I have added the 5 volume set of The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church and the 7 volumes of The Works of Bishop Hay to the Catholic Reading section of the site under Books We Have Enjoyed.
2 Comments
A SHORT time before the holy Father's death, he called together his Children and warned them of the coming troubles, saying : "Act bravely, my Brethren ; take courage, and trust in the Lord. The time is fast approaching in which there will be great trials and afflictions; perplexities and dissensions, both spiritual and temporal, will abound; the charity of many will grow cold, and the malice of the wicked will increase. The devils will have unusual power, the immaculate purity of our Order, and of others, will be so much obscured that there will be very few Christians who will obey the true Sovereign Pontiff and the Roman Church with loyal hearts and perfect charity. At the time of this tribulation a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavour to draw many into error and death. Then scandals will be multiplied, our Order will be divided, and many others will be entirely destroyed, because they will consent to error instead of opposing it. There will be such diversity of opinions and schisms among the people, the religious and the clergy, that, except those days were shortened, according to the words of the Gospel, even the elect would be led into error, were they not specially guided, amid such great confusion, by the immense mercy of God. Then our Rule and manner of life will be violently opposed by some, and terrible trials will come upon us. Those who are found faithful will receive the crown of life ; but woe to those who, trusting solely in their Order, shall fall into tepidity, for they will not be able to support the temptations permitted for the proving of the elect. Those who preserve their fervour and adhere to virtue with love and zeal for the truth, will suffer injuries and persecutions as rebels and schismatics; for their persecutors, urged on by the evil spirits, will say they are rendering a great service to God by destroying such pestilent men from the face of the earth. But the Lord will be the refuge of the afflicted, and will save all who trust in Him. And in order to be like their Head, these, the elect, will act with confidence, and by their death will purchase for themselves eternal life ; choosing to obey God rather than man, they will fear nothing, and they will prefer to perish rather than consent to falsehood and perfidy. Some preachers will keep silence about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it. Sanctity of life will be held in derision even by those who outwardly profess it, for in those days Our Lord Jesus Christ will send them not a true Pastor, but a destroyer.
Source: WORKS OF THE SERAPHIC FATHER ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, Imprimatur 1882 The following is a condensation of the closing pages of Rev. George Hay’s “The Sincere Christian” in Five Volumes, 1871. Seven of the eight volumes can be read and or downloaded at archive.org. The books are wonderful!!
Every co-operation, in religious matters, with those who are separated from the Catholic Church, is criminal in the sight of God, because every such co-operation implies an approval of their false doctrine, and is, as Saint John expresses it, "a participation in their wicked works" (2 John 11). Whoever Acknowledges Me We are strictly obliged to confess our Holy Faith outwardly, acknowledging ourselves to be members of the one Church of Christ, whenever either the honour of God or the good of our neighbor's soul requires it. The Scripture makes this confession an express condition of salvation. Thus, "if thou confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9). The internal faith of the heart suffices for our justification, that is, for being reconciled with God through repentance, but if occasion be given, we are also bound to confess outwardly, both by words and actions, without shame, or fear of the world, the faith which we believe in our hearts, in order to obtain salvation. It is with great reason that Saint Paul affirms this to be a truth of Divine revelation, for Our Lord Himself declaresit to His holy Apostles in these words: "Whoever acknowledges Me before men, I too will acknowledge him before My Father Who is in Heaven" (Matthew 10:32). And in another place He repeats it, " I tell you, whoever acknowledges Me before men, him the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God" (Luke 12:8). Now by acknowledging Jesus Christ is not only meant acknowledging our belief of His Person, but also of His doctrine, and consequently, of His Church, in which alone His true doctrine is preserved. For of Saint Paul before his conversion it is said that he "with every breath he drew threatened the disciples of the Lord with massacre" (Acts 9:1), that is against the Church, as he himself declares, "in my Jewish days I persecuted and ravaged the Church of God" (Galatians 1:13). And further,when Our Lord appeared to him on the road to Damascus He said to him, " I am Jesus Whom thou persecutest" (Acts 9:5); from which it is clear that persecuting Christ and persecuting His Church is the same thing, and consequently that confessing Christ and confessing His Church is the same thing also, according to His own words to the pastors of His Church, "He who heareth you heareth Me" (Luke 10:16). Whoever Denies Me To deny Christ, or His Faith and Church, is of its very nature a most grievous sin of the deepest dye, for He Himself says "Whoever denies Me before men I too will deny him before My Father Who is in Heaven" (Matthew 10: 33); and again, "whoever denies Me before men shall be denied before the angels of God" (Luke 12:9). "If we deny Him, He will deny us," Saint Paul declares to Saint Timothy (2 Timothy 2:11), and commands him, and in him all the pastors of the Church, to preach the same truth, lest heeding it not we should hear that dreadful sentence, " I know you not, nor whence you have come. Begone from Me, all you doers of iniquity" (Luke 13:27). Our Lord says that "whoever is ashamed of Me and of My words before this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels will be ashamed of him" (Mark 8:38). It is evident from this that being ashamed not only of Him but also of His words, that is, of His doctrine, and therefore of His Church which is the depository of His doctrine, is of its very nature mortal sin; and if being ashamed of these is mortal sin, how much more denying them? The Example of the Martyrs It is never allowable, even in appearance, by any word or sign or act to deny the Faith, though to gain the whole world or to escape the greatest evils. This conviction led thousands upon thousands of the first Catholics to lay down their lives rather than do the smallest thing that could have the slightest appearance of denying their holy religion. It was not always required of these blessed martyrs openly to renounce their Faith; they were frequently asked but to be present at some heathen service, though their heart took no share in what was done there. Had they complied with this for once, they would seldom have been sought after again, but might follow what religion they pleased, and be left in secure possession of their goods and liberty and life. And yet they persevered resolute, choosing rather to forfeit all that was near and dear to them in this world, and to undergo the most terrible torments, than do the smallest action contrary to Jesus Christ. Convinced as they were that the slightest co-operation in false religion was unlawful, offensive to God, dishonourable to His Faith, scandalous to their brethren, they cheerfully embraced death in all its horrors rather than be guilty of so great a crime. When weak brethren, to avoid these tortures, procured for money an attestation from the magistrates that they had complied with what the persecuting laws required of them, though in reality they had not, they were looked upon by the Church as traitors, and as such they were dealt with, so as not to be admitted to participation in the sacred mysteries till, by long and public penance, they had endeavoured to expiate their crime and satisfy for the scandal they had given. Avoid Their Company The language of Holy Scripture is unmistakable: all religion other than that of Christ and His Church arises from false teachers, false teachers who are deceivers and antichrists, says Saint John (2 John 7 ) ; liars who organize their followers into sects of perdition, says Saint Peter; impostors who teach the doctrines of devils (1 Timothy 4:1,2), ravening wolves and perverters (Acts 20:29, 30), enemies of the Cross of Christ, says Saint Paul (Philippians 3:18). Of Saint Paul's command in 2 Corinthians 6:14ff., "Do not be yokefellows with unbelievers. For what partnership have innocence and iniquity? What has light in common with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? How can a believer have part with an unbeliever?"; of this command, the fathers who prepared the Rheims New Testament say, in their note upon this passage: "Here is forbidden dealing with unbelievers in prayers, or meetings at their schismatical service, or other worship service whatsoever." "Give a heretic one warning, then a second," says Saint Paul, "and after that avoid his company; he is perverted, and in sin, and is self-condemned" (Titus 3:10, 11). In their note on this text the translators of the Rheims New Testament declare that "heretics must not marvel if we warn all Catholic men, by the word of the Apostle in this place, to take warning against them, and to shun their preaching, books and meeting-places." Saint Paul, writing to the Ephesians, elaborates upon Our Saviour's warning that we "must beware of false prophets" (Matthew 7:15). "Let no one deceive you with empty arguments," he says, "these are what brings down the wrath of God on unbelievers; do not associate with them" (Ephesians 5:6, 7). Here is an express command not to have any contact with those who teach false religion, to avoid their meetings and sermons, lest we be deceived by them, and incur the anger of Almighty God, provoking Him to withdraw His grace from us and leave us to ourselves, in punishment of our disobedience. The same Apostle renews this command in his Epistle to the Romans. "Brethren," he says to them, " I beg of you, watch out for those who are causing dissension and scandals, contrary to the doctrine you have learned, and avoid their company. Such men do not serve our Lord Christ but their own belly; by their pleasing speeches and flatteries they seduce the hearts of the innocent" (Romans 16:17, 18). See here whom we are to avoid: those who cause dissension to the traditional doctrine. And why we are to avoid them: because they are not servants of Christ but slaves to themselves whose appeal is not to faith and reason but to emotions and passions. "Now these avoid," Saint Paul commands his beloved disciple Saint Timothy, speaking of false teachers, even though Timothy was a bishop of the Church, and fully instructed by the Apostle himself in all the truths of the Faith; because, besides the danger of seduction, which none can escape who voluntarily expose themselves to it, all such communication is evil in itself, and therefore to be avoided by all, and especially by bishops and priests, whose bad example would be most poisonous to others. Saint John the Evangelist says of the doctrine of the Faith that "if any one comes to you who does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house; do not even greet him; to greet him is to share the guilt of his wicked works" (2 John 10, 11). If the holy Apostle declares that even greeting such people is a