The student planners for the 2025-2026 school year are available to download and print for free. I am no longer able to offer printed versions. May God bless you all in the coming school year! You can find them HERE.
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I CANNOT conceive of a God of love and mercy torturing His children in hell.” How often we hear that statement from people, Catholics among them. Catholic dogma teaches that there is a hell, or state of eternal punishment. Thus we read in the Athanasian Creed: ‘‘And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire.” The proof of this doctrine is found in the clear texts of Holy Writ and in the constant witness, from its very beginning, of the Church established by Jesus Christ.
Without any knowledge of Christian principles, it would seem at first sight that infinite goodness and mercy are incompatible with eternal punishment. Though it is true that after all explanations the element of mystery must remain when finite man considers the infinite counsels of God, still reason likewise has an answer. These people say that they ‘‘cannot conceive,” etc. Can they, then, conceive how a just God, who is the Lawgiver and the Lord of men, can give His kingdom to one guilty, for in¬ stance, of unrepented murder, adultery, seduction, or drunkenness? Can they conceive of a just God who can give eternal happiness to one who all his life long has despised and set at naught His mercy and who has died obstinate in evil? They are forgetting that God is not only infinitely loving and merciful but also infinitely just. Willful Rebellion Man, you must remember, is not a mere automaton, nor a mere animal of sense and instinct, nor an independent, self-ruling being, but a creature created after God’s image and likeness, with intellect to know the good and free will to choose it; and with sufficient grace always to know God’s revelation and to do God’s will. If such a being deliberately refuses these gifts and graces, refusing to acknowledge his dependence on God his Creator and Lawgiver, freely choosing mere creatures in place of his God, and dies insolently refusing to fulfill his destiny—what else can God do to this adorer of self than to leave him to his choice for all eternity? It is easy to see how utterly out of place the unrepentant sinner would be in heaven. A son has rebelled against a father; a friend has turned traitor against a friend; a creature has proved false to a Creator; and yet, they say, Jesus Christ, the God of all justice, must say to the rebel creature that still hates Him: “Come, you blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom!” This is only thoughtless sentimentality, which, having altogether lost the conviction of the malice of sin, refuses to see God’s justice in punishing the sinner. Catholic Teaching The Catholic Church teaches that there is a hell, and that hell in primarily the permanent deprivation of the Beatific Vision, everlasting separation from God, inflicted on those who die in mortal sin. This greatest pain of hell is called the pain of loss. God is the end of man; and to have lost this end through one’s own fault constitutes the very nature of hell. The word “damnation” comes from the Latin word damnum, which means simply “loss.” Eternal Punishment It is well to try to understand that the punishment is necessarily everlasting. One overtaken by death in mortal sin is found preferring a created good to God; and he abides in his final choice, can no longer change his mind, continues to reject God. After death there is no chance for merit. The damned is eternally punished because he is eternally in the state of sin. The Catholic Church teaches that the human soul remains in that state in which death finds it; if death finds it averted from God, it will remain so forever. The damned at the judgment do not for a moment see God; but some flash of light must pierce their darkened minds so that they realize the tremendousness of their loss; and every instant of their eternity they want God and at the same time feel a disgust, a hatred, which turns them from what they want; theirs is a never-ending life of appalling aimlessness, an eternal knocking at the gate eternally closed. They are truly “the lost.” The journey will never end; home and rest—God and His heaven—will for them never be. Pain of Sense The Church teaches that in addition to the pain of loss, which is a negative punishment, there is also a positive punishment, the pain of sense, commonly referred to as hell-fire. The reality of hell-fire as an instrument of the sense of pain has never been solemnly defined as an article of faith, though it is said that if the Vatican Council had not been interrupted, it would have been so defined; but meanwhile it is clear that no one may doubt the reality of hell-fire without grievous sin. It would not be formal heresy to deny it, but willful error and temerity; and no Catholic can deny it without grave sin against the faith. It is not the fire we have on earth, but only analogous to it. Our word “fire” expresses most nearly this instrument of pain, wherefore it is referred to in the New Testament no less than thirty times by the word “fire.” By God’s omnipotence hell-fire will also act directly on a pure intelligence, causing it to suffer a pain to which the only parallel we possess on earth is the sensation of burning. Thus this fire can burn not only bodies, but also spirits. A Place Though no one could say that it is a part of revelation, yet it has always been held within the Church that hell is a place as well as a state. This is a most natural inference from the texts of Scripture. Where in the universe hell is, no one can say. It has not pleased God to reveal this. However, Holy Writ seems to indicate in many passages that hell is within the earth. Nor need we look upon these passages as merely metaphors to illustrate the state of separation from God, of being hidden away from high heaven above in the dark abysses of the earth. Hence, some theologians accept the opinion that hell is really within the earth. St. John Chrysostom reminds us: “We must not ask where hell is, but how we are to escape it.” Worse Than We Can Imagine What is hell? It is beyond our power to answer this properly, for hell exceeds in horror all that men can imagine. Just south of the ancient city of Jerusalem was Gehenna, “The Valley of the Groans of Children.” There the idolatrous people were wont to sacrifice innocent babes to Moloch, a brazen idol with the form of a man and the head of an ox. A furnace was erected beneath the figure in such a way that unnatural worshippers of the Prince of Darkness would flock to the spot, place their children in the red-hot arms of the hideous idol, and drown the agonizing shrieks and cries of the little ones by the discordant music of timbrels and other harsh instruments. The tender babes would writhe in agony in the monster’s fiery clutch and then drop into the roaring furnace beneath. Later on, that valley was used as the receptacle of the city’s sewerage and all foul filthiness. Was that hell? No. After the Jamaican earthquake in 1907 the city of Kingston was littered with the bodies of the dead. It was found necessary to burn them. They were piled in heaps; oil and turpentine were poured over them; the torch was applied; and quickly a murky angry flame sputtered and crackled among the writhing corpses. “Oh, the odor of that sizzling flesh!” says one who witnessed the sight. “It stifled; nay, it sickened unto death.” A passing quake shook the pile down. There lay a boy with an ugly gash across his face. “Even as I looked,” says the eyewitness, “the figure began to writhe and squirm as if in agony. Shrinking back in horror I cried, ‘Surely they have not cast a living child among the dead?’ No, it was merely a contraction of the sinews and the muscles as the flames ate through the flesh.” Was that sputtering, hissing pyre, that mass of sizzling putrefaction, hell? No. After the earthquake at Messina in 1908 ravenous, starving dogs prowled about gnawing at dead bodies like hyenas. A young man was so buried in debris that only his head protruded. While thus unable to defend himself three of the rabid dogs attacked him and savagely tore his eyes and face. Was that hell? No. In the Rocky Mountains, hundreds of miles from the nearest habitation, a solitary man fell over a precipice. With crushed bones and broken body he lay at the bottom of the abyss, crying in agony for the help that would never come. Was that hell? No! What is hell? It is eternal separation from God, for whom the soul was made: “Depart from me . . It is eternal enmity with that God: “Depart from me, accursed ones ..It is eternal pain: “...into the everlasting fire ...“ It is the hateful companionship of the devils and the damned: “... which was prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). It is eternal remorse and despair: “Where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:43). No doubt the pains of hell have sometimes been described with a crude realism that is revolting to the mind. But it were well at all times to remember that the pains of hell exceed in horror all that men can imagine. We therefore say that it is right and just and sometimes even a duty to call in even the imagination to warn men against the supreme and last danger that awaits them all. In heaven there are different degrees of happiness. So in hell there are different degrees of punishment, but the least degree will exceed in horror all that we can imagine on earth. Hence Dante’s play of imagination in his Inferno, where he describes all kinds and degrees of sufferings, is not idle and useless. It keeps before the mind that for the lost, in some unique way, the punishment will always fit the crime. Timeless. Unending, Hopeless a) There is no time in hell; both the blessed and the damned have entered a changeless world, eternity. When the hour of death strikes, the hands of the clock of time stop and move no more. b) It is utterly useless and opposed to the spirit of the Church to pray for the lost; their state can in no way be changed after the judgment nor their punishment mitigated; they are “outside the bond of charity,’’ says St. Thomas Aquinas, “by which the works of the living extend to the dead.’’ c) The lost will never have the least joy or satisfaction, even in evil. Dives was “tormented in this flame,” but not even the petition that a finger dipped in water should be laid on his tongue was granted. d) The guess that the pain of sense will sometime come to an end must be definitely rejected. “Everlasting” is the word most often attached to the word “fire,” e) The devils roam through the world seeking the destruction of souls. Revelation tends to show that no such influence is normally granted to the damned. Also, if in a spiritistic seance an evil spirit presents itself, the presumption is that it is a devil and not a damned soul; and it is certain that it is not a soul in heaven or in purgatory. We admit that the doctrine of hell is a mystery; but it is a lesser mystery than Bethlehem or Calvary. The human mind can more easily understand that God should punish sin eternally than that the Eternal God Himself should die upon the cross to save man from eternal punishment. Witness of Logic “There is no hell!” reechoes insincerely from millions of souls to whom the wish is father to the thought, and who in their strange folly imagine that the denial of a thing must needs make that thing non-existent. ‘‘There is no hell!” cry those who do not want one. But human reason rises up in all her majesty and calmly says, “Good and evil can never be placed on the same plane. Good must be rewarded, evil punished. In this world only too often there is no justice: the godless oppressor, the sinner who tramples upon the rights of God and man rolls in riches, lives in ease and luxury; whereas the godly man is oppressed, the just man who observes the laws of God and men languishes in poverty, ekes out a miserable existence in suffering and adversity. But since there is so often no justice in this world, it must come in the next. Therefore there is a hell. Who shall dare tell me that Nero and Paul, Judas and Peter, Lucifer and Michael, shall abide together?” Universal Opinion “There is no hell!” cries the spirit of the age. But the nations of the world rise up in protest. “Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Mohammedans, Jews, Heretics, Christians — we all and at all times have believed in a life to come which, as surely as it must have its rewards for good must just as surely have its punishments for evil. Eternal retribution is written on every page of our history and imbedded in our literature. Search the Iliad of Homer and Greek drama, the Aeneid of Vergil, the Inferno of Dante, the epic of Milton, the tragedies of Shakespeare, and you will find everywhere our testimony that there is a hell. . “There is no hell!” cried Count Orloff and General V, two freethinkers, rashly consoling themselves. It was at Moscow in 1812. Scoffingly they made a compact that the first to go there was to return and tell the other. Soon after General V set out with the Russian army to repel Napoleon. Some weeks later Count Orloff was lying awake in bed when suddenly the curtains were dashed aside and General V, pale as death, with his hand on his breast, appeared before him. “There is a hell,” he gasped, “and, great God! I am in it!” Several weeks later word arrived at Moscow that General V had been killed by a shell striking him in the breast on the day and at the hour when he was seen by Count Orloff. Christ's Testimony “There is no hell!” cries the modern world. But the meek and forgiving Jesus proclaimed it in His Gospel no less than fifteen times. “Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). “Fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). And Jesus is God, who cannot deceive. And whoever believes not the Son of God maketh Him a liar! There is a hell. Such is the dogma of the holy and infallible Church, founded by Christ on His Apostles. There is a hell. So teaches our holy faith. It is a real place of existence and not merely a state of being. It is a place of torments eternal, a place of everlasting fire. Christ the Lord has said everlasting fire. And Christ is God, and God is Eternal Truth. Ticket to Hell Who is going to hell? “Which of you shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” (Is. 33:14). All who die with mortal sin upon the soul are going there. That is Catholic teaching. One mortal sin is enough. Unrepented of and unforgiven, mortal sin means hell. As regards the wicked the Church has frequently defined “that according to the ordinance of God the souls of those who depart in actual mortal sin immediately after their death descend into hell where they are tormented with infernal pains.” Pope St. Gregory the Great says: “As beatitude rejoices the elect, so we must believe that from the day of their departure fire burns the reprobate.” Mortal Sin What is mortal sin? “Sin,” St. Augustine tells us, “is any transgression, in deed, or word, or desire, of the eternal law. And the eternal law is the divine order, or will of God which requires the preservation of natural order and forbids the breach of it.” The law of God is fourfold: The law of conscience, implanted deep in the soul at its creation; the decalogue, or ten commandments, given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai; the moral law of Christ, promulgated in the Gospels; the law of the Church, legislating in the name of Christ. Now, mortal sin is a grievous offense against the law of God, committed with sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. It is a rebellion of dust against the omnipotent God; a despicable turning of one’s back on God; a rude trampling on the image of God in one’s soul. It is an injurious ingratitude toward God the Father, the Creator; an accursed ingratitude toward God the Son, the Redeemer; a frightful ingratitude toward God the Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier. What is mortal sin? The greatest of evils, so great that the works of a million martyrs would not be sufficient to atone for one mortal sin. Go to an open grave; look down at the rotting, worm-eaten corpse — sin did that! Ascend in spirit into heaven; see its beauty — sin can rob you of that! Descend into hell; see the damned suffer—sin made hell. Go to Calvary; see the Savior dying on the cross in unutterable agony—sin nailed Him to it! What is sin? It is that turning from God which has caused all the sighs that have ever agitated human breasts, and all the oceans of tears that have fallen, drop by drop, from the eyes of men; it is that which has caused tears to fall from the most sacred eyes of the Son of God! What is mortal sin? It is purposely getting too near the devil, a chained dog, and letting him sink his yellow teeth into your heart. It is clasping a slimy black rattlesnake to your breast and letting it plunge its deadly fangs into your flesh. It is, for many, alas! the putting of the finishing stone to their house of eternity, to the house of their damnation. Motive of Fear Millions of souls, as we said before, to whom the wish is father to the thought, cry out, “There is no hell!” They deny its existence because they wish It did not exist. Then there are others who, while not denying the existence of hell, would rather not be reminded of it. “Why frighten us,” they complain, “by telling us these things? Fear is man’s enemy; it weakens the mind and body. Why disturb people by filling the soul with fear?” Fear of death and purgatory and hell does not seem to disturb people overmuch, to judge from the fact that so many are not even enough afraid of these terrible things to refrain from committing grievous sin. An increase of a salutary fear of God is, indeed, much to be desired. Says the Savior: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). The love of God grows mighty weak at times, and only fear can save us then. No wonder holy men have ever prayed: “O God, if ever my love for you does not keep me from sin, grant that at least the fear of hell may do so!” In this life men value the motive of fear very highly, as is evident from the punishments in every law code of the world. There are only too many who are law-abiding only because they fear the punishments resulting from the violation of the law. It is a simple matter of reason to apply this motive to the moral order. Not Highest Motive True, the fear of hell is not the highest motive on which to base our moral life; it is surely better to serve God out of love. “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). The highest motive is service of God out of pure love for Himself alone, but the motive of fear is not to be despised or called low and unworthy, even if a man were to say, “Were it not for the punishment, I would not restrain myself from evil, nor would I do good,” his fear, though servile and imperfect, would nevertheless be substantially good; for it recognizes infinite justice. Still what we should strive after is filial fear. “Now you have not received a spirit of bondage so as to be again in fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by virtue of which we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Rom. 8:15). Gift of the Holy Ghost And yet how truly we should fear! Indeed, as you know, the fear of the Lord is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. We receive this gift in order that we may be filled with a dread of sin. “The fear of the Lord driveth out sin” (Ecclus. 1:27). We enlarge upon this subject because the ignorance shown by those who would have us refrain from reminding them of hell, is only too common—and a very successful trick of the devil in these days. “A wise man feareth and declineth from evil,” says Holy Writ (Prov. 14:16) ; and, “By the fear of the Lord every one declineth from evil” (Prov. 15:27). From this we understand that the first step by which the sinner is ordinarily converted from his evil ways is the fear of God, who, being all-wise and all-holy, punishes all sin in justice and truth, that is, according to His infinite justice and His infinite wisdom. But we must not conclude from this that anyone may abandon all fear of the Lord when he has abandoned a sinful life. The wise man continues to dread the great evil of sin, in order to expiate it the more, and to keep away from all danger of it. He knows full well that he is prone to evil; he is, therefore, diffident of himself; but the more he advances in wisdom, the more he confides in the goodness of God. And his fear of God is tempered by a firm confidence in his Savior’s merits and by a sincere and consoling trust in God’s mercy. The fear of the Lord is then what it should be: a reverential fear, by which we subject ourselves to the will of God and, as a consequence, dread sin, which He detests and abhors. Such should be our fear of the Lord. Such fear leads us to hate and avoid the occasions of sin; deepens the consciousness of our frailty without rendering us pusillanimous; reminds us of past failures without lessening our hope; warns us of future dangers without impairing our spirit of holy enterprise; induces us to guard the senses, to mortify the flesh, to bridle the imagination, and to keep the affections of the heart first and last for God. No; there is no danger of arousing too much of this salutary fear of the Lord. On the contrary, there is not enough of it. To Avoid Hell What should you do to avoid hell and its eternal torments? In the words of Ecclesiasticus: “My son, hast thou sinned? Do so no more: but for thy former sins also pray that they may be forgiven thee. Flee from sins as from the face of a serpent; for if thou comest near them, they will take hold of thee. The teeth thereof arc the teeth of a lion killing the souls of men” (Ecclus. 21:1-3). What shall you do? Make your peace with God if you are at enmity with Him through mortal sin. Begin anew today. Avoid mortal sin as you would a poisonous serpent. It makes the soul as odious in the sight of God as would be to us the sight of a man tied face to face, mouth to mouth, with a loathsome corpse. Avoid even all deliberate venial sins; for they are the rungs of the ladder that leads to mortal sin. Live a life of prayer and piety and Christian virtue. Rather suffer anything, rather die a thousand deaths, than commit one mortal sin. What shall you do? St. Paul tells us in the Epistle for the First Sunday in Advent. “It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences.” Be true to God! How He desires the salvation of us all! We turn from the dread thought of the land of darkness where everlasting horror dwelleth and look through the pages of Holy Writ, God’s own word. There we read, “He will have all men to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4). “I am the Lord thy God . . . showing mercy unto them that love me and keep my com¬ mandments” (Ex. 20:5, 6). “The Lord is sweet to all” (Ps. 144:9). “Is it my will that the sinner should die, saith the Lord, and not that he should be converted from his ways and live?” (Ezech. 18:23). From the Holy Book we turn to the darkened hill of Calvary. We see the divine Savior suffering for us as never man suffered on earth before, and never man shall suffer again. Looking up into His agonized face, we dare not doubt His love for us, for all. The proof is written large in His Precious Blood. From the cross we turn to the tabernacle. The Savior so loves our souls that He wants to be with us on earth until we can be with Him in heaven. How eloquent the tabernacle is with the silent pleadings of love, with the yearnings of the Sacred Heart for souls! How that Heart must bleed with anguish when it looks upon the sinner, upon the soul that doesn’t care. How the Savior must exclaim in tears, “What more could I have done for thee that I have not done!’’ “My blood, my life I gave for thee That thou might’st live eternally. I love thee still. Give me thy heart And from thy sinful way depart!’’ How often would the Savior have drawn you to His bosom in the infinite tenderness of His boundless love, “and thou wouldst not.’’ Imprimatur 1953 Movies and TV have been a sore spot with me for a long time because of the demoralizing effect they have on all society, not just Catholics. The impurity, the taking of God's holy name in vain, the vulgarity, as well as the sympathetic treatment of many, many sins are just a few of the negative reasons we choose to stay away from them.
I was sent a link by a friend to the full text of "MOTION PICTURES Classified by National Legion of Decency FEBRUARY, 1936 — OCTOBER, 1959" (Vatican II did away with this, I wonder why?) If you should choose to read some of the text at the link, be sure to read the ratings before you scroll down the list, also read the objections under some of the movies; it certainly is eye opening. The movies in this list are all from 1959 and before. If the Legion of Decency were still in existence how would the movies of today be classified? Methinks not many of them, if any, would be classified so that they were okay to watch. What great dangers lie in these movies for the innocent eyes of our precious children? Those little eyes that God entrusted to our care! The following is from the Preface: "Convinced that there exists today no means of influencing the masses more potent than the motion picture medium, Holy Mother Church has, during the last three decades, exercised a special motherly care and watchfulness over the cinema. Ideally, as a gift from God our Creator, the motion picture should be used by men solely for the good of mankind, for "the first aim of this art should be to serve truth and virtue," to use Pius XII 's forthright statement in Miranda Prorsus. In the same Encyclical letter the late Holy Father has specified the particular reasons which prompt a continuing interest on the part of the Church in motion pictures: "Just as very great advantages can arise from the wonderful advances which have been made in our day, in technical knowledge concerning motion pictures, radio and television, so too can very great dangers. For these new possessions and new instruments which are within almost everyone's grasp, introduce a most powerful influence into men's minds, both because they can flood them with light, raise them to nobility, adorn them with beauty, and because they can disfigure them by dimming their luster, dishonor them by a process of corruption, and make them subject to uncontrolled passions, according as the subjects presented to the senses in these shows are praiseworthy or reprehensible. In the past century, advancing technical skill in the field of business frequently had this result: machines, which ought to serve men, when brought into use rather reduced them to a state of slavery and caused grievous harm. Likewise today, unless the mounting development of technical skill, applied to the diffusion of pictures, sounds and ideas is subjected to the sweet yoke of the law of Christ, it can be the source of countless evils, which appear to be all the more serious, because not only material forces but also the mind are unhappily enslaved. And man's inventions are, to that extent, deprived of those advantages which in the design of God's Providence ought to be their primary purpose. . . ." The Church has never doubted the vast power of the cinema for good but neither is She blind to the harm which this medium can do when crass commercialism replaces principle and social responsibility. To assist Her children in the choice of that which is good in this medium of entertainment and at the same time to guard them against movies which are not worthy of the rational nature of man the Church has established National Catholic film centers throughout the world. The National Legion of Decency is such a center for the American scene. . . . . " The rest of this can be read at the following link: http://archive.org/stream/motionpicturescl00nati/motionpicturescl00nati_djvu.txt An example of what can happen when children are allowed to watch what they please. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/911-call-released-waukesha-slender-man-stabbings-n122291 Source
"First I give thanks to my God through Jesus Christ for you all; because your faith is spoken of in the whole world."— Romans I, 8. The great Apostle of the Gentiles thus praised the people of Rome before he had visited the imperial city of the Caesars. The foundations of the Church there had been laid by other hands than his. Who built up that flourishing church, so famous from its very infancy? Whence its importance in all subsequent ages of Christian history? And why do we now, after the lapse of nineteen centuries, still look up to it, and speak of it with the reverence, and in the terms of praise with which it was looked up to and spoken of by the whole world in the days of St. Paul? I will tell you. One day in far off Palestine a Man was walking attended by twelve other men in that mountain region in the neighborhood of Caesarea-Philippi. The men were the disciples of One who called himself by the mysterious title, "Son of Man"; and He asked them, "Whom do men say that the Son of Man is?" They answered: "Some say that He is John the Baptist, others that He is Elias, others that He is Jeremias or one of the prophets." Then the Man said to His disciples: "But whom do you say that I am?" And one of His disciples thereupon answering said: "Thou art Christ the Son of the living God." Then the Man, turning to him who had answered His question, said to him: "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and flood have not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in Heaven. And I say to thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven." A year had passed away, and the same Man was sitting at table with these same twelve men. The time of His Passion was at hand, and in view of it, He had instituted the rite in which He had created the chiefs of His kingdom, and He spoke to them of the kingdom He was disposing to them, described the nature of its government, and indicated the character of the person who was to exercise it. And then, singling out from among the twelve that same disciple, whom He had distinguished in the instance just mentioned, He said to him: "Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and thou being converted confirm thy brethren." On the same night, the Man who had thus twice conferred a special charge on the same disciple was taken by the chief priests of His nation, delivered to the secular power, and put to death by the procurator of the Roman Emperor, as one who claimed to be king of the Jews. After dying on the cross, He was buried, but His disciples said that He arose again and appeared to them. And in one of the appearances, as seven of them were fishing in the Lake of Galilee, they saw Him standing on the shore. And He called to them, and invited them to dine with Him. And after the dinner, He said to the same disciples whom he had twice before distinguished in the company of twelve by giving him a singular charge: "Simon, son of John, lovest thou me more than these ?" He said to Him: "Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee." He said to him : "Feed my lambs." He said to him again: "Simon, son of John, lovest thou me ?" He said to Him : "Yea Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee." He said to him : "Be shepherd over my sheep." He said to him the third time: "Simon, son of John, lovest thou me?" Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, "lovest thou me?" And he said to Him : "Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee." Jesus said to him: "Feed my sheep." Some years later a stranger from the East entered Rome by the Appian Way and said to himself : "Here will I remain ; from here will I feed my Master's lambs, and my Master's sheep." The stranger in Rome was Peter, to whom Christ had spoken in Palestine. Peter brought to Rome her greatest glory. He made her the seat of a universal and never-ending empire—the empire of the Church of the living God. It was because Rome was the great city of the Caesars, towards whose forum converged the highways of the world, that Peter chose her to be the chief city of Christ's empire. Here he fixed his See, and now for nearly nineteen hundred years his successors, the bishops of Rome, have ruled the Church of Christ. In history there is nothing like the Papacy. The record of its life is the proof of its divine origin. It has lived nearly nineteen hundred years. It carries us back to the time of the early Caesars. Its hands were uplifted to bless the martyrs given over to the wild beasts of the Coliseum. It worshiped in the sacred recesses of the Catacombs. The Papacy welcomed Constantine to Rome after his great victory over the tyrant Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge before the gates of the city, and listened to his proclamation of freedom for Christ and His followers. It crowned Charlemagne, when a new world had risen upon the ruins of the old Roman empire. But the Papacy did not pass down the centuries without struggles against fierce and powerful enemies. Strength of arm and power of mind, such as would have dealt destruction to the most mighty kingdoms, assailed it in every age. "And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon the house, and it fell not; for it was founded on a rock." "And Jesus said to them: why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then rising up, He commanded the winds- and the sea, and there came a great calm." These two quotations from the Gospel of St. Matthew present under two different figures, a forcible illustration of what has often happened to the Papacy at various epochs in its long and eventful history. A house strongly and securely built upon a firm foundation by an all-wise and all-powerful Architect, it has been at all times the object of the fiercest and most obstinate attacks. The armies of the world and the hosts of Satan have been successively marshalled against it in formidable array; dark and threatening storms have often broken over it; erring men, and the powers of darkness have over and over again conspired to destroy it ; but "it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock." Launched like a bark on the boisterous sea of this world, the Papacy has been at all times assailed by the most terrible tempests; the winds have howled fiercely around it; the waves, lashed into fury, have threatened to swallow it up; everything pointed to a speedy and fatal shipwreck, and its stoutest-hearted mariners quailed and trembled with fear. But, the good old ship has braved all storms and out-lived all dangers. It could not suffer shipwreck, for it was freighted with the riches of redemption and the hopes of mankind, and Jesus was constantly on board, watching over its destiny and shielding it from impending danger. Sometimes, indeed, He seemed to slumber; but even then His Divine Heart was wakeful; and in the hour of the greatest gloom and of the most imminent peril to His trembling disciples, He listened favorably to their earnest supplication, "Lord, save us, we perish." He rebuked their want of faith, "Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?" "And rising up He commanded the winds and the sea, and there came a great calm." It has ever been so in the history of the Holy See. It has come victorious out of every struggle, sometimes,, indeed, bearing on its body the mark of cruel wounds, and with its garments dripping with blood, but always with the principle of life as strong in it as ever. The Papacy has survived revolutions which have swept away the most mighty states and empires; it has weathered storms in which the stoutest barks have suffered shipwreck; it has come unscathed out of fiery ordeals which have consumed all other institutions, creations of merely human wisdom and power. Empires have fallen around it, dynasties have disappeared, thrones have tottered and sunk to the dust, scepters have been broken in pieces, laurels which have decked the brows of conquerors have faded, and regal crowns have dropped to the earth; yet the Papacy has survived every change and revolution and has stood forth a pillar of strength, solitary and alone in its wonderful stability amidst the ruins everywhere strewn in around it. And now, after all its conflicts, the Papacy is still as vigorous, as full of health and1 life, as buoyant with hope, as when it first entered the great battle-field of this world, almost nineteen hundred years ago. The greatest trial that the Papacy had to sustain in modern times was when Pius VII was dragged into exile by the imperial despot who rode the storm of the French revolution and controlled its destinies. Napoleon I was determined to chain the Papacy to his chariot. He sent General Radet to Rome, who forced his way into the private apartments of the Pope in the Quirinal Palace, on the 9th day of June, 1809, and seizing the aged Pontiff, carried him off a prisoner to France. We all know how shamefully the Holy Pontiff was treated, and to what indignities and humiliations he was subjected by his imperial jailer, in the royal palace of Fontainebleau, near Paris. But did the aged Pontiff quail? Did his purpose falter? Did he lose faith or hope? Did he fear the result? And was his hope groundless? Calm, mild, dignified, strong in faith and hope, Pius VII was not appalled by the dreadful storm that raged around the vessel of which he held the helm. He knew and felt that the tempest would soon subside, and that the bark of Peter would once again pursue its prosperous course over the placid waters. And he was not left long in suspense. Soon the scene shifts. The long persecuted Pontiff is borne back in triumph to Rome. His victory and that of the Church is glorious and complete. But what of Napoleon, the great all-conquering Emperor, who had put forth his hands against the Lord's anointed; had sarcastically boasted, when the Pope excommunicated him, that this should not cause the arms to fall from the hands of his brave soldiers, and had flattered himself with the vision of an universal empire over Europe, of which Rome and Paris would be the two great centers? What was the fate of this towering genius and proudly boasting conqueror of Europe? Everyone knows what it was. In the very room at Fontainebleau where he maltreated Pius VII, by a strange irony of fate, he was forced to sign his abdication. And, confined upon a barren rock in the ocean, he languished out the last years of his feverish existence, with full leisure to reflect on the evils he had done to the people of God and on the blind ambition and sacrilegious invasion of the Church which had marred his destiny; and with time enough, too, to repent of his misdeeds, to lament his false steps, and to return to a more sober and more Christian frame of mind. Forgetful of all past injuries, the noble Pontiff exerted his influence with the European powers and in particular with the British Government, and succeeded in obtaining permission to send him the spiritual guide for whom he had earnestly asked. One of the most remarkable incidents in this drama, is the circumstance that Napoleon was overthrown, the Pontiff restored to his See and the Church to its rights, chiefly by the agency of three great powers, England, Russia and Prussia, all distinguished for their firm, constant and relentless opposition to the Church, and to the Papacy. Who does not see the finger of God in all this? Who will not conclude that both the Church and the Papacy bear a charmed life; that God Himself stands pledged for their defense and protection, and that man, therefore, cannot destroy them? The Papacy has always exercised a civilizing influence on the world. From the Rome of Peter, Christianity and civilization went abroad over the earth. Blot out from history the influence of the Papacy—what remains to the world of Christian truth, spiritual life, and moral culture? The Apostle of Christianity was ever the apostle of civilization; the missionary was the explorer of new countries, while preaching the Gospel to the inhabitants of unknown and untraveled regions, and it was at Rome's bidding and under Rome's guidance that Christianity was preached in every nation of the known world. As early as the second century Irenaeus of Gaul wrote: "To Rome because of its supremacy must believers from everywhere turn." From Rome Augustine went to England and Patrick was sent to Ireland. Rome sent Boniface to Germany, and Ansgar to the tribes living near the North Sea. And what Rome sowed in the souls of men she protected and nurtured. The Papacy was at all times the great promoter of education, the valiant defender of the weak, the vigilant guardian of liberty. When feudal lords and kings sacrificed womanly virtue, and the sacredness of the marriage bond, a Pope quickly excommunicated the guilty ones, and the haughtiest and mightiest men of earth were compelled to do homage to justice and good morals. When tyrants smote liberty and trampled on the sacred rights of the people, a Pope called them to Canossa and curbed their pride and ambitions. The famed universities of the so-called Dark Ages, were blessed and encouraged by the Popes, and often founded directly by them. The ceaseless efforts of the Papacy rid Europe of slavery and diminished the number and repressed the savagery of feudal wars. It has been well said that he knows but little of history— but little of the battles waged for truth, virtue, liberty and civilization, who does not reverence the Papacy. Who, visiting Rome, does not pass from one basilica to another in love and gratitude, to kneel before the tombs of some of the giants amongst the Popes, and thank heaven that the Papacy was given to humanity to defend the poor and the weak, to protect woman, to preserve on earth purity of morals, and liberty of soul, when pride and passion conspired to hurl the world back into paganism. The Papacy stands out in history the most sublime and constant evidence that God's ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts. To the minds of many the crucial period in the life of the Papacy had come when the pontificate of Pius IX was drawing to its close. The Papal States had fallen, and the spoliation of the temporal power of the Holy See was complete. Prophets of evil were not wanting who foretold the speedy extinction of the Papacy. But God never abandons His Church. Providential Popes have always been seated in the chair of Peter at every crucial period of her history. And so, twenty-six years ago, when the hour seemed the darkest for the Papacy, Leo XIII was proclaimed Supreme Pontiff. For over a quarter of a century Leo did his work thoroughly and well, and when death claimed him in July, 1903, he left the Papacy recognized by all intelligent men as the first and greatest moral power in the world. Leo has passed to his reward, but the Papacy lives on in his successor Pius X. A few weeks ago, through the kindness of Cardinal Satolli, I had the happiness of being received in private audience by the Holy Father. A few days after my ordination, I had the honor of representing the old imperial university of Innsbruck at the Vatican, and enjoyed the distinction of a private audience with Leo XIII, then happily reigning. Leo was all intellect; Pius is all heart. Leo was the scholar, the philosopher, the statesman, the diplomat, the nobleman. Pius is the mild, the gentle, the humble, the benevolent commoner. He is a man of charming personality, and graceful, dignified bearing. He is a fine, large, handsome, manly man, with snow-white hair, a healthy, ruddy complexion, and a kind, sympathetic face. He meets you with a kindly smile and a gracious cordiality that puts you at once at ease. He has dispensed with a good deal of the etiquette of the Papal court, for he is a very democratic Pope. I at once felt at home in his presence. I have visited Rome, the city of the Popes, the metropolis of religion; I have seen Peter, in his successor Pius X, the living link in the Apostolic chain, the first ring of which is riveted to the shrine of the Apostle St. Peter. I am grateful for the encouragement and inspiration I received from the hands of the successor of Peter. I now realize better and appreciate more the power and majesty of the Holy See, and I understand more clearly the vastness of its influence. The Papacy, like the sturdy oak shaken by the storm, has taken deeper root, and become more firmly established in the soil of the earth by each successive tempest that has swept by it in the long lapse of ages. Persecution has not only not impaired, but it has rather served to extend its empire, even as the wind scatters the seed of the plant, and sows it broadcast upon the earth. The Papacy cannot be destroyed, it cannot perish, because God is its light and its strength, Jesus Christ is its head, and the Holy Ghost is its Teacher and Comforter. The Papacy cannot fall, unless the Saviour God fail in His word; and He said: "Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words shall not pass away." "Strong as the rock of the ocean that stems A thousand wild waves on the shore," it has survived every tempest, and withstood every storm and assault. Its triumphs are strewn over the history of the past; other triumphs await it in the future. Who does not admire, if he will not love, this glorious Spouse of Christ, "pure as a virgin, and as a virgin meek," this heroine of a thousand triumphs., this imperishable mother of Christians! Who is not proud to rise up among her millions of children and to call her blessed! Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church, Imprimatur 1911 (June 29.)