participation in their wickedness, what would he say of going to their meeting-places, hearing their sermons or joining in their prayers? It is a great and damnable sin in any one to do any of these things, but a much greater crime in those who are learned and powerful. The Church's Constant Practice The conduct of the Catholic Church in this matter has been uniformly the same in all ages with what the Holy Scripture teaches. She has always forbidden her children to have any communication, in religious matters, with those who are separated from her, and this she has sometimes done under the most severe penalties. In the Apostolic Canons, which are for the most part handed down from the apostolical age, it is thus decreed: "If any bishop or priest or deacon shall join in prayer with heretics, let him be suspended from communion." Also: "If anyone, clergy or lay, shall go into the synagogue of the Jews, or the meetings of heretics, to join in prayer with them, let him be deposed and deprived of communion." The Council of Carthage held in 398, at which the great Saint Augustine was present, enacted that: "No one must either pray or sing psalms with heretics; whosoever shall communicate with those who are cut off from the communion of the Church, whether clergy or layman, let him be excommunicated." Pope Paul IV wrote thusly to the Catholics of England, at a time when the most severe persecutions were raised against them, unless they agreed to go from time to time to the Protestant church: "Great has been the grief of our mind for the calamities you have had to undergo for your adherence to the Catholic Faith; and as we understand that these trials are become more severe at present, our affliction is increased exceedingly. We are informed that you are compelled, under the most grievous penalties, to go to the churches of heretics, to frequent their meetings, and be present at their sermons. But we are fully persuaded that you who with so much fortitude and constancy have hitherto endured almost infinite miseries that you might walk without stain in the law of the Lord will never consent to be defiled by communicating with those who have forsaken the Divine law. Nevertheless, urged by the zeal of our duty, and by our paternal care for you, we admonish and command you that on no account you go to the churches of heretics, or hear their sermons, or join in their rites, lest you incur the wrath of God, for it is not lawful for you to do such things without dishonouring God, and hurting your own souls." The constant practice of the Church shows that any attempt to authorize or excuse communication in religion with those who are separated from her falls under the curse pronounced by Saint Paul on all novelty in religion, and is contrary to the gospel which has been preached from the beginning and handed down from the holy Apostles. The Law Unalterable No power on earth can make that allowable which the law of God forbids; and to say that because there are those who do go to heretical churches and hear heretical sermons and read heretical books,without being censured, it is therefore allowable, is the same as to say that because great numbers curse and lie and drink to excess it is therefore allowable to commit these sins. No, the law is by no means altered by the fact that it is widely disobeyed; it stands as a testimony against those who flaunt it, and though they here and now escape the censure of men, they will not escape the just punishment of their transgression at the tribunal of God. Sinful Curiosity Whatever is a sin to do, is a sin to appear to do; and it is evident that whoever goes to non-Catholic churches, even though his motive is mere curiosity and no more, appears to join with what is done there, whatever be in his own mind; and Our Lord not only condemns those who deny Him in their hearts, but also all those who deny Him before men, whatever be the inward disposition of their hearts. Do not the texts of Scripture we have cited forbid the very going to such places at all, do they not command us to avoid them? and how can one be said to avoid them who goes to them, whatever his intention? Does not the Scripture say that there is no fellowship, no participation, no concord, no part, no agreement between the faithful and the unbeliever? and how can this be said of one who goes to their religious meetings, is present at their service, and hears their preachings? Does not the Scripture expressly affirm that he who so much as greets them, communicates in their wicked works? how much more he who honours their meetings with his presence? As for the motive of curiosity, it is certainly a disgrace for a Christian to fly to such an excuse for doing a thing forbidden by any lawful authority, but much more for doing what is so frequently, so severely, and for such important reasons, forbidden by the law of God and of His Church. Whatever useful purposes curiosity may serve in the acquisition of knowledge, however blameless it may be when employed about innocent objects, yet curiosity is, without doubt, a very great sin in itself when to gratify it a person either does what is criminal, or prohibited by lawful authority, or exposes himself to the danger of doing so. The Learned No Less Obliged It is no argument to say that a person might go to see and hear what passes among heretics so long as he is well grounded in the true Faith, and so unlikely to be seduced from it. Even if we grant that such a person would run no risk of losing his faith, yet this is only avoiding one of those reasons for which going to heretical places is forbidden. It would still be, at least in the eyes of the world, a seeming approbation of the heresy, and a transgression of an express command of God and His Church, and a very grievous scandal to the faithful. In fact, the scandal arising from the from others, because every one of the faithful well knows that it is a sin to go to such places, and therefore all must be more offended to see a person who ought to know his duty better than others acting so contrary to it, and the weaker sort among them will be more influenced to do the same from the example of such a person, than if less learned and less instructed in his religion. But even the most learned cannot answer for themselves when, contrary to their duty, they culpably expose themselves to the danger. Saint Paul assures us that "it is by grace that you are saved, with faith for its instrument, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8). Our faith, then, being God's gift, our perseverance in it is no less so. If therefore a person, though ever so learned, offends Almighty God by doing what is dishonorable to His holy Faith, is this not provoking God to withdraw that gift from him, of which by his disobedience he renders himself unworthy? In the primitive ages, Tertullian and Tatian were most learned men, and great champions of the Catholic Faith, having written many excellent things in defence of it, yet by exposing themselves to these very dangers they were miserably seduced, lost their faith, and fell into the most unreasonable heresies. It is impossible that there should be any solid reason in favour of falsehood capable of convincing the understanding of a person who is well instructed in the Faith of Jesus Christ, but the most learned and best instructed are not proof against their own passions, and the seductions of the heart, and therefore can have no security against these if they culpably expose themselves to the danger, by which they offend God, and provoke Him to withdraw His grace from them, and leave them a prey to their passions. On this account was the command to avoid all fellowship with false teachers given to all without exception, to the learned as well as to the unlearned, to priests as well as to people. Even Refutation a Poor Excuse But might a well instructed person go to such heretical meetings that he might be the better able to confute the heretics? This case is the same, as to the danger, as that of reading bad books with the design of confuting them. To read bad books is forbidden by the law of God, by the natural law, and by the law of the Church, precisely because of the danger of being seduced by them to evil. Even a person thoroughly learned and in no probable danger of being seduced by them cannot read them with a safe conscience, even with the design of confuting them, unless he has received permission from his spiritual superiors to do so. Should he read them without such leave, he runs the risk of being hurt by them, all his learning notwithstanding, in punishment of his disobedience to what the law of God requires of him. But if he has the required permission, and reads with the intention of confuting them, he may do it lawfully; and he has reason to hope that God will preserve him from danger. In like manner, if a learned person, by permission of his lawful superiors, should go to the meetings of those of a false religion, precisely to learn their ways and teachings that he may be able the better to confute them, this will take away the sin as to this one point of exposing himself to the danger; but this will not excuse the other evils of his doing so, namely, its being an apparent communication with a false religion, a seeming approbation of it, and a source of offense and scandal to the faithful, most of whom, hearing of his doing so, and not knowing either the permission he has got, or the intention with which he goes, cannot fail to be greatly offended and scandalized by it. So except in circumstances where all these evils could also be prevented, such permission could not be granted; and though granted, would not, I fear, give him full security before the tribunal of God—especially when it is considered that there seldom or ever can be a necessity for granting such permission, since the teachings of all false religions can easily be known from their books, or from the relation of others, without doing a thing so detrimental to the honour of the true religion, and so obnoxious in the eyes of all pious members of the Church of Christ. From: Chapter VII pgs. 180-181 Q. 9. What are we to think of any doctrine which is contrary to what the Church teaches ? A. As, by what we have seen above, we are undoubtedly assured that Jesus Christ will never permit His Church to fall into error or teach false doctrine, but will continue to preserve the sacred truths which He revealed to her, and put into her mouth, at the beginning, unchanged and uncorrupted to the end of the world; so it is evident that the doctrine which the Church teaches is infallibly true; consequently, any doctrine which is contrary to this must necessarily be a false doctrine; and, if false, it cannot be from God, for God is truth, and cannot deny Himself, by speaking contrary to the truth. Q. 10. From whom, then, does all false doctrine come ? A. Our blessed Saviour says to the Jews who opposed His doctrine, "You are of your father the devil. . . . He abode not in the truth, because truth is not in him; ... for he is a liar, and the father thereof," John, viii. 44. St Paul also assures us that " in the last times some shall depart from the Faith, giving heed to spirits of error, and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy," I Tim. iv. I ; and St James says, " Be not liars against the truth; for this is not wisdom descending from above, but earthly, sensual, devilish," James, iii. 14, 15 THERE is a whole school of thought that sniffs at the idea of encouraging Catholic customs in the home--or anywhere else, for that matter. Customs like the saying of the rosary together, the decorating of an altar in May seem to them too childish for consideration. For them the doctrines of the Church are sufficient, without these extras. And indeed the doctrines of the Church are enough for anyone. They are like straight, unwinding roads that lead into eternity; only on either side of these roads are hedges and ditches and meadows and all sorts of flowers. The ultra-catholic Catholic is not interested in these flowers or fields. Still, such things are to a road what Catholic customs are to the faith; they adorn it, enliven it, they help to keep one on the journey. It is not strange that all sorts of devotional practices have sprung up around Catholicism, sometimes practices that may seem rather trifling until one realizes that customs cannot be worthless that have evolved from the faith of the people through many hundreds of years, sometimes through well over a thousand years. What family is there that does not use certain sayings and phrases that have significance only for those belonging to the circle? What family exists that has no peculiar customs, nicknames, rites, birthday ceremonies that outsiders cannot be expected to appreciate? Can anyone account for the curious rites they observed as children. Those rites are not necessary for family life, but they adorn it and enliven it. And since the Church is not an institution but a family that ranges from God and God's mother and thence to the saints and thence to the souls in purgatory and from them to ourselves, is it not astonishing then that spiritual family rites and customs have sprung up? It is surprising how few people think of this. But the parents who do enter into these spiritual family customs can give their children treasures, whose value they may not realize until eternity. There is nothing forced in this idea: why does the church in her liturgy allot the various days to the honor of her saints, or to events in the lives of Christ and of Mary, if she does not wish us to celebrate them in some way? These feasts of the Church are fixed, but the way they can be celebrated can vary--and does vary tremendously from place to place. With the passing of time the festivities and the customs of the day have also changed, still the essence remains the same. At Christmas, for instance, Jesus is the center of the day, and everywhere in the world Christians will show their love to the new-born Child in their own way, whether this be with carol singing, erecting cribs, hanging Advent wreaths, placing lighted candles in the windows, leaving empty places at the table for the holy Family, or by making it a special festive day for children, their own or other people's. ~ adapted from: "A Candle is Lighted," Imprimatur 1945. ~ It is with these thoughts in mind I will share those traditions that we do to help bring our Faith to life. ADVENT - Holy Mother Church's way of teaching Her children to prepare for the coming of Christ, both on His birthday and on Judgment Day. To this family the Advent and Christmas season is the most wonderful time of the year. We have many traditions that help make the season penitential as well as joyous. My children as well as my husband and I are eagerly awaiting the first Sunday of Advent. It is on this day that we start our traditions. Besides the Advent Wreath with it's prayers and songs, we have another tradition called "Christkindl" (Christ Child). After our Mass prayers are said and our breakfast eaten I bring out a bowl which I pass around. In it are pieces of paper each containing a different name of one of our family members. The papers are neatly rolled up, because the drawing has to be done in great secrecy. Each person then draws a piece of paper from the bowl and looks at it in secret. (This tradition is a little hard when all the children are small because the burden of keeping track of each person's Christkindl falls on the mother) The person whose name one has drawn is now in one's special care. From this day until Christmas, one has to do as many little favors for him or her as one can. One has to provide at least one surprise every single day--but without ever being found out. This creates a wonderful atmosphere of joyful suspense, kindness, and thoughtfulness. Perhaps you will find that somebody has made your bed, done your chores or has informed you, in a disguised handwriting on a holy card, that "a rosary has been said for you today" or a number of sacrifices have been offered up. (Note: I will type up on paper prayers like, 3 Hail Mary's or a decade of the Rosary, etc. and place them in the center of the Advent wreath for the children to use for each other. When it has been found by the Christkindl it is then returned to the wreath to be used again.) The beautiful thing about this particular custom is that the relationship is a reciprocal one. The person whose name I have drawn and who is under my care becomes for me the helpless little Christ Child in the manger; and as I am performing these many little acts of love and consideration for someone in the family I am really doing them for the Infant of Bethlehem, according to the word, "And he that shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me." That is why this particular person turns into "my Christkindl." At the same time I am the "Christkindl" also for the one I am caring for because I want to imitate the Holy Child and render all those little services in the same spirit as He did in that small house of Nazareth, when as a child He served His Mother and His foster father with a similar love and devotion. Many times throughout these weeks can be heard such exclamations as, "I have a wonderful Christkindl this year!" or, "Goodness, I forgot to do something for my Christkindl and it is already suppertime!" It is a delightful custom, which creates much of the true Christmas spirit and ought to be spread far and wide. We have a large manger (just the Infant's bed) that we set up on our domestic altar. It is empty and throughout the Advent season after our evening prayers are said, the children place pieces of hay into it for each good deed they have performed during the day. The more good they have done, the softer Baby Jesus' bed will be come Christmas morning. (Note: We use straw colored yarn cut into pieces instead of the hay that can be reused year after year.) There is still one very important thing to do for Advent. Each member of the family writes a letter to the Baby Jesus mentioning his resolutions for the weeks of Advent and listing the wish for a gift. This "Christkindl Brief" (letter to the Holy Child) is put under the manger on our domestic altar for the Guardian Angels to take to the Christ Child. (I have kept these over the years and love to read them over again.) It cannot be said often enough that during these weeks before Christmas, songs and hymns of Advent should be sung. No Christmas carols! Consciously we should work toward restoring the true character of waiting and longing to these precious weeks before Christmas. Just before Midnight Mass, on December 24th, is the moment to sing for the first time "Silent Night, Holy Night," for this is the song for this very night. It may be repeated afterwards as many times as we please, but it should not be sung before that holy night. This year we will be adding yet another tradition or actually changing the way that we do one. We used to at the beginning of the school year have each child pick a Saint that they have to research, make a costume for, and tell about come All Saints Day. This year we are going to do things a little differently. The following has been taken from: "Around the Year with the Trapp Family" and it is this tradition that we are going to adapt to our own. "One of the old customs is to choose a patron saint for the new year of the Church. The family meets on Saturday evening, and with the help of the missal and a book called "The Martyrology," which lists thousands of saints as they are celebrated throughout the year, they choose as many new saints as there are members of the household. We always choose them according to a special theme. One year, for instance, we had all the different Church Fathers; another year we chose only martyrs; then again, only saints of the new world....During the war we chose one saint of every country at war. The newly chosen names are handed over to the calligrapher of the family. She writes the names of the saints in gothic lettering on little cards. Then she writes the name of every member of the household on an individual card and hands the two sets over to the mother In the afternoon of the first Sunday of Advent, the whole family meets in the living room. The Advent wreath hangs suspended from the ceiling on four red ribbons; the Advent candle stands in the middle of the table or on a little stand on the side. Solemnly the father lights one candle on the Advent wreath, and, for the first time, the big Advent candle. Then he reads the Gospel of the first Sunday of Advent. After this the special song of Advent is intoned for the first time, the ancient "Ye heavens, dew drop from above, and rain ye clouds the Just One...." After our first gathering around the Advent light, and the singing of the first Advent hymn, an air of expectancy spreads over the family group; now comes the moment when the mother goes around with a bowl in which are the little cards with the names of the new saints. Everybody draws a card and puts it in his missal. This saint will be invoked every morning after morning prayer. Everyone is supposed to look up and study the life story of his new friend, and some time during the coming year he will tell the family all about it. As there are so many of us, we come to know about different saints every year. Sometimes this calls for considerable research on the part of the unfortunate one who has drawn St. Eustachius, for instance, or St. Bibiana. But the custom has become very dear to us, and every year it seems as if the family circle were enlarged by all those new brothers and sisters entering in and becoming known and loved by all. Start a tradition or two with your families this Advent season, your children will learn to love and cherish them and it will help bring your Faith to life. May you all have a very fruitful and blessed Advent! Below you will find a printable file with the Advent Wreath Prayers:
"Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, at least you my friends."— JOB 19, 21. In indulgences the eternal mercy of God is mani- fested as a most consoling truth. God gave to His Church the power not only to forgive grievous sins with their eternal punishment in the Sacrament of Penance, but also outside of this Sacrament the power to remit in part or in whole temporal punishment due to sin. But besides this power of the Church, the doctrine of indulgences shows in a special manner the faith in the Communion of Saints in its most touching beauty. This is especially so in regard to the communion of the faithful on earth with the poor souls in purgatory. According to the expression of the Apostle St. Paul the Church is the body of Christ, but He is the head (Eph. 5,). As in the human body all the members are not only united with the head in the most intimate union, but also among themselves, so that the whole body feels what each member feels or suffers, so is it also in the Church of Christ. She is united with her divine Head in a most intimate manner, and so are all the faithful as members of the Church united with Jesus Christ and among them- selves most closely. Therefore, the graces and merits of our Saviour penetrate the whole Church, the triumphant Church in heaven, the militant on earth and the suffering in purgatory, and flow over all the faithful who are united with the Church, just as the blood in the human body flows through all its mem- bers. In like manner the prayers and sacrifices, the merits and good works of the just and the saints flow out in all directions and benefit the faithful on earth by indulgences, and the dead in purgatory by inter cession. Holy Scripture says : " It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead." (2 Macch. 12,46.) If we consequently pray for them and if the Church by her priests can offer the holy sacrifice to God for the poor souls, why should she not also have the power to apply through the intercession of the faithful indulgences to the poor souls? Whoever would deny this truth, would also be obliged to deny that we could not in general pray for the dead and consequently could not offer the holy sacrifice for them. Such a denial contradicts the experience and the practice of the centuries and offends Christian sentiment. Precisely by the doctrine of indulgences the Catholic Church shows herself in her true light, in her true greatness as the one kingdom of God in heaven, on earth and in purgatory. By indulgences the militant Church on earth grasps with one hand the triumphant Church in heaven, with the other the suffering Church in purgatory. From heaven she takes the abundance of the merits of the sufferings of Jesus Christ and the Saints, and applies them by indulgences to the faithful on earth and applies them by intercession through the faithful to the poor souls. Now if this truth is so firmly established that we, by intercession can apply indulgences to the poor souls on account of our communion with them, how great is our duty, my beloved, to do so as often as possible. Just as the Saints in heaven joyfully apply to us the abundance of their penitential works, in like manner we should compassionately come to the assistance of the poor souls, in order that God may lessen their sufferings, shorten or entirely remit them. Therefore I will speak to-day of the intercession for the poor souls and of our duty to assist them by indulgences in order that you may see indulgences in a new and touching light. O Jesus, assist me with Thy grace. 1. The real object of the holy Catholic Church is the intimate union of the faithful with God. Therefore all the faithful have a communion among themselves. They enter into this communion by baptism and as its indelible mark lasts for eternity, so this communion continues in eternity for all who obtain eternal life. We live, it is true, still in this visible world, which is the battlefield of the Church, but we are nevertheless inseparably united with the blessed in heaven and with the poor souls in purgatory. Year after year the trium- phant Church in heaven receives new armies of holy Christians from earth and from purgatory. And the number of its blessed adherents exceeds by far the number of the faithful on earth. And who knows how many of our friends, acquaintances, brothers and sisters, parents and ancestors are in the number of the Blessed with Jesus in His triumphant Church ? And in the same manner, my beloved, year after year the suffering Church in purgatory receives a great number of Christians who died in the state of grace, but still have much to atone for before they will be worthy to join the triumphant Church in heaven. And in fact the suffering Church also exceeds in extent and in the number of the poor souls by far the militant Church on earth with its millions of faithful. The suffering Church in purgatory is that holy kingdom of grief but also of sinlessness where the poor souls suffer, indeed, suffer severely, but in heavenly patience and with that marvelous silence which adores the Justice of God. They are holy souls in the state of grace who can sin no more ; they are the chosen of the Lord, the suffering sacrifice, who have submitted to the will of God, but will be tormented no more by the fear of sin nor doubt of their early coming bliss. Even the most bitter suffering of the poor souls is accompanied with the great est peace, which this world cannot conceive. No com plaints, no murmurings, no impatience overshadows this holy place, for they all persevere faithfully until their painful time of penance is past and the angel of God takes them and leads them into the land of their most ardent longing, into the kingdom of the blessed. Yes, my beloved in Christ, if the quiet meek suffer ing even on earth is something most estimable and touching what a sight must the suffering Church in purgatory offer, this marvelous likeness to the suffering Saviour on the cross and of the sorrowful Mother of God? Therefore you will clearly understand that the poor souls remain in the most intimate union with Jesus Christ, with the saints in heaven and with us Catholic faithful on earth. Jesus Christ is the Head of all in the militant, suffering and triumphant Church, which is only one holy Church in heaven, on earth and in purgatory. But yet let us not deceive ourselves ! The pains of the poor souls are great and terrible, and last long, according to the number of their sins and the great or little penance which they have performed on earth for them. No tongue can adequately describe this suffering, and no intellect can grasp it, for we know that they are almost equal to the pains in hell, but yet with this two fold difference that these pains are not eternal and that the poor souls are not tormented by despair. There fore their greatest pain is their separation from God and His bliss. The poor souls feel themselves power fully drawn to God and this power becomes the stronger the longer the separation lasts. But what makes the suffering souls, truly poor souls, is their boundless helplessness. Neither the angels nor the saints in heaven can help them or make intercession for them, much less can the poor souls help themselves or one another. They can acquire no merits, make no satisfaction, receive no sacraments, gain no indulgences; no consoler stands by them and no charitable Samaritan relieves their pains. They can only suffer and do penance. They are a thousand times more helpless than a helpless sick person, than a paralytic or the little child, and present in their helplessness a wonderful picture of our Divine Saviour in His Passion on the cross. Their helplessness becomes the more awful, the more these poor souls are ungratefully abandoned and forgotten by their own relatives, friends or children. 2. Yes, my beloved in Christ, I repeat again, the helplessness of the poor souls in their unspeakable pains becomes the more terrible the more they are abandoned and forgotten by their relatives. If the angels and saints cannot help them, God in His adorable mercy has nevertheless imposed upon us Catholic faithful on earth the duty to help the poor souls. Therefore God has given us such a glorious power over the dead that their lot almost seems to depend more on us than upon heaven. We can sweeten the sufferings of the poor souls; we can lessen and shorten them, if we pray for them, have the holy sacrifice offered up for them, and especially if we gain indulgences for them. We can consequently apply to them the abundance of the means of grace which are at our command on earth and we can offer for them the merits of Jesus and the Saints, for they are in communion with us. Just as the holy martyrs and confessors formerly interceded for penitent Christians who had been excluded from the communion of the Church and obtained for them the remission of their penance, so should we Catholic faithful intercede for the poor souls who are still excluded from the triumphant Church in heaven and shorten their time of penance. And this we can do in addition to praying for them and offering up the holy sacrifice and communion for them, especially by gaining indulgences for them. Hear how a mysterious whispering rises from grave to grave, and numberless voices cry out from purgatory: "Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, at least you my friends, for the hand of the Lord hath touched me." These are the voices of the poor souls who cry to us for mercy, and our mercy is their one hope of help and a quick redemption from their pains. Redeem souls, my beloved in Christ, redeem souls from purgatory, which are precious in the eyes of God. Even if they are now victims to His Justice, nevertheless His love and His pleasure rests upon them. 3. Oh, what a thought, to be able to save souls, holy, precious souls, to redeem them from pain and before the end of the time allotted to their painful penance to lead them before the throne of God and into the circle of the Blessed! What a consoling thought for zealous Christians, thereby to glorify God and to rejoice the heart of our Divine Saviour by leading souls sooner to His Beatific Vision! Therefore the Catholic Church daily prays in holy Mass for the poor souls and grants to her faithful indulgences which can be applied to the Holy Souls. The Catholic Christian has nothing else to do than to faithfully fulfill the conditions of an indulgence, therefore to worthily receive the Sacraments and to perform the indulgenced prayers. If he has worthily done this he can offer to God the plenary or the partial indulgence for the poor souls. Why, are there not many, who once loved us on earth, nourished, instructed and suffered for or by us as we may hope now they are on the way to bliss, therefore in purgatory? Parents, brothers, sisters, relatives, friends, teachers, benefactors, priests? Oh, behold, how they in the midst of their sufferings raise their hands to you and beseechingly say: "Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, at least you my friends." Lay your hand on your heart, my beloved, and let each one ask of himself : Is there a single soul in purgatory on my account? Is there no father, no mother, no brother, no sister, no friend, is there no soul there who must suffer grievously for my sake? who sinned on my account, whom I enticed, scandalized or induced to sin ? Who can, who will have the courage to answer: Not a single soul suffers on my ac count? Therefore, Christian justice demands that we help them as much as possible, confidently gain indulgences for them. Oh, how beseechingly do many parents look to their children on earth, how many brothers, sisters, relatives or friends look to those who belong to them and cry out: "have mercy on us at least you our friends." And if they do not receive help from those who owe it most to them, oh, how bitter is this cold indifference and heartless injustice ! 4. In order that we may help the poor souls, God in His adorable mercy has given to us a power which even the angels and saints in heaven do not possess. We, and we alone can intercede for the poor souls, we can have the holy sacrifice offered for them, yes, we can gain indulgences for them. Therefore there are few devotions, which are so pleasing to God, as the devotion for the poor souls. There are few good works by which we can show such service and such honor to God as to redeem the poor souls from their pains and to help them on their way to eternal bliss. Behold here the grateful Christian who, as it were, repays the mercy which God grants to him day by day. Like our Divine Saviour, who applies to us daily in the holy sacrifice of the Mass His merits, His Passion and Blood, and like the saints who interceded for us and allowed us to share in their penitential works on earth, so also good Catholic faithful remember in love and mercy the poor souls and apply to them by indulgences the Church's treasure of grace. How such love pleases God our heavenly Father! He has, as it were, committed to us the care of the poor souls, in order that we may make satisfaction to His justice for them by gaining indulgences. We should make it possible for His mercy to admit them before their time to the Beatific Vision. Oh, how very much our Divine Saviour will be pleased, if we lead these souls to Him in His glory ! What a service of love we render the Holy Ghost as soon as we re deem the poor souls from their suffering and lead them, the brides of His grace, to the ardent embrace of His love! How happy does Mary the Mother of Mercy feel when we strive to requite her love and intercession for us by leading the poor souls to her motherly heart, in freeing them from suffering in purgatory! It brings joy to the Angels of God, and the saints in heaven rejoice as often as a poor soul is freed from purgatory and enters into the heavenly Jerusalem before the throne of the Most Holy Trinity and into the blessed number of the heavenly hosts. 