Gospel. Matt. xvi. 13-19. "At that time Jesus came into the district of Cesarea Philippi, and he asked his disciples, saying: Whom do men say that the Son of man is ? But they said : Some, John the Baptist, and other some Elias, and others, Jeremias; or one of the prophets. Jesus saith to them: But whom do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answering said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven." How beautiful is our holy religion! Not only does she propose to our imitation the life of Our Lord, but she shows us also poor weak human beings, that have been sanctified by God's grace and mercy, and have become saints in heaven. Such were the Apostles, and so many other saints, who, from very imperfect beings became holy men and women. Let us therefore speak of the great Apostle, St. Peter, whose feast, with that of St. Paul, we celebrate today. We shall see in this discourse how he was elevated to so high a dignity, through the lively faith and intense love he had for Jesus Christ. The faith of St. Peter was of the liveliest character: the first time he saw Our Lord he believed in Him, became His disciple and abandoned all to follow Him. Once from his boat he saw Our Lord walking toward him on the water, and so great was his faith in His power, that he believed it would be possible to walk on the water also, if Our Lord so ordered. The first time Our Lord taught the great mystery of the Blessed Eucharist, promising that He would give His flesh to eat and His blood to drink, many of His hearers and disciples left Him, so much were they shocked. Our Lord asked Peter whether he, too, would go away: to which he answered, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." No, Lord, never will I leave Thee, let all fly from Thee, and abandon Thee, but I will always be happy in Thy company, even though I should have to give my life for this fidelity. But who does not remember St. Peter's betrayal of Our Lord at the court of Pilate, when a servant girl remembered to have seen Peter, and said that he was one of the companions of the Nazarene; he assured the bystanders that he knew not the man, and confirmed his assertion by oaths and curses. But Jesus cast a glance of commiseration on the guilty Peter, who then remembered his Lord's words: " Before the cock crows, thou wilt deny Me thrice," and going out, he wept bitterly. Another sign of the faith of St. Peter is shown from the following incident: Once Our Lord asked His disciples who they thought He was; they mentioned different persons, Elias, or one of the prophets. But Peter at once answered, "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God." That is. Thou art the Messias promised to the Jews, the Desired of all nations, the King of Israel, the King of kings, the Lord of lords whom all must obey. This was a wonderful confession and the Lord approved of it. "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father, who is in heaven. And I say to thee thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven." If Peter's faith was great, immense also was his reward: In consideration of that great faith, he was constituted the head of the Church, the master of all; that by the special gift vouchsafed to him, the Church might be preserved infallible. As a reward of his faith you see him work the most wonderful miracles, healing the sick even by the shadow of his body; the lame walked, the devils fled from those that were possessed, and he raised the dead to life. We read in the Acts of the Apostles of a poor man whose lower limbs were paralyzed so that he was not able to walk. When this poor man saw Peter passing, he asked for alms, but Peter said, "Silver and gold, I have none, but what I have I give thee; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, arise and walk." Another miracle wrought by St. Peter is the following: A noble young man, a relation of the king, died; his parents and relatives had recourse to Peter, who after a short prayer, turned to the body and said, "Young man, I say to thee, arise." Jesus gave him life and health, and at once he rose. Peter took him by the hand and gave him to his parents. My dear young friends, do you wish to do great things for God and for humanity, and do you wish to have the help of God in all your undertakings? Imitate the faith of Peter; make with Peter that beautiful confession to Our Lord, by calling Him the Son of God. When you receive Jesus in holy communion, when you visit the church where Jesus is on the altar, call Him Jesus, the Son of the living God, because it shows your faith and your love for Him. The love of Peter for Our Lord was also very great. You can see this from the following incident, related in the Gospel: One day after Peter's triple betrayal. Our Lord suddenly came upon him and said, "Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?" and Peter answered, "Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee." He saith to him, "Feed My lambs." Then Our Lord asked him again, " Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?" Peter gave the same answer, and Jesus said, "Feed My sheep." Then for the third time Our Saviour asked, "Lovest thou Me?" and Peter was grieved, for it looked as if Our Lord doubted his fidelity, firmness, and love. So in despair he said to Our Lord: "Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee." Then Jesus said, "Feed My lambs." These glorious offices were entrusted to Peter on account of that faithful and enthusiastic love he showed for Christ. My dear young people, if Our Lord were to address you in these words, "Dost thou love Me?" what could you answer? Could you with St. Peter say, "Thou knowest. Lord, that I love Thee." Would you not have to answer, "I love Thee but little, Lord; somehow I must confess that I love pleasures, plays, pastimes and feasts more." Others will have to say, "No, Lord; I love Thee not. I hate Thee. Go away from me; my love is for the devil and sin." You thereby confess yourself an enemy of Christ, and dreadful will be your fate in the future. Let us, my dear friends, make a profession of love to Our Lord, saying, "Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee; we have been friends for many years. Thou knowest that I have not deserted Thee." St. Peter gave practical proofs of his love for Jesus by the gigantic works which he undertook; the preaching of the Gospel and supervising the workings of the infant Church. He did not fear to appear now in the very midst of those who had crucified Our Lord. He is not afraid now of Pilate's servants, and he tells the Jews openly, "You denied the holy One, and the just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you, but the Author of life you killed." Thus he remained faithful to the cause of Our Lord, in all the trials that came upon him. When put in prison, when cruelly treated and persecuted, when the priests had him scourged, he did not cease to preach constantly the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When they forbade him to do it, he said, "Judge for yourselves whether we should not obey God rather than men." He had to suffer much among those many and bitter enemies; but the love of Jesus made him superior to all suffering; no persecution could tire him; he possessed great peace of soul, even though he was in chains. At length the day arrives when he is to give the last and greatest proof of his love. He rejoiced when judgment was passed on 'him, and he was to be crucified. "Ah," he said, "I am not worthy to die as my Master did; crucify me with my head down, and thus I will suffer a little more for Him." His prayer was granted. This is the reason that in pictures we see St. Peter crucified with his head downwards. St. Peter praised God on the cross and preached for the short while he had to suffer, and then he gave up his soul to the Lord, who brought him with glory to the realms of paradise. One thing more I wish to recommend strongly to you, my dear young friends, and that is the great faith and love St. Peter had for Our Lord. On this, his glorious day of martyrdom, pray for the whole Catholic world; pray that he may protect and intercede for you at the throne of the omnipotent God, pray that you may be able to resist the insinuations of modern unbelief; pray that he may obtain for you a true sorrow for your sins, and the strength of soul not to commit them again; pray that he may obtain for you the true love of Jesus, that having loved Him faithfully on earth, you may have the happiness to continue that love for all eternity in heaven. Source: Sermons for the Children's Masses, Imprimatur 1900  Gospel. Mark xvi. 14-20. At that time as the eleven were at the table, Jesus appeared to them, and upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart: because they did not believe them who had seen him after he was risen again. And he said to them: Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned. And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name they shall cast out devils: they shall speak with new tongues: they shall take up serpents: and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them: they shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover. And the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God. But they going forth preached everywhere, the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed.
After Our Lord had consoled the Apostles by appearing to them at different times, and by wishing them peace, He declared at last that He was about to leave this world and ascend to heaven "to prepare a place for them." On this day, for the last time, He came to visit the Apostles. He promised to send them the divine Spirit, the Spirit of strength and wisdom. He said that the time had arrived for Him to go from them to remain in the enjoyment of His peace. He raised His hands, blessed them, and took leave of them all, as well as of His dear Mother. He then conducted them to the Mount of Olives. There they listened to His words, with their eyes fixed upon Him, when suddenly He was raised above them; higher and higher still He was borne, until a light cloud withdrew Him from their sight. While they were beholding Him going up to heaven, suddenly two angels stood by them, who said, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven? " This same Jesus whom you have just seen ascending into heaven will return again at the end of the world to judge mankind. He will then appear in the same form in which you have just seen Him. You ought then, my dear young friends, joyfully do all that He has commanded you before He left you, that you may be well received by Him on His return. The disciples fell to the ground and adored their Lord and Master, and then returned to Jerusalem; where they retired to a quiet place, and remained in prayer until the coming of the Holy Ghost. My dear young people, who can imagine the great triumph with which the King of glory was received on His entrance into heaven. The whole court of heaven was there, ready to meet its Master and Creator. All came forward to make their submission to the great Conqueror of the world and the devil, who has returned in triumph. These good souls must have been in an ecstasy of joy when they saw the great Hero; they looked with wonder on those wounds, which shone like stars. As He entered heaven they joined Him singing hymns and canticles to the great glory of God; then they conducted Him to His throne in heaven, where He sits at the right hand of His Father. Our Lord, my dear young friends, left this world and ascended into heaven, to prepare a place for us; we had lost heaven, but He regained it for us. He again opened heaven to us, that pleasant, happy place, which will be our home for all eternity. As long as we live on this earth, we shall have to suffer many evils, sickness, and, finally, death, but in heaven we shall have everything; riches, happiness, enjoyment; we shall be inebriated with torrents of delight. The angels will be our companions, the saints will be there, and Mary and Jesus, too. We shall enjoy the happiness that God gives; we shall see God's omnipotence, with which He created heaven and earth; we shall see His wisdom and providence, by which all created things are governed; we shall see all the perfections and attributes of God clearly. We shall then see the Son of God in the Godhead, and Jesus in His divine person. We shall be filled with the Holy Ghost. We shall see God in the splendor of His glory on a throne of majesty; the centre and source of all the joy and brightness of heaven. If one little drop of that heavenly joy should fall from heaven into hell, it would sweeten the dreadful pains that are felt there. But, my dear young friends, remember that if you wish to attain the possession of this happiness and to reign with Jesus, you must not look for your heaven here on this earth; those who enjoy this world will hardly enjoy heaven. Many wish to give full sway to their passions here, and then expect to have the reward of heaven also. But they are foolish, for if they indulge their passions here in this world, they defile their souls, and cannot enter heaven. If you want to get to heaven, keep the law of God, keep the commandments of the Church, observe the laws of the state, and you will have a right to its joys. Not only should we observe the commandments of God, but we must also join to it the imitation of Jesus Christ if we wish to possess the place which He has prepared for us in heaven. My dear children, Jesus Christ is the model that is set before us and we must imitate Him just as the artist does who has a model before him; he marks the outlines, and then faithfully follows every lineament, every particular feature with the most scrupulous exactness. Have you so far endeavored to model your lives on that of Jesus Christ? "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ," so that those who see you will say, "this is a faithful imitator of the divine Master." It is easy to recognize the original and the faithful copy. Jesus, my dear young people, is the lily of the valley, the Immaculate Lamb. Here is a very important virtue. Do you possess that scrupulous purity of thought and action which renders man like the angels? Jesus was obedient, obedient even unto death. What are the inclinations which most young people follow? They are disobedient and rebellious, independent and loving liberty; they are constantly looking for pleasure, so that life loses the necessary seriousness which belongs to it. What a difference between their life and that of Christ! Your whole effort, my dear children, should be to imitate Jesus in the purity of His life, in His obedience to the divine will, and His respect for authority. Lead a mortified life, joyfully accepting all the trials you may meet with here on this earth, and then shall come true as St. Paul says, "As you are partakers of the sufferings, so shall you be also of the consolation." A young man once came to St. Jerome and said he desired to abandon the world, to follow Jesus and to imitate Him. He was rich. St. Jerome voluntarily accepted him among his disciples, but he took him aside and gave him a little instruction. First he said, "Son, our life is a very hard one, as you see; we have no shoes, our clothes are coarse, we have to bear the cold and the heat in our houses; to endure abuses and hard words from people and violent temptations from the devil. I know not whether you can endure all this; you seem to have been brought up tenderly and in luxury." The young man answered, "Am I more delicate than Jesus was when He walked about without shoes, suffered hunger and thirst, cold and heat, many persecutions and at last death? He has promised to help me: had I twenty bodies I would sacrifice them all for His love." Oh, my dear young people, if you will reflect seriously but for a moment, you will see that the imitation of Jesus Christ is a necessity. "I have given you an example that as I have done to you, so you do also." Jesus desires you all to be in paradise. Do you not wish to go there? Yes, certainly; everybody expects to go to heaven; it is the greatest insult even to intimate to your friend that there is a danger of his going to hell. Do, then, as the Apostles did. When they saw Our Lord ascend and taken away from them their hearts followed Him because they had no interest except in the glory of Jesus and the spread of His kingdom on earth. They desired trials, torments, persecutions, even violent deaths in order to be the sooner with Christ. They disliked the world and all its vanities. Let us not put our love on the things of this earth; let us look up to heaven, where our home is. Let us suffer, let us labor hard, let us employ all our time in this life, and so deserve a heavenly reward. Source: Sermons for the Children's Masses, Imprimatur 1900 "See that you keep my sabbath: because it is a sign between me and you in your generation." EXODUS 31, 13.
We spoke the last time about the Sunday and its sanctification. And in sooth no commandment is more ancient than this one. It has been with us since the days of Paradise and will endure unto the threshold of eternity, yea into the very realm of Heaven. No religious law is so universal, since it embraces all the peoples: the pagans, the Turks, the Jews and the Christians. It has withstood every vicissitude of time, every catastrophe of the world, for it is the pillar and the ground of the human race. All creatures praise their Creator, the heavens proclaim His glory and His omnipotence, and the hosts of Heaven give homage to God and sing the praises of the thrice holy God. In like manner the human race on earth is bound to praise and adore God its Lord and Creator, and to offer Him the sacrifice of its homage. For this reason God has reserved one day of the week for Himself and designated it as a day of rest and adoration for men. No commandment is so replete with promise as this one: "Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day." And again no commandment brings with it such dire threats of punishment for time and eternity, for temporal and eternal perdition as this one. Hence Jews and Christians place it in the front rank of the commandments of God. And for the same reason it is of the first importance in all Christian codes of law. The captivity of the Jews, every calamity that befell them, the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem and its profanation by the heathens all these had been threatened by God to avenge the desecration of the Lord's Day. And now, my dearly beloved, has God changed in the New Law ? Or has the Sabbath, the Lord s Day, become less holy because the Apostles transferred it to Sunday in memory of Christ s Resurrection, of the Descent of the Holy Ghost, and to differentiate them from the Jews? Or are the Christians, upon whom God has lavished more graces and benefits than upon the Jews, less obliged to gratitude, fidelity and adoration ? Is the son of the Cross, the Christian, for whom Jesus bled upon the Cross, less obliged to live for the salvation of his soul and for the adoration and the love of God, than the bondsman of the Ancient Law, the Jew? or than the poor pagan who is deprived of the knowledge of the one true God? No, this commandment of God, "Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day," has a greater and holier importance for us, but its non-observance is also attended with more dreadful consequences for us. The first of these consequences is the ruin of religion not only for the individual, but also for whole nations. I shall therefore speak today of his first consequence. O Jesus, assist us with Thy grace! 1. What do we mean by religion? Religion is the bond and union of man with God. Religion is the tie that unites us with God. Now religion is not only for the individual but for all, and manifests itself in the public adoration of God, in the public profession of faith, in public worship; hence the desecration of the Sunday is the destruction of religion. God Himself has established the Sunday as the public sign of His Covenant with men. And in fact, what has ever been the war cry of those who rebelled against God? Was it open atheism, or professed sensuality, or the robbery of the Church s patrimony? Such crudity would be revolting to the majority of men, and would give too patent an evidence of their ultimate aim. No, they have inscribed on their banners what the Royal Prophet read upon them more than three thousand years ago: "Let us abolish all the festival days of God from the land" (Ps. 73, 8). Verily, the trend of evil is unmistakable; it does not always strike hard, but it strikes surely. As soon as a nation begins generally to desecrate the Sunday, it readily loses all knowledge and practice of religion, it offers up no prayers, it receives no sacraments, it renders no public act of worship. Experience teaches this, and it is a fact which is patent to everybody. Now, what happens to the individual Christian who is guilty of a constant disregard of the Lord's Day? Let us begin with the children. They have learned a little catechism while they attended instructions, but if they fail to keep holy the Sunday they will forget the little they knew in a few short years. It is a matter of sad experience that many people of advanced years no longer know the Apostles Creed. What right have we then to expect such as these to know anything about the commandments of God, about the laws of the Church, or about the sacraments? Yea, it is not infrequent that we meet with people who know nothing about Jesus Christ. The desecration of the Sunday is the destruction of religion in the individual. But let us assume that the adult has not forgotten the instruction which he received, but on the contrary knows all the truths of his holy religion. Even this knowledge will not suffice. If these truths are to be conducive to the salvation of the soul they must exercise a great influence on the heart and the will. We must therefore often meditate upon them, and have them frequently explained to us. The desecration of the Sunday renders this impossible, and all the influence that religion may possess, is entirely lost upon the mind and the will, but especially on the conduct of life. When will the servant, the laborer, the trades man find time to meditate on the truths of Heaven if those who are in a position to give the example fail to do their duty? Their failure can only be ascribed to a lack of good will. For all these the desecration of the Sunday is the destruction of religion and with it of every grace and of redemption. The fact becomes all the more serious, for the sanctification of Sunday is the absolutely necessary condition of our union with God. "The Sabbath," says God to Moses in Exodus 31, 16, "is an everlasting covenant between me and the children of Israel, and a perpetual sign." Now what the Sabbath was in the Old Law, that and more is the Sunday in the New Law. Hence I shall put to each of you the same question that the persecutors put to the first Christians : "I do not ask you if you are a Christian, but I wish to know if you observe the Sunday?" From this we can see that in the sound judgment of the pagans the sanctification of the Sunday was the mark of the true Christian. The desecration of the Sunday is therefore a practical denial of the faith. There are many in our day who vaunt their Christianity and ever pretend that they are very pious Christians, but in reality they are nothing more than rebels against God. 2. I say: rebels against God. The desecration of the Sunday is an open revolt against God. And this with its dreadful consequences is a more terrible misfortune than all the lost battles of the world. Every seventh day a countless number of men of every condition in life place themselves in open rebellion against God; in their awful presumption they revolt against the most sacred commandment of God. The church bells call to service; they invite us all to come and adore and praise the Lord; they plead with us to assist at the Unbloody Sacrifice, to be united with Jesus the Saviour and the Judge of men. But deaf to every appeal are the ears of many, and everywhere and in every way we see a shameful disregard of the holiness of the day. The call of pleasure and of self interest is stronger than the call of duty. Can there be a greater crime than this? The desecration of the Sunday is the ruin of all religion. 3. But the desecration of the Sunday is more than an open revolt against God it is a frank profession of atheism and of disbelief in God. And this is the truest and most hateful characteristic of the Sunday profanation. There is no religion, not even a pagan one, that is without its public act of worship. Religion is intended not for one, but for all men without exception, and unites us all with God. Hence the whole nation must take part in a public act of worship, because thereby it makes an open profession of its faith and declares that it is a religious people. All the nations of the earth have known and acknowledged this: Christian, Jews, Turks and heathens; we do not find a single exception among the nations. Public worship must, however, have its appointed time, its definite day, when all may unite in the same belief and in the same adoration a spectacle worthy of Heaven. God has established this day for the Christian peoples ; it is the Sunday. A nation, therefore, that does not sanctify the Sunday has become more degraded than the very pagans, for it openly professes its atheism, its disbelief in God. Or do you think that a few sentimental considerations, a few pious thoughts, a few banal phrases constitute true faith and a real worship of God? If you believe in God, honor Him, adore Him, and observe His commandments! Remember that the following is the most sacred of His mandates : "See that you keep my sabbath: because it is a sign between me and you in your generation." The profanation of the Sunday is the destruction of religion in the individual as well as among the nations. But what do we understand by the destruction of religion? It means the dissolution of our bond with God, with Christ the Redeemer, with the Holy Ghost the Sanctifier; it means the annihilation of redemption, of grace, of Christian virtue, of faith, hope and charity; it means the blotting out of piety, morality, honesty, faith and loyalty, of obedience and of every respect for authority. The desecration of the Sunday implies rebellion against God, selfishness, brute sensuality and the slipping of the leash to all the passions. But the destruction of religion brings further evils in its train : might without right and justice, consideration without respect, constitutions without stability, laws without obedience, sacrifice without recompense, sorrows without consolation, despair, suicide, ferment and dissolution of every legitimate tie. Whence all conspirators against the established order of things inscribe on their banners : "Let us abolish all the festival days of God from the land." For the profanation of the Sunday is the ruin of religion. Look upon the condition of our public affairs, consider the menaces that the future holds for us: my language is not too severe. If I have called the child by its name, if I have endeavored to show you the true characteristics of the desecration of the Sunday with its evil consequences, I have done so with the laudable purpose of strengthening and confirming you in the faithful fulfillment of your most sacred obligation as men and as Christians. Keep ye holy the Sunday. I thank God that you are animated with the desire of doing so. Your conduct is a proof of this. One thing, however, I ask of you: do not restrict the sanctification of the Sunday to your own selves. Give your children and all those who are dependent on you an opportunity of adoring and praising God on the Lord's Day. Never render yourselves guilty of preventing them from fulfilling their sacred obligations. You know now that faith and grace and salvation depend on this. May God grant that the magnificent promises which He has attached to the faithful observance of His Day may find their accomplishment in us both in time and in eternity. May our Sunday on earth be changed to the unending Sunday in Heaven, whither we are called to adore and praise God with His angels and His saints through a blessed eternity. Amen. Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Faith, Imprimatur 1916 OF COURSE, I’ve told it often. But it won’t hurt one tiny little bit to tell it over again. It? What? Why, the beautiful legend about the rosary. Don’t you remember?
Once upon a time a saintly Sister was walking slowly to and fro in a convent garden. Oh, it was so quiet there and so lovely! Flowers bloomed on both sides of the graveled walk. The sweetest odors filled the balmy air. Birds sang softly. But the Sister was praying. What was she praying? Hail Marys fell from her lips. Again and again the dear greeting of the “Ave” was given by this consecrated bride of Christ to Christ’s blessed Mother, the spotless Virgin of virgins. All of a sudden Our Lady appeared before the Sister. And then—what do you think happened then? Each Hail Mary that fell from the Sister’s lips became a beautiful rose! And as the roses dropped on Mary’s heart, she took them up and wove them into a fragrant crown. When the crown was finished angel hands placed it on Mary’s soft, beautiful maiden hair. Now, do you know what those Hail Marys were that the Sister was saying? Ah, they were the rosary. They crowned Mary with a crown of the roses she likes best of all. The word “rosary,” you know, comes from the Latin word “rosarium,” which means a place planted with roses, a rose garden. First we’ll call that holy nun Sister Rose. Then we’ll say to darling Mary, “Mother, we’ll crown you often with roses, just as Sister Rose did.” “Queen of the most holy rosary, pray for us!” Source: Tell Us Another, Imprimatur 1928  "I rejoice at the things that were said to me: We shall go into the house of the Lord." Ps. 121,
1. How beautiful is the Christian ecclesiastical year, adorned with a bright garland of splendid feasts feasts of our Lord, of our Blessed Lady and of the great saints ! The feast of Christmas, when we celebrate the anniversary of Our Divine Saviour s birth, is replete with emotion, and causes us the deepest joy. On this day the world of Christian children joyfully greets the Divine Infant, and in Him is glad of its own redemption and grace. The world of the poor raises eyes and hands to the Divine Child and feels itself strengthened and consoled in its poverty. The sick and the suffering find consolation and strength in the Divine Child, the rich receive from Him the impulse to be merciful, and all Christians rejoice because through Him they have all become the children of God. The days of Holy Week are solemn and striking. They are the days when we are vividly reminded of the Passion of Our Divine Lord and Saviour. The days of Easter are days of glory for Our Divine Saviour and days of joy for us, for the Resurrection of Christ is a pledge of our own resurrection to a better life. Equally glorious for the Saviour and consoling for us is the feast of His Ascension into Heaven, for we know that Jesus, the Just One, is now our Intercessor before the throne of His heavenly Father. The feast of Pentecost reminds us of the fact that the Holy Ghost guides and rules the Church in all truth, and sanctifies and comforts and assists us during our whole life. How beautifully the feasts of Our Blessed Lady fit in between all these; how they gladden mind and heart ! The Annunciation, the Assumption, the Nativity and the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed Lady. And again we have the days of the glorious Apostles SS. Peter and Paul, of St. Stephen, St. John the Baptist and of all the others who, as faithful servants of the Lord, followed Him on earth in joy and in sorrow, and now possess with Him the eternal glories of Heaven, whence they point out to us the way to attain the same happiness. Yes, truly, the Church is the place where, more than elsewhere, we obtain the grace and the mercy of God. It is the place of our regeneration, of our sanctification and of our redemption. It is the house of God, where God abides among men and where men may converse with Him. It is the abiding-place of the holiest mysteries, the house of rest and of peace, where all Christians, great and small, high and low, rich and poor, are the family of God, one heart and one soul. Hence it represents to us the paradise of Heaven and the gate of Heaven. Today as yesterday, and during all the ages, the Christian in church is the disciple of the Lord. There he hears the words and the teachings of God, as once did the Apostles and the Jewish people. We find there the poor, the sick, the sinner, who have come to the Saviour to implore His mercy and to hear the sweet words: "Be of good heart, thy faith hath saved thee!" In the church the faithful come to the Saviour, as once did the Jews in the desert, or rather as the Apostles did at the Last Supper, to be nourished by Him unto life eternal. It is there that they are blessed by Him; it is there that they are the witnesses of His life, His teachings, His miracles, His Passion, His Resurrection and His Ascension. Hence the church is truly the house of God and of His faithful, and the commandment to sanctify the Sunday is a great and a decisive one for time and for eternity. It is my purpose to speak once more on this topic, and to point out to you today what the sanctification of the Sunday means for the Christian. Would that all those within the hearing of my voice might take these words to heart, since everything depends on the sanctification of the Sunday faith, grace, religion, the welfare of the family, the salvation of the soul, a Christian death and eternal happiness. O Jesus, assist us with Thy grace! 1. Sunday is the Lord s Day, hence a day when man should rest from his ordinary work and devote his time entirely to the service of God, to adoring and glorifying Him. Men set aside a definite time for all important transactions, the week, the day, yea, the very hour is predetermined. The courts of law set a definite day for the cases that are to come before them, the employer decides when work is to begin and when it is to end, the mother sets the time for the meals, the teacher for the school, the farmer for his plowing, the huntsman for the chase. Is God alone to be denied the right of deciding on a definite time, a definite day for the holiest and most important action that man can and must accomplish on earth? Yea, my dearly beloved, since all men are bound to give to God this public and outward adoration, God Himself was obliged to establish this day for the benefit of man, so that all could assemble at the same time to take part in Divine Service. If God had left to man the designation of this day, nothing but the greatest disorder and conflict and discord would have resulted. Fathers, teachers, mothers, employers cannot leave the choice of the time that is to be devoted to work, to the school and to household affairs to the servants or the children with out having to fear the greatest disorder; they themselves must fix the time. God has ordered the sanctification of the Sunday for the welfare of man, for the preservation of faith and of religion. It is on Sunday that the entire Christian world is assembled to praise, thank and adore God, and it is on this day that it is united with the angels and the saints in jubilation and adoration. On Sunday the Christian world becomes a grand, splendid congregation. It must be a spectacle worthy of God when on the same day in all parts of the inhabited globe, from the rising of the sun unto the setting thereof, the Christian world with one voice honors and praises God the Father for the work of His creation; when with one voice it honors and thanks God the Son for the Redemption, when with one voice it adores God the Holy Ghost and honors His grace. It must be a grand spectacle, worthy of God, when on the same day in all the churches of the earth the Christian world with one hand offers the Immaculate Sacrifice to the Triune God; when as with one heart it believes and hopes and loves; when it gathers as the great family of God for the same act of worship, and when they all feel that they are the children of God, the heirs of Heaven, Christian and brethren. This is marvelously well expressed in the Preface or the hymn of praise of the Mass, where the priest summons the faithful to give praise to God in the following words: "Lift up your hearts!" After having received the answer : "We have raised them to God," he continues the hymn to God the Almighty and Eternal : "Through Jesus Christ, through whom the Angels and the Archangels praise His Majesty, the Dominations adore Him, the Powers tremble, the heavens and the Virtues of Heaven and the blessed Seraphim are united in joyous exultation. Permit us, we beseech Thee, to join our voices with theirs to proclaim in suppliant confession: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of Sabbath." Yea, even the whole of inanimate creation joins in this hymn of praise: "The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands" (Ps. 18, 2). "O Lord our Lord, how-admirable is thy name in the whole earth! "(Ps. 8, 2). The whole world with its countless creatures is an immense organ, that sounds the praises of the Creator throughout the entire universe. But Jesus Christ is like the master that plays this organ. He is the High Priest Who accompanies it with His voice and thus only gives it the true expression of the praise of God. It is also through Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and man, that all our adoration, all our praise, all our good works, every act of gratitude, every tear, every Christian suffering arises to God. He, as our High Priest, unites all our prayers and sacrifices to His prayers and Sacrifice, and so offers them to God His heavenly Father. It is not without reason that the Sunday is so great a day, and it is with truth that it is called the Lord's Day, for through Jesus Christ it unites the whole Christian world, yea even the universe, for the praise and adoration of God. It is not without reason that the commandment of keeping holy the Sunday is of such importance, and that on its proper fulfillment depend time and eternity, the preservation of religion, the welfare of families, the blessing of God and the consciousness of our heavenly vocation as Christians and heirs of Heaven. 3. For this reason the desecration of the Sunday is also so great a crime against God and against ourselves. But what must not have happened in such Christians before they reached the point of desecrating the Sunday? Before they sank so low as to deny God the adoration that is His due, and to exclude themselves from the circle of the faithful? If such men, I no longer call them Christians, if such men, moreover, consider it a disadvantage and a waste of time to join their brethren in thanking, praising and adoring God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, what can or shall we think of them? What crust of ice must not have formed around their hearts, and what dread mysteries of apostasy from God, of blindness and passion does not this condition of affairs reveal? Thou, O man, art a sacrilegious wretch ! By thy profanation of the Sunday thou robbest God of His Day, of the Lord's Day! By thine own act thou cuttest thyself away from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. By thine own act thou executest the sentence of exclusion from Holy Church, from the communion of the saints and from the company of the saved! The leaf that falls from the tree does not fall of its own volition, but through thine own fault thou hast fallen away from the tree of life, of redemption. The worm that thou tramplest under foot does not die by its own act, but thou diest because of thine own fault, voluntarily thou tramplest under foot the salvation of thy soul! The leaf and the worm glorified God by their existence, but man dishonors Him, and by the desecration of the Sunday he becomes a criminal against God and against himself. 4. Yea verily, my dearly beloved, the Sunday and its sanctification has an extraordinary significance for each and every Christian. By keeping holy the Sunday every human being fulfills the most sacred obligation of its existence on earth, namely, to serve God, to honor and adore Him, in order to become eternally happy. For this reason so many of God's favors are attached to the celebration of Sunday, and the house of God, where we gather to perform our duties, offers the soul so much consolation and so much grace and joy. Most beautiful are the words of the Epistle read at the Mass proper to the feast of the dedication of a church: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more" (Apoc. 21, 4). And though this promise will find its full accomplishment in Heaven, it still is partially fulfilled in our churches, which are an image of Heaven and the vestibule to eternal happiness. God is indeed ever ready to dry our tears, to assuage sorrow and pain, if we come with confidence to His house and there beg Him for mercy. How many of you, my dearly beloved, have already made this happy experience! How many Christian fathers and how many Christian mothers have prayed and wept in church for their children, and God has heard their prayer and dried their tears. How many an anxious troubled soul has come to church and there pleaded for help with streaming eyes, and God has allayed its fears and swept away its sorrows. How many a child's prayer has risen there for the safety of its parents, and God has listened to its prayer. And who will count the sin-laden multitudes, who finding peace nowhere, have come with contrite heart like the Prodigal Son to beg the Father of all mercies to press them once again to His paternal bosom and grant them peace and grace and joy of soul? In the church stand the baptismal font, the confessionals, the altars, the tabernacle, the communion railing, bearing eloquent witness to the mercy and the bounty of God. All these have served us from the earliest days of our childhood, and not only us but also our parents and our ancestors. For them also the waters were taken from the baptismal font, to cleanse them from sin and to make of them Christians and children of God. For them, too, the doors of the tabernacle opened to nourish them for life eternal. The confessionals have also heard their acknowledgment of sin, their contrition and purpose of amendment, and if their confession was a worthy one, they were dismissed therefrom consoled and re-established in the grace of God. And from the pulpit our parents and forefathers have received many a salutary lesson and well-meant warning, and if they received them cheerfully and remained true to them they have good reason to be glad of it in a happy eternity. They have gone before us across the threshold of time into the realms of eternity. For them and for all those who have lived in the long ago, the church has been the place where they experienced in fullest measure the goodness and the mercy of God. It is there that they laid the ground-work of a life that was Christian and pleasing to God, yea, it is from those hallowed precincts that they drew all that finally brought them to eternal glory. And so for us too there is and can not be another place than the church. When they died they were brought once more to the church, and so we too in our turn, when we are dead, shall be brought to the church for the last time. The church is for every Christian the gate of Heaven, the place where he shall find either eternal happiness or eternal damnation, according to the words of the old proverb, "He who hastens to church, hastens toward Heaven ; he who goes slowly to church, goes slowly to Heaven ; he who does not go to church, will not go to Heaven." We can readily comprehend the reason for this. It is in the church that Our Divine Saviour wishes to be surrounded by His own on earth, just as He is surrounded by the angels and the saints in Heaven. It is especially in church that He wishes to be loved, praised and adored; it is here that He extends His arms in blessing over us, that He makes us sharers in His merits and His graces, so that we may finally surround Him forever in Heaven, see Him, not merely under the appearance of bread, but face to face, so that we may celebrate an unending Sunday with Him, and continue with unalloyed joy with the angels and the saints to sing the eternal hymn of praise to the Triune God. Thrice-blessed, therefore, the Christian to whom the church was a real home, who paid it frequent and devout visits, who let himself be blessed by his Divine Saviour, who often received the sacraments, who gladly listened to the word of God and who kept holy the Sunday. And when after death he is brought to the church for the last time for the purpose of receiving Christian burial, his soul will take a fond fare well from the church where he felt himself so much at home and contented : Fare thee, well, O church, thou gate of Heaven, thou image of the heavenly paradise, fare thee well! I shall pass over a better threshold, I shall enter the paradise of Heaven, the eternal house of God. Farewell, ye friendly altars where I have been so happy when assisting at the Holy Sacrifice, and whence I received such heavenly fruits! Farewell, thou communion table, where so often in childlike yearning I received the Body of my Saviour! Fare well, ye confessionals, where I have shed many bitter tears over my sins; O blessed tears, blessed contrition and confession, that obtained for me the mercy and the grace of God, fare ye well ! Farewell, thou pulpit, from which I have received so many saving lessons and encouragement! Farewell, ye servants of the Lord, who meant it so well with me, may God reward you for your trouble! Fare ye well, my Christian brothers and sisters, who so often edified me by your devotion! Farewell, all ye beautiful feasts that I loved to celebrate in church. I am now going to celebrate an everlasting feast, forever will I rejoice with the angels and the saints, eternally will I abide with God my Saviour, for he who hastens to church, hastens toward Heaven. 5. But he who does not go to church will not go to Heaven. It is a sad thing to note that there is a large number of men and of women who no longer even know where their church is, of what the church reminds them, who never keep holy the Sunday and who seldom or never receive the sacraments. They too will be brought to the church at the end of their days. How will their poor soul feel when even the church will rise in accusation against them? They will then cry out in pain and sorrow: Farewell thou hallowed abode of God's love and mercy that I contemned! Farewell, ye altars, tabernacle, and confessionals : O had I but a half hour's time to receive the sacraments, my eternal salvation would be secure! Farewell, ye good and faithful Christians, how happy I should be if I had followed your example, and had not looked upon you as fools and on myself as wise ! Farewell paradise, thou heavenly elysium, thou everlasting house of God, thou realm of happiness, farewell, for I shall never see thee ; another lot is mine, an abode of unending misery, for he who does not go to church will not go to Heaven. May God grant, my dearly beloved, that you may always love to go to church, love to sanctify the Sundays and the holy-days. "I rejoiced at the things that were said to me : We shall go into the house of the Lord" (Ps. 121, i). Moreover the house of God reminds us of the dignity of our own soul. St. Paul tells us that we are the temples and the abiding-place of the Holy Ghost. Our soul was solemnly consecrated by holy Baptism. The foundation of this temple is the virtue of faith which was infused into us in holy Baptism. The spire is hope, which raises us to God, the high altar is charity, and the sacrifice, pure, holy, and pleasing to God, that we are to offer up to Him, is our very self with body and soul, and we do so when we give ourselves to the service of God in joy and in pain. The pillars upon which this spiritual temple of God rests, are the Christian virtues; the arch which extends over the temple of the soul, is the gracious Providence of God. And as long as we observe the commandments of God and of His Holy Church, as long as we remain in the state of grace and retain the innocence of our soul or have regained them by contrition and penance so long are we the temples of the Holy Ghost and God will willingly abide in us. Then the celebration of the Sunday will also be a feast of the soul and the prototype of the everlasting Sunday, which we are called to celebrate in Heaven. Hence let us ever rejoice when we are told : "We shall go into the house of the Lord," now on earth and one day in Heaven. Amen. Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church, Imprimatur 1916 Source: THE GOSPELS FOR LENT AND THE PASSION OF CHRIST by C. J. EISENRING, PASTOR IMPRIMATUR 23rd of January 1911 For Meditation. Preparation. O Lord, Jesus Christ, on the first Holy Thursday, at the last supper, Thou didst institute the holy Sacrifice of the Mass as a perpetual and unbloody memorial of Thy bloody Sacrifice on the cross. Give us the grace to attend, with true devotion, the holy Sacrifice of adoration, thanksgiving, petition and propitiation; and grant that, by devout meditation on Thy bitter passion and death, we may partake of its fruits, for time and eternity. Amen. I. The priest goes to the altar; Jesus approaches Mount Olivet to expiate our sins. 2. The priest begins to pray at the foot of the altar; Jesus sweating blood prays three times on Mount Olivet. 3- The priest goes up to the altar and kisses it; Jesus receives the kiss of betrayal from the unfaithful Judas. 4- At the epistle side of the altar, the priest says the Introit or entrance; Jesus is seized, bound and dragged to Jerusalem, and He receives a blow in presence of Annas. 5- The priest goes to the middle of the altar and recites the Kyrie and Gloria: Jesus is led before Caiphas and is denied by Peter. 6. The priest, turning to the people, says : "Dominus vobiscum" "The Lord be with you" Jesus looks with love and sorrow at Peter and converts him. 7- The priest returns to the epistle corner of the altar to read the prayers of the Church (or collects) and the epistle; Jesus is brought to Pilate, and He must listen to the false accusations made against Him. 8. After returning to the middle of the altar, the priest goes to the gospel side; Jesus is led before Herod and scoffed at. 9- The priest goes from the gospel side to the middle of the altar and says the "Credo" and "Dominus Vobiscum" Jesus is brought back to Pilate and the murderer, Barabbas, is preferred to Him. 10. The chalice is uncovered; Jesus is stripped of His garments. 11. The offertory of holy Mass. The priest offers up the bread and wine; Jesus offers Himself to His heavenly Father during His painful scourging. Pray in union with all the faithful : O heavenly Father, look with complacency upon the gifts which the priest offers in the name of Jesus and at His command; which we too offer in union with the priest to honor Thee as our Creator and supreme Master and to thank Thee with filial reverence. We offer Thee at the same time our body and our soul and all that we have. O most patient and afflicted Jesus, take our heart, unite it with Thy Sacred Heart and present it to Thy heavenly Father for us as an offering in honor of Thy painful scourging. Amen. 12. The priest covers the chalice: Jesus is crowned with thorns. At the "Lavabo" the priest washes his hands; reflect on the cowardly Pilate washing his hands. 14- At the middle of the altar, the priest turning to the people, says: "Orate Frates"; Pilate shows Jesus to the people and says: "Ecce Homo." But they exclaim: "Away with Him! Crucify Him!" The priest recites the Preface; Pilate pronounces the death-sentence upon Jesus. 16. The priest says the Sanctus, the "thrice holy,"and he makes the sign of the cross; Jesus takes theheavy cross upon His shoulders. 17. The priest begins the Canon; Jesus staggers towards Calvary under the weight of the cross. 18. The priest folds his hands at the Memento of the Living; Jesus consoles the daughters of Jerusalem and Simon of Cyrene helps Him to carry the cross. 19. The priest holds his hands over the chalice: the Saviour is laid on the cross. 20. The priest makes the sign of the cross five times over the chalice and the host; the Saviour is nailed, hands and feet, to the cross. 21. The consecration. The priest changes the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ; Jesus dies on thecross and offers His death as a bloody sacrifice, Adore Him and say: O Jesus, for Thee I live; O Jesus, for Thee I die; O Jesus, Thine I am in life and death. Amen. Spare me, O Jesus; have mercy on me, O Jesus; O Jesus, pardon all my sins. Amen. Contemplate the three hours suffering of Jesus, the pains of His body, the torments of His soul, His mockery, His dereliction. Listen to His seven holy words, kiss His five holy wounds, present to Him all your petitions and those of the holy Church, make an act of contrition, with a firm purpose of amendment. 22. At the "Nobis quoque peccatoribus," think of the pardon granted to the thief on the right, and at the "Pater Noster" recite devoutly the Our Father. 23- The priest breaks the sacred host and drops a particle into the chalice; the soul of Jesus descends into limbo (hell). 24. At the "Agnus Dei" the priest strikes his breast three times; at the death of Jesus the centurion confesses the divinity of Jesus, and he, with many of the bystanders strikes his breast. 25- The third principal part of holy Mass. The priest consumes in holy communion, theBody and Blood of Jesus Christ; His sacred body is laid in the grave. If you do not actually communicate, make an act of Spiritual Communion, saying: "O Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof, but say only the word and my soul shall be healed." (3 times.) O divine Saviour, do not disdain to look down upon us unworthy creatures with a glance of Thy divine goodness. Through Thy infinite mercy prepare our hearts to receive Thee at least in a spiritual manner. Graciously accept our desire, and grant that we may soon be worthy to receive Thee in reality. Increase our faith, strengthen our hope, inflame our love, fill our hearts with Thy grace, and help us to persevere unto the end. Soul of Christ, sanctify me! Body of Christ, save me ! Blood of Christ, refresh me ! Water flowing from the side of Christ, purify me! Passion of Christ, strengthen me! O good Jesus, hear me ! In Thy holy wounds, conceal me! Suffer me not to leave Thee ! From the evil one, defend me! In my last hour, call me ! And bid me, Lord, to come to Thee ! With Saints and Angels may I praise Thee, Through endless ages of eternity. Amen. At the last "Dominus Vobiscum," reflect on the glorious resurrection of Jesus. 27. At the "Ite Messa est," reflect on the glorious ascension of Jesus. 28. At the last Blessing and the last Gospel, call to mind the sending of the Holy Ghost. Ask Him for His blessing and graces for yourself and upon those that are near and dear to you. Conclude your meditation on the passion and sacrificial death of your Saviour with this prayer of the Church: O God, we beseech Thee, look graciously down upon this Thy congregation for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to surrender Himself into the hands of sinners, and to suffer the torments of the cross; He Who in union with Thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth world without end. Amen. A PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH Almighty and Eternal God, look down upon us with an eye of pity, and behold our misery, our distress and our woe. Have mercy on all Thy people, for whom Thine only Begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, freely delivered Himself into the hands of sinners, that He might shed His most precious Blood on the tree of the Holy Cross for us. O most merciful Father, through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, remove from us all the evils, which we have so richly deserved, present and future dangers, pernicious insurrections, famines, plagues, wars, and Thy many other judgments. Grant us, God of peace, true union in the faith, without dissension or schism. Direct our hearts to true penance and amendment. Enkindle in us the fire of divine love, and fill us with an ardent desire and zeal for justice, that as obedient chil dren we may please Thee in life and in death. We also pray, as Thou, O God, wishest us to pray, for our friends and enemies, for those in health and for the sick, for all afflicted and distressed Chris tians, for the living and for the dead. Now and forever we recommend to Thee, O Lord, all our actions and omissions, our whole con versation, our life, and our death. Let us, O God, receive Thy grace here below, and enjoy it hereafter, that in union with the elect, we may praise, honor and glorify Thee in eternal bliss. Grant this, O heavenly Father through Jesus Christ Thy Son, Who, with Thee and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen. I, a poor sinner, renounce Satan with all his works and all his pomps. I believe in God the Father, in God the Son and in God the Holy Ghost. I believe, without reserve, all that Holy Church pro poses for my belief. With this holy and Catholic faith, I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary ever Virgin and to all the Saints that, from the day of my childhood unto the present hour, I have sinned much and often in thought, word and deed and by the omission of good works; and I accuse myself concerning whatever way I have sinned, whether secretly or openly, knowingly or unknowingly, against the ten commandments in regard to the seven capital sins, by the five senses of my body, against God, against my neighbor and against the salvation of my poor soul. For these and all my sins I am heartily sorry. Therefore I humbly beg of Thee, almighty and eternal God, to grant me Thy divine grace, and to spare my life so that I may confess my sins and do penance for them, and thus merit Thy heavenly favor and, after this wretched life, obtain the everlasting joy of heaven. Wherefore I strike my sinful breast and say with the public sinner: O Lord, God! have mercy on me a poor sinner! Amen. Then say the Litany of the Passion below. A printable pdf of this post is available at the bottom. 
 SERMON XX
THE MOTHER OF SORROWS "There stood by the cross of Jesus His Mother." JOHN 19, 26. The beauty of Jesus is inexhaustible. He is beautiful always, beautiful everywhere, in the disfigurement of the Passion as well as in the splendor of the Resurrection. But above all things Our Divine Saviour is beautiful in His Mother. If we love Him, we must love her. We must know her in order to know Him. As there is no true devotion to His Sacred Humanity, which is not mindful of His Divinity, so there is no adequate love of the Son, which disjoins Him from His Mother, and lays her aside as a mere instrument. Mary was not an unconscious instrument of the designs which God accomplished through her. Before she consented to become the Mother of Jesus, Mary understood the ransom that must be paid for sinners, she foresaw the sorrows with which the sufferings of her Son would desolate her soul, and in consenting to cooperate with God in the work of salvation, she willingly accepted the lifelong martyrdom which the crucifixion caused her to endure. The Catholic view of this question must be clearly brought out before Christians can properly understand the relation in which she stands to the redeemed. It is what Mary consented to suffer, and actually did suffer that gives her a right to the gratitude and devotion of Christians, that makes her intercession all powerful with Christ, and shows that the confidence which Catholics repose in the patronage of the Blessed Virgin is well founded. What did Mary suffer? St. Liguori applies to her the words of Isaias : "He will crown thee with the crown of tribulation" will crown her Queen of Martyrs. That we may know how hard it is to form any adequate idea of Mary s sorrows, the Church applies to her the words of the Prophet Jeremias : "To what shall I compare thee, to what shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem ? To what shall I equal thee, O Virgin daughter of Sion? For great as the sea is thy broken-heartedness." Who can measure the sea ? While sailing across its wide expanse, the largest vessel seems but an atom on its bosom. In sight is a great waste of water, which is but a fraction of that other mighty waste of water which the horizon conceals from view. At certain points, the length, breadth and depth of the sea may be measured, while at other points it stretches out and sinks down so far and so irregularly as to baffle all human efforts to accurately estimate its volume. Thus the sea, while not infinite in extent, is, humanly speaking, immeasurable. This is why the sea is truly a picture of Mary's broken-heartedness. Now and again, definite views are obtained of certain features of Mary's sorrows, which for the moment seem to offer some basis for an accurate estimate of all her sufferings. When, however, an attempt is made to measure them, other aspects of the depth, the intensity, and the duration of her dolors are revealed in such bewildering proportions as to render futile all efforts to measure the sea of her broken-heartedness. Meditation thus shows us, that Mary's sorrow, although falling short of the infinite, is measureless. The factors that help us to form a faint, an imperfect idea of Mary s sufferings are: (1) Mary's sanctity; (2) Jesus lovableness; (3) Mary s foreknowledge of Christ s sufferings, and her willingness to participate in them. As disease dulls and deadens the nerves, the sensitiveness of the body to pain, until in certain forms of sickness the power to suffer is diminished, destroyed, so that the body of the afflicted one may be cut and burned without feeling any pain; so sin destroys the feelings of the heart, dries up the fountains of compassion in the soul until the very power to sympathize with another is diminished or altogether lost. As the greatest capacity for physical sufferings exists in the perfect body, so the greatest capacity for mental anguish exists in the soul. Mary was sinless, preserved by a singular privilege from all stain of sin. Her soul remained unclouded by even a shadow of an imbruting passion. She not only retained all the natural feelings of her pure heart unimpaired, but she cultivated them to the highest degree that it was possible for a creature to attain. The more refined, delicate the soul, the more excru- ciating the agony. Mary s sinless body with its exquisite perfections was delicately formed beyond all others but that of her Son. It is therefore evident that Mary, both by nature and grace, had the greatest capacity of love, to sympathize, and to suffer; and as she had consecrated herself entirely to God there were neither worldly interest, nor human ties to distract or divide her love. It was centered wholly in Jesus. The maternal instinct impels mothers, sometimes, to love, to cling to their children despite the latters utter unworthiness and depravity. Mary, however, loved Jesus because He was infinitely worthy of her affection. No mother ever had such a Son. Mary's Son was both human and divine "the splendor of the Father's glory and the figure of His substance" at once the Son of Mary and the Son of God. In Mary there was concentrated, as in one consuming flame, the strongest affection which a mother ever cherished for a child, and the intensest love that a Creature ever bore the Creator. And since it was impossible for greater love to exist between two beings than that which existed between Mary and Jesus, there could be no greater sympathy than that of Mary and Jesus. Every suffering inflicted on the Sacred Humanity of Jesus was a sword of sorrow that pierced Mary's soul. But in order to see how immeasurable Mary's sufferings were, we must acquire some idea of her foreknowledge of Christ's Passion, of her willingness to participate in it, of the heroic, holy purpose that animated Mary when she consented to cooperate, to suffer, in the cause of man's salvation. Mary's sanctity entitled her to the fullest confidence of the Deity, as to the means by which the world's redemption was to be accomplished. While God conceals His counsels from the proud and wicked, He confides them to the humble and innocent. Mary was selected because of her humility. She was full of grace; she had found favor with God. Upon no creature has such an eulogy been passed as that which God the Father, by the mouth of the Archangel Gabriel, pronounced upon Mary. No creature was ever admitted to that close and marvelous union that existed between Mary and the Eternal Father. Living only for God, and in God, it may well be believed that secrets were committed to her of which priests and prophets were kept in ignorance; just as Jesus communicated to John, by reason of his virginal sanctity, secrets concerning which the other Apostles dared not even question their Master. It may well be believed that Mary knew more than the prophets of old, upon whose vivid portrayals of the sufferings of the Messias she had often meditated; that she knew more than Joseph, who learned from the Angel that Jesus would "save His people from their sins" that she knew more than Simeon, whose vision of the Passion enabled him in those forcible, expressive words, to liken Mary's sympathy with Jesus in His suffering to a sword of sorrow that would pierce her soul. While the Apostles were often, during the lifetime of their Master, rebuked for their slowness to believe, their failure to understand, never once was Mary's faith or understanding rebuked. On the contrary she is represented as keeping the divine counsels, pondering them in her heart. Mary showed in the Magnificat and at Cana the fullest appreciation of His divine character and of His coming. The extent of Mary's knowledge is not a mere matter of speculation. It is a matter of fact that, before the Incarnation, she was the only daughter of Israel that entertained a correct notion of the character of Messias. The other women of Judea regarded the coming Messias as a great temporal prince. Hence as the time of His coming approached, a consuming desire to be the mother of the Messias burned in the breast of every Jewish woman. With this object in view, the maid sought marriage, the wife prayed for fruitfulness, and implored the Lord to save her from sterility as from a curse. No such ambition, as Cardinal Newman says, was cherished by Mary. On the contrary, by a vow ofvirginity, she had made her mothership of the Messias, humanly speaking, impossible. She had such a true conception of that exalted Divinity that she deemed perpetual continence and a life of sanctification in the temple necessary to prepare herself, not for the mothership of the Messias, but to become the handmaid, the servant of the woman whom God would deem worthy of so high an honor. In this, what testimony does not Mary bear to that incomparable dignity to which God, regarding her humility, exalted her. No less an authority than Cardinal Newman interprets Mary's reply to the Angel; "Behold the handmaid of the Lord," as signifying that Mary simply aspired to become the servant of the Mother of the Messias. Mary entertained such correct ideas of the Messias before the Angel's visit, what fullness of knowledge must she not have received through Gabriel's message and his answers to her questions. Her dialogue with the Archangel shows plainly that she was not selected as a mere instrument, but as a free, intelligent agent; that she was free to refuse to become the Mother of the Messias, and that she consented only after having attained to a clear understanding of what would be required of her. "She was troubled;" says the Gospel, at