5. Oh, how great is the Catholic Christian in this power over the poor souls and how like to our Divine Saviour he becomes in its exercise! Can you show, my friends, your love, your gratitude and your faith better than when you remember the poor souls and return the grace and the mercy of Jesus to you with mercy? Can you become more like the Angels and Saints in heaven who lovingly look down and share in your joys and sufferings than when you, like an angel full of compassion, look down into the silent, sinless kingdom of the poor souls and pour out upon them the merits of Jesus and His Saints! Our Divine Saviour says: "Make unto you friends that they may receive you into everlasting dwellings." (Luke 1 6, 9.) The poor souls whom we free from their suffering are these friends, who richly requite us before the throne of God by their intercession for what we have done to them. How glorious, therefore, is the Catholic doctrine of indulgences, how touching the love which it announces! It is love that animates the blessed souls towards us, and it is love that urges the Christians to help the poor souls. We should therefore never miss an opportunity when we can gain indulgences for our selves and for the dead, in order that we may as soon as possible after our Christian life on earth enter into the eternal Vision of God and into the blessed communion of the Saints. Amen. Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church, Vol. III Imprimatur 1913 THE INTERCESSION OF THE SAINTS "In this present time let your abundance supply their want, that their abundance also may supply your want, that there may be an equality."— -2 COR. 8, 14. One of the most glorious articles of our faith is the Communion of Saints. The Catholic Christians remain truly united among themselves whether they are in heaven, on earth or in purgatory. This communion is not a communion of bodies but of souls, which confines their love, their desires and their compassion for their brethren to no place, and therefore they mutually remember each other throughout all space and time and continue their love and compassion towards each other forever. Every day Catholic Christians depart from this life, but yet in such a way that they are not completely and forever separated from us, in so far as they go into eternity in the grace of God. And as our Divine Saviour is the head of all Christians in heaven, on earth and in purgatory, so the Catholic Church always remains by the Communion of Saints in heaven as triumphant, in purgatory as suffering, and on earth as the militant Church. The more the blessed in heaven are united with Jesus, the greater is their love towards us, their brethren on earth, in order that we may share in the same happiness. The more the poor souls in purgatory suffer, the stronger is their desire for bliss, and the greater their wish that we Christians on earth may lessen their pains through our prayers and zealously make use of the means of grace of holy Church for ourselves and for them. And if the poor souls are unable to help themselves by prayer to God, they the more zealously pray God for us, the more we help them. Yes, marvelous is this Communion of Saints. The saints in heaven who behold God are holy; we all, my friends, have been sanctified in Baptism and should become still holier by the Sacraments; and the poor souls are holy, for although they still suffer and do penance, they are nevertheless on the way to their bliss. Hence St. Paul says so beautifully and truly speaking of the Communion of Saints, that the abundance of the saints in heaven supply our want that there may be an equality. And they do it, since the abundance of their merits and sufferings on earth and intercession in heaven come to our aid, while we again on earth effectively help the poor souls and can apply the abundance of our means of grace to them. This takes place especially by indulgences. Therefore I shall speak today on the intercession of the saints and show how their abundance of merits are applied to us through indulgences. O Jesus, assist me with Thy grace. I. The Apostle St. Paul imposed on a public sinner of the Christian congregation at Corinth which he the Apostle -- by his indefatigable zeal and preaching the Gospel had established, a severe and public penance. He dismissed him from the communion of the faithful " with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ," and excluded him from participation in divine service, in the holy sacrifice and the holy sacraments, "in order that he might be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ," as the holy Apostle expresses himself in his epistle to the faithful at Corinth. After the example of this great Apostle, and by virtue of the power confided to her by the Saviour, Holy Church has also imposed similar and long penances upon public sinners. And after the example of that sinful Christian of Corinth, and other Christians who had the misfortune to fall into public and grievous sins, have with the same willingness, yes, mostly of their free will, submitted to such penances in order that they also " would be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." St. Paul later remitted to this sinner the remainder of the penance and that, too, as he himself writes in his second epistle to the Corinthians : " For what I have pardoned I have done it for your sakes in the person of Christ." (2 Cor. 2, 10.) The holy Apostle therefore grants to this sinner an indulgence. But from his own words we learn two important truths in reference to indulgences: the first is that St. Paul, and consequently the other Apostles and in general the Church, has the power to grant indulgences in the person of Christ. Secondly, St. Paul made use of this power on account of the intercession, the prayers and merits of the faithful at Corinth, " for your sakes." Indulgences show forth in the most resplendent manner the Communion of Saints and intercession for fallen Christians. For, where one member of the body of Christ, namely of the Holy Church, rejoices, there rejoice also the other members, the other holy Christians ; but where one member suffers, there suffer also the other members with him. His misery of soul, his unhappiness to have fallen so low goes to their hearts. Therefore they offer for his welfare their prayers, the holy sacrifice, the reception of the sacra ments and their merits. And just as God for the sake of the faithful grants to many sinners the grace of conversion so also the Church for their sake grants to the contrite, but still penitential sinners, pardon of their penance, that is an indulgence. Just as Jesus Christ in the hour of His death besought God to have mercy on us poor sinners, and in order to be heard, applied his merits to us, so those holy Christians at Corinth turned their compassionate eyes towards their fallen brother and besought the Apostle to pardon him. This constantly takes place in the Church of God. The holy Martyrs who fearlessly professed the Christian faith before the courts of the heathens, amidst the greatest pains on the rack and were thrown into prison, joyfully beheld a bloody death — the Martyrs, who on account of their courageous profession, still living in prison, the objects of the joy of the Church, were the admiration and honor of the faithful, these holy Martyrs thought constantly of the suffering of their fallen brethren and made intercession for them. If in spite of their wounds they were still able to write, they wrote the names of the penitents whom they made intercession for, which are called libella or the books of the martyrs; if they could not write they simply gave the names of their proteges to the deacons, who visited the martyrs in prison, administered to them holy communion, bound up their wounds or brought them food, which privilege they bought from the heathen jailers. The deacons brought these written or verbal recommendations to the Bishop, and the Bishop, for the sake of the martyrs, shortened the penitent's time of penance. He granted therefore after the example of the Apostles an indulgence. The glorious doctrine of the Communion of Saints, and consequently of the faithful on earth consists especially in this that the merits and good works and prayers are of benefit to one another. Therefore we behold how whole congregations interceded for those who had fallen on account of the fear of martyrdom, or who had denied the faith, if they saw that they were really contrite. We see how saints in prison and on the rack, by the glory and the constancy of their faith, in the greatest sufferings encouraged the faithful and caused public sinners to return to the faith and like the dying Saviour in compassionate love besought the Church to forgive them. How should in that solemn moment, when by the last struggle of the martyrs our Divine Saviour was glorified before the world, the Church seals with a new glory her truths, when the martyrs are crowned with an eternal crown and the faithful celebrate with joy the victory of their brethren — how should in that solemn moment any member of our holy Church re main excluded from the common joy and continue in sadness? The very sight of the courageous confessors and martyrs was pain enough for the penitents that they had fallen so deeply by their sins. Therefore they should participate in this common joy, and for the sake of the martyrs and their intercession they were received again into the communion of the faithful and therefore granted an indulgence of the rest of their penance. Here the words of the Apostle are applicable: "That their abundance supply your wants that there may be an equality." An indulgence is consequently the forgiveness of ecclesiastical penance on account of the intercession and the merits of the saints and especially of Christ, and God pardons just as much of the temporal punishments in purgatory as we would have atoned for if we had really performed this penance. In indulgences we learn, my beloved, at the same time what a glorious consciousness once penetrated the Christians, how intimately they were united to the Christian community and were of one heart and one soul, Here we see that Christian morality and purity was the common spirit, the disapproval of vice and disobedience towards God and the Church was general, sorrow for sin was a common grief, love and intercession for the penitents in public prayer during divine service and the holy sacrifice of the Mass was performed by the common bond of charity. Yes, indulgence which the ignorant and unbelieving, puffed up with a miserable pride, despise and with vulgar stupidity ridicule — indulgence is one of the most beautiful and consoling doctrines of the Catholic Church. 