the Angel's words, and asked, in her own mind, the meaning of his salutation. The angel having allayed her fears, Mary asked plainly: "How shall this be done, for I know not man?" Mary did not blindly consent, like the Apostles, to participate in the work of the Messias, and afterwards, like them, fail in her part when it came to drink of the cup of Christ's bitterness. She consented only after she had known what sacrifice that consent would demand of her; and therefore she never afterwards shrank from what was laid upon her: "Be it done unto me according to Thy word. "It is clear that Mary could have absolutely refused to become the Mother of the Messias, nevertheless, her acceptance was so deliberate, was given with such full knowledge of the sufferings which it involved, and with such willing obedience to the Counsel of God; and consequently, was so meritorious, that the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of Elizabeth, declared Mary blessed for having consented: "Blessed art thou that hast believed, because those things shall be accomplished in thee which were spoken to thee by the Lord." Let those, then, that would form an idea of her sorrows, look at Mary, from the moment of the Incarnation, standing in spirit as truly under the Cross as when she stood by the Cross of Jesus on Mt. Calvary. During those thirty-four years of martyrdom, her knowledge of Jesus sufferings did not increase, but her realization of them became more and more vivid and painful in proportion as she beheld Jesus increase in wisdom, and age, and grace before God and man. Her power to love and her power to suffer increased day by day, until she saw Jesus offer Himself a bleeding, dying victim on the Cross. What more touching, entrancing, than the scene enacted in the stable of Bethlehem. The winter winds were joyful with the music of the multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and singing : "Glory be to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will." The dismal cave was lighted up with the glory of Heaven; angels and wondering, adoring shepherds came to worship the new-born Saviour ; and Mary and Joseph lovingly, adoringly contemplated the Heavenly Babe. Had that scene, which has filled the earth for centuries with light and gladness, no joy for Mary? Did not its splendor for the time being dispel the shadow of the Cross? Did not Mary, in the words of Holy Scripture, rejoice, "because a man was born into the world," and for the moment, turn the eye of her soul from the vision of Calvary? Alas! no, the joyous light of Bethlehem only projected the shadow of the Cross more distinctly. The scene in the stable, it is true, touched Mary's soul, joy welled up in her heart, but only that the thought of Calvary might instantly change it into an ocean of bitterness. As Mary laid the Divine Infant in the manger, as she saw His little arms stretched out as if to embrace her, she thought of the time when that same Jesus would be laid upon the Cross, when His hands would be stretched out in crudest torture, in infinite love, to embrace the whole human race ; as she listened to the song of the Angels, she thought of the blasphemies with which men would demand His death ; as she looked on the reverent shepherds she thought of the wild beasts that put Him to death; as she looked on the glory of Heaven lighting the first opening of His eyes, she thought of the gloom that would fall upon their closing; as she saw earth and Heaven rejoicing over His birth, she thought of how both man and God would forsake Him in death; as she clasped Him to her bosom, she thought of the time when He would be laid at last, all bleeding and bruised, and wounded and lifeless, on her breast. Thus even at Bethlehem, Mary stood in the shadow of the Cross. There are pictures, some of which are regarded as inspired in their conception and miraculous in their salutary influence, that afford clearer views of Mary's ever present sorrows than any illustration that human tongue can offer. The painting of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, for example, represents the Blessed Virgin as revolving in her mind the prophecies concerning the Messias. With a face full of sweetness and sadness, she gazes upon the Child Jesus Whom she holds upon her arm, only to see Him startle at the vision of His future sufferings, the instruments of His Passion the reed, the crown of thorns, the nails, the spear, the Cross, as they loom up in the dim distance. Then again, there is the painting that may be called the Shadow of the Cross. It represents a scene in the workshop at Nazareth. Joseph is employed at the carpenter's bench, Mary sits plying the distaff. A bright summer day pours a flood of light into the room. Jesus, a beautiful youth, with filial piety informing every feature, advances with out-stretched arms towards His Mother to embrace her, and to imprint a kiss upon her cheek. Oh ! what happiness would this scene have been to Mary, with what joy would it have dilated her soul, if only the future had been concealed from her! But, alas! looking at Jesus, the Mother's joy is turned into grief, because she sees the body and out-stretched arms of her Son cast the Shadow of the Cross on the opposite wall ! But if this was Mary's cruel portion during the joyful mysteries, who can imagine what must have been the bitterness of her grief during those cruel scenes that followed, when every torture of Jesus, like a sword, actually pierced her soul. The Passion of our Lord may be said to begin on the Thursday in Holy Week in the house of Lazarus at Bethany. On that Thursday morning Jesus went to Bethany to bid His Mother farewell and to obtain her consent to His Passion, as He had before done to His Incarnation. Not that it was necessary, but it was fitting and convenient to the perfection of His filial obedience. He then went to Jerusalem with His disciples. The Last Supper, the First Mass, took place that night. Having celebrated the Passover He passed out of the city again with His disciples to Mount Olivet where Judas betrayed Him. He was seized by the mob and conducted to the court of the High Priest. St. John, as soon as Jesus had been condemned to death, returned to the house with the news of the sentence. Mary, the broken-hearted Mother, prepares to leave the house with Magdalen and the Apostle. John, by his knowledge of the city, will lead her to the end of the street where she can meet Jesus on His road to Calvary. Everywhere the streets are thronged with multitudes setting in one tide to Calvary. Heralds at the corner of the streets blow their harsh trumpets, and proclaim the sentence to the people. What a journey for a mother. The procession comes in sight; the tall horse of the centurion shows first, and leads the way. The trumpet sounds with a wailing clangor. The women look from the lattice above. She sees the thieves, the crosses, everything and yet only one thing Himself. As He draws nigh the peace of her heart grows deeper. It could not help it ; God was approaching, and peace went before Him. Now, Jesus has come up to her. He halts for a moment. He lifts the one hand that is free, and clears the blood from His eyes. Is it to see her ? Rather that she may see Him, His look of sadness, His look of love. She approaches to embrace Him. The soldiers thrust her rudely back. And she is His mother. For a moment she reeled with the push, and then again was still, her eyes fixed on His, His eyes fixed on hers, such a look, such an embrace, such an outpouring of love, such an overflow of sorrow. Has He less strength than she? Yes. He staggers, is overweighed by the burden of the ponderous Cross, and falls with a dull dead sound upon the street, like the clang of falling wood. She sees it. The God of Heaven and earth is down. Men surround Him like butchers round a fallen beast ; they kick Him, beat Him, drag Him up again with cruel ferocity. It is His third fall. She sees it. He is her Babe of Bethlehem. She is helpless. She cannot get near. The terror of this scene to Mary beggars description. We must not forget that her heart was eminently feminine. Fancy the sea of wild faces into which she looked in those crowded streets. Every passion was glaring out of those ferocious eyes, rendered more horrible by their human intelligence mingled with the inhuman fiery stare of diabolical possession. A multitude, with the women, possibly the children, all athirst for blood, raving after it, yelling for it as only a maddened populace can yell. It was a very vent of Hell, that voice of theirs, a concourse of the most appalling sounds of rage and hate and murder, and blasphemy and imprecation, and of that torturing fire and their own hearts which those passions had fiercely lighted up. The sights and sounds thrilled through her with agonies of fear. Visible by her blue mantle, she floats about on the billows of that tossing crowd, like a piece of wreck on the dark weltering waters of a storm. And she is apart from Jesus. He is perishing in the waves of that turbulent people. He is engulfed, and she can stretch out no hand to save Him. She cannot yet hear Him, and thus she followed slowly on to Calvary, Magdalen and John beside themselves with grief, but feeling as if grace went out from her blue mantle, enabling them also to live with broken hearts. The way of the Cross was ended, and Christ was raised on the Tree of Shame. Mary turned to the foot of the Cross, passing the soldiers who were casting lots for the seamless garment of her Son. She raised her eyes to Heaven for strength, and they met the eyes of her Crucified Son. Upon beholding Jesus fastened to the Cross, she stood speechless, riveted to the spot by this cruel spectacle. Everything disappeared before the Cross; the sun veiled its gaze in very shame, the heavens became dark, the earth quaked, the rocks were rent asunder, the graves gave up their dead. All nature seemed to participate in Mary's grief and to suffer with her. The multitude were terrified and fled down the mountain striking their breasts, saying : "He was truly the Son of God." Yet amidst the wild confusion caused by nature sympathizing with the dying Saviour, caused by the earthquakes which shook Golgatha's mount to its very foundation -Mary remained unmoved, with hands folded in prayer, sunk in meditation on her Crucified Love, and the few pious women of Jerusalem wept, and said with compassion: The poor Mother ! Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, as a pious writer tells us, approached Our Blessed Lady with the profoundest reverence and sympathy and asked her permission to take the Body down from the Cross. They fixed the ladder against the Cross. Joseph mounted first and Nicodemus after him. Mary with John and Magdalen remained immediately beneath them. It seemed as if some supernatural grace issued forth from the adorable Body, softening and subduing all their thoughts, making their hearts burn with divine love, and hushing them in the deepest and most thrilling adoration. With gentle, trembling hand Joseph touched the Crown of thorns, and delicately loosened it from the head on which it was fixed, disentangled it from the matted hair, and without daring to kiss it passed it to Nicodemus, who reached it to John, from whom Mary, sinking on her knees, receives it with such devotion as no heart but hers could hold. Every blood stained spike seemed instinct with life, and went into her heart, tipped as it were with the Blood of her Son, inoculating her more and more deeply with the spirit of His Passion. Who can describe with what reverential touch Joseph loosened the nails so as not to crush those blessed hands and feet? Each nail was silently passed down to Mary, and the poor Mother bent over those mute relics crusted, too, as they were with the Precious Blood which she adored in its unbroken union with the Person of the Eternal Word. But now the Body was detached from the Cross. Mary is kneeling on the ground. Her fingers are stained with blood. She stretches the clean linen cloth over her arms and holds them out to receive her Son, her lost Son, come back again, and come back thus ! Now the Body is low enough for John to touch the Sacred Head, and receive It in his arms, that It might not drop in that helpless rigid way; and Magdalen is holding up the feet. It is her old post. It is her post in Heaven now, highest of penitents, most beautiful of pardoned spirits! For one moment Mary prostrates herself in an agony of speechless adoration, and the next instant she has received the Body in her extended arms. The Babe of Bethlehem is back again in His Mother's lap. What a meeting! What a restoration! For a while she remains kneeling, while John and Magdalen, Joseph and Nicodemus and the devout women adore, and whisper: "The poor Mother!" Then she passes from the attitude of the priest to the attitude of the Mother. She rises from her knees still bearing the burden as lightly as when she fled into Egypt, and sits down upon the grass, with Jesus extended upon her lap. There was not a feature of His Blessed Countenance, not a mark upon His Sacred Flesh, which was not at once a sorrow to her, and a very volume of profoundest meditations. In vain for her were the birds thrilling their even-song, the weight of the eclipse being taken off their blithe little hearts. In vain for her were the perfumes of the tender fig-leaves rising up in the cold air, and the buds bursting greenly, and the tender shoots full of vernal beauty. Her grief was past nature's soothing. For her Flower had been cruelly gathered and lay withered there upon her knee. But now He must be swathed in the winding sheet for burial and Mary must take her last look at that dead face. Mothers live lives in their last looks. Who shall tell what Mary's was like? With heroic effort she has bound the napkin around His head, and has folded the winding sheet over the sweet face. And now there is darkness indeed around her. The very Body had been a light and a support. She has put out the light herself. Her own hands have quenched the lamp, and she stands facing the thick night. O, brave woman! O Mary thou didst pierce thy own heart through and through, with the same hand which hid His face ! And the women wept again with compassion and said, "The Poor Mother" Poor! but through whom? Through us my friends ! He was bruised for our sakes, says the prophet, and our sins crucified Him, killed Him; and Mary the Queen of prophets should not have known this? She knew it well and felt the sufferings of her Son, inflicted by our sins all the more keenly. What reason have we not then for sorrow, for the profoundest grief, the bitterest tears over our sins which have robbed this good Mother of her Son? In the city of Padua in Italy, St. Francis de Sales relates, is a street called the Road of Mercy. It received its name from the following incident. Two university students met one dark night, and without recognizing each other fell into a quarrel, because neither would get out of the way of the other with the result that one stabbed the other one to death. The murderer pursued by the authorities fled in despair to the house of a widow whose only son was his fellow student and best friend. He threw himself at her feet, told what he had done, and begged her to hide him. The good woman took pity on him and concealed him in her house. It was not long before her only son was brought home to her dead, for it was he whom the student had stabbed. Sobbing aloud she went to the murderer and said, "What did my poor son do that you have so cruelly murdered him?" But when he heard that it was his own dear friend, he broke down with grief, tore his hair, and instead of asking the good mother s forgiveness, he threw himself at her feet and begged her to deliver him over to the hands of the Justice, in order that he might publicly expiate his crime. The grief-stricken mother, who was a most Christian lady, was so touched by the evident sincere grief of the youth that she said: "If you beg God's forgiveness and promise to amend your life, I will allow you to go free." He made the promise and obtained his liberty. My friends, we have also robbed a poor Mother of her only Son, the Son of Mary, Who loved us as our best friend, more than life, we have by our sins crucified Him. We might have died a thousand times, we might have forfeited eternal life, but the Mother to whom we took refuge, the Mother of Sorrows, rejected us not and promised to allow us to go away for given provided we beg God s forgiveness, and amend our lives. Let the redeemed learn then what they owe to Mary. Let them think of the sufferings that she endured for thirty-four years, in consequence of her maternal instincts leading her to most earnestly desire that the chalice of suffering might pass from her Divine Son, while her obedience to the divine counsels and her devotion to man's salvation, doing a holy violence to her love, forced her to say: "Let the will of the Father be done; let my Son suffer death to redeem His people from their sins; thus making it her higher love to do the will of God than to enjoy the companionship of Jesus. Let them look often and thoughtfully upon the scene on Mount Calvary! Let them meditate on Mary's holy heroism. Let them think of her as a woman, weak in her sex, as a mother wounded in her tenderest affections, as sorrowful unto death, yet tearless, unwavering in her purpose to fulfill the promise made to God through Gabriel, willing to drain the chalice of affliction, resolved to witness the end, to see Jesus blot out the handwriting against sinners with the Most Precious Blood, to stand by the Cross until she heard: Consummatum est, It is finished, until she saw her Son become the Saviour of the world, and the children of wrath become the children of God, until the death of Jesus left her amid the shadows of Calvary in a desolation so unutterable that the earth has no name for its anguish. Let Christians look upon Mary crowned by Jesus on Calvary, in the words of Isaias, "with the crown of tribulation," and then they will understand why Mary takes an interest in their spiritual welfare; why she jealously guards the affairs of their salvation in life; why she bends all her energies at the hour of death to protect souls from the assaults of the Demon. Then they will understand why that unfailing devotion which Mary displayed from Nazareth to Calvary, to the cause of the world s redemption, she now exhibits in behalf of each and every one redeemed, to the end that the Precious Blood of Jesus shall not have been shed for any soul in vain. Amen. Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Faith, Imprimatur 1916  FEAST OF ST. JOSEPH
March 19 Gospel. Matt. I. 18-21. "When Mary, the mother of Jesus, was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child, of the Holy Ghost. Whereupon Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing publicly to expose her: was minded to put her away privately. But while he thought on these things, behold the angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep, saying: Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her, is of the Holy Ghost; and she shall bring forth a Son: and thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins." St. Joseph is called the foster-father of Jesus, the pure spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, titles which we confer on him, and which carry with them great and important privileges. He alone was found worthy to protect the Mother of Christ, the Daughter of the Father, and to his loving reverence was entrusted the Redeemer of the world. From His birth, Jesus depended on him for the necessities of life, and with what watchfulness and tenderness did he not fill his exalted position! To him Mary most pure, and Jesus, spotless Lamb, gave obedience and respect. He was head of that most holy family on earth, and is now the model for all fathers in all ages. With what virtues was not his soul adorned, since he was found worthy of being clothed with such dignity! Humility, purity, patience, fortitude, longanimity, sweetness of character, and a whole line of virtues must have been found in him in an eminent degree. When God, my dear young friends, raises some one to a great dignity. He does not look at a man's birth, his riches, his honor or his fame. He regards the soul, the virtues which the man practices and the love with which he is filled. It is true that St. Joseph was of noble birth, for he was of the royal house of David; but he was far removed and was poor, and had to gain his livelihood by working as a carpenter. While he was poor in this world's goods he was rich in merit, and dear to God for his sanctity and love; therefore he was richly blessed with the greatest graces. If you are poor and of little account before the world, yet love Our Lord with great affection, you also will be dear to Him and He will enrich you with His gifts and His graces. Love Our Lord, therefore, with all your heart as did St. Joseph. Though St. Joseph was dear to Our Lord, still He wished Joseph to feel the trials and afflictions of life. But he also had great consolation. The night Our Lord was born in the stable at Bethlehem Joseph's heart was full of heavenly joy. Another great happiness was the visit of the three kings from the East, who offered to the new-born Babe their precious gifts. When Joseph arrived at Bethlehem with Mary, and found that after wandering from door to door there was no room for them, he felt sorely afflicted, for he felt that he had to look after the comfort of Our Lord. Disappointed and fatigued, he had to take refuge in a stable, in order to provide shelter for the divine Babe. Great also was his sorrow when he heard the aged Simeon prophesy that the Child would be a sign which should be contradicted, and a sword of sorrow should pierce the heart of Mary, the tender Mother. What dreadful misgivings must he not have felt, when in a dream he received the command of the angel to take the Child and His Mother, and set out for Egypt, an unknown country, where he was to remain until he was again notified; and this in order that he might withdraw Our Lord from the persecution of Herod. I think I can see him, rising quickly from his couch, and telling Mary to prepare for the journey. In Egypt he had great difficulty to find employment, by which he might furnish the necessaries of life to the dear ones whom he had in charge. Nor was his anguish less when he was ordered back to Nazareth, there to open the workshop which had been closed so long. What sorrow must he have felt when for the first time he put the plane and hammer into Our Lord's hands. "O, my Son," Joseph must have said, "am I such a father to you that I cannot provide what is necessary for your sustenance; but that you, too, my God, must work! " But his sorrow must have been much alleviated when he saw with what happiness and cheerfulness Our Lord served him. Hence, while great were his afflictions, great also were his consolations in that life of union with Our Lord. God acts in this way with His saints; He does not always console them, nor does He always afflict them; He distributes these visitations according to the need of the holy soul. He does the same to us, my dear young people. He sends you great consolation to animate you in the practice of virtue, and He will send you hours of consolation, until you cry, ''Enough, Lord, my happiness is too great." He will send you also sufferings, poverty, dishonor and sickness to purify you and make you worthy of Him, and with it all you shall still have peace of mind, the peace of God which is beyond all knowledge. The greatest consolation that Joseph had was at his death, at which Jesus and Mary were present. He saw the hour approach when he was to leave the tender objects of his love; his eyes followed them with affection as they moved about the room ready to minister to him. What holy words must have been spoken to him by Jesus and Mary! They assisted him in his agony and gave him all possible human relief! The death of St. Joseph was therefore most consoling, for he truly died in the embrace of Our Lord. Now, my dear young friends, you can set before your minds what reward was granted to him, whose greatest privilege it was to be the foster-father of Our Lord and the protector of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He enjoys in heaven all the glory of which a human being is capable, near the throne of his foster-Son. What demand will ever be denied St. Joseph? His prayers are commands to God. St. Teresa says, "I do not know that I have ever asked anything of St. Joseph that was not granted." Let us all become his devout clients and we also will experience his protection. Our Lord said in a revelation to Margaret of Cortona, "Every day make a tribute of praise to the Blessed Virgin and to my foster-father, St. Joseph." Yes, my dear young people, if you are really devout in your pious exercises to St. Joseph, he will obtain for you special graces at the hour of your death. He will ask Jesus and Mary to be present, and will suggest to your heart the sweet names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and you, too, will die a happy death, in the embrace of Our Lord. Source: Sermons for the Children's Masses, Imprimatur 1900  "Let us now praise men of renown, and our fathers in their generation ; . . . these men of mercy whose godly deeds have not failed; good deeds continue with their seeds ; their posterity are a holy inheritance ; and their seed hath stood in the covenants ; and their children for their sakes remain forever; their seed and their glory shall not be forgotten. Let the people show forth their wisdom, and the church declare their praise." ECCLUS. 44.
The characteristic qualities of great men are delineated in their works. There are certain leading features which characterize their activity and distinguish them from all other men. Great men impress, as it were, their own individuality upon their works. Thus Shakespeare s dramas are a perfect mirror of his character ; he has impressed upon them so forcibly his own individuality, that they are beyond compare. The author of the world-renowned "Last Supper" Leonardo daVinci, has impressed upon all his paintings the image of his own pure soul in a most singular manner. And so it is with all great men, the leading features in their character are impressed upon their work. St. Patrick, whose feast the Church commemorates today, is no exception to this rule. He was a man of a strong and noble individuality and he impressed it upon his work the founding of the Church in Ireland. I propose, therefore, to consider briefly the leading features in St. Patrick s character, which may be summed up as follows: A great supernatural attachment to the see of Peter; a missionary apostolic zeal for the conversion of souls ; and a spirit of heroism in suffering for God. These were the three great features in the character of St. Patrick, and these qualities he transmitted to the church which he founded in Ireland. In the first place then, St. Patrick was truly devoted to the Holy See. He recognized in the Successor of St. Peter, the Representative of Christ, the Head of the Church Catholic, and loved him as such. Coming directly from Rome, and filled with ecclesiastical knowledge, he preached fidelity and unswerving obedience to the Chair of Peter, to the Pope of Rome. But some writers deny his Roman mission. They say that St. Patrick was not sent to Ireland by the Holy See. By whom then was he sent? And from whom did he receive his mission to preach the Gospel in Ireland ? They do not tell us, but history does, and in no uncertain language. St. Probus, one of Ireland s earliest writers, tells us that when St. Patrick proposed to himself to evangelize Ireland he prayed to Christ Our Lord that He might lead him to the feet of the Roman Pontiff, there to receive authority to preach the Gospel to the Irish people. And he continues : "Patrick having come to Rome was most honorably received by the Pope, Celestine, and sent into Ireland by that Pontiff. This testimony of the sainted biographer is corroborated by writers of every age and country. Thus the Four Masters, under date of 431, tell us that St. Patrick was ordained to the Episcopacy by the Holy Pope, Celestine I, who commissioned him to go to Ireland to preach the Gospel. But why do I argue? Why dispute with men who would have the world believe a most unmitigated falsehood? Nothing is more clearly proved than the sub ordination of the new-born church in Ireland to the Roman See a subordination which was taught, decided, and regulated by Patrick. He came to Ireland by command of the Holy See; he revealed to her the grand design of Almighty God in His Church; he taught her that Peter was the Rock which was to sustain her in every storm ; and he bound her to this rock, "Rock of Ages," to Peter s Chair, by firmest bonds of obedience and love, and infused into her soul his own supernatural devotion to Rome that devotion which has ever marked the Church in Ireland. It is a curious fact that when the Christian world was confused by the pretentions of the antipopes, Ire land was never led astray ; with an instinct truly supernatural, she never failed to discover, to proclaim and to obey the true Pontiff. She is the only Catholic nation that never was separated for a moment from St. Peter, nor mistaken in her allegiance to him. But it might be urged that Ireland was too far removed from Rome to be easily led astray, as the confusion caused by the antipopes seldom spread farther than the continent. Why then did she not renounce her allegiance to Rome when England apostatized? When the evil genius of Henry, of Edward, of Elizabeth, of Cromwell stalked through the land and with loud voice demanded of the Irish people separation from Rome or their lives why did they consent to die rather than renounce their faith, their union with Rome? Was it because the false religion was presented to them by the detested hands that had robbed their country of her crown? Was it because the new gospel was preached by such gentle missionaries as the "humane and tender hearted" Oliver Cromwell? This may have told with the people, I grant ; but no natural explanation can explain the supernatural fact that a whole nation preferred for a thousand years, confiscation, exile, death, rather than surrender their faith, their union with Rome. And it is because the spirit of St. Patrick lived on in the Church in Ireland; because he had transmitted to her his own supernatural attachment to the Holy See. He had engrafted her on the Rock of Peter, that Rock upon which is built the impregnable Church of God, against which the crested billows may rise and foam, but they fall harmless at its feet. The bond with which St. Patrick bound Ireland to this Rock has never been severed. Each succeeding Pope, from Celestine I, who sent Patrick to Ireland, to our glorious Benedict, has inherited her prayers, her love, and her obedience. The second prominent feature in St. Patrick s character, I said, was missionary apostolic zeal for the conversion of souls. He burned with the desire, he tells us himself, to instruct the world, to enlighten those that sat in darkness, and in the shadow of death. This missionary zeal, this burning desire to spread the Gospel was his great ruling feeling. He is the only Apostle who entered a country entirely pagan, and left it at his death entirely Christian. And it was not only Catholic and Christian at his death, but according to the most ancient records, the most holy nation God had gathered into the bosom of His Church. And St. Patrick transmitted this missionary zeal to the Church which he founded. To prove this, I need but remind you of the days of Ireland s monasticism of those days when the world acknowledged the miracle of Ireland's holiness. Never since Christ proclaimed the truth among men never was seen so extraordinary and miraculous a thing as that a whole people should become almost entirely a nation of monks and nuns as soon as they became Catholic and Christian. There had been the ruin and desolation of almost all the rest of the world. Hordes of barbarians poured in streams over the world sweeping every vestige of civilization and Christianity before them. The whole world seemed to be now falling back into the darkness and chaos of the earliest times ; but Ireland, sheltered by the encircling waves, converted and sanctified by the labors of St. Patrick, opened her schools and learned institutions, the first universities, as it were, to the children and scholars of the young nations, who had conquered the soil of the Roman empire, to be conquered in their turn by the faith of Rome. But the sons of St. Patrick were not content with instructing the vast numbers that flocked to their shores from every clime, they had inherited Patrick's missionary zeal, they realized the necessity of spreading the Gospel abroad, of carrying their knowledge and faith afar, and of penetrating into the most distant lands to watch and combat paganism. The missionaries launched forth from their Green Isle, they covered the land and the seas of the West, unwearied navigators they landed in the most distant islands; they fertilized the continent by successive immigrations, and these children of St. Patrick not only evangelized the people of these foreign countries, but founded monasteries and great seats of learning. So undeniable were their exertions, that they left Scotland, Britain, Gaul, Burgundy, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Iceland, and even Vinland on our own shores under a debt of eternal gratitude. To name Lona, Lendisfane, Bangor, Luxeuil, St. Gaul, Bobbio, is to name centres of civilization and faith of world-wide renown, established by the children of St. Patrick. There is hardly a land in the whole world wherein do not rest the bones of an Irish missionary. Our own great country, our grand America, which Providence seems to have designed for the great meeting place of all mankind, is dotted with churches, colleges and ecclesiastical institutions of every kind. But who built them? Who covered our vast country with glorious churches and grand Catholic institutions? All credit and honor to every Catholic race. All credit and honor to the Catholic Frenchman, to the Catholic German. The Germans in this country those brave men ; those sons of Catholics ; those descendants from ages when the great Roman emperors upheld the sceptre for so many centuries in defence of the altar, are worthy of their sires; they have done great things in this country and will do still greater; but it is, after all, the children of St. Patrick who have done the lion's share of the work. Great America vast, grand, free ; to what shall I liken thee, my native land, unless to the mighty ocean, whose surface mirrors the Almighty s form? I glory in thy greatness, in thy immensity, but in thy prosperity forget not the God of nations, Who created thee, and forget hot what thou owest to the sons of St. Patrick and aid them and their last struggle for freedom. I now come to the third feature in St. Patrick's character; viz.: a spirit of heroism in suffering for God. St. Patrick, as you all know, was a child of adversity. In his early youth he was carried off by pirates, and enslaved in Ireland. He passed six years on the bleak mountains of that country, exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons, and endured suffering unspeakable without a murmur. It was during these years of adversity and suffering that he prepared himself unconsciously for his future labors the conversion of Ireland. That the Church which he founded in Ireland was a suffering Church, I need not tell you. It is true, in the first three centuries of her existence she was a glorious Church "without spot or wrinkle," she stood forth as a beacon light to all the world, but her bridal robe was soon changed for the purple garment of suffering. Suffering Ireland! How the very name thrills through the soul, and stirs the deepest fountains of its sympathies. How many mournful recollections does it not awaken ? Who has not shared to a greater or less extent in the tender feelings embodied in the following touching lines of Erin s sweetest, greatest poet : "The stranger shall hear thy lament o'er his plains; The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o er the deep; Till thy tyrants themselves, as they rivet thy chains, Shall pause o er their captives and weep." But why has the Church of St. Patrick ever been a suffering Church? What was her crime? The stern refusal to abandon the Catholic faith and subscribe to the new fangled and ever-changing religious notions of England constitutes her greatest crime. No language can adequately portray the refinements of cruelty by which this crime has been visited by England for centuries. The penal code which England adopted for Ireland would have disgraced the statute book of the Grand Turk himself! No government whether Christian, Mohammedan or Pagan, was ever sullied with more crimes or marked with more utter baseness. I recoil from this recital ! I will not harrow up your souls by relating the anguish which Ireland endured in the days when her faith was tried, in the days of the penal laws and of famine, when her children preferred death on the gibbet, starvation in their cabins, rather than abandon the faith brought by St. Patrick from Rome, and left as the richest of legacies to their fathers! Never was a nation's faith and nationality more perfectly united. In other lands individuals suffered for their fidelity to faith, and all credit to them but Ireland suffered as a nation, she exhibited to the world a nation of martyrs, suffering as a nation for their holy faith. Had Ireland betrayed her trust and become protestant with England she might be prosperous to-day but because she spurned the temptation and clung to the faith given to her by St. Patrick, she is not prosperous, but poor, like the Lord for Whom she suffered! O how truly did St. Patrick impress the qualities of his own great soul upon the Irish Church! And she has ever remained true to him, and true to her God. Today St. Patrick looks down upon her from his high seat of bliss, and his heart rejoices. To-day the thousands of her virgin and martyr saints bespeak her praises in the high courts of Heaven. Today her children scattered over the four quarters of the earth plead in prayer for her liberation. May we not hope that God will comfort His "little one" and speak to her as He did to weeping Israel! May we not hope that He will say to her in His infinite mercy : "Poor little one, tossed with tempest, and without all comfort; behold I will lay thy stones in order, and thy foundations with sapphires." O God Who art just and merciful, hear Thy children call on Thee ! In the day of rack and gibbet they were faithful to Thee; bless them in their great and final struggle for the land Thou gavest them, and restore to freedom Thy long-enslaved people ! Erin, Mother Erin, may thy children hope to see thee come out of this struggle more glorious and resplendent! May the shackles of slavery that have long bound thee to feudal lords be stricken from thy limbs, and may the full morn of freedom shine around thee yet, that thou mayest be all that we wish thee:" Great, glorious and free, First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea." Amen. Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church, Imprimatur 1911 "He that is of God, heareth the words of God."—St. John viii, 47.
Truly consoling are the words of the Divine Saviour: "He that is of God, heareth the words of God." The Christian who truly believes, hopes and loves, may indeed tremble and be anxious about his soul's salvation when he thinks of death, judgment and eternity. But then the words of Jesus will comfort him: "He that is of God, heareth the words of God." Zeal for, and joy in, the word of God, the mysteries of the Catholic faith, and love of divine worship are all eloquent testimonials that we are of God, that we possess the grace and spirit of God and that we shall return to God. And though a Catholic may fall into grievous sin because of human weakness, he still hears the word of God and the voice of his conscience. His yearning for the word and for the grace of God will not permit him to remain in his unfortunate condition. He throws off the yoke of sin, reconciles himself with God, and fulfills the consoling word of Christ: "He that is of God, heareth the word of God,"—"for blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it." The reason is plain. Whoever, among men, has a vocation, or profession, or fills an office, is bound to acquire all the knowledge, qualities and fitness that are necessary to follow such vocation or profession honorably and conscientiously. Thus an officer, a physician, a lawyer, an artisan, a merchant, a farmer, a cook, a governess, a housewife must all possess the knowledge necessary to the fulfillment of their vocation or profession. They must continue to keep what they already know fresh in their minds and strive to acquire new knowledge. It is absolutely necessary for them to do this if they do not wish to be lacking in conscience, if they do not wish to bring untold misery upon themselves and others, or to appear as useless members of society, deserving the contempt, the poverty, the wretchedness to which their laziness has reduced them. Now the holiest and most honorable profession and vocation is that of the Catholic. Hence it comes about that the Catholic incurs the responsibility before God and man of acquiring an exact knowledge of the duties and obligations that belong to his first and holiest vocation, for on this vocation depends not merely his temporal welfare, but, what is infinitely more important, the eternal salvation of his soul. He must of necessity therefore, constantly strive to learn more and more completely and exactly all the truths of his holy faith and the commandments of God and of the Church, for, "he that is of God, heareth the words of God." The reason of this will become more clear to us if we consider that it is a child's most sacred duty to pay attention to the words and teachings of its parents—that it is a sacred duty for the pupil, the servant, the citizen, to give a willing ear to the admonition and commands of the teacher, the master, and the authorities. Peace and order, harmony and prosperity depend on this. But the duty of the Catholic to listen to the word of God is far more sacred and important than the duty of the child, the pupil, the servant and the citizen. As far as the heavens are above the earth so does the word of God, faith, surpass all human knowledge and learning. Time and eternity, peace and joy depend upon it. Faith is the wonderful light that enlightens us; it is our guide on earth, our staff in life, our comfort in misfortune, the remedy of our souls, the well-spring of all virtues and the dispenser of eternal happiness. And yet, my dearly beloved, sacred as is the duty of the Catholic to be thoroughly instructed in his holy faith, that sublime treasure and marvelous gift of grace that has come to us from an all-merciful God, there are nevertheless many Catholics in our day who are willing and anxious to learn and to know everything else but what concerns the truths and mysteries of the Catholic faith. What is the cause of this sad state of affairs? It originates in the deliberate ignorance of indifferentism concerning matters of faith. It is, therefore, my purpose to speak to you of this ignorance and its consequence. O Jesus, assist us with Thy grace! We encounter everywhere the most astounding ignorance concerning holy things, matters of faith, the commandments, the sacraments, the practices, and life of the Catholic Church. Whence does this come? It can originate only in the deliberate determination to remain in ignorance of all these things by staying away from instructions and sermons, by contemptuously throwing aside all Catholic literature and periodicals as unworthy of serious attention. And this ignorance concerning matters of faith, the like of which the world has never seen in all the ages past, is dignified with the boastful name of Enlightenment, Liberalism, and Culture. We encounter it rampant in every state of society, in every phase of human life, in the classroom, the courts, the halls of the legislative bodies, the public places and the public press. Our separated brethren themselves are obliged to acknowledge this impoverishment of the mind. All the world stands aghast at the recrudescence of crime, the flourishing immorality and practical infidelity and the abject materialism among all classes of men in this boasted Christian nation of ours. And if only this were all! But this ignorance is fraught with direst consequences. Only ignorance leads to ridicule of the faith. The devil himself does not mock for he knows better. The world has never heard such cynical scoffing at all things holy and pure, and especially at all things Catholic, as in our day. It has come to such a pass that the child tries to outdo the parent, the pupil the teacher, the poor the wealthy. Ignorance leads to unbelief and to hatred of the Catholic Church. Only ignorant people are unbelievers and haters. That is why the Jews hated the Redeemer: "He that is of God, heareth the words of God. Therefore you hear them not, because you are not of God" (St. John viii, 47). Why did the ancient pagans hate Christianity? Why do pagans, Turks and Jews hate Christianity even in our day? Because they know nothing about it, because they do not wish to know anything about it, because they are ignorant of its truths. However, the worst of them all in mockery and hatred are the ignorant and bad Catholics. They are ignorant because they are bad, and they are bad because they are ignorant, and therefore they hate their own faith. No Jew, no Turk, no heathen derides his own religion. Only ignorant Catholics are capable of such a thing. They conduct themselves very much like the young man who led a most immoral life and openly boasted of his infidelity as proof of his enlightenment. A kind friend had pity on him and lent him a book in which the beauties of the Catholic faith were portrayed. The young infidel read the book with a great deal of interest. His doubts were being solved one by one, the scales fell from his eyes, the truth and beauty of the Catholic faith grew more and more evident to his soul,—when, seized by an uncontrollable whim he dashed the book aside and exclaimed : "The wretch, he almost convinces me with his book." And he ended his life in vice and infidelity. All those ignorant people who wish to be considered cultured and broad-minded, act in the same way. They hate and reject every Catholic instruction, every sermon, book and paper, that would help them to acquire a more thorough knowledge of Catholic belief and life. They do not wish to be disturbed; they are not disposed to hear the word of God, because they are not of God, but have long since fallen away from the Catholic Church. But ignorance leads to something more; it leads to superstition. And we find the most superstition in the ranks of those who claim that they are guided by the light of reason only. We find them attaching undue importance to occurrences in every-day life. We frequently see them in earnest consultation with spiritualistic mediums and assiduous attendants at their seances; they dread to meet funeral processions; Friday and the number thirteen strike them dumb with horror. They are, however, particularly superstitious, or rather, over-credulous in regard to newspapers. These ignoramuses swear by their papers and accept as undeniably true every lie that is forged against the Catholic Church, no matter how stupid or how devoid of every vestige of probability it may be. They are convinced to the point of evidence that the Church is the cause of all the trouble in France and in Portugal and, in fact, of all the troubles that have ever existed in the Christian world. They are still prepared to swear to the truth of the statement that nuns have been and are still being walled up alive. Nothing can persuade them that the infallibility of the Pope does not consist in his inability to commit sin. They know—no matter what proof you may offer to the contrary—that the clergy are immensely wealthy. For them it is a fact beyond all possibility of doubt that the Catholic Church of set purpose keeps her ministers and followers ignorant, that she is an enemy of the people, that she has laid her curse upon the world and condemns it to the abyss of hell. They swear by their gospel, the newspaper. What other proof of anything does he need? And yet, did not the rationalistic Pharisees of old say of Our Divine Saviour: "He hath blasphemed God, what further need of proof have we?" But ignorance in matters of faith goes one step farther, just as the Jews proceeded against Our Divine Saviour. They were ready to stone Him, and finally nailed Him to the cross. In like manner the whole tribe of so-called liberals, and, by the same token, ignorant, bad Catholics as well as non-Catholics, take up the stone of calumny, of false accusation against the Catholic Church, against their own mother, who regenerated them, and who, in order to preserve to' them grace and faith and salvation whole and intact, has suffered and bled from the first days of her existence. They take up the stones of malediction against their own mother, who in the days of their youth instructed them in matters of faith, administered to them the sacraments and who alone will and can stand by them in the hour of death. Aye, even after death when the world and their families have forgotten them, she will not forget her erring children in the holy sacrifice of the mass. But all this does not deter our liberal Catholics, for in their ignorance they no longer remember the best of mothers, or, if they do, it is only to heap insults and obloquy upon her. But if you question these so-called broad-minded Catholics concerning the simplest truths of holy faith, concerning the nature and number of the sacraments, the commandments of God and of the Church, in fine, anything that a Catholic must know if he would save his soul, they are dumb as the culprit before his judge. They have unlearned, forgotten everything, but because of this very fact they like to pose as liberal-minded men and forthwith proceed to scoff and blaspheme. Holy Scripture tells us that when the Jews took up stones to kill Our Divine Saviour, He quietly went His way. In like manner the Catholic Church, the religious orders and we Catholics quietly proceed on our way and pay no attention to the missiles that are hurled at us from the rationalistic camp. The Catholic Church has looked upon the world for centuries; she has overcome other and greater enemies by her patience, and she has heard the rejoicings of nations who were converted. She will in turn come forth glorious from the storm of rationalistic and modernistic ideas. Has, perchance, the Catholic faith, so wonderful as the most splendid gift of God's grace, deteriorated in our day? Or has the heavenly seed, which the divine sower planted in our hearts at holy baptism that it might bring forth fruit for heaven, decayed, that so many bad Catholics should scoff and jeer at it? No, the gift of God's grace remains the same in its heavenly power, in the splendor of its truth and in the fullness of its light and comfort. The heavenly seed has not rotted away, for in this our day, it still grows and flourishes and brings forth magnificent fruit of Christian life and eternal happiness. What therefore has deteriorated and rotted? Only the hearts of many Catholics, who have allowed themselves to be carried away by the whirlwind of intellectual license. History relates that when Alexander the Great came to the river Cydmus he bathed in its icy waters and in consequence contracted a mortal disease. His physician Philip prepared for him a healing draught. But at the moment when Alexander was about to take the remedy from his physician's hand a message was brought to him that said : "Do not trust your physician Philip, for, bribed by Persian gold, he is giving you poison to drink." Alexander read the letter and with one hand giving it to the physician with the other he seized the cup that held the remedy and unhesitatingly emptied it to the very dregs. Why does history tell us of this incident in the life of Alexander the Great, and express admiration, for it ? Because trusting the assurance of his physician Alexander apparently braved death by taking the draught. Jesus Christ is the physician; we and all mankind are the sick man, and the health-giving draught which Jesus has prepared for us are the heavenly truths, faith, grace, the sacraments, in a word, redemption. And, indeed, what wonderful results has not this life-giving draught produced in suffering humanity? It has made the Apostles, the martyrs, the saints, it has converted nations, dispelled superstition, vice and madness; it has restored health to souls, consolation and strength in life and in death and has peopled the kingdom of heaven. The assistant of our Divine Physician, the Catholic Church, still offers the self-same healing draught to sick and languishing humanity. Why is it despised and wasted? The godless, the unbelievers, the infidel press cry out even to Catholics: "Do not trust her, it is poison she is giving you!" Instead of trusting the Divine Physician, His Church, and the experience of centuries, many Catholics believe implicitly what the godless tell them, and dash away the divine draught, simply because they wish to be considered broad-minded at any cost. But see how greedily they devour what the yellow press doles out to them. Every item of filth, of scandal, of untruth, of calumny, is eagerly absorbed and believed. They do not even give themselves time to think. There is no doubt in their minds but that all they have read is absolutely true, in fact they have come to such a pass that for them there is no longer a doubt possible. And thus they lose their faith, grace and eternal salvation and become the enemies of God and of His Church. These are the fruits of stupid liberalism. In proportion as the remedy of the Divine Physician, faith and grace are dissipated, the elements of Christianity are destroyed in the hearts of individuals and of the family, the more the Christian spirit is banished from the school, the community and the state, the greater will grow the sickness, the lust for pleasure, vice and confusion. There is a cry for light, and impenetrable darkness seizes upon despairing hearts. Everybody clamors for liberty, and the slavery of vice and of wealth grows greater. On all sides we hear of the prosperity and the well-being of the people, and taxes are multiplied and poverty becomes ever greater. The people are daily sinking deeper into despair, misery and crime. The principles of ruin and disintegration are hourly gaining ground. The soil is become a morass, the good seed is rejected, the life-giving draught is being spilled, and instead our people have become rationalistic. The greatest anguish of soul our Divine Saviour had to bear was the foreknowledge of the ingratitude of Christians. And in fact we can imagine no greater madness, no more revolting audacity than to see man, upon whom such love has been lavished, for whom such tortures, such humiliation and ignominy, such sufferings on the cross were borne, grow bitter against his Saviour and revile His Church and His doctrine. Man is not satisfied with rejecting Jesus, His teachings and His commandments, he must also rage against Him and blaspheme Him. The Saviour bore fatigue and the cross for us, but many Christians are too slothful to take a few steps to Church for the love of Jesus and for the sake of their immortal souls. God gives us life and health and six days in which to do our work, and many of us have become incapable of giving Him a short half-hour on Sundays by assisting at holy mass. God has done everything for our immortal souls, and most men do everything for the body, but nothing for their souls—the cares and riches and pleasures of life destroy every germ of grace. It is indeed true that the judgments of God are terrible, but the majority of Christians do all that lies in their power to justify this severity. Whosoever hath ears to hear, let him hear. And yet, my dearly beloved, nothing more gladdening, more consoling and uplifting has been given us than the knowledge of Jesus, and love for Him. Nothing enlightens us so much as faith, nothing ennobles us like grace, nothing awakens such hope in life and in death as Catholic faith, the source of all blessing and peace. Let us at least not be numbered among those who throw away the draught of life, who trample under foot the divine seed, the word of God, or strangle it in its young growth. Rather let our splendid faith fall on good soil in our souls and bring forth fruit a thousandfold for time and for eternity, so that the Divine Sower in the day of harvest— of judgment—may gather us into His barn and our living faith may bring us unto eternal happiness before the face of God, for "he that is of God, heareth the word of God." Amen. Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church, Imprimatur 1911 When it is evening you say: "It will be fair weather, for the sky is red." And in the evening: "Today there will be a storm, for the sky is red and lowering." You know then how to discern the face of the sky, and can you not know the signs of the times?—Matt, xvi, i-4.
You will wonder, no doubt, at my choosing for my Lenten sermons a text that has apparently no bearing at all upon this holy season, when the Church desires us to be recollected, making it a time of meditation, prayer, penance and amendment of life. A preacher is accordingly bound to conform to the wish of the Church, and to supply his people with the means of making a good use of this acceptable time, this day of salvation ( I I . Cor. vi, 2 ) . I have no intention of neglecting this duty, but I shall, I think, fulfill it best by pointing out to you the Signs of the Times, and suggesting how they may be interpreted, so that you may not incur the reproach : "You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you do not know the signs of the times." I invite you therefore now, at this holy season, to consider these signs, so that we may be able to answer the cry uttered by the prophet: "Watchman, what of the night?" Would that we could truthfully reply: " I behold the dawn of a bright and joyful day." Alas, we ought rather to say with the prophet: "The morning cometh, also the night." Wherever we look we find enemies, we find signs foreboding tempests and storms, famine, and war with all its horrors. Yet still worse than all these perils are the doctrines and principles of the socialists—doctrines which threaten to undermine all human society and the Church herself, and to bring about the overthrow of all existing relations between men and nations. These people deny the very existence of God, and reject all Christian teaching on matters of faith and morals. They wish to abolish all authority in State, Church and family; they have no respect for the marriage bond, nor for the rights of property; they will not acknowledge that it is the duty of parents to bring up their own children, and they assert the absolute equality of all men with regard to their mutual relations, rights and obligations. Many even go so far as to renounce all law, both human and Divine, and to declare God, or rather faith in God, to be the source of all evils in human society, and so they assign to man, as his sole duty on earth, the task of seeking in every way to satisfy his own desires and passions. Those employed in diffusing these false and revolutionary doctrines and principles are incessantly active, and carry on their propaganda at public and private meetings, as well as in books, periodicals and newspapers, so that at every turn we are reminded of our Saviour's warning to beware of false prophets. This is the reason why I wish to lay before you, in this course of sermons, the doctrines and principles current at the present day, in order to put you on your guard and to supply you with the means of refuting them; at the same time I hope to show you where to find guidance in the troubles that beset us, so that you may not lose hold of the anchor which alone can prove your salvation. With one hand we must ward off the enemies' attacks, and with the other build up the walls of the heavenly city. I intend to begin my sermon to-day by considering a man who denies that religion is indispensable, and thinks it enough to lead an honest life in the world. I have undertaken a difficult task in proposing to discuss these subjects, a task that can not be accomplished without God's assistance and your good will; I can rely upon the latter, and trust that by your prayers you will help me to obtain the former. Let us therefore implore the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth and strength, to aid us, and enable us to begin, continue and end the work for the edification, encouragement and sanctification of God's faithful people. I . At the present day, and especially among the upper classes there are many who maintain religion to be something superfluous, and say that it is enough for a man to lead an honest life. For this reason they cease to attend public worship, or attend it only for the sake of appearances and as a matter of form, whilst they look down with contemptuous amusement on such of their fellow creatures as still possess and profess some religion. They regard themselves as wise and enlightened, and others as ignorant and behind the times, and whilst they are very anxious to have a good reputation as men of honor, they cast doubts upon the honesty, uprightness and virtue of their neighbors. These are the people who by word and example have sown among the lower classes the seed of unbelief and indifference to religion, thus encouraging the socialists, who now boast of having conquered the religious feelings of their hearts and of having discarded the Church, that gloomy relic of medievalism! But is it possible to conquer all religious feeling, and to dispense with religion? By religion I mean the sense of our possessing a finite nature dependent upon an infinite Being; I mean the recognition of God, and the worship of Him that results from such recognition; I mean the light from above that illumines our understanding and reveals to us God and the relation in which we stand to Him; finally I mean the bond uniting the creature with the Creator, man with God and earth with heaven. Innate in every human being is a sense of dependence upon some higher power, and this sense influences every mind not corrupted by evil doctrines. A child lifts its little hands in prayer to God, of whom it knows nothing, but whom it already fears. Go where you will , even to the backwoods of savage countries, whither Christianity has not yet penetrated, and everywhere you will find that men believe in a Supreme Being, who governs them and controls their destiny; everywhere some kind of worship, though it may be barbarous and very imperfect, is paid to this Being. No race exists either in the Old or in the New World devoid of all religion, and can we suppose it not to be indispensable, when every simple, uncorrupt individual nature, as well as all the nations of the earth, possesses an innate sense of religion? Men, beasts and plants require the light of the sun, if they are to live, grow and thrive, and in the same way we require religion, the light from above, to enlighten our minds and ennoble the feelings of our hearts. The knowledge and worship of God are as indispensable to the spiritual life of our souls as are food and drink to our physical life. "This," says our Saviour, "is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent" (John xvii, 3). "The bread of God is that which cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world. . . . I am the bread of life" (John v i , 33, 35). "He that shall drink of the water that I will give him, shall not thirst for ever" (John iv, 13). The greatest and most learned men in every age have always recognized and insisted upon the necessity of religion. Who are those who nowadays maintain that they can do without it, and can be contented and happy when they have neither faith in nor love of God, and do no fear and reverence Him? They are ignorant, mad and unconscientious people, or else foolish windbags, unworthy to be mentioned in the same breath with the really great men to whom I have referred. But why, it may be asked, need we assert so emphatically that religion is absolutely indispensable to mankind? It is not merely for the reason already stated, but also because, without religion, it is impossible for men to be truly wise, good or happy. II. 1. They can not be truly wise, for none deserve to be calledwise who know nothing of God, in spite of His revealing His existence, His omnipotence, His wisdom and His goodness in all the wonders of the universe. How can a man be truly wise, who fails to see what God has done and still does, day by day, for the welfare of the human race? How can he be wise, who is ignorant of the relation in which he stands to the one great God, and of the way in which he ought to act towards Him, and of what he may rightly hope or fear to receive from Him? A man may be learned in worldly matters and in scientific knowledge, but unless he understands the things of God, he is not truly wise. Just as God is highly exalted above men, and the heavens above the earth, so does the knowledge of things Divine and heavenly far surpass that of earthly and human affairs. The wisdom of this world is enmity against God because it aims at limiting His glory, and it is harmful to men because it originates in pride and ends in wickedness and shame. God is constrained, for the sake of His own majesty and glory, to overthrow this wisdom, and in His holy anger He has sworn to destroy it: "Wisdom shall perish from their wise men, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid" (Is. xxix, 14). "Where is the wise?" asks the Apostle, "where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" ( I . Cor. i , 20). God effected this, first, by means of revelations given to the patriarchs and prophets, and afterwards through His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, "who of God is made unto us wisdom, and justice, and sanctification, and redemption" (Ibid, v, 30). He alone is truly wise who knows God, and Jesus Christ, whom He hath sent. "The testimony of the Lord is faithful," says the Psalmist, "giving wisdom to little ones, the judgments of the Lord are more to be desired than gold and many precious stones, and sweeter than honey and the honeycomb" (Ps. xviii, 9-11). Wisdom such as this is bestowed upon those only who are guileless as children, since it is the reward of humble piety. A man who possesses the wisdom derived from religion may not perhaps make a great display, as do those versed in the knowledge of this world, but he knows how to lead a good, God-fearing life. He, may not be able to calculate the course of the stars, but he knows who spread out the heavens like a tent, and created sun, moon, and stars. He may not have read the records of history or the works of learned men, but he realizes that here below all is vanity and that whatever takes place in the world is subject to God's guidance. In short, those trained in the school of religion may not be wise in the sense of discussing every imaginable topic, nor do they possess a knowledge of a great many unprofitable, if not harmful things, but they are wise because they understand the most important thing of all, viz., how to please God and act rightly. Solomon was the wisest of men, and yet he acknowledges that it was the teaching of religion that made him wiser than his elders and more learned than his teachers. 2. Without religion a man can not be truly good and honest, for whoever cuts himself off from God, and severs the bond of union between himself and his Creator, is abandoning himself to his own perverse inclinations and to the dictates of a will ever prone to evil. By ceasing to think of the God who rewards the good and punishes the wicked, he throws off all restraint capable of curbing his disorderly desires and passions, and thus becomes liable to commit even the greatest crimes. Of course our conscience tells us what is right and what is wrong, but men devoid of religion are Godless, and consequently soon become deaf to the voice of conscience, which ceases to make itself heard as soon as it ceases to be regarded as the voice of God. Godless men, heedless of conscience, are little better than the beasts; in fact they are still lower than the brutes, inasmuch as they do more harm and are more prone to every form of wickedness, and at the same time less amenable to law and discipline. It is useless to maintain that reason bids man act morally, for reason is often deceived when it no longer has a hold upon God, and then it accepts falsehood as truth and declares what is evil to be good. How often is it blinded by self-love and self-interest! Nothing hinders a man with no religion from overreaching, deceiving, robbing, slandering, persecuting and crushing his neighbor. Reason is often pressed into the service of disorderly cravings, for the flesh is ever apt to rebel against the spirit, and to impel man, against his better judgment, to gratify the lusts of the flesh. "I know," says St. Paul, "that there dwelleth not in me, that is to say, in my flesh, that which is good. For to will is present with me, but to accomplish that which is good, I find not. For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do" (Rom. vii, 18, 19). Religion alone tells us authoritatively what we ought to do and what not to do; it supplies us with the best means of living good and upright lives; it awakens within us true love of God by representing Him to us as merciful and holy, hating iniquity and loving righteousness; it deters us from evil by the threat of terrible punishments which God in His justice will inflict upon wrongdoers, and it stimulates us to do good, by promising us a reward that is indescribably great and imperishable. If men are deprived of religion they will act as they please, each will give free rein to his passions and use his strength to crush the weak, his cunning to outwit the simple, his eloquence to mislead the credulous and his power to stir up fear and bloodshed in every direction. St. Paul gives us an account of the condition of men without religion before our Saviour's coming. He says that they were filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness; they were full of envy, murder, contention, deceit and malignity; they were whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity and without mercy (Rom. i, 29-31). Yes, indeed, if ever God's enemies should succeed in making all men socialists, human society would ultimately be nothing but an ungovernable rabble of savages. It is impossible, in the short time at my disposal, to give you historical proofs of the manner in which up to the present day all this has repeated itself in the case of men, whenever they have fallen away from God and lost the restraint of religion. It is all recorded in history, where you can read it for yourselves, and I will merely quote a very remarkable utterance made by one who perhaps hated and injured Christianity more than any of those who preceded or succeeded him — I mean Voltaire, the famous philosopher of the 18th century. He said: "Unbelief is the vice of fools, and a mistake that can have originated only in the darkness of prisons. It is not merely opposed to morality and the welfare of mankind—for, where no God is recognized there is no obstacle to secret vice. An unbeliever's heart is capable of all baseness and of the vices of the most abandoned among men." Experience will have taught you all more or less the truth of these words. Are those who go about ridiculing religion and the Church, and openly boasting that they believe in nothing, are those, as a rule, good, honest, gentle, chaste and amiable people ? As far as my knowledge of the world and of men goes, I must deny them to be such, and I think you will agree with me. With whom do you prefer to have business dealings? Whom do you trust in everyday life? A godless man or one with some sense of religion? Are you not afraid lest a Godless man should cheat you, simply because he has no religion and consequently no conscience? I have no desire to accuse anyone, but it is a fact that those who believe in nothing and do not care for the Church, are as a rule people capable of and even prone to every kind of injustice, sin and vice. They may proclaim their honesty and respectability, but those who know them will not believe them; and even if they are really worthy people, their goodness generally consists merely in avoidance of flagrant vice and of transactions which would bring them under the censure of the law. It is because men devoid of religion can not be good and upright, that no civil society or state has ever been able to exist long without religion, for peace, order, personal safety, regard for the rights of ownership and for honor, and respect for the law can not exist without it , and they are the very foundations of society and the state. The pagans of old, recognizing this fact, declared faith in their gods to be the foundation of their government; and at the close of the 18th century the moving spirits of the French Revolution learned by experience that religion was indispensable to the settled order of the State. No sooner had they forbidden the French nation to believe in God and immortality, no sooner had they destroyed the churches, overthrown the altars and killed the priests, than the terrible results of their action filled them with alarm, and they were forced hastily to withdraw their prohibition and to allow the people to believe in God and immortality and to restore the churches and altars. The present French Republic is on the way to unbelief; it has banished religious instruction from the elementary schools, under the pretext of thus securing more time for subjects of greater importance, it has secularized education, driven out the religious orders and severed all connection with Rome, and all this has produced a terrible increase in the number of juvenile criminals. According to official statistics in one year almost 29,000 children under 16 years of age were convicted of serious offences, and 443 children committed suicide. If such is the case with the green wood, what will become of the dry? And what will be our fate when our people have lost all religion?; 3. Finally, men devoid of religion can not be happy. It is not necessary for me to say much in proof of this statement; I need only appeal to your experience and ask whether you have ever felt any happiness to compare with that which you feel when, with hearts cleansed from sin, you approach the table of the Lord and receive the Bread of angels. The happiness afforded by religion differs from that afforded by the pleasures, wealth and enjoyments of the world as widely as heaven differs from earth. St. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, says: "Our glory is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity of heart and sincerity of God, and not in carnal wisdom, but in the grace of God, we have conversed in this world, and more abundantly towards you" (II. Cor. i ,12). Let me ask you another question: What gives you strength and courage in trouble and adversity? What comforts you in sorrow and supports you in misfortune? What enables you to bear poverty and trials with patience and composure? What makes you suppress your feelings of anger and vindictiveness when you are persecuted, insulted and slandered, and renders you calm and peaceable? What supplies you with fortitude in time of danger and temptation and in your struggles to resist sin? It is not your reason, not your passions, not your fellow men—it is nothing but religion, which teaches us that happiness and adversity both come from God, and that He who formed the light and created darkness is also He who makes peace and allows evil, and that there is no misfortune but with the Lord's permission. Religion tells us that God punishes us for our good, for "that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory" ( II. Cor. iv, 17). Can anything but religion give us strength, comfort and hope at the last fearful conflict between life and death, when we have to leave everything, our dear ones, our possessions, our business and honors, when our intellect fails, the world with its deceptions and vain joys passes away, and the grave is ready to receive us? What can be our aid when we have to appear before the tribunal of our just but inexorable Judge? Religion robs death of its sting, the grave of its terrors, and hell of its victory, since it strengthens the inward man when the outward man perishes. It teaches us that after this fleeting life is over there will be another life that will last for ever, when God will wipe away all tears from our eyes, gratify all our desires and be Himself our reward exceeding great. It tells the anxious, though penitent sinner: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord" (Apoc. xiv, 13). It is a remarkable fact that almost all those who fancied themselves able to live happily without religion in the days of health and prosperity, evince very different sentiments when sickness lays its hand upon them. Then they are glad to see a priest and to receive the consolations of that religion which they used to ridicule. I myself have often visited sick persons who had previously regarded all religion as superfluous, and I know the truth of my assertion. Enough has, I think, been said to prove to you that men need religion, and can not be truly wise, good or happy without it . How grievously, therefore, do those people sin who at the present day go about declaring religion to be unnecessary, and trying to destroy all reverence for what is holy and Divine. They are robbing mankind of their most precious possession, of their safest guide amidst the bewildering deceptions of the world, of their sole consolation in the sorrows aad suffering of this life and of their sweetest hope for the world to come. They are depriving virtue of its sole support, severing the bond between earth and heaven, giving men over to their disorderly lusts and desires and thus plunging their fellow creatures into ruin and bringing down upon themselves the curses of their contemporaries and posterity. Beware of letting yourselves be led astray by these false prophets, these wolves in sheep's clothing; they are enemies of God and aim at the destruction of your souls. Hold fast to the faith of your forefathers, and be careful, each according to his power, to cling to the doctrines of the Church, to respect her principles and teaching, to obey her commandments, and avail yourselves of her aids and consolations. In these gloomy, ominous times nothing but religion can bring salvation, comfort and hope to the human race. It is the only anchor capable of keeping us safe amidst the waves that rage around us, and of preserving us from ruin. I trust most earnestly that you are still all true to your religion; cling to it, cherish it as the most precious treasure of your souls, and let it influence your whole life and all your thoughts and actions. If you do this, thrones may totter, the social order may be shaken to its very foundations and great disasters may come upon us, but you will always have a firm anchorage and will derive thence comfort, courage, help and hope whilst the ungodly fear and despair. Then will our Lord's promise be fulfilled: "Every one that heareth these My words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock" (Matt, vii, 24, 25). Amen. Source: The Signs of the Times - A Course of Lenten Sermons, Imprimatur 1915 Walk worthy of God, in all things pleasing; being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.-—Col. i, 10.