3. Is intercession made no more for the sinner and the fallen? Most certainly, but in a different way. We have in the present day no martyrs and no public penances; ecclesiastical penances are supplemented by indulgences. Therefore, indulgence teaches us again that neither God nor Holy Church has joy in punishment, and that punishment is not inflicted in order to injure, but in order to make satisfaction to the divine Justice, in order — as the Apostle says — that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord. If therefore this satisfaction to the divine Justice can be made in an other and a milder way, then the temporal punishment is all taken away. This is done by indulgences. The Church, my beloved, wishes to lead us to God by indulgences for our justification as she formerly did by penance. She relies on the free and willing zeal of the faithful and admonishes them to works of charity. She announces to them who wish to sanctify them selves and fulfill the conditions of indulgences, forgiveness of ecclesiastical penance on earth and temporal punishment in purgatory. By sincere zeal to gain indulgences reverence for the justice of God, which punishes the least sin, is always manifested. Who therefore does not strive with his voluntary penance to obtain indulgences exposes himself on the day of the Lord and will more deeply feel the penance of purgatory, the less he strove to make satisfaction to divine justice on earth. Those Christians who are not satisfied with only contritely confessing their sins, but strive earnestly to do penance for them and as often as possible to obtain indulgences for them, obtain the intercession and the merits of the martyrs and confessors, the intercession and merits of the whole Church and of all holy people, the same as the penitents did in the first ages of the Church. Moreover, they share in the public prayers for sinners and penitents, the holy sacrifice, the good works, the suffering and persecution of the just. The catechism teaches us that the prayers, the merits and the good works of all the faithful are of benefit to all. This continually takes place on earth and will until the end of the world, but especially by indulgences. The Saints will also make intercession for us. They give to us, when we strive to attain an indulgence, the abundance of their satisfying merits in order that there may be an equality. But the Saints grant to us not only their superfluous merits in indulgences as a charitable rich man would give of his surplus fortune in alms to the poor, but they intercede also for us at the throne of mercy. Once the holy martyrs and the faithful in the early Church called upon the Church for compassion and mercy to the fallen and the penitent, in order that they would, after the forgiveness of their penance, the sooner be received into the communion of the faithful and allowed to attend divine service and share in all the rights of the worthy Christian. At present we see in spirit the same confessors, martyrs and all the saints imploring for us the divine mercy at the throne of God in order that with the help of indulgences and the merits of the saints we may the sooner be permitted to share with them the celebration of the eternal Sunday and to join in the hymn of praise of the heavenly hosts around the throne of the immaculate Lamb. The holy longing of the Blessed is that we may not be for long years excluded from the doors of heaven and obliged to go the hard way of penance and pain in the fires of purgatory. 4. Oh, that you would all learn to understand rightly the glorious doctrine of indulgence and earnestly and zealously strive whenever possible to gain an indulgence! Then the saints in heaven would look down upon you with greater love when they would see that their penance on earth, their suffering and abundant merits are applied by the Church to you by indulgence. Yes, this application is the reason that the saints in heaven love you with a twofold and a threefold love, and always continue to be your protectors in the hard struggle for life on earth against the devil and sin, and your zealous intercessors at the throne of God until you have happily, with their help, escaped the deluge of sin on earth and have arrived at the portals of heavenly bliss. How consoling and mysterious, my beloved, appears indulgence to us in the glory of its truth, and if considered in that love, which, as an out pouring of the divine love of our Saviour, also penetrated the saints. Oh, if you could behold the hearts of those great saints who were inflamed with divine love, who passed their holy angelic pure lives in continuous self-denial, penance and suffering, and freely, just as our Divine Saviour, offered themselves to the divine Justice for the sins of their Christian brethren, so that they gained not only for themselves celestial glory but atoned for the punishments of others. Yes, at this sight you would be seized with the desire to strive to become good children of our holy Mother, the Church, and to make use of her treasure of grace by gaining indulgences. You would even be inflamed with the fire of Christian charity to come to the help of your suffering brethren in Christ as much as possible by prayers and good works, in order to do for them what the saints in heaven have done for you. 5. There remains, my beloved, another glorious truth, a rich source of consolation in suffering in regard to indulgences which I will communicate to you. From what you have already heard, have you not experienced the amiable beauty of this doctrine? Yes, truly, enlightened by this article of faith we learn first to appreciate the innocence and the suffering, the prayers and the penances of the just Christians in their entire supernatural greatness. They are precious in the sight of God, so that they have obtained not only for the saints an eternal bliss but also have atoned for the temporal punishment of their neighbors. What a consolation for all who suffer innocently! What a joy for holy Christians who experience sufferings, trials and tribulations! Who will still accuse God of in justice, who will continue to blaspheme Him? You sinners, when you contemptuously speak of the divine Justice and say: "I sinned yesterday, and what happened to me? I will sin today, and nothing will happen to me." You sinners, who trample on the commandments of God and of the Church and go still unpunished and even joyfully and blessed with temporal prosperity continue to live — whom have you to thank for this? Indulgences, the good works, the prayers and sufferings of holy Christians. You purse-proud people, you frivolous Christians, who so often laugh and scoff at the piety of your servants ; whom you often torment on account of their faith and devotion — whom have you often to thank if the judgment of God has not overtaken you, whom else but the piety and suffering innocence of Christian souls? They pray for you. You parents, who at the sick-bed of your little innocent children accuse God of cruelty — indulgence places for you the sick-bed of your child as an altar of atonement, the suffering innocence as a sacrifice of atonement for your sakes and for your sins. This sacrifice not infrequently turns aside the punishment from the guilty head of the parents and obtains for them mercy and grace. May you all therefore be filled with reverence for this article of faith of the Catholic Church, which has a beauty and a truth which the miserable scoffers never dreamed of. May you strive by gaining indulgences to share in the merits of the saints in order that divine Justice may be appeased and that you may be spared in time and eternity. Amen. Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church, Vol. III Imprimatur 1913 WE are so near the Feast of All Saints and the commemoration of all the faithful departed All Souls day- that we may well let our affectionate thoughts follow after our brethren who have gone before us and sleep in the peace of Christ. There is scarcely one of us, dear brethren, who has not been familiar from childhood with the article of the Apostles Creed, "I believe in the communion of saints"; and there are few, if any, who have not derived consolation from this dogma of our faith, teaching, as it does, that we are not entirely cut off from those who have gone before us, but form with them one great family, of which the head is Christ and the members the souls of the just, whether in heaven or in purgatory, or still in the flesh. But if this truth of holy religion brings consolation, it brings also the duty of praying for our brethren who are passing through the cleansing fires of purgatory; who, because of sin or the debt due for sin, cannot enter their eternal home until they have repaid the last farthing. They can do nothing for themselves their day of meriting is past; they look to us who are their friends to help them. While they were with us they were very dear to us bound to us by ties of blood or friendship. Let us do our duty to them now; let us, by our good works in their behalf, show how much we love them; let us show that our affection for them was not selfish nor pretended, but so real and strong and lasting that death has but strengthened it and brought it to its fulness. What one of us but has his daily task his allotted work? Yet as each day brings its own burdens, so each day is full of opportunities of gaining indulgence for the souls in purgatory. The many inconveniences we all of us are called upon to suffer, the many sacrifices of comfort and of pleasure we make, the disappointments we meet with, the fatigues we bear all these may be made sources of refreshment to our friends beyond the grave. If in the morning we would but offer to God all we shall do and suffer during the day for his honor and glory, and for the relief of the departed, oh ! how soon would the angels welcome them to their true country, and how many advocates we should have before the throne of God! But if so much can be done without any particular effort on our part, what shall we say of the efficacy of the special prayers we recite for them and the Masses we have offered for their repose ! How shall we tell of their gratitude, of their unceasing supplications for us! We lose nothing, dear brethren, by praying for them; be assured we are rather the gainers, for not only do they pray for us, but more our charity towards them deepens in our souls our love for God, and makes us thirst the more after virtue and holiness, and wins for us a higher place in heaven and a brighter crown of everlasting glory. Let us be generous, then; let us storm heaven with our prayers for the souls in purgatory, and we shall find rest for ourselves as well as for them. Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Faith, Imprimatur 1913 "Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called. Which some promising, have erred concern-
ing the faith."—I Tim. vi, 20. Our Divine Saviour frequently compares His Church to a field and Himself to the sower who went out to sow good seed. He has indeed cultivated this field in the bloody sweat of His brow and sown the seed of His divine doctrine and of His grace. His labors were well repaid by the splendid harvest which He reaped in the faith of the first Christians, and in the holiness of the martyrs, confessors and virgins. But "his enemy came and oversowed cockle among the wheat and went his way" (St. Matt. xiii, 25). The cockle is not only sin, but also error. This cockle will remain in the field of God, the Church, until the end of time. It is, therefore, the height of injustice to doubt the truth and sanctity of the Catholic Church because, forsooth, a few of her children, and even some of her priests and bishops, have been guilty of heresy or of crime. For the very reason that the Catholic Church is God's field, the wheat and the tares must grow side by side, until the time of the harvest, the day of general judgment comes. But in spite of the fact that the cockle and the wheat grow in the same field, the Church retains her truth and holiness. Her doctrines and sacraments sow only wheat; the enemy sows the cockle. Our Divine Saviour Himself tells us that the cockle is spared until the time of the harvest only because of the wheat. Because of the good Christian, God spares the sinner; because of the true believer, He spares the infidel and the heretic. God waits patiently until they be converted, or until they die, when He will reward them according to their deeds. The wheat is, therefore, the greatest benefactor of the cockle. It is on account of His faithful followers that God tolerates scoffers, sinners, heretics and infidels. The godless should, therefore, thank God on their knees that there are still so many faithful on earth. However, still another truth makes itself manifest in this parable of the wheat and the tares in the field of God. Just as the sower cannot tolerate the cockle in his field, so the Church cannot tolerate the cockle, namely sin and falsehood. Her zeal for the truth and for the salvation of souls compels her to be intolerant of error under what guise soever it may appear, but for the sinner and the erring she is merciful and compassionate, and she prays for them. We must never forget that weeds will always be weeds and wheat always wheat. Weeds can never become wheat, unbelief can never be placed on the same footing with faith, sin and crime can never claim equal rights with Christian virtue, and for all of them the day of the harvest will come, when the cockle will be cast into the fire and the wheat will be gathered into the granary of heaven. I will endeavor to show you today what is really meant by religious intolerance. O Jesus, assist us with Thy grace! 1. We frequently hear in our day the mass of unthinking men, especially her enemies, accuse the Catholic Church of intolerance against all those who profess a belief different from her own. What do we mean by intolerance? We can have a true and a false conception of its meaning. Our enemies give it the false interpretation; we will try to explain its true meaning. In its true conception, my dearly beloved, religious intolerance is the solemn avowal that God alone can give mankind the true religion and reveal those heavenly truths which are absolutely necessary for eternal salvation. Every child can understand this. Hence religious intolerance condemns every religion and doctrine that does not come from God, that has its origin in the vagaries of the human mind, and must by that very fact be false and detrimental to the salvation of souls. In this meaning God Himself must be intolerant, if we may so express ourselves. He cannot tolerate that man change the eternal truths and precepts to suit his fancy, or that he adore strange gods. God in His infinite love and mercy can never reward eternally those men who willfully transgress His divine law, who mutilate His divine truths, or who completely throw off the allegiance they owe Him. On the contrary His infinite justice demands that He inflict everlasting punishment on them. If God did not do so, He would thereby admit that He is not the only true God, that His commandments are not necessary and that His truths are not required to obtain eternal life. Who will dare utter such blasphemy? Therefore, even on the part of God, there must be a necessary and essential intolerance. But even man is intolerant, and he cannot be otherwise without surrendering the rights that belong to him by nature or condition. No ruler can allow his subjects to alter or abrogate his laws at pleasure, nor can he permit them to decide for themselves whether they will obey the laws of the land or not. Whither would such a state of affairs lead us? To the ultimate overthrow of every duly constituted authority, and to boundless license. Public order and the security of life and property demand that all those responsible for the enforcement of the law be intolerant, that is, punish all law-breakers and disturbers of the peace. No father can allow his children to gainsay his commands, ridicule his admonitions, or repudiate their obligations. He must be intolerant in all these matters. No teacher can permit his pupils to maintain the opposite of what he has taught them, or to uphold their personal opinions as the only correct ones. No good could result from such a method, and so the teacher also is obliged to be intolerant. The same condition prevails between master and ap-which God raises before the world against religious indifference and infidelity. The cross tells us that God abhors every religion which He has not revealed to man, and that the infinite justice of God will punish all those who refuse to accept the grace and the doc-trine of the divine Redeemer, or who falsify them according to the caprices and the desires of their hearts. God is obliged to hate and punish sin and religious error, because He is infinite holiness and eternal truth. If God were indifferent to them He would thereby deny His own essence and being. If it be true that it is a matter of little consequence whether we possess the true faith and the true religion or not, why then did God not spare His only begotten Son, but give Him up to the ignominious death of the cross? Again, who can doubt the infinite love, and mercy of Jesus toward all men, but especially sinners and the erring? And yet how intolerant Our Divine Saviour was of every deliberate error and contradiction in matters of revealed truth. How often and emphatically He pronounced judgment against all those who will not believe. "He who does not believe is already judged." "If he will not hear the Church let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican." St. John, the disciple of love, writes : " Whosoever revolteth and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. . . .If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house, nor say to him, God speed you" (II St. John i, 9). But he also gives the reason for this. "He that believeth not the Son, maketh him a liar, because he believeth not in the testimony which God hath testified of His Son" (1 St. John v, 10). 3. And in fact, my dearly beloved, what other purpose did the Saviour have in view when He came into the world, than that of raising the human race out of the pit of infidelity and idolatry into which it had fallen, by means of the truths which He brought from heaven, and leading it back to God and salvation? If it were a matter of such complete indifference to what religion or religious error we give allegiance, is it not true that the Incarnation of Christ and His public ministry would be entirely superfluous? But who will dare to make so blasphemous an assertion? Since without Jesus there can be no truth, no eternal life, it follows that Our Divine Saviour was obliged to condemn openly every teaching that did not proceed from Him and, was for that very reason dangerous to the salvation of souls. Today, as always, He must be intolerant of every false religion that can only lead to perdition. For this alone "is eternal life," says Our Divine Saviour, "that they know Thee the only true God and Him thou hast sent, Jesus Christ." To be indifferent to religious error and to be tolerant of every false doctrine is equivalent to a denial of the veracity of God and of His revelation. The Church then, cannot permit false teachings to arise; she must be intolerant. Just as God hates and punishes falsehood, so must the Church combat and condemn heresy, because she is the kingdom of truth. If she did not do so, or was lax in the accomplishment of this plain duty, she could no longer be the kingdom of God and of redemption on earth. She would be untrue to her vocation and fail to attain the purpose for which she was instituted, that is, to be the teacher of the human race, and she would thus accomplish her own annihilation. Indeed, if she also were indifferent, if she also asserted the equality of truth and falsehood, of revelation and heresy, if she also maintained that it mattered little whether one were Catholic or Protestant, Turk or Jew, she would be the first to deny the necessity of Redemption and of the true faith and likewise of the true Church. Can anyone imagine for a moment that the Church could ever subscribe to a doctrine so monstrous and at the same time so suicidal to herself ? She is, therefore, obliged by the very nature of things, and in justice to the Redeemer and to herself, to be intolerant of error. 4. There are two further reasons why God Himself, Our Lord and Saviour, and, consequently, the Church must necessarily exercise this true intolerance, namely, the salvation of souls and the removal of temporal disturbance and evils. As a matter of fact, what would become of mankind if proud or unbelieving individuals might with impunity transform the religion of Christ, curtail His doctrines or abolish His commandments? The Church cannot tolerate so reprehensible a course without betraying the sacred trust reposed in her by Jesus Christ, Grace and eternal life depend on the integrity of the faith, and therefore she could not tolerate any tampering with it without committing the most frightful treason against humanity and the salvation of souls. What would become of the unity of Catholic faith, of the sacraments, of divine worship, whither would Christianity have drifted if the Church had not constantly combated and condemned heresy? Hundreds of heresiarchs have sprung up in the course of nineteen centuries. Each one attacked a different dogma of the Church, each one asserted that his position was the correct one, each one arrogated to himself the right to teach the Church, the pillar and the ground of truth. Is, then, the Church to yield and be tolerant of heresy and thus betray Jesus Christ and the souls she was instituted to save? Any child can see that such a thing is radically impossible. The Church is obliged to be intolerant of error. Teachers of heresy, at the expense of their fellowmen, seek only to satisfy their pride, ambition, and passions, and to sow divisions, discord and hatred. I do not speak here of those who have been led into error, of those who without any fault of theirs have been born and reared in heresy. They are deserving of our compassion, our love and our prayers. But I speak of those who knowingly and deliberately disseminate false doctrines. Such as these know perfectly well where they obtain the seed that they sow in the field of the Church. They know well that the doctrine which they try to spread by craft and violence is naught else than but the fabric of their own brain. They know that they are in conflict with the faith of the Catholic Church. They know that they are assailing Our Divine Saviour in His commandment and in His person—in His command to hear the Church, and in His person that has promised to abide forever in His Church. Do you think, my dearly beloved, that it is proper for the Church to say nothing about these presumptuous practices of the teachers of error? Should she quietly abandon the Catholic faithful to temptation and thereby expose them to the danger of eternal perdition? Who will expect the Church to be so recreant to her duty? In such a case she would cease to be the true Church of Christ, she would no longer be the mother of the faithful, she would degrade herself to the level of her betrayers. In good sooth, the Church can never do this! Hence, as a warning to her children, she must exclude all heretical and godless men from her pale, she must condemn heresy. A father must exclude from the bosom of his family every person, every book that threatens to corrupt the morals of those who are entrusted to his care; the teacher must eradicate every evil influence from the midst of his pupils; a prince, a ruler must banish from among his people every element of disorder. This must be done lest misfortune and ruin overtake the family, the school, or the nation. So must the Church drive out heretics from among her children. She owes it to the Saviour, she owes it to herself, and, most of all, she owes it to the faithful, so that on the one hand they may recognize the false doctrine and, on the other, they may not lose their souls. 