There are many people who are quite ready to admit that religion is indispensable, who even declare it to be of the utmost importance to man, and who are willing to accept the Christian revelation, at least in as far as it contains exalted moral teaching, but they maintain that Christianity and the Church ought to move with the times and adapt themselves to the spirit of the age. They say that everything is in a constant state of evolution and progress, and that consequently our religious principles need to be refined and perfected; that what is accepted by a child, is unsuitable for a full-grown man, and so on. It is of course true that in no age has so much been done as in the present to add to the comfort, charm and refinement of life and to develop trade and industry; great and beneficial discoveries are continually being made, and never before have men penetrated so deeply into the secrets of nature; never have the arts and sciences reached a higher pitch of perfection; never has education been more universal or civil liberty more complete. It is not therefore at first sight unreasonable to demand that religion should keep pace with this general progress. There are many who share this opinion, and they tell us frankly what they want. They say that the Church ought to conform to the feelings of the age, and abandon doctrines that are not universally acceptable, such as those of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the One infallible Church, the Sacrament of Penance, and the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Moreover, she ought not to insist so much upon morality, and would do well to give up ordering men to be chaste, humble, obedient and just, since each individual ought to be free to act as he thinks best or in accordance with the customs of the age. This is one of the many demands made by the children of this world, and, in making it, they believe themselves to be demanding only what is just. What should we, as Christians, think on the subject? Is it the duty of the Church to advance like everything else, and adapt herself to the spirit of the times? This is the question that I intend to discuss to-day. The answer may be given at once—it is simply "No; (1) the Church can not and must not participate in the general advance, but (2) it is our duty to increase in our knowledge of Christian truth and in the practice of Christian virtues." 1. Before proving the truth of my assertion that the Church can not advance with the times, I must, in order to avert misunderstandings, point out that we have here to distinguish between essentials and non-essentials. As non-essentials we may regard variations in the outward forms of worship, in prayers, hymns, external customs and arrangements, and in Church discipline as a whole. These things can of course be modified and ordered in accordance with the circumstances of time, place and individuals; for what once tended to edification may now have a contrary effect, and what once was unnecessary may now be of great importance. The external discipline of the Church has therefore always been liable to modification. For instance, the last day of the week used to be observed as the Lord's day, but now we observe the first day; formerly Holy Communion was celebrated in connection with so called love feasts, at which the poor were entertained by the rich, but in course of time these feasts were abolished. These things are non-essentials, and as such are subject to change and modification, not of course effected arbitrarily at the caprice of individuals, but by the governing authorities in the Church. It is quite otherwise with doctrines regarding faith and morals, which are essential and unalterable! The Church's teaching on faith and morals consists of truths that had their origin in God, who is truth itself, and who can neither err nor be deceived, and not in the brain of any frail human being, prone to error and deception! The opinions and devices of men are subject to change and amendment, but what comes from God, is, like God Himself, perfect and unchanging. An edifice, reared today by one man, may tomorrow be overthrown by another, but the building that God erects Is founded upon a rock, and is able to defy all the storms and changes of time. ~~ The Church derives her teaching from the everlasting source, and it is the teaching of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was sent to preach the Gospel to the poor, and to make known the perfect law of God. He said: "My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me; if any man will do the will of Him (the Father), he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself (John vii, 16-17). Our Lord and His Apostles proclaimed this doctrine, not as a matter of opinion, but as Divine truth. "I give you to understand," says St. Paul, "that the Gospel which was preached by me is not according to man, for neither did I receive it of man, nor did I learn it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. i, 11-12). If, then, the Church's teaching on faith and morals is derived from God Himself, this Divine revelation can not possibly admit of any improvement. God is truth, and can not wish to deceive mankind, and the truth made known by Him is as unchanging as He is Himself. Supposing that the Catholic teaching or faith and morals were subject to change, would not God have given us a mere imperfect fragment, and have plunged us into an ocean of doubts and difficulties? And should we not in that case have to acknowledge that Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, "yesterday and to-day and the same for ever," and also the Holy Ghost had taught us in an imperfect and fallible manner? Even to think of such a thing as possible is blasphemy. God has at all times desired men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. It was for this reason that He sent His only-begotten Son into the world, and for the same reason that Christ after His ascension sent the Holy Ghost to teach truth and establish an infallible Church, with which He and the Holy Ghost were to abide until the end of the world, to teach her all truth and to guard her from all error and corruption. This Church is empowered to preserve and proclaim the living word of God, and she is bound to hand it on in all its purity, integrity and truth, just as she received it from above; it is her mission faithfully to make known on earth what she has received from heaven, and therefore she labors incessantly to sow the Divine word of truth on the earth, which is God's field; this is the seed that she distributes with loving zeal to all generations of men. Is it conceivable that any mere man could improve the utterances of God, and reduce religion to a matter of private judgment? Before a man could do this he would have to share God's counsels, and see what is hidden in God; he would have to fathom the depths of the Godhead, and possess an intellect more vast and penetrating than that of God Himself, for otherwise he could never improve what proceeds from God. It is only possible to improve a thing if we are cleverer than the person who made it. Now look, I beg you, at the people who say that religion ought to be adapted to the spirit of the age, and progress with it. Can you imagine them to be capable of improving and perfecting the works of God? Are they not all weak, powerless, shortsighted and prone to error and deception, like all other human beings? How could proud, sensual, fickle and deluded mortals be in a position to alter arbitrarily the truths of faith and adapt them to the spirit of the age? A man's religion is the dearest and most sacred of his possessions, and can it be at the mercy of the prevalent love of change and innovation? No, the Church can never adapt herself to the spirit of the age, for what is that spirit? It is a spirit of pride and falsehood, a spirit that denies and contradicts the truths revealed by God, a spirit of disobedience, license and frivolity; it is, in short, the spirit of the devil, the prince of this world and the enemy of God and holy Church. How could religion adapt itself to such a spirit as this? No, it is impossible, for religion is, like God, eternal and unchanging, and, as our Lord said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away;" "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." St. Paul, too, says: "God is faithful, for our preaching which was to you was not "It is" and "It is not." The Apostle means that he did not today proclaim as true what tomorrow he would have to deny, for such a proceeding could only give rise to fresh anxieties, since every one would fear that what had been asserted, might be retracted. St. Paul even goes so far as to curse any who dare to tamper with the truths of Christianity. "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a Gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema" (Gal, i, 8). It seems as if men who have cut themselves off from Catholicism and fashioned for themselves a religion in accordance with the spirit of the age were destined never to prosper. Every religious sect that has abandoned the Catholic Church has lapsed into error and split up. What one man accepts as true, another rejects as false; what one believes, another condemns, until finally there is nothing left of the truths of Christianity. If the founders of the various sects could be restored to life, they would be astonished to see how little of their doctrine is still retained by those professing to be their followers. It is a lot common to all human institutions to be liable to continual change and alteration, whereas what is Divine is eternal and unchanging, like God Himself. This truth was boldly proclaimed by Pope Gregory XVI, when the Emperor Nicholas of Russia came to Rome and demanded that he should sanction what had been done in Russia against the Catholics. The valiant old man replied: " In your country laws made by men can be altered, precisely because they were made by men, but the Divine laws of the Church are unalterable." The teaching of the Church on matters of faith and morals can not be altered like a garment, to suit the prevailing fashion. Men can neither add to nor take away from the truth of our faith, and even the Pope, the visible head of the Church, is powerless to effect any modification. What the Apostles taught is taught at the present day and will be taught to the end of the world, and we have the strongest possible proof of the truth and Divine origin of our religion in the fact that the Church has withstood so many attacks and still stands firm, although storms rage on all sides, and everything else seems tottering to ruins. We may say fearlessly and with full confidence that, when the passion for change and progress has destroyed all permanence, the Catholic Church will still be strong and vigorous; it will be to her that anxious souls will have recourse amidst the disasters threatening them, and she will be the sole fountain of truth and salvation, whither they will hasten to quench their thirst. Do not be misled, therefore, by the specious arguments used by the so-called progressives and especially by the socialists. They wish to deceive you and to throw dust in your eyes, so that you may not detect their evil designs. What they really aim at is to ruin all existing order, to turn everything upside down, and then, profiting by the downfall of others, to raise themselves to supremacy. This will be possible, however, only if men lose all hold upon religion, which is so great a stumbling block to their designs that they are doing their utmost to bring it into contempt or disrepute. With this end in view they clamor for the modification or rejection of the Church's teaching on faith and morals, and for a religion suited to the age, so that finally there may be nothing left except what each man can accept or reject at will. But, as I have shown, there is and can be no progress possible in the teaching of the Catholic Church on faith and morals, because it proceeds from God, the everlasting Truth, and is therefore, like Him, perfect and unchanging. The Church does not, however, fail to appreciate progress in art and science, but tries to avail herself of it, and in this sense it is possible to say that she moves with the times. She makes use of the achievements of art and science in defending and promulgating the truths of faith, in public worship and in every case where she sees that they can benefit the faithful. But she does not and can not surrender the ancient truth; she may, in accordance with the needs of society and individuals, clothe it in a new and more beautiful garment, to which art and science contribute their part, and she thus obeys the rule laid down by our Saviour for the preachers of the Gospel, who were to bring forth out of their treasure new things and old, and become all things to all men, in order to bring light and salvation to all. You see, then, that the teaching of the Church on faith and morals can not make progress, but it behooves us to go forward and increase in the knowledge of the truths of Christianity and in the practice of virtue. 2. (a) It is our duty to increase in knowledge of the truths of Christianity. In my first sermon I showed you that no art or science could be compared in importance with the knowledge of Divine and heavenly things, and you can easily understand that a man can not strive after anything more worthy, more necessary and more profitable than after a more perfect knowledge of the truth. Truth is the greatest and noblest possession that we enjoy in this life. Solomon valued it far above wealth, and deemed it worthy of all his endeavors. " I wished," he writes, "and understanding was given me, and I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came upon me. And I preferred her before kingdoms and thrones, and esteemed riches nothing in comparison of her. Neither did I compare unto her any precious stone, for all gold and comparison of her is as a little sand, and silver in respect to her shall be counted as clay. I loved her above health and beauty and chose to have her instead of light, for her light can not be put out" (Wisd. vii, 7-10). You see how highly Solomon valued the truth, and how earnestly he strove to attain to it, setting us all an example that we should follow. As children you were trained in the truths of Christianity, but knowledge acquired in childhood is inevitably imperfect, and you have probably forgotten a good deal of what you then learned. You have good reason to exert yourselves and to make up for lost time by supplying deficiencies in your knowledge and increasing it. Our Saviour and the Apostles all insisted that this was needful. In almost every one of the epistles the faithful are urged to grow in the knowledge of Christ and of His doctrine, to search the Scriptures and try to understand them, so as to be able to give to every man a reason for their faith and hope. Are you exempt from this obligation? You advance day by day in your business or trade; as soon as any fresh discovery, bearing upon it, is made, you are eager to learn all about it. If, then, you are so anxious to advance in worldly matters, ought you not to show equal zeal in increasing in the knowledge of Divine truth? "What shall it profit a man," exclaimed our Saviour, "if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?" (Mark viii, 36). Many people at the present day are trying to falsify and misrepresent the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and therefore we are more than ever bound to possess a thorough knowledge of the truths of Christianity, and every one who cares for religion and the salvation of his soul ought to aim at increasing this knowledge. Whoever does not thus advance is slipping back into indifference or unbelief. There is no lack of evidence proving this to be the case. We know that many make shipwreck of their faith, and become indifferent to it if not absolute infidels, ridiculing and despising religion; many, too, join the ranks of the socialists simply because they were satisfied with the meagre amount of religious knowledge that they learned as children, and not only failed to preserve it, but made no attempt to renew and increase it. Being insufficiently instructed in the truths of faith, they could not defend it, and were unable to solve difficulties when they arose, or to refute the arguments of unbelievers and to repel their attacks, and thus finally, for want of knowledge, many have fallen victims to unbelief or indifference. It is most important for you to strive to increase your knowledge of the doctrines of Christianity, that you may be able to resist in the evil day . . . taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one, . . . and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (Eph. v i) . No one nowadays has any excuse for remaining ignorant. The word of God is preached every Sunday, everyone can read and there is no lack of good books. It behooves you, as Christians, to avail yourselves of your opportunities, to listen to sermons and instructions, doing your best to impress what you hear upon your memory. You ought to read good books, if you have time, and you all have time on Sundays and holidays, letting prayer accompany your reading, and liking God to give you understanding and wisdom. "If any of you want wisdom,? says St. James, "let him ask of God, who giveth to all men abundantly and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him" (James i , 5). (b) Faith requires us to advance also in the practice of virtue. St. Paul, in writing to the Thessalonians, says: "We pray and beseech you, brethren, in the Lord Jesus, that as you have received of , us, how you ought to walk, and to please God, so also you would walk, that you may abound the more. . . . For this is the will of God, your sanctification" ( I . Thess. i w , 1, 3). We have here indeed unlimited scope for advancement! It is our duty continually to become more perfect and more holy, in order that we may grow more like God, our great Example. This is the great aim of our existence, and no form of progress in the whole world can be more rich in blessings and rewards than progress in what is good. "He that hath looked into the perfect law of liberty, and hath continued therein, not becoming a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed" (James i , 35). But on the other hand, he who does not advance in keeping the Commandments, in virtue and in perfection, must inevitably fall back into sin and destruction. "No man putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." "Be ye therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect." "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the Commandments." How few there are who advance in goodness! Many think that everything in the world is wrong, and are willing to criticize and improve everything except themselves. They always look at others, never at themselves, and expect happiness and salvation from without and not from within; they talk of reforms and improvements, but they never reform or improve themselves. For this reason they are on bad terms with themselves, with their own conscience and with God Himself, and transfer their inward discontent to the world around them, with which they never seem to cease to find fault. Let us be on our guard against becoming people of this sort. If we want to improve others, let us begin by improving ourselves. If we desire others to make progress, let us lead the way by keeping the Commandments and increasing in virtue and perfection; let us "follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see God" (Heb. xii, 14). I have shown you wherein, true progress consists. Let the children of this world persist in their quest of vain and fleeting things, and if they try to ensnare you by their specious arguments and seek to make you follow their example and adapt your religious principles to their views, say, like St. Peter: "Lord, we will never forsake Thee" we will hold fast to Thine eternal, unchanging truth, "to whom should we go ? Thou hast the words of everlasting life." Like Mary Magdalen sit at our Lord's feet, listening to His words, and, like our Lady, keeping them in your hearts, that they may be your guide, and that you may conform with ever greater perfection to His doctrine. The true sort of progress, which will make a man happy at the last, is to gain a thorough knowledge of one's religion, to make it a guide amidst the darkness of the world, to advance daily on the path of virtue, to win fresh victories daily over the world, the flesh and the devil, and to be able to say with St. Paul: "Now I live, yet not I , but Christ liveth in me." If you make it your aim to live thus, increasing in righteousness of life, I have no fear of your falling into the hands of the socialists, and you will be able to fulfil the law of charity, by instructing and warning others, so as to prevent their joining this party and so making shipwreck of their faith and of their temporal and eternal happiness. Well for you, if you resolve during Lent that this shall be your aim! Well for you, if you grow in the knowledge of the truth, as you will do, if you avail yourselves of the opportunities offered you so abundantly in the Lenten sermons! Well for you, if you advance in self-denial and mortification, in prayer and penance, in virtue and holiness! You will be more and more convinced that the Catholic Church has no need to fear the light and to advance with the times, because she is already in full possession of the truth, and, if you search for them, you will daily discover fresh beauties in her. In the acceptance and practice of her doctrines you will find peace that the world can neither give nor destroy, and you will at last attain to that happiness which is promised to all who believe in and love our Lord, Amen. The Signs of the Times - The Position and Prospects of the Catholic Church at the Present Day (1916)3/4/2025 ''And other sheep I have, that are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd" (John x, 16).
I wish to address today on the subject: (1) of the present position, and (2) of the prospects of the Church. Let us begin by invoking the aid of the Holy Ghost. 1. In my last sermon I showed you how the Catholic Church adheres with inviolable fidelity to her Divinely taught doctrines regarding faith and morals, not allowing them to suffer the smallest modification. In this way she is the sole teacher of truth, the sole source of salvation, and the firmest anchorage of hope, and she will continue to be such, even if everything else crumbles into ruin. This loyal adherence to the deposit of truth that she preserves is the most certain token of her Divine origin, but at the same time it gives rise to many attacks on the part of those outside the Church, and even on that of her own children, so that her position is rendered very perilous. (a) Heresy is the first antagonist assailing the Church on account of her loyalty; and heresy assumes so many forms that it is impossible to enumerate them. However widely these forms may differ from one another, and however bitterly they may be opposed, they all agree in hatred of the Catholic Church. Most teachers of heresy at the present day refuse to acknowledge any God, any truth and any religion that is not the outcome of their own intellect, and whatever stands as an obstacle in the way of their arrogance, incurs their hatred and hostility. As they cannot actually attack Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of God, His heavenly Father, they do their utmost to undermine all faith in His Divinity and in the redemption that He accomplished, and they reject His promises, His teaching and His Sacraments. Above all do they direct their fury against the Church that He founded, because she preserves and proclaims the faith, and administers the means of salvation. I need hardly remind you of the efforts that are being made to injure, and if possible to annihilate, the Church. No method is too foul for the various heretical teachers to employ in order to attain their base and godless aims. Sometimes they represent the Church as an obsolete institution, that has lost all efficiency with lapse of time; sometimes they accuse her of shrouding men in darkness and of tyrannizing over conscience; and they never weary of trying to injure her by means of lies, calumnies, ridicule and all sorts of diabolical devices. Go where one will, everywhere one encounters these lying slanders and suspicions of the Church; they meet us in the streets and highways, in books and newspapers, and it is hardly possible to join in any conversation or to take up a paper without having cause to remember our Saviour's warning to beware of false prophets. But this is not all. These enemies of the Church are not content with attacking the Church herself, but they assail her members individually, and try in every way to make them turn against her, or at least become indifferent to her teaching. They assign to her children inferior positions in civil life and undermine their reputation and fortune, whilst those who are lukewarm or apostates are loaded with favors and honors. In order to insure the success of their plans, our enemies ally themselves with men of every class, high and low, rich and poor, learned and simple, and often with the secular government. Sometimes, however, they do not appear as ravening wolves, nor do they assail us openly, but they put on sheep's clothing and look like innocent lambs and then they are still more dangerous to the Church and her children. They know how to disguise their false doctrines under a semblance of Christian charity, and pretend to have at heart nothing but the welfare of mankind and the good of the whole human race. Hence they profess to believe in Jesus Christ and to desire to uproot unbelief; they say that they have no wish to limit the work of Christ, but only to purify it from human principles and additions; they maintain that it is their intention to reform, but not to destroy, the Church. They make these and many similar assertions, hoping thus to lure the unsuspicious into their snares and bring about their ruin. You must all know by experience that my account is not exaggerated, and you will agree with me in thinking that all this constitutes a grave danger to the Church at the present time. The socialists are now among the worst and most dangerous enemies that she has to encounter; Their first article of faith is: "There is no God;" the second is; ''There is no future life," and the third makes pleasure the supreme law. Hence all their efforts are directed primarily at robbing men of faith in God and Christ and in all that the Catholic Church requires us to believe. When faith is gone, the ten Commandments must also cease to be the rule governing the thoughts and actions of men, and in their place is propounded to us as the one supreme law: "Enjoy all sensual pleasures to their fullest extent, since everything ends at death." If the leaders, who have been initiated into the secrets of socialism were to state this rule; and others derived from it, in plain unmistakable terms to those whom they wish to win over to their party, all who still have in their hearts even a spark of Christian feeling would turn away from them in horror. So they begin by destroying the faith of Christians and by making them indifferent to religion; they speak of all kinds of advantages and enjoyments to be derived from socialism, and unhappily they find among ignorant and credulous people only too many who follow their leaders like a flock of sheep. (b) In addition to the heresies assailing the Church from without, there is another no less deadly foe, that carries on his evil work within her very bosom. This is the spirit of worldliness, whichever since the time of St John has been like a venomous serpent trying to undo the work of God. This spirit is one of pride, avarice, and sensuality, and many Catholics who have become infected with it grow indifferent to the doctrines, commandments and practice of our holy religion. Their hearts, contaminated with this worldly spirit, seem almost incapable of aiming at anything higher thaik the gratification of their own selfishness and sensual desires. They look upon life as an amusement, and think of nothing but how to derive the most enjoyment from it; fancies, and on the other hand, they fear and depreciate all that runs counter to these faincies. Can we wonder that such people care very little about the Church, which incessantly impresses upon the minds of her children the fact that life is a serious matter and that death and immortality are inevitable? The Church insists upon humble faith and apposes private judgment; by her strict moral teaching she condemns lives of sinful frivolity, and puts definite restraints upon the audacity of men's minds, the insolence of their hearts and the corruption of their morals, saying sternly! "Thus far and no further." With aching heart she calls upon her unruly children and implores God; but only too often they are deaf to her entreaties, and openly go over to the camp of the enemies, with whom they unite in assailing their Mother the Church. Is not this literally true? Are there not many who have given up going to church, and who for years have not received the Sacraments? Are there not many in public life who are ashamed of their religion, and if they do not actually join in ridiculing it, at least utter no word in its defense? Are there not many whose evil, godless mode of life brings shame and dishonor upon the Church? Are there not many who have publicly renounced her and joined the ranks of her enemies? It is true that at the present time the Church is in a precarious position; as in the past she is still misjudged, calumniated, falsely accused and persecuted. The Bride of Christ encounters opposition on all sides, and the Cross which she sets up above each of her buildings is still to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the heathen folly, and to unbelievers an object of ridicule and scorn. Her members still experience the lot foretold by our Saviour to His disciples when He said: "Behold, I send you as lambs among wolves." "You shall be hated by all nations for My Name's sake." "They will put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doth a service to God." It is no longer with fire and sword that men attack the Church; no longer do hordes of barbarians threaten to overwhelm her; no longer are schisms the only evil devastating Christianity; the standard of Antichrist has been raised and acclaimed in our day, and there is a countless host of men, calling themselves Christians, who rally round this standard in order to oppose their own mother. There are deadly weapons employed to spread abroad indifference, worldliness, unbelief and godlessness. We have indeed great reason for anxiety, and it is a disgrace when the Church is in peril for any Christian to look on with indifference, and not lift a hand to defend her. We may well fear for ourselves; for our intellect, that it may not be led astray; for our heart, that it may not be deceived; for our courage, that it may not fail; for our constancy, that it may not waver; and for our crown, that it be not lost. But for the Church we have no right to fear. In spite of all perils we must not feel alarm on her account, but cherish the fairest hopes, as I am about to show you. 2. Although, as I have said, the Church is at the present day in a dangerous position; we need not fear for her, but we ought to look forward with hope and confidence to her increasing growth and prosperity. We are justified in so doing because hitherto she has invariably come forth triumphant from the worst persecutions and struggles, and so the most violent attacks upon her have only served to multiply her victories. The position in which she now stands is nothing new to her; she was in worse plight when pagans raged against her children with fire and sword, inflicting indescribable tortures and slaying thousands for their faith. She was in worse plight when heretics, in league with the secular power, tried by violence to rob her of her members. She was in worse plight in the 16th century, when millions fell away and rebelled against her, causing a terrible war that raged for thirty years, and brought unspeakable misery upon Europe. The Church was founded at the foot of the Cross, persecutions could not check her growth or dim her glory, and the holy age when the martyrs shed their blood and the Church groaned under the oppression of cruel tyrants, was nevertheless the period of her greatness and triumph. The blood of martyrs was the seed whence fresh converts sprang, and persecutions aroused the sluggish and indifferent from their inactivity, steeled their courage and kindled the sacred fire of zeal for and loyalty to the faith. If the Church is robbed of many of her children in one country, others are born to her elsewhere, who console her for the losses she has suffered. In spite of incessant persecutions the Church of Christ, so small at the first Pentecost that one room in Jerusalem contained all her members, now numbers about 300,000,000, spread over the whole world. How, then, is it possible to be anxious as to her future? Although, as the prophet says (Ps. ii, 2) : "The kings of the earth stood up and the princess met together, against the Lord and against his Christ," He frustrates all their plans. A host of enemies may assail the Church, but she will never perish, for with her is He to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth. The devils in hell may employ all their cunning and all their weapons against her, but she will not be overthrown, because "she is built upon a rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her." Christ founded her at a time when everything was against her; He caused her to grow and increase, when circumstances seemed utterly opposed to her progress; He has preserved her for nineteen centuries, and whilst empires and kingdoms have risen and fallen, she has remained unchanged; surely He will keep her safe and protect her from the dangers now threatening her. He is bound to do so, for He said: "Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." Heaven and earth may pass away, but His Word will not pass away. The coming of the happy time when, in accordance with our Saviour's promise, there shall be one fold and one shepherd, is continually drawing nearer, so many are the converts to Catholicism in all countries. And who are these converts? Are they people devoid of faith, intelligence, fear of God and virtue, as are most of those, who in the last few years have left the Church? No, they are the best and noblest of the nation, men who, after spending years in study, have arrived at the conviction that the Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ. And why have they forsaken the Church to which they belonged? Many who leave the Catholic Church do so in order to be free from restraints upon their passions, or to draw attention to themselves and gain credit for being men of intellect. Is this the case with converts to the Church? Or do they expect to derive any prestige from joining her? No, indeed; they are well aware that the laws of the Catholic Church are far stricter than those of any other religious body, and they know that their conversion will bring upon them hatred, ridicule and contempt, and, if they have hitherto been ministers or teachers, they have to sacrifice their position and income. Nevertheless they come into the Church, renouncing all that the world can offer them, impelled of course primarily by God's grace, but also by their love of truth, the force of their conviction and desire to save their souls. They prefer to lose wealth and honor rather than to imperil their salvation; they choose to be objects of contempt and ridicule to men rather than to be abandoned by God; they think it better to reduce themselves and their families to poverty, than to live in luxury and suffer the loss of their souls. When men such as I have described, occupying prominent positions, are received into the Catholic Church, she feels such intense joy that it consoles her in her sorrow over the apostasy and indifference of others, and justifies her hope that their example may induce many more to follow them. During the last few years a new and vigorous spirit has pervaded the Church, heralding the coming of a second spring. The attacks Upon the Church have certainly caused some unworthy sheep to quit the fold, but they have also aroused many who were indifferent, and recalled to their allegiance many who were wayward. Many waverers have been confirmed in their faith and many lifeless members have been quickened to that fresh life, which makes itself felt in the Church and gives rise to fair hopes for the future. Moreover, many associations have recently been formed, having as their aim the religious education of children, the promotion of religion among girls and boys, men and women, the publication and circulation of good books, the support of missions, the erection of churches and the maintenance of priests and teachers in districts where Catholics are few, and without priest, church or school. The existence of such associations augurs well for the future. Another circumstance that may well make us hopeful for the Church and very thankful to God, is that the Holy Ghost has given the Church, in the person of Benedict XV, a sovereign pontiff uniting in himself many most excellent qualities, and capable of coping with all the demands made upon him. Let us offer our homage to him, the supreme ruler and head of the Church! May God destroy his enemies and crown with success his noble efforts for the welfare of the nations and of holy Church! May He hear the prayer that rises daily from the hearts of millions of Catholics all over the world, imploring God to grant happiness to the Pope and growth and prosperity to the Church! There is then good reason even at the present time for being hopeful, and our hopes will not be shattered, if only we stand firm with unwavering faith, and in loyal obedience to God and His Church, and if we persevere in earnest, fervent prayer. Let us with heart and voice echo the following beautiful words, uttered by a great man (Ventura) in his enthusiasm for the faith: "O holy Roman Church, Mother of Churches and of all the faithful, and chosen by God to unite all His children in the same faith and the same charity; we will ever maintain thy unity from the very depths of our souls. If ever I forget thee, O holy Roman Church, may I forget myself, may my tongue wither and cleave to my mouth, if I think not first of thee, exult not in thee, and regard it not as my chief glory to be thy child. Hail, holy Church, great mother of us all! At our entrance into the world thou welcomest us, thou upholdest us in this vale of tears, where we are exiles from our true home, and thou keepest us in safety. May none of us ever be so unhappy as to forsake or scorn thee, espedaily at this time when many of our brethren, once cut off by heresy from thee and us, are stretching out their hands to the see of Peter, and coming to thee, who wast of old their mother, and who, despite their errors, hast not ceased to call them back. O tender mother, open thine arms and receive thy wayward children, returning from the paths of error to cast themselves at thy feet, may thy prayers, thy power and thy strength hasten the ardently desired moment, when for all Christians there shall be but one fold and one Shepherd!" , May that happy day soon dawn which shall bring back faith, peace and religious and political unity to all the world. We can hasten its coming, by the steadfastness of our faith, by our spirit of union and obedience, by the fervor of our prayers and the purity of our lives, so that at last we may see the fulfilment of our Saviour's promise: "Other sheep I have, that are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one Shepherd" (John x, 16). Amen. Source: The Signs of the Times - A Course of Lenten Sermons, Imprimatur 1915 "The rich and the poor have met one another; the Lord is the maker of them both" (Prov. xxii, 2).
Of the many non-Christian doctrines that, like parasitic plants, shoot up again from time to time, there is perhaps none that attracts so much attention, and that is so likely to undermine the whole social order as the statement put forward by the socialists, that all men are equal, and therefore all class distinctions must be abolished and property distributed equally among all human beings. The advocates of these views go from country to country, seeking to confuse men's minds and to win adherents, and they succeed, partly because their doctrines appeal to the pride, greed, and natural indolence of mankind, especially of the working classes and the poor, and partly because they give a very specious and attractive expression to their opinions. It cannot be denied that from the purely human standpoint they seem to have much right on their side, and so, wishing to be regarded as benefactors to the people, they are wise when they make the most of the facts that appear to support their theories. No words ring more sweetly in the ears of men, or appeal more directly to their hearts, than "liberty and equality," and although many so-called friends of the people are far from wishing to obliterate all class distinctions and to distribute their goods to the poor, they know that the masses delight in hearing of such things and will applaud them loudly if they discuss how all men can be made equal, but they have no intention of suffering any loss themselves in the process. These false principles are promulgated therefore by men of two kinds—by those who really are convinced that universal equality ought to be brought about, and also by those who preach this doctrine only in order to win popularity, or rather to secure influence and authority over the people. Under these circumstances there is much reason to fear lest Christians, too, should be led astray by false prophets, who lay their snares and insinuate themselves everywhere. Hence I wish to show you today what we, as Christians, are bound to think of the doctrines that all men are equal, and that all distinctions of rank and property ought to be abolished. Let us, however, first invoke the assistance of the Holy Ghost. If we look about us, we cannot fail to perceive the great inequality that exists among men with regard to their rank, possessions, talents, capabilities and happiness. One is of noble, another of lowly birth; one has many intellectual talents, another has few; one is poor, another rich; one has to labor daily in the sweat of his brow, another spends his time in idleness; one has to provide for wife and children, another is unmarried, and has few needs; one is a master and another a servant; one is healthy and another diseased; one is happy and another miserable. Do you suppose that it is in our power to remove this inequality, or that we ought to remove it, if we could? No, we neither can nor ought to remove it. Men are so constituted that they cannot be independent of one another; they are obliged to depend upon one another's help, and none can say to his fellows: "I require you not." Life would be an unending series of miseries, if none of us helped his neighbors. How wretched would be the lot of the sick, if they received no skilful treatment from the physician, and no tender care from their friends! How unhappy would the weak be if they derived no support from the strong! What confusion would prevail in human society, and what dangers would threaten our persons, property and reputation, if there were no authority able to control the follies of undisciplined hearts and minds, and to govern the passions of men! Do you imagine that, supposing one man possessed as much money as another, he would be satisfied ? The desires of the human heart are insatiable; never has it enough, and though it may possess abundant wealth, its craving for more continues. Assuming that all the money in the world were distributed equally to all men, what would happen when one had wasted his share? Would he not insist upon a re-distribution as often as his own supply was exhausted? And would not this give rise to the greatest confusion and disorder in society, and ultimately effect its ruin? As long as we are imperfect creatures, liable to sin and error, perfect equality, at which the socialists aim, can never be secured, and there must be inequality in rank and property. This inequality is in accordance with God's will, is recognized and protected by His express commands, and therefore man has no right to remove it. The spirits in heaven are arranged by God in different classes, and it is the same with men, and just as there are many mansions in the kingdom of heaven, so are there many ranks on earth. "The rich and the poor have met one another, and the Lord is the maker of them both." These words of Holy Scripture mean that rich and poor, masters and servants, rulers and ruled, learned and ignorant, wise and simple, must all live together; God has created them all, and prescribed and sanctified their differences in rank and property. St. Paul writes: "There are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministers, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who worketh all in all. And the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man unto profit. To one indeed by the Spirit is given the word of wisdom, and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit. To another faith, in the same Spirit; to another the grace of healing in one Spirit. . . . But all these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to everyone according as He will" ( I . Cor. xii, 4-11). You see, then, how God in His unsearchable wisdom distributes His gifts and favors to mankind. To one He gives much, to another little; one He orders to rule and another to serve; to one He imparts many intellectual talents and abilities, and to another very few, but to all He gives what they require in order to work out their salvation. As, therefore, differences in rank and property are ordained by God, how can it be right for us to rebel and to seek violently to overthrow this order? To do so would be to outrage God's rights, for He alone is Lord, able to do and to bestow what He will; it would be to assail His majesty and to offer Him an insult, which He must speedily punish. Who can argue with God or complain of having received at His hands gifts of body and mind in less abundance than another? Our temporal and eternal happiness does not depend upon these gifts— if it were dependent upon them, then perhaps those to whom less is given might with some justice complain; but you know the value of earthly possessions, and are well aware that they are accidental, non-essential, deceptive and transitory. Only the possessions of the soul are essential, valuable and permanent. Hence St. John writes: "Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him; for all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the concupiscence thereof; but he that doth the will of God, abideth for ever" (I. John ii, 15-17)- However great may be the unequality between men in respect of their rank, property, abilities and happiness, there is one point on which they are all on one level, viz.: that they are all human beings, and, if they profess Christianity, there is another point of equality, viz.: that they are Christians. All of us, rich and poor, high and low, great and small, are alike in possessing a human body and an immortal soul; we are all made in God's likeness; all are His children, destined for eternal life. All have to bear, in different degrees, the same weaknesses, sufferings and annoyances; we all must some day die and be buried. Neither riches, nor power, nor honor can protect us from death. But we weak, mortal creatures all resemble one another in more respects than in being children of God, made in His likeness; there is a far higher equality, consisting in the fact that we are all Christians, the brethren and disciples of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and redeemed by Him; we are temples of the Holy Ghost and heirs of heaven. Men may belong to various ranks and classes according to their wealth, reputation and talents, but they are all equal as regards what is of supreme importance, viz.: their dignity as children of God, redeemed of Christ, temples of the Holy Ghost, participators in all the graces and truths of the Gospel and heirs of eternal life. The point of view of Christianity is not the same as that of the world, and he is not regarded as great who has money and wealth and high position, so that he can satisfy all the cravings of his nature, but he who is adorned with many virtues, that make him resemble God, the all-perfect. In the fact that we are Christians and children of God, we all, rich and poor, high and low, enjoy the same dignity, and we all possess similar rights, on which no one is entitled to encroach. The poorest and most miserable of men, the very sight of whom arouses feelings of disgust and horror in one more happily situated, has a right, equally with a rich man, of aspiring to the highest and most glorious possessions. He has a right to lift his thoughts and send up his prayers to the throne of the Most High, feeling sure that God in all His majesty and glory, amidst the praises of His elect, will nevertheless look mercifully upon him and hear his requests. The poor man is justified in saying to himself: "Although the Lord of heaven and earth has to govern the universe, this does not prevent Him from remembering me, and from caring for me, my children and family, my salvation, my sustenance and for even the smallest thing that concerns me, even the hairs of my head. Such a man is justified in calling God by the most tender and familiar names, such as one gives otherwise only to one's intimate friends; he may speak of Him as his Master, his Friend and his Father, and of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as his Brother. This poor man is entitled to kneel with princes at the Lord's table, and to receive His sacred Body, the Bread of Angels. He has a right to all the comfort and refreshment offered so abundantly by the Church of Christ, and to say to himself: "It was for my sake that the Son of God became Man, to teach us and to suffer a death of agony on the Cross. It was for my sake that He instituted the holy Sacraments, founded His infallible Church, and sent down the Holy Ghost to teach us all truth and to counsel, comfort and sanctify us." When death comes, the poor man has a right to the last consolations of religion. He may live in a gloomy shed, and have no other bed than a little straw; he may be suffering from some disgusting, infectious disease and be abandoned by all his friends, but God's servant will not forsake him, and will bring him the Lord's Body as Viaticum and strengthen him with all the rites of the Church before he enters upon his last agony, the last struggle between life and death. Finally, at the moment of his departure hence, he has a right to knock at the gate of heaven, and ask permission, and it may well be that they open to him more readily than to the rich and arrogant man, who goes about in fashionable attire and has never troubled so much as to look at the beggar. At least we read in Holy Scripture that "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matt, xix, 24). To show you what will be the end of those who deny God's existence—and we must class the socialists amongst them—let me quote to you what Chateaubriand, a famous Catholic writer of France, says of a physician, who had been an atheist, and spent his life in a career of vice. As he grew old, and could no longer seek amusements, he declared that he was far from regretting the time wasted in excesses, for he was going to die, and hoped to greet death as his last friend. "However," says Chateaubriand, " I witnessed the pitiful tears that he shed when dying; it was impossible for him to conceal his despondency. Only the unbeliever is really unhappy when he quits this earth; to him earthly existence ends in the terrible fact of annihilation; if he had never been born, he would not have to face the awful fate of ceasing to exist. The life of such an atheist is like a flash of lightning, only serving to reveal to him the abyss awaiting him. O God of mercy and compassion, Thou hast placed us in this world, not that we may suffer aimlessly, nor that we may enjoy a meagre portion of happiness. The disenchantment that is inevitable at death proves our destiny to be of a loftier nature." Do you understand this, you who work in our mines, factories and shops, you who labor in the fields, you who are servants, poor perhaps as regards earthly possessions, intellectual endowments and reputation; do you appreciate your privileges, dignity and rights? Can kings and princes lay claim to anything higher or more glorious ? Do their luxuries, their fine houses, their extravagant feasts, or their proud titles really give them any advantage over you, who may not indeed enjoy their pleasures in this life, but can proudly boast of the dignity and rights which I have tried, though in a very imperfect way, to describe to you? The great ones of earth as a rule care nothing for these rights, and treat you as if you were beings of a lower sort, altogether inferior to themselves, but in so doing they prove their own pettiness, and their inability to judge things at their true value. Each of you, no matter how poor, wretched and degraded, can with justice claim from every man recognition of and respect for his dignity and rights; he can demand to be treated by all as a brother partaking in the benefits of Christ's redemption. "In order that we may all be of one accord," says St. John Chrysostom, "we have all received the same nature, we all have a body and a soul, we inhabit the same earth, and we are fed with the same fruits that the earth brings forth." If you, who are wealthy and exalted, despise, oppress, ill-treat, defraud and trample down those whom Providence has set in a lower position, you are not only despising yourselves and renouncing your dignity, but you are insulting God, the Creator of these people, Christ, their Redeemer, and the Holy Ghost, their Sanctifier. By looking down upon others and humbling them, you hope to win honor and glory among your fellows, but you are showing that you have no conception of the real meaning of honor and glory. A man's true glory does not consist in being a gentleman, rich, aristocratic and respected, but rather in having been created in the likeness of God, in being a child of God, a brother of Jesus Christ and an heir to the kingdom of heaven; it is his true honor to recognise, respect and uphold this dignity in those about him. We read in Holy Scripture that "The fear of God is the glory of the rich, and of the honorable, and of the poor. . . . The great man, and the judge and the mighty is in honor, and there is none greater than he that feareth God" (Eccl. x, 25, 27). St. Augustine writes: "Do not fancy that you are not bound to love your neighbor because he is poor and you are rich. It is true that you have no need of him, because you have wealth, but he, though poor, wretched and needy, is a man as you are; he is like you. It rested with God to make him rich and exalt him above you, and perhaps he would have deserved it better. What greater service did you render to God, that you should possess riches, which your neighbor possesses not? Could not God have placed you in the position which he occupies? Therefore you should see yourself in him whom you despise. He is your brother, a part of yourself, and as such he deserves your love." You see, then, that, looked at in the light of Christianity, differences of rank and property are not very important, though they certainly exist by God's ordinance. They are something nonessential and accidental, on which we should not lay too much stress, since men are all equal in what is essential, viz.: in their imperishable dignity and glorious destiny. Moreover, Christianity sanctifies differences of rank and property, and makes them a source of merit and of eternal salvation. In the ancient world, before Christianity existed, the outward inequality prevailing among men was the reason why some should enslave, oppress and ill-treat others, and thus it caused a great aggravation and intensification of the inevitable sorrows of life. Although this inequality was not removed by Christianity, it was nevertheless not only rendered bearable, but turned into a source of merit. Christianity teaches that the outward inequality of men, and their mutual dependence upon one another, are intended by God to be means of carrying out His designs with regard to the human race. Inequality is a consequence of sin, but it may now become a means of salvation. God has given to every human being a temporal existence, that he may employ it in meriting eternal life; and in the same way He prescribes to each individual the path that he must follow in order to perform his allotted task. Every one of us ought to use the position assigned him and the temporal gifts bestowed upon him, as means and sources of his own salvation; one should thus avail himself of his poverty, another of his wealth, one of his exalted and another of his lower rank, but all should tend to sanctification. The Gospel teaches us that God gives wealth to the rich that they may spend it in the service of the poor, not that they may regard it as their own property, of which they are free to dispose as they please, to gratify their pride, ambition and lust. God destines the wealthy to be the instruments of His mercy and stewards of temporal goods for the benefit of their neighbors; hence He does not merely remind them to give alms of their superfluity, but He lays it down, as an absolute law, that they are to help the poor. Speaking through Moses, He said: " I command thee to open thy hand to thy needy and poor brother, that liveth in the land" (Deut. xv, II) . The Hoiy Ghost makes almsgiving a duty, and bids us give what we owe to the poor, signifying that it is not left to our discretion whether to give alms or not, but it is an absolute obligation to do so. In order to make us more ready to be charitable, we are reminded in Holy Scripture how God daily opens His Hand and fills all living things with blessings; and our Divine Saviour bids us to imitate Him, when He says: "Be ye merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful." It was through charity and mercy that Jesus Christ came down from heaven, became Man and went about doing good. "He that giveth to the poor shall not want; he that despiseth his entreaty shall suffer indigence" (Prov. xxviii, 27). This is the teaching of Holy Scripture, which assures us that "by mercy and truth iniquity is redeemed" (Prov. xvi, 6 ); and promises to the merciful that they shall find mercy at the judgment seat of God. Christianity tells the poor that they are God's children, the brethren of Christ, temples of the Holy Ghost, and destined, equally with the rich, for eternal happiness, since God has no respect of persons. They are urged to work out their salvation in patience, humility and obedience, looking constantly at Christ, the Son of God, who left the glory that He enjoyed with the Father, and became poor, in order to make us rich. He was born of a poor maiden in a wretched stable, and had not where to lay His head; He who hung on the Cross for our sakes, abandoned by all, calls upon the poor to take up their cross and bear it after Him, and He tells them: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The Gospel bids masters, employers and those in authority not to forget that they too have a Father in heaven, to whom they will have to answer for the use made of their power and influence, and whose representatives they should be on earth, by their justice, mercy and goodness; it reminds them that as Christians they are the brethren of those under them, and ought to respect and love each of their subordinates as a brother and an equal. Christianity admonishes servants and work people to be patient, obedient, and contented with their lot, following the example of Christ, who came, not to be served, but to serve, and said: " I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also" (John xiii, 15). You see, therefore, that although the world contains rich and poor, high and low, strong and weak, they are all brethren in Christ, and the greatest is the servant of the least; every rank is sanctified and should be a source and means of merit and of eternal salvation. Do not despond if God has not lavished earthly possessions upon you, nor placed you in a lofty position, nor bestowed outward honors upon you; submit with all humility to His ordinances. A pot cannot blame a potter for not having fashioned it otherwise, and we too cannot murmur against God for having created us as we are, and for not arranging things in another way. He would only say: "Have I not power to act as I will?" Bear ever in mind that riches, high rank and exalted position are not the greatest advantages in life, nor are poverty, lowly birth and obscurity the greatest evils. Instead of being deceived by the specious appearance of transitory things, and instead of complaining like angry children of your inferior position and poverty, you should each of you strive to sanctify yourselves in your own station, and to discharge the duties assigned to you for the honor of God, your own good and the welfare of your fellow men. Remember St. Paul's words: "As the Lord hath distributed to every one, as God hath called every one, so let him walk" ( I . Cor. vii, 17). "With fear and trembling work out your salvation" (Phil, i i , 12). In order to sum up shortly and give you a clear impression of what I have been saying, let me have recourse to an allegory. The human race resembles a body with many parts, all of which are equally useful, but they are not all equally honorable. The eye ranks higher than the mouth, the mouth than the ear, the ear than the hand, and so on. Now it is the same with mankind—they are all equally good, because they were created by God as His children^ but they are not all equally rich or equally honorable. In the body each member has its own place and the eye cannot complain of being an eye, nor the ear of being an ear. In the same way a position is assigned to every human being; one is a master, another a servant; one is a father, another a son, and no one has any right to grumble. In the body each member has its own function; the eye has to see, the mouth to speak, the ear to hear. In the same way every human being has his own peculiar duties, indicated by his rank and calling. In the body one member supports another, and when one suffers, all suffer with it; when one is at ease, all the rest share its comfort. The same ought to be the case with men; one ought to support another, and help him to the best of his abilities, sharing his joys and sorrows. "Rejoice," says St. Paul," with them that rejoice, weep with them that weep" (Rom. xiii, 15). Henceforth let none of you look down upon his neighbors nor encroach upon their rights. The laborers, the workers in mines and factories, toiling to provide for themselves and their families and giving their strength and health to increase their employers' capital, even the beggars in ragged clothing and with careworn faces, going from door to door in quest of food, all are God's children, all are your brethren, loved by God and destined for as glorious a future as yourselves. Do not follow the example of many wealthy and respectable people, who talk a great deal about the dignity and rights of men, whilst actually trampling them under foot; or who, when a poor man asks bread for his starving children, or employment for himself, question him at once as to his religious views, and should these not coincide with their own, refuse him all assistance. Others pamper their cats and dogs with delicacies, and refuse even the crumbs that fall from their table to their poorer fellow creatures; others again avail themselves of their intellectual superiority to outwit and ridicule the simple, and employ their strength in oppressing the weak. Treat your workpeople and the poor as your brethren in Christ, show them mercy and love, and their complaints of harsh and unjust dealings on the part of employers will gradually die away. These complaints are the cause of much discontent and bad feeling and drive many to adopt the doctrines of socialism. If you despise your fellow-creatures, you are despising not only your own flesh and blood, but also Him who created them, and God will not suffer you to escape punishment "Go to now, ye rich men," writes St. James "weep mid howl in your miseries, which shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten; your gold, and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up to yourselves wrath against the last days. Behold the hire of the laborers, who have reaped down your fields, which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You have feasted upon earth, and in riotousness you have nourished your hearts in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and put to death the just one, and he resisted you not" (James v, 1-6). In the book of Ecclesiasticus we read: "The Lord will not be slack, but will judge for the just, and will do judgment; and the Almighty will not have patience with them, that he may crush their back; and he will repay vengeance to the gentiles, till he have taken away the multitude of the proud and broken the sceptres of the unjust; till He have rendered to men according to their deeds. . . . till He have judged the cause of His people, and He shall delight the just with His mercy" (Eccl. xxxv, 22-25). If then you are masters, treat your work people with Christian charity and justice, not forgetting that they are your brethren in Christ. If you are subordinates, accept your lot with patience, and walk worthily of your high calling. If you are rich and respected, remember that your position requires you to be generous, accessible and abounding in good works. Practise these virtues and let your hearts be ever ready to sympathize with the miserable, and your ears be open to their cry for help. Especially at the present time, when destitution stares so many in the face, "let your abundance supply their want," as St. Paul says, "that there may be an equality" (II. Cor. viii, 14). Never say that you are tired of giving, and will furnish no further help. Ought your charity to diminish when need increases? Do not complain that business is bad, and that it behooves every one to keep what he has. Of course the times are bad; poverty, distress and want prevail in every direction, and many are out of work. But who knows whether God will not have mercy on those whom He has stricken; and whether the sword, that He has brandished over our heads, may not be restored to its scabbard, when He perceives our charity and sees that we have mercy on others? "Son, defraud not the poor of alms, and turn not away thy eyes from the poor; despise not the hungry soul, and provoke not the poor in his want; afflict not the heart of the needy, and defer not to give to him that is in distress. . . . And thou shalt be as the obedient son of the Most High, and He will have mercy on thee more than a mother" (Eccl. iv, 1-4, 11). You who are poor, and forced to toil for your daily bread, endure your poverty and labor for the sake of God and our Lord Jesus Christ, and do not lose your courage and confidence. You are God's children, brothers of Christ, who was Himself poor, and so knows what it means to suffer want; you are temples pf the Holy Ghost, in short, you enjoy the same dignity, privileges and rights as the exalted on earth. God, your heavenly Father, will never forsake you. He who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the flowers of the field, will give you food as you need it; He will open His hand and bestow abundant blessings upon you and your families. "The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a contrite heart, and He will save the humble of spirit. Many are the afflictions of the just, but out of them all will the Lord deliver them" (Ps. xxxiii, 19, 20). I acknowledge that it is galling to a man to have to occupy an inferior position, whilst he is aware of his own dignity; it is galling to owe his support to one who is only a man like himself; it is galling to have to carry out instructions given by one no better than himself. But, after all, the present order will soon pass away, and, if we have borne our cross patiently here on earth, and worked out our salvation with fear and trembling, we shall reach the place where there are no such conditions, and where whatever greatness each human soul possesses will shine forth in perfect splendor. Let us look forward to this time, and strive to do our best here, so that we all, rich or poor, high and low, masters and servants, may gain admission to our heavenly home. Let us look forward to the time when earthly things will have passed away, and when our good works alone will be seen to have any true value. Then, when each man's reputation depends upon his goodness, when his greatness depends upon his humility, his possessions on his hope, and his happiness on his charity and mercy—when all human respect, all differences of rank, and all subordination of one to another are at an end; we shall all with one accord rejoice in the contemplation of God in His infinity, and together with the choirs of Angels and the countless multitude of the elect, we shall praise and adore Him forever. Amen. Source: The Signs of the Times - A Course of Lenten Sermons, Imprimatur 1915 "If you continue in My word, you shall be My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free*"(John viii 31-32).
Liberty, equality and fraternity! These words rang from one end of the world to the other at the time of the French Revolution, and had a magical effect in kindling enthusiasm in the minds of men, and we still hear them employed by those who, professing to be friends of the masses, strive to win the people over to their ways of thought. I do not know why so much fuss is made about these ideas, as if they had never been heard of before. Christianity has been preaching these three things for 1900 years. The ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity owe their introduction into the world to Christianity, and having thriven under her protection, they have been the cause of countless blessings to the human race. This is a fact, but it is also true that in course of time these ideas have been lamentably distorted and misused by those who pretend to wish to promote the happiness of the people. I desire to put you on your guard against a wrong use of these precious gifts bestowed by Christianity, and to supply you with a true comprehension of them, whilst at the same time I hope to show you what blessings result from putting them to their proper use. You must not expect me to discuss these matters from the political point of view; the pulpit is a place, not for political speeches, but for the exposition of Divine truth, and I propose to deal with my subject only from this standpoint. Today I mean to speak of liberty, and to show you (1) in what it consists and (2) where it is to be found. Let us begin by invoking the aid of the Holy Ghost. 1. Reason and free will are the most precious possessions that we enjoy in this life, and nothing else distinguishes us so completely from the brutes as our having these gifts, which are tokens of our Divine origin, and enable us to enter into communion with God and gradually to grow more like Him, the most perfect of all beings. A beast must follow the prompting of its instinct, but man does only what he wills to do; by means of his reason he can determine to do or not to do an action, and no power on earth can violate his will. He may be tortured or even killed, but he cannot be forced to do anything that he wills not to do. In the first three centuries of the Christian era the pagans had recourse to every imaginable means of compelling the Christians to do sacrifice to false gods and deny their faith, but it was all in vain; they preferred to die rather than give up their liberty. In the same way you too may be oppressed and persecuted, or even imprisoned, but you cannot be compelled to tell lies, to steal, or to deny your faith. Many people believe that true liberty consists in freedom to act as they like, and that they are as free to choose evil as to refrain from it and to choose good. A child supposes himself to be free, when he is out of his parents sight, and doing what he fancies. A young man supposes himself to be free, if he can follow his impulses without any let or hindrance. A socialist supposes himself to be free, if he can cast aside the laws of Church and State whenever it pleases him to do so, discard all morality and order, and gratify his sensual desires undisturbed. But is this real liberty? No; it is license, want of discipline and the enslavement of the spirit to the flesh. God gave us reason to guide us in our actions and to control and direct the lower impulses that we possess in common with the beasts. But if we allow ourselves to be directed and controlled by our sensual instincts and the desires of the flesh instead of by reason, we have ceased to be free, and have become slaves to the flesh. How shameful and dishonorable is this slavery! Which is more noble, the flesh or the spirit? You answer without hesitation: "The spirit, for it is the breath of God; it bears the impress of God's likeness; it is able to know and love God; it is immortal and destined for eternal life, whereas the body is nothing but dust, and must return to the dust of which it was formed." If such is the case, can anything be more shameful and lowering to human dignity than that a man should allow his immortal spirit to be enslaved and subjugated by his sinful body? We certainly have the power to choose between good and evil, and if we decide in favor of evil, we cease to be free and become its slaves, for, as our Saviour said: "Whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin" (John viii, 34). We are truly free only if we decide in favor of good, freely, and not under compulsion from within or from without, but following the voice of reason. The ability to choose between good and evil is innate in us, and we require to be trained in true liberty, which is, as I have said, freedom to decide for oneself to do what is right. You know that Adam's fall into sin brought inward corruption upon the whole human race, and that in consequence our evil desires strongly oppose reason and conscience, the voice of God speaking within us, telling us what is good and what is evil, stimulating us to do right and warning us against sin. As a result of Adam's fall our reason is weakened and obscured, our hearts are filled with selfishness, pride, sensuality and avarice, and our will is enfeebled to such a degree as to do what it rejects, and not to do what it wills. "I know," says St. Paul, "that there dwelleth not in me, that is to say, in my flesh, that which is good. For to will is present with me, but to accomplish that which is good, I find not. For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do. Now if I do that which I will not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that when I have a will to do good, evil is present with me. For I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man, but I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin that is in my members" (Rom. vii, 18-23). This is the case with every human being, however freely he may be able to choose the good, he is hindered and thwarted by the evil concupiscence that dwelleth in him, and frequently obtains the mastery over his will and reason, so that he can no longer do what he wills, but is obliged to do what he wills not. A pagan poet says very truly: " I perceive the better course and assent to it, but I follow the worse." You need only read the history of the human race to see to what terrible errors and sins this enslavement of the will by selfishness and sensuality has led mankind. Idolatry in all its horrible forms, the innumerable vices by which men degraded themselves lower than beasts devoid of reason, the slavery and other kinds of bondage that prevailed in olden times and were an outrage upon all Christian sentiment these are the consequences of this subjugation of the will and intellect resulting from sin. All these evils would recur if men with one accord made use of the license offered them by those who wish to ensnare them in their toils. If you want to know how a free man can be enslaved by selfishness and sensuality, you have only to look around you. Here is one who is a slave to drunkenness; when sober he has reproached himself times without number: he has wept tears of repentance, and sworn to his wife that he will amend, and give no more scandal to his innocent children—but his oaths are vain; he goes out sober and comes back drunk; he is weighed down by the fetters of his evil habit, and can no longer do as he desires, but is constrained to satisfy his craving and do what he wishes not to do. Another is so much entangled in the snares of debauchery that he cannot free himself, however much he tries. He makes fresh resolutions daily, prays, and imposes on himself various mortifications; but it is all in vain; tomorrow he will break the resolutions that he makes today! It would be an endless task to enumerate all the forms of captivity in which men lie bound. St. Antony, being once in a dreary desert, had a wonderful vision, in which he beheld the whole world covered with traps, snares and toils. These were anger, envy, greed, avarice, lust, falsehood, deception and the countless other sins in which men entangle themselves and lose their freedom of will. "His own iniquities catch the wicked, and he is fast bound with the rope of his own sins" (Prov. iv, 22). 2. (a) How can these fetters be broken, and the darkness of our understanding be scattered, so that we once more become able to recognize the truth? How can our will be strengthened so as to shake off the bonds of pride, ambition, avarice and lust, and be free to choose what is good? Who can restore our liberty, that we have lost through sin? Only our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, can do these things; He can deliver us from doubt and error, to which sin had subjected our understanding, and He can bring us the Divine light of truth, which enlightens every man that cometh into the world. Hence He said: " I am the way, and the truth and the life" (John xiv, 6). "He that followeth Me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John viii, 12, 32). Christ is called our Saviour and Redeemer because He released us from the bondage of sin and death, and we ask Him daily to deliver us from evil. "Because the children (of men) are partakers of flesh and blood, Christ also Himself in like manner hath been partaker of the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and might deliver them who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to servitude" (Heb. i i , 14, 5). "But now being made free from sin, they have become servants of God" (Rom. vi, 22). True Christian liberty exists therefore for the man in whose heart Christ has destroyed the power of darkness and the reign of sin, so that, the tyranny of his passions being broken, he is free to take up his stand on the side of truth and goodness. In other words, Christian liberty is childlike submission to the will of God as made known by Christ. This is why St. Paul says: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" ( II Cor. iii, 17). The more completely you are delivered from sin and sinful desires, and the better you serve God in the spirit of love, the greater is your liberty. Those pious souls who serve the Lord in simplicity of heart, who struggle to resist temptations, who crucify their flesh together with its vices and concupiscences, who with patience and submission bear the burden and heat of the day, who loyally and conscientiously fulfil in their home life the duties of their rank and calling, these are truly free, and these enjoy the glorious liberty of the sons of God. But our Saviour did more than make known to us God's will, to guide us in all our actions; He merited for us God's grace, to sustain us in our weakness and strengthen our will, so that we might obey the dictates of conscience and God's Commandments, and be thus delivered from the bondage of concupiscence. "It is," says St. Paul, God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish" (Phil, ii, 13), and although the same Apostle confesses that he saw in his members another law, fighting against the law of his mind and captivating him in the law of sin (Rom. vii, 23) he was none the less convinced that by God's grace it was possible for him to shake off the bonds of sin. "I can do all things in Him who strengthened me" (Phil, iv, 13). You see therefore what is the source of liberty. It is a heavensent gift, bestowed upon us through the Son of God, who Himself took the form of a servant in order to deliver us from the bondage of sin. As He said: "If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed" (John viii, 36). Liberty was given to the world through Jesus Christ, and it is through Christianity, or rather through the Catholic Church, that it has obtained supremacy in the world, and it is in the Church that it has found the surest guarantee for its preservation. (b) For over nineteen hundred years the Church has toiled incessantly, by means of instructions, commands and Sacraments, to deliver men from sin and error, from disorderly desires, passions and habits, and to establish the Kingdom of God, which is the rule of truth and liberty. During the present season of Lent, when she calls upon us to deny ourselves and mortify our flesh, she has no other end in view than to release us from the bondage of sin and the flesh, under which all mankind is groaning, and to give us the liberty of the sons of God. "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin" (John viii, 34).* The Church of Christ has always safeguarded external, personal and civil liberty as well as the internal or moral liberty of man. Let me quote a few instances in proof of this assertion: A father formerly possessed absolute rights of life and death over his children, and could dispose of them as he chose, giving them up to a life of shame or killing them; treating them in fact like cattle, that he could sell in the same way as a house or field. To what do children owe their liberty from this tyranny? To the Gospel, that has declared a child to belong to God, and his father to be responsible for the child's welfare and upbringing. Women at the present day cannot realize the harsh and degrading treatment suffered by their sex everywhere before our Saviour's birth, and still suffered in countries to which the light of His Gospel has not yet penetrated. Among non-Christian nations women are regarded as inferior creatures; a maiden is supposed to have no will of her own, so that she can be sold by her parents or bought by a suitor, as they think fit. A wife is merely a household drudge, to be ill treated or turned out, according to her husband's fancy. How different is the position held by women in Christian lands! Here a maiden is looked upon as a child of our heavenly Father, as one redeemed by our Lord, as consecrated by the Holy Ghost, and as an inheritor of eternal life, and ever since the most glorious of all virgins conceived and gave birth to the Saviour of the world, virginity has been highly esteemed, and a virgin is regarded as an ornament to the Church of God, and shares in all the grace and truth of the Gospel. As a result of Christianity the wife now occupies a place of honor beside her husband; they are two in one flesh, and their union is a type of the relation existing between Christ and His Church. The socialists, however, set no value upon virginity, and reject marriage and family life. To them a woman is nothing but a prostitute, and when she has borne and suckled a child and taught it to eat and drink, they require her to hand it over to the State for education. Among people holding such opinions there can be no thought of love and duty between parents and children, for these things simply do not exist. Could any doctrines tend more to drag men down below the level of beasts? Christianity has done much to alleviate, improve and sanctify the lot of the working classes. In the ancient world men were divided into masters and slaves. The slaves were the chattels of their masters, their property, to be dealt with as they chose, as slaves could have no liberty, no rights and no possessions. They were not looked upon as beings of the same kind as their masters, but as creatures of a lower order, destined by nature, like the domestic animals, for the service and use of their owners. A master could sell his slaves as he pleased, or ill-treat them according to the prompting of his bad temper, striking them as he would strike a dog or an ass; he might even blind or kill them, and no one had any right to find fault with him, far less to punish him. To five you some idea of the terrible lot of these unhappy people, It Is perhaps enough to tell you that slaves used to be sacrificed to the gods, fattened and thrown into ponds to feed the fish, and forced even to attack and slay one another for their master's amusement. One master often owned several thousand slaves, and one great Roman lady frequently required the services of two hundred female slaves. What did Christ do for these wretched creatures? He destroyed slavery altogether, by proclaiming that all men were equal, that all alike were children of God, who has no respect of persons. But He did more than this, for He laid down the law of brotherly love, to which there are no exceptions, and finally He died on the Cross for all men, including slaves, and opened the gates of eternal happiness to slaves as well as to their masters. Has not civil liberty always been upheld and defended by the Church? and has it not often been assailed and destroyed by secular princes, who have aimed at increasing their own power and reputation, and, in order to accomplish this, have oppressed their subjects? For centuries the Catholic Church alone, with all the resources at her disposal, opposed the tyranny of princes and the oppression of the poor, and did her best to support the liberty of nations. It was under the influence of the Church that the constitutions securing most freedom came into being. England boasts of being the freest country in the world. From what period does her freedom date? From the age of the vaunted Reformation? No, certainly not; it dates from the time when every Englishman used to hear holy Mass daily. You see, therefore, that the Catholic Church has always led the way in safeguarding civil liberty. She has never, however, encouraged rebellion and revolution, but she has invariably condemned them and admonished the nations to make for freedom by legal and constitutional methods. She has always insisted upon obedience to authority, and has taught that without law, discipline and order liberty cannot thrive or even exist. "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's'—this is the teaching of the Divine Founder of holy Church, and St. Paul says: "Let every soul be subject to higher powers, for there is no power but from God, and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist, purchase to themselves damnation" (Rom. xiii, 1-2). It is impossible to dispense with civil authority, as the socialists desire, for authority and laws are needed to check the vagaries of men's minds and hearts, and to prevent free will from degenerating into license, violence, tyranny and outrages upon the person, property and honor of others. Although the socialists declare man to be free and subject to no authority, yet their leaders regard themselves as having a right to control their followers, and tolerate no arguments or expression of contrary opinions, so that bitter quarrels happen at their meetings. They refuse to acknowledge any authority in State, Church, community or family, and yet they usurp it themselves. They say to the powers that be: "Give place to us;" but, as matters stand, we are far better off under the existing government than we should be under that which the socialists wish to introduce. (c) We have seen that Christianity gave liberty to the world, and it cannot thrive or even continue to exist apart from Christianity, which is its surest guarantee, for where Christianity does not prevail, men are dominated by their passions and are under the bondage of sin. What must we not therefore expect from those who talk much about liberty, but discard all the principles of Christianity? We know by sad experience that what they desire is not liberty for all men, but only for themselves and their comrades; they wish to be free, in order to rule over others more absolutely; they do not want liberty for truth and goodness, but liberty to spread abroad their false and pernicious doctrines; they want to be free, unfettered and unrestrained, in the gratification of all their passions. If another claims the right to have his own opinions and convictions, and reproaches them with their injustice, cunning and double dealing, they are infuriated against him, and employ all possible means of silencing him. Beware, therefore, of these false prophets, and do not assent to their arguments, which are un-Christian and consequently evil and destructive; such men are aiming at enslaving you, not at setting you free. We too wish to enjoy liberty of conscience, of faith and of speech; we too desire to have liberty in civil life, but we want no license, no wanton violence and no rebellion; we have no wish to see one man tyrannize over another and reduce him to slavery; we insist upon freedom for all, for we desire the liberty of the children of God, for "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." We have now seen in what true Christian liberty consists, to whom we owe it and how we should use it. Let me conclude with St. Peter's words: "So is the will of God, that by doing well you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men; as free, and not as making liberty a cloak for malice, but as the servants of God" (I . Peter ii, 15-16). If we remember that we are all God's servants and children, we shall not encroach upon our neighbor's rights and liberty; for the sake of God and conscience we shall respect authority, and peace and order will reign in our midst. Above all let us strive to cast off the fetters of pride, avarice, envy, selfishness and lust. As long as we are bound by them, we are not free men, but slaves of sin; for whosoever commits sin, is the servant of sin. How many of us are still in bondage! Let us arise, and obey the call of the prophet who exclaims: "Shake thyself from the dust, arise, sit up; loose the bonds from off thy neck, O captive daughter of Sioni" (Is. lii, 2). O captive soul shake off the dust of earth which obscures thy beauty; arise and loose the bonds of sin, death and Satan by the threefold force of contrition, confession and satisfaction, for what is loosed on earth, shall be loosed also in heaven. Hasten, before the snares of death and the terrible bonds of hell, from which there is no escape, entangle thee. Easter is at hand, the holy season when our Lord and Saviour invites us all to cleanse ourselves from sin, and to come and keep the Pasch with Him. Come, therefore, all ye who are weighed down with sin and misery, groaning under the load of your disorderly inclinations, passions and habits, the Lord will set you free. He calls you, saying: "Come to Me, all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you." But when you are released from sin and made children of God, be careful to walk thenceforth as free men, guided by the Spirit of God, and not dominated by impure passions; be no longer slaves of sin, but servants of God. "Brethren," says St. Paul, "you have been called unto liberty; only make not liberty an occasion to the flesh, but by charity of the spirit serve one another" (Gal. v, 13). To serve the flesh is slavery, to serve Christ is to rule. "O, let us," exclaims St. Bernard, "remain bound by God's holy Commandments! The bonds of love constrained Him to come down to earth and submit to suffering; we on the other hand, who desire to be raised from earth to heaven, must first submit to the bonds of suffering, patience and obedience, that we may be one with Him, as He and the Father are one." Let us remain free from sin and sinful desires, let us be ever guided by the Spirit of the Lord, and subject only to His Commandments, and then we shall be free indeed, and at last for us, too, the golden gates of heavenly liberty will be opened, and we shall enter in and enjoy perfect freedom forever and ever. Amen. *By proclaiming the truths of faith and inviting us to frequent the Sacraments, the Church is in no respect interfering with our liberty. She says: "You must believe this if you wish to be saved: but it rests with you to be saved or to perish; you can choose which you like." It depends, therefore, altogether upon a man's own will whether he obeys or rejects the call of grace; he is perfectly free to accept or to deny the truth. Faith is in any case a gift of God, but man's free will has to cooperate in it, for the simple reason that no one receives a gift which he is unwilling to accept. Source: The Signs of the Times - A Course of Lenten Sermons, Imprimatur 1915 "A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love one for another" (John xiii, 34, 35).
Good Friday, the day when our Saviour hung wounded and dying on the Cross, is the day in all the year when we ought particularly to remember this new Commandment. Look at the Cross! On it, between two malefactors, hangs One who is all love, more holy, more innocent than any other who ever lived on earth. He, the Son of the Most High, for love of us left the glory that He enjoyed with the Father, before the world was made, in order to redeem His people and make them happy for ever. He loaded them with benefits, He embraced and blessed their children, He healed their sick, He raised their dead to life, and desired in His unspeakable love to gather all around Him, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings—and, in return for all this, the men of His own nation nailed Him to the shameful wood of the Cross. See how His head is bent, to give us the kiss of peace; His arms are outstretched to embrace us; His side is opened to show us the way to His heart; His hands and feet are pierced with nails and fastened to the Cross to assure us of the fidelity and permanence of His love; His sacred Blood streams from countless wounds in order to wash away the guilt of our sins, and He dies that we may live. How infinitely great is His love! Was it not right that, when "The, the most faithful of all lovers, the chief of benefactors, died, the sun should veil its face, and the very Angels weep for sorrow? Was it not right that when He, who was innocence itself, was overwhelmed with shame and suffering, the earth should be moved in its innermost depths? Was it not right that the graves should open and allow the dead to proclaim the love which men in their ingratitude refused to recognize? Even the murderer on the cross cried out: "Lord, remember me, when Thou comest to Thy Kingdom,"* and the pagan centurion in horror exclaimed: "Truly, this man, was the Son of God." How is it possible for our hearts to remain cold and unmoved? My intellect is too mean old my speech too feeble for me to say what I fain would say on the subject of Christ's love, but He, as He hangs dying upon the Cross, teaches more emphatically than any words could do, "Love one another, as I have loved you." Surely you will not refuse to listen to this, His dying utterance; surely, you will reply with all the earnestness of which you are capable: "Yes, Lord, we will love one another, as Thou hast loved us. In return for Thy love we can offer nothing but love." This new Commandment given by our Saviour is to be the subject of our meditation today. I desire, after invoking the aid of the Holy Ghost, to speak of our Lord as (1) the source and (2) the example of love. 1. We hear a great deal nowadays about brotherly love; it is extolled to the clouds and described in the most exquisite and enthusiastic terms. In the sixteenth century the Reformers represented faith alone as the chief ground of all salvation, and condemned active charity as actually wrong; but now the reverse doctrine is inculcated, and faith, we are told, is of quite subordinate importance, whilst charity is essential. Men say it is a matter of indifference whether or no we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and Redeemer of the world; and maintain it to be impossible for mankind to be united in a common faith, hence all must adopt as their bond of union the law of charity, to which everything worth keeping in religion inevitably tends. Of course this law of charity was the first great Commandment laid down by Jesus Christ; it is His bequest to us, and the fulfilment of the whole law, and in this sense those outside the Church have adopted the principle of charity as their entire creed. But this principle, though easily recognized and enunciated, is not thereby put into practice. A reign of love cannot suddenly be established in this world. No one intending to build a house begins with the gables, but with the foundations, and if we want to gather fruit, we must first have a tree to bear it. This remark applies also to charity, which is, as it were, the gable, necessitating the previous existence of the foundations, and the fruit, that can never be produced without a tree. Now the foundation and root of charity is the Christian faith. This faith teaches that God is the Father of all men, that we are His children, and that no one can love Him, who does not also love his neighbor. St. John writes: "If any man say, ' I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not? And this Commandemnt we have from God, that he who loveth God love also his brother" (I . John iv, 20-21). Faith teaches that Jesus Christ redeemed us all with His most precious Blood, so that we might be His brethren and members of that sacred body, of which He Is the Head, and for this reason we all ought to love one another, "You are the body of Christ," says St. Paul, "and members of members," i.e., members of it. "He that saith he abideth in Christ, ought himself to walk, even as He walked" (I. John ii, 6). "This is His Commandment that we should . . . love one another" (I. John iii, 23). Faith teaches that the Holy Ghost sanctifies the heart of every Christian and renders it a temple of God, that we are destined for everlasting happiness, and that one day we shall all be with God, but all this depends upon our love of one another. "We know," says St. John, "that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not, abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in himself" (I. John iii, 14, 15). Could there possibly be any higher and more constraining motives for love than these truths? But true brotherly love cannot exist and thrive without faith in Jesus Christ, in whom all men are united. The pagans of old possessed intelligence enough to appreciate the importance of love; they had hearts capable of being moved by the sufferings of others, but they did not know the law of brotherly love, proclaimed by Christianity and admitting of no exceptions. Their love was fickle, self-interested and untrustworthy, like that of children. They oppressed, despised and enslaved the poor and weak, and there are very few instances of their practicing the virtues of meekness, gentleness, mercy and others which contribute so much to the charm and happiness of social intercouse. Even the Jews had a law: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" but so many additions had been made to it by the Pharisees, that it was completely altered and deprived of all force and efficacy. That was why our Saviour said: "A new Commandment." If the Jews, who had received from heaven the Commandment of charity, were unable to obey it in all its fulness, it is still less likely that other non-Christians can do so. Faith is the foundation and root of charity; so how is it possible for the socialists, who do not believe in God, or in His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ! our example in brotherly love, to practise this virtue, and allow it to influence all their thoughts and actions as it should for the benefit of their neighbors? Charity is not merely a matter of sentiment, it concerns chiefly our will and behavior. By nature we are weak and prone to evil; we desire to do right, but fail to accomplish it. If we follow the impulse of our own hearts, and resolve to display by our acts the love that we feel for our brethren, we are often hindered by self-love and worldly considerations. For instance, suppose that you suffer some wrong; your own heart perhaps suggests that it is your duty to forgive, but your pride calls for revenge. What is the result? Do you offer your hand to the person who has injured you, and seek to be reconciled with him ? Or do you requite evil for evil, and avoid him, plotting vengeance in your heart? Or suppose that your brother is in great distress, and needs help at once; he comes to you, asking your assistance. Do you give it? Do you help him to the utmost of your power, or do you send him away, pleading that every man ought to look after his own interests, and therefore you cannot assist him. We must confess that we are naturally selfish, revengeful and slow to make sacrifices. Where shall we find a support in our weakness? What will strengthen our will and make us comply with the demands of charity, and overcome the obstacles suggested by our self-love, ambition, self indulgence and avarice? Our intellect cannot help us, for it is weakened and clouded by sin; our hearts are under the sway of our evil passions, and we find help nowhere, save in the faith of Jesus Christ and in the efficacy of His merits. "I am the Vine," He says, "you are the branches; he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John xv, 5). "Of His fulness we all have received, and grace for grace" (John i , 16). He shows forth His strength in the feeble, and enables us to will and to accomplish every good work through the Holy Ghost, which, He assures us, all shall receive who believe in Him" (John vii, 39). Now the fruit of the Spirit is, according to St. Paul, "charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity" (Gal. v, 22, 23), and we receive this spirit of charity by means of prayer and the Sacraments, for our Father in heaven gives the good Spirit to them that ask Him** (Luke xi, 13). This being the case, how could true brotherly love exist, thrive and bring forth its beautiful fruits among people like the socialists, who never pray, and who have no faith in Christ and the power of His grace? A tree cannot produce either blossom or fruit without nourishment from the soil and sunlight; and In the same way charity cannot live and bring forth fruit without the Divine stimulus and constant influence of grace, which is the fertilizing dew of heaven The true faith directs and quickens charity; apart from it we may shed tears of sympathy at the sight of another's misery, we may give alms or support some good work in consequence either of a transitory emotion or of a desire for admiration, we may revel in pleasing sentiments, we may observe the outward courtesies of social life, we may even talk eloquently about brotherly love, but all this is merely the outcome of our natural feelings, which subside as quickly as they are roused, and not unfrequently change to coldness, indifference, harshness, anger and hatred, when our self-love, avarice and self-indulgence are awakened. True, universal, unselfish charity, that shrinks from no sacrifice, can thrive only in the sunshine of grace and on the soil of the true faith. "This is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith" ( I . John v, 4). Here, if anywhere, are our Saviour's words peculiarly applicable: "By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit" (Matt, vii, 16,17). It is easy enough to discover the fruit which the Catholic Church, rooted in the true faith of Jesus Christ, has brought forth. Think of the Apostles' love of the brethren! "We are reviled," says St. Paul, "and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it; we are blasphemed, and we entreat" ( I . Cor. iv, 12, 13); and elsewhere he writes: "We are in danger every hour; I die daily" ( I . Cor. xv, 31). How intensely did the early Christians love one another! We read in the Acts of the Apostles (iv, 32) that they had but one heart and one soul, i. e., that all were animated by the same spirit and the same faith, moreover "neither did any one say that aught of the things which he possessed was his own, but all things were common unto them." They looked upon their own property as something to which the brethren had an equal right, and distributed to the poor according to their need, so that the rich felt no pride and the poor no shame, all being full of charity. Their love for one another was so remarkable as not only to arouse astonishment on the part of their pagan neighbors, but also to make many converts. Tertullian tells us that the heathen used to say: "Behold how the Christians love one another, and each is as ready to die for his brother as if they were all begotten by the same father and born of the same mother; they are not separated by language, nor by nationality, nor by the customs of their own countries, nor by diversity of birthplace." The sight of this unselfish love existing among Christians had such an effect upon Pachomius, a pagan soldier in Constantine's army, that he was converted, and embraced the austere life of a hermit. Not Christians alone, but also heathens bear witness to the care lavished by the early followers of Christ upon the sick and poor in their midst, and regard them in this respect as models for imitation. Julian the Apostate, who persecuted the Christians most cruelly, writes: "See how the Christians help their poor, and how they love one another! It is precisely this feature that has chiefly led to the growth of their superstition (such is the designation given by the apostate emperor to Christianity). Let us, too, build hospitals, for it would be a disgrace to us not to care as much for our poor as do the Jews and Galileans." Even the bitterest enemies of the Catholic Church acknowledge that she has everywhere erected hospitals for the sick and refuges for the poor, for widows and orphans, and that queens and noble ladies have renounced all worldly honors in order to become angels of consolation in these abodes of suffering. The same charity has founded many orders and peopled many religious houses established for the welfare of the human race; it has carried men over the sea and into pathless deserts, in order to rescue captives from the hands of the infidels, and to bring to those sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death the light of the Gospel and the glad tidings of salvation. This glowing flame of charity has never been extinguished in the Catholic Church; it burns now as brightly as ever, and in token of its persistence. I may remind you of the work of foreign missions, that is increasing day by day, of the hospitals that are continually being built, and entrusted to the famous congregations of nursing sisters; I may point to the various religious associations established for the mutual advantage, both spiritual and temporal, of their members; I may mention the money lavished without stint upon the poor, the oppressed and the suffering. Where will those who are led astray by the socialists find help in time of old age, sickness and poverty? They will find none to assist them except paid officials, who have no sympathy with their sorrows and pains, and treat those under their charge with disdainful harshness. But let us pass on to other topics. I should not have mentioned these subjects today, the anniversary of our Lord's death, had not the task which I had undertaken rendered it necessary. You know that Christianity is called the religion of love, primarily because Jesus Christ, its Divine Founder, made the law of love His chief commandment, and the distinguishing mark of His disciples. "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another" (John xiii, 35). How could anyone devoid of charity be a follower of Him, who for love of us gave up the glory that He enjoyed with the Father, and took upon Himself flesh and blood, "that He might become a merciful and faithful high-priest before God, that He might be a propitiation for the sins of the people" (Heb. ii, 17). What man, having no charity or mercy in his heart, could profess to accept the teaching of Him who had compassion on the multitude "because they were distressed and lying like sheep that have no shepherd" (Matt, ix, 36); who shed tears at the grave of His friend Lazarus, and at the sight of Jerusalem, the unhappy city, that refused to recognize the things that were to her peace, and who spent His whole life in going about and doing good? No one without love could be a true disciple of Him who bled and died upon the Cross for us, His enemies, the children of wrath. His last words were words of love and intercession for His murderers: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Therefore instead of exhorting you further to practise charity, I will only ask you to look up at the Cross, and learn from Him who hangs there, what kind of love we should have for our brethren, since without it we cannot be His disciples, nor can we claim a share in the fruits of His atonement. He says: "Love one another, as I have loved you." We have therefore to love one another in the way in which He loved us. Now His love was universal, self-sacrificing and disinterested; so our love ought to possess these three attributes, 2. (a). Our love ought to be universal, embracing every human being without exception, because Jesus Christ is the Saviour and Redeemer of all mankind, and died for all upon the Cross. "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only* but also for those of the whole world" ( I . John ii, 2). Hence He could rightly say: "I , if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself (John x i i , 32). We need but look at the Gospels, to see how, during His life on earth, He regarded all men with equal love. He did good not only to the children of Israel, but also to pagans who came to Him in their troubles, beseeching His help. He loved sinners as well as the righteous, and did not refuse to sit at table with them. He treated rich and poor, high and low all alike, excluding no one from His love. "When He was reviled, He did not revile; when He suffered, He threatened not;" on the contrary He prayed on the Cross for those who had injured Him, condemned Him to death and crucified Him, and He even pleaded for them in the touching words: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." If you desire to be His disciples, you must act as He did. All human beings, whether rich or poor, high or low, fellow countrymen or foreigners, friends or enemies, are God's children and your brethren in Christ. How can it be right for you to bestow your charity on one and refuse it to another? Is it just or Christian to love those only who profess the same faith and hold the same opinions as yourselves, and to show no charity to those who think otherwise and belong to another religion? Ought you to despise and scorn such people? No indeed; they may look down upon you, and refuse you a share in social and political life, but you must not requite evil with evil. Our Saviour's teaching is: "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you; that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh His sun to rise upon the good and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust" (Matt, v, 44, 45). The law of charity knows no exceptions; it seeks to be all things to all men for Christ's sake. (b) Our love must be self-sacrificing, and, as St. John says, we must "not love in words, nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth" (I . John iii, 18). Our Saviour's love was of this kind, and, as you know, His whole life, from His birth in the stable at Bethlehem to His death upon the Cross, was an unbroken series of acts of self sacrifice, performed for love of us. If you wish to be His disciples, go and do likewise; shrink from no exertion, no trouble, no sacrifice and no self-denial, when you have an opportunity of doing a charity to your brother. Do not listen to the suggestions of pride and passion, when you are slandered and insulted. Overcome your feelings of aversion! anger, hatred and revenge, and offer your hand to your brother in token of reconciliation. "If you love them that love you, what reward shall you haveP Do not even the publicans this?" said our Lord. To talk eloquently about brotherly love, to indulge in pleasing sentiments and to shed tears of sympathy over the sufferings of others are all beautiful things, but they are not the love required of us by our Saviour, nor the charity that He practiced Himself. Christian charity should be active, energetic and self-sacrificing; as St. Paul says, it "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things" ( I . Cor. xiii, 7); it is always ready to help at any cost; it is unwearied, no matter how many claims are made upon it, and reveals its full strength when it is most severely tried. It is not discouraged when it is misunderstood, oppressed and ill-treated, but shines forth then in all its heavenly purity. If means are lacking to assist the needy, charity can always have recourse to prayer, and often can offer consolation and advice. (c) Finally, our love must be disinterested. Our Lord's love was absolutely disinterested; " I seek not My own glory," are His own words, and there is not a single passage in the Gospel from which we can infer that He gained anything by healing the blind, deaf and lame, the paralyzed or the lepers. We are never told that He helped others in order to be thanked, or to become famous, or to win popularity; on the contrary, He silenced every loud expression of applause and gratitude, and when those whom He had cured refused to hold their peace and desired to make Him king, He fled into the wilderness. He wished all glory to be ascribed to His Father, not to Himself, and therefore on the last evening of His life He could say: "I have-glorified Thee on the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do" (John xvii, 4). If you will be His disciples, go and do likewise. In all things give the glory to God and make it your sole aim to please Him; let love of God be the soul, the motive power and the object of every thought and action. If you keep nothing but your own advantage in view, and aim at winning the applause and praise of men; if you extol brotherly love, in order to be commended for so doing; if you are friendly towards your neighbors and contribute liberally to all charitable works merely for the sake of vain glory—then you do not resemble Jesus Christ, your Divine Example, but rather the Pharisees, of whom Holy Scripture tells us that they did all these things. "Take heed," says our Saviour, "that you do not your justice before men, to be seen by them; otherwise you shall not have a reward of your Father who is in heaven" (Matt, vi, i ) . Our Lord's Apostles thought at first too much of their own advantage, and this made them impatient and desirous of earthly honors. Hence they said: "Behold, we have left all things and have followed Thee; what, therefore, shall we have?" (Matt, xix, 27), and they disputed among themselves which of them should be the greatest (Mark ix, 33). But after they had received the Holy Ghost, and had been filled with love of God, they displayed the deepest humility, and not a trace of pride, and instead of asking who should be greatest, St. Paul writes: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or persecution, or the sword? . . . But in all these things we shall overcome because of Him that hath loved us" (Rom. viii, 35, 37). Let us, therefore, love one another, as our Saviour hath loved us; let us have a love that is universal, self-sacrificing and disinterested, for then we shall be His true disciples, entitled to share the glory promised to those who persevere to the end in love and in keeping the Commandments. Let us often call to mind the love with which Christ loved us even unto death. Let us hold converse with Him daily, drawing pure love from Him, the sole source of love; let us daily strive to become more like Him and test our love by His standard! A community, all the members of which followed their Lord and Master in the practise of universal, self-sacrificing and disinterested charity, would indeed be pleasing to God and the heavenly hosts. No one would seek his own advantage, but rather that of his neighbor; no one would love in word only, but in deed and in truth. There would be no place for pride, envy, avarice or ambition, since each would bear the other's burden, and so fulfil the law of Christ. None would be offended, slandered or wronged, and should one injure another, he would at once be forgiven. Each would sympathize heartily with the joys and sorrows of his neighbor, and give active expression to his good will. The employer would regard his workmen with brotherly love, not imposing too heavy burdens upon them, but giving each sufficient wages to support himself and his family. Workmen, laborers and servants would trust their masters, and be faithful and conscientious in the discharge of their duty. A poor man would not ask for alms in vain, nor would a sufferer weep and find none to console him; no sick man would toss untended on his bed of pain, no wounded man would lie by the wayside without the help of a good Samaritan, ready to aid him. Than peace, harmony and happiness would prevail, and all would look forward to the day when the just Judge should say: "Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took Me in; naked, and you covered Me; sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me. . . . Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these, My least brethren, you did it to Me" (Matt, xxv, 34-40). O, crucified Love, without Thee we can do nothing, but with Thine aid we can do all things. O, teach us and help us to love one another, even as Thou hast loved us. Amen. Source: The Signs of the Times, Imprimatur 1915 Below are some books for Lenten reading if you wish to read them.
THE GOODNESS OF GOD
He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how hath he not also, with him, given us all things? — Romans viii. 32. 1. Since the Apostle makes mention of many sons when he says (ibid. v. 15), You have received the spirit of adoption of sons, he now separates this Son from all these by saying his own Son, that is to say, not an adoptive son, but a son of his own nature, co-eternal with him, that son of whom the Father says, in St. Matthew (iii. 17), This is my beloved Son. The words he spared not mean only that God did not exempt Him from the penalty, for there was not in Him any fault to be matter for sparing. God the Father did not withhold from his Son an exemption from the penalty as a way of adding anything to himself. God is perfect. But he so acted, subjecting his Son to the Passion, because this was useful for us. This is why St. Paul adds, but delivered him up for us ally meaning that God exposed Christ to the Passion for the expiation of all our sins. He was delivered for our sins, says Isaias, and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all (liii. 5,6). God the Father delivered him over to death, decreeing him to take flesh and to suffer, inspiring his human will with a burning love by which, eagerly, he would undergo his Passion. He delivered himself for us, St. Paul says of Our Lord (Eph. v. 2). Judas, too, and the Jews delivered him, but by an activity external to His. There is something else to notice in the words, He that spared not his own Son. It is as though it said : Not only has God given other saints over to suffering for the benefit of mankind, but even his own, proper Son. 2. God's own Son, then, being made over for us, all things have been given us, for St. Paul adds, How hath he not also with him, that is, in giving Him to us, given us all things. In other words, all things thereby are turned to our profit. We are given the highest things of all, namely the Divine Persons, for our ultimate joy. We are given reasoning minds in order to live together with them now. We are given the lower things of creation for our use, not only the things which appeal to us but the things which are hostile. All things are yours, says St. Paul to us, and you are Christ's and Christ is God's (i Cor. iii.22, 23) Whence we may see how evidently true are the words of the Psalm (Ps. xxxiii. 10). There is no want to them that fear him. (In Rom. viii) Source: Meditations for Lent, Imprimatur 1937 THE SEED
The Sower went out to sow his seed. — Luke viii. 4. 1. The keenness of the sower. It is Christ who goes forth, and in three ways. He goes from the bosom of the Father, and yet without a change of place; from Jewry to the Gentiles ; from the private depths of wisdom to the public life of teaching. It is Christ who sows. Now the seed is the source of fruit. Whence every good action is clue to God. What is it that He sows ? His own seed, says the gospel. That seed is the Word of God. And what does it produce ? It produces others, like unto Him from whom itself proceeds, for it makes them sons of God. 2. The obstacle in the way of the seed. The obstacle is threefold, because for the growth of the seed three conditions are necessary, namely it must be remembered, it must take root in love, it must have loving care. The growth is therefore hindered if in place of the first condition there is flightiness of mind, instead of the second there is hardness of heart, and if, in place of the loving care, there is a development of vices. (i) Some fell by the wayside. As the way is free for all who care to walk, so does the heart lie open to every chance thought. So it is that when the word of God falls upon a heart that is careless and vain, it falls by the wayside and is doubly imperilled. St. Matthew speaks of one danger only, that the birds of the air came and ate it up. St. Luke speaks of two, for the seed is trampled into the ground as well as carried off by the birds. So when the careless receive the word of God it is crushed by their worthless thoughts or their evil company. Whence great joy for the devil if only he can steal away this seed and trample upon it. (ii) Hardness of heart. This is contrary to charity, for it is in the nature of love to melt things. Hardness means "locked up in itself" or "narrowed within its own limits," and love, since it causes the lover to be moved to what he loves, is a thing that liberates, widens, pours itself out. St. Matthew says therefore, some fell upon stony ground, and Ezechiel, I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I IP ill give you a heart of flesh (Ezech. xxxvi. 26). For there are some men whose hearts are so deprived of love of any kind that they are scarcely flesh and blood at all. There are others who have indeed a natural affection but it is slight and has no deepness. To have deepness is to have a power of loving deeply. The man may be said to love deeply who loves all things and whatever he loves for the love of God, and who puts the love of God before all else. There is another type of man that does indeed delight in God, but delights more in things. Men of this sort do not pour themselves out, nor have they much deepness of earth. The gospel continues, And they spring up immediately for they who think deeply, think long, but they whose thought is shallow plunge into action at once, and inevitably pass away quickly. So these men hear quickly, but take no root in what they hear, for they have no deepness of earth, that is in the earth of loving charity. (iii) Destruction of the fruit. The fruit is lost because when there ariseth tribulation each man snatches for what he most loves, and the man who loves wealth looks only to his riches. And when the sun was up they were scorched, that is, because they lacked strength. And because they had not root, they withered away, for God was not their root. Others fell among thorns, anxieties, quarrels and such like things. And the thorns grew up and choked them. (In Matt, xiii.) Source: Meditations for Lent, Imprimatur 1937 ON REFORMING OURSELVES
Be not conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God. -- Romans xii. 2. 1. What is forbidden is the forming of oneself after the pattern of the world. Be not conformed to this world, that is, to the things which pass away with time. For this present world is a kind of measure of those things which pass away with time. A man forms himself after the pattern of things transitory when, willingly and lovingly, he gives himself to serve them. Those also form themselves after that pattern who imitate the lives of the worldly, This then I say and testify in the Lord : That henceforward you walk not as also the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind (Eph.iv. 17). 2. We are bidden to undertake a reformation of the interior man when it is said, But be reformed in the newness of your mind. By mind is here meant the reason, considered as the faculty by which man makes judgments about what he ought to do. In man, as God first created him, this faculty existed in all the completeness and vigour it could need. Holy Scripture tells us of our first parents that God filled their hearts with wisdom and shewed them both good and evil (Ecclus. xvii. 6). But through sin this faculty declined in power and, as it were, grew old, losing its beauty and its brilliance. The Apostle warns us to form ourselves again, that is, to recover that completeness and distinction of mind that once was ours. This can indeed be regained by the grace of the Holy Ghost, and we should therefore use every endeavour to share in that grace — those who lack that grace that they may obtain it, and those who already have gained it faithfully to progress and persevere. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, says St. Paul (Eph. iv. 23). Or again, in another sense, be renewed in your external actions, that is to say, in the newness of your mind i.e., according to the new thing, grace, which you have internally received. 3. The reason for this warning is that you may prove what is the will of God. We know what befalls a man whose sense of taste suffers in an illness, how he ceases to have a true judgment of flavours and begins to loathe pleasantly-tasting things and to crave for what is loathsome. So it is with the man whose inclinations are corrupted from his conforming himself to the things of this world. He has no longer a true judgment where what is good for him is concerned. It is only the man whose inclinations are healthy and well directed, whose mind is made new again by grace, who can truly judge what is good and what is not. Therefore on this account is it written, Be not conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of our mind that you may prove, that is, that you may know by experience. As again it says in the psalm, "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet (Ps. xxxiii. 9) What is the will of God: that is, to say the will by which he wills is to be saved. This is the will of God, our sanctification (i Thess. iv. 3) The will of God is good, because God wills that we should will to do what is good, and He leads us to this through His commandments. I will shew thee, O man, what is good, and what and what the Lord requireth of thee. (Micheas vi. 8) The will of God is agreeable in as much as to him who is rightly ordered it is a pleasure to do what God wills us to do. Nor is the will of God merely useful as a means to achiever our destiny, it is a link joining us with our destiny and in that respect it is perfect. Such then is the will of God as those experience it who are not formed after the pattern of this world, but are formed over again in the newness of their minds. As to those who remain in the old staleness, fashioned after the world, they judge the will of God not to be a good but a burden and useless. (In Rom. xii.) Meditations for Lent - Saint Thomas Aquinas, Imprimatur 1937 THE NEED FOR CAUTION
Wherefore he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall. — i Cor. x. 12. 1. The case of the Jews who, in punishment, were overthrown in the desert (ibid. v. 5 ) is a warning for us. These words of the Scripture contain four things which should attract the wise man's attention, namely the multitude of those who fell, for it says Wherefore; then the uncertainty of those who still stand, for it adds he that thinketh himself to stand, thirdly, the need for caution, for it adds let him take heed and finally the ease with which disaster comes, for it says lest he fall. St. Paul says wherefore as if to say these men, for all that they have had the advantage of God's gifts, nevertheless, because of their sins, perished, wherefore, bearing this in mind, he that thinketh himself, by whatever kind of subtle reasoning, to stand, that is, to be in a state of grace and charity, let him take heed, diligently attending to it, lest he fall, whether by sinning himself or by inducing others to sin. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer says Isaias (xiv. 12), and the Psalmist, A thousand shall fall at thy side (Ps. xc. 7), and St. Paul himself, in another place, says therefore, See how you walk, circumspectly (Eph. v. 15). 2. We must note that the things which drive us to a fall are numerous. (i) Weakness, lack of strength ; as children, the aged and the sick fall in the natural life. As Isaias says, They shall fall through infirmity (Isa. xl. 30). This happens to us through lukewarmness in well doing and through too frequent changing. (ii) We fall under the weight of our sins, as asses fall under a load that is too heavy. The workers of iniquity have fallen (Ps. xxxv. 13). And this happens through our neglect to repent. (iii) Through a multitude of things drawing us, as a tree or a house falls over on the crowd that tugs at it. We fall in this way by the onrush of enemies. (iv) The slipperiness of the road, and so we fall as travellers fall into the mud. Take heed lest thou slip with thy tongue and fall (Ecclus. xxviii. 30). We fall thus through carelessness in guarding our senses. (v) A variety of traps and we fall like the bird taken in the nets. A just man shall fall seven times Prov. xxiv. 1 6). And this happens through the corruption of created things. (vi) Ignorance of what one ought to do, and we fall easily as do the blind. If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit (Matt. xv. 14). This comes about through our not learning things necessary to us. (vii) The example of others who fall, as the angels fell by the example of Lucifer. A just man falling down before the wicked, is as a fountain troubled by the foot, a spring that has suffered defilement (Prov. xxv. 26). And this happens when we imitate the wicked. (viii) The heaviness of the flesh: for the body when corrupted weighs down the soul, as does a stone that hangs at the neck of a swimmer. A mountain in falling cometh to naught (Job xiv. 18). And this is what comes of pampering the body. (In i Cor. x.) Source: Meditations for Lent, Imprimatur 1937 |
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