5. There is a still more cogent reason why the Church should excommunicate heretics. The experience of centuries teaches us that heretics have always and everywhere been the cause of terrible discord, of revolt, of persecutions against Catholics and of bloody wars. It has been thus from the time of Arius in the third century down to the days of Luther, who sowed the seeds of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, with all its attendant horror and ruin. No country where heresy has gained a foothold has ever remained at peace; it has either been rent asunder or has gone completely to ruin. Poland, Germany, France, Austria are sad examples of this. Protestant countries in our day furnish an apt illustration of the bitterness with which the Church is hated and of how little justice and fair play a Catholic may expect when his religious convictions come into conflict with the prejudices of his fellow citizens. Is then, my dearly beloved, the Catholic Church,that has lived through nineteen centuries with all their happenings and knows the heart of man only too well, is she to look quietly on while heresies arise, and extend to them the tolerant hand of welcome? She cannot and must not do so, because of the salvation, the tranquillity, the welfare of the nations. She must be as uncompromising towards error as the father is towards the seducers of his children, or the ruler towards the rebels who incite his people to revolution. Let the enemies of the Catholic Church accuse her of intolerance as much as they please. This uncompromising attitude of the Church toward the seducers of her children shows a large measure of wisdom, justice and mercy. She thus proves her right to the title of true kingdom of Jesus Christ, for her divine Founder can tolerate no revolt against His teaching and His commandments. The Church cannot give up the most precious heritage of Jesus Christ for the sake of a few proud or vicious men. Love as well as truth, obliges her to proclaim to all that the Catholic faith is the only true faith, and that he who lays a sacrilegious hand upon it attacks eternal truth itself, and that for him there is no hope of salvation unless he do penance and return to the faith. She is the Church of the martyrs, the Church of the holy Fathers, of the confessors and virgins and of all the saints. She has never to the present day hesitated to suffer and to shed her blood for the sake of her faith. She cannot, therefore, hesitate to defend the faith against the teachers of error, and declare them the enemies of her children, yea, even of the human race, and cast them out of her midst. And we who are anxious to obtain everlasting life must be intolerant of ourselves, of our sins and shortcomings, we must cast them off, weep over them and flee from them. The deposit of faith has been kept intact in the Church until the present day because she has never entered into compromise with error. We too can maintain ourselves in grace, and in the faith by waging a relentless war against sin and falsehood, and thus we shall live to see the happy day when God Himself will forever separate the cockle from the wheat, and in recompense for our sturdy resistance against error and sin, will receive us into the realms of everlasting bliss. Amen. The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church, Vol. I, Imprimatur 1911 "Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." St. Matt. v, 10.
Nothing better demonstrates the truth of the Catholic Church than the constant persecution to which a godless world subjects her. She has inherited in all its fullness the hatred which Jew and Gentile, Pharisee and Herodian, not only bore in their hearts but openly manifested against her Divine Saviour. The Redeemer foretold that His Apostles, His servants, His faithful, and His Church would fare no better than He Himself : "If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you." And in the course of the ages this prophecy has been amply fulfilled, even before our very eyes. The Church as a faithful bride patiently shares the fate of her Lord. She too is crowned with thorns; she too is nailed to the cross; she too is bedewed with the blood of her martyrs. But just as the Redeemer is wonderful and adorable in His bitter passion and death, so the true Church shows in her bloody persecutions, in the countless numbers of her martyrs, a greatness, a truth, a beauty, a divinity, which surpasses a thousandfold all the other splendid efforts which she employs for the conversion of the world. Although the marks of the true Church, her unity, her sanctity, her catholicity and apostolicity betoken that God is with her—for indeed, He has, as it were, built the Church on these four mighty and indestructible pillars as His abode on earth and as a secure asylum for mankind—still the likeness which the Church shows to the suffering Saviour in her sorrows and her persecutions demonstrates far more clearly the divinity of her vocation to save the world and to comfort the faithful. Just as St. Joseph strove to defend from the machinations of Herod that most precious treasure entrusted to his care, the Divine Child, so the Church has ever striven to defend against the attacks of the Herods and the godless of all times, the Catholic faith, grace and redemption, as the most precious trust confided to her for the welfare of the world. Like St. Joseph she spares no pains, no effort; she recoils not even from persecution, if only she may preserve this priceless treasure. For this very reason she is called the Church Militant, against whom all the powers of iniquity have conspired. I spoke last time of the bloody persecutions of the Church, in order to show her truth and beauty. Today I will speak of her unbloody persecutions, for they are worse and more dangerous than the former. They proceed from heretics and wicked governments; the former attack the Church in her faith, the latter in her possessions and her life. O Jesus, assist me with Thy grace! 1. An old Greek fable tells of the Titans, giants of prehistoric times, who in their audacity wished to scale high Olympus itself. To attain this end they heaped mountain upon mountain until the thunderbolt of an avenging god dashed them to the ground. Such Titans or giants of godlessness have ever arisen against the kingdom of heaven on earth, as Christ calls His true Church. This has given rise to the persecutions against the Catholic Church. The pagan emperors were the first giants of impiety. They attempted to wipe Christianity from the face of the earth by shedding the blood of the Christians in profu-sion. Nay more, they declared themselves divine and exacted for themselves divine honors and worship. The pagan emperors tolerated every form of superstition, ungodliness and vice. For the Church and the Christian faith alone they reserved their most relentless and cruel measures; at the price of her life-blood the Church, and she alone, preserved the faith and with it the benefits and the blessings of Christianity to the world. In the meantime the omnipotence of God dashed to the ground and annihilated the idolized pagan emperors with their empire. But even during the days when the persecutions, instigated by the Roman emperors, were still raging in all their bloody fury, there arose a second generation of Titans to assail the kingdom of heaven. They appeared in the form of heretics, who did not, indeed, threaten the life of the faithful, but who designed to wage a far more pernicious warfare against what Christians prized even more highly than life itself, namely, the doctrines and the faith of the Church. If faith itself be destroyed, the Church will automatically cease to exist. The numerous herd of false teachers who rapidly succeeded each other did not at once direct their attack against the whole body of the Church's dogma, but slowly, steadily, one by one they took them up, disfigured them and tore them to pieces. In the course of centuries there is not a single Catholic doctrine, not an article of faith, not a mystery that has not been questioned or denied, so that at present there is not a tittle of divine revelation which has not been, or is not being, made the object of ungodly criticism or of impious denial. The very existence of God, the personality of our Divine Saviour, the Blessed Virgin in her dignity as Mother of God, the Divine Sacrifice, the immortality of the soul, eternity, heaven and hell, are made the mockery of vile tongues and are positively de- nied. This second persecution is promiscuously tolerant of every heresy, every folly, every madness of the ancient and the new world, down to the renewed theory of man's evolution from a monkey. It hates but one thing—one thing alone it pursues with its venom, and that is the Catholic faith. It is the destiny of the Church to suffer, through the ages, the same persecutions to which her Divine Lord was subjected by the Pharisees and the Sadducees, for they constantly attacked His teachings and cast suspicion on all He said and did. The pagan emperors constituted themselves gods, and so, like them, the second Titans end by self-deification. It is the apotheosis of human reason, which places itself above God, above Jesus Christ, His Church and the teachings of the faith, and constitutes itself an infallible court before which everything must pass for judgment. It displays itself im-pudently in the sciences, in books and schools and periodicals, and is the cause of all perplexity, contradiction, doubt, ignorance, impiety, blasphemy and hatred. The omnipotence of God has likewise hurled this second attack against His Church to the ground. The force of this second storm is now well-nigh spent. The Protestants belonging to the numberless sects have at the present day no choice left but that of joining the Catholic Church, as so many have already done in England, Holland, Germany and our own country, or of becoming adherents of modern paganism. The Catholic Church has splendidly withstood all the violence of this storm of centuries. There, impregnable as the Lord built her, she stands a beacon light to the nations. The tempest lashed the waves to fury and hurled them mountain high against her, but the waters fell back in harmless foam, and the beacon stands calm and undisturbed, sending forth the pure rays of her light of faith in undiminished power to guide the nations of all the world, on their way to God, to life eternal. 2. During the middle of the last century a third persecution against the Church had been gathering its forces out of the second. This is the most dangerous and ruthless of all. Just as the cruelty of Church Militant - Herod only benefited the innocent children, so the Roman emperors by their bloody persecutions only benefited Christianity; for never did she show herself in such radiance of truth and virtue as during the days of her greatest suffering. She took the pagan world by surprise and converted it. Nor have the countless heresies caused the Catholic Church any damage. What she lost in Europe by apostasy, she regained in Asia, Africa and America, and the Catholic faith shines as ever in the undimmed splendor of its unity throughout the world. But this third persecution proceeded from the interior of the Catholic Church herself, and was directed against her own inner life. Consummate cunning and malice distinguished its procedure, for under the mask of friendship and protection, under the caption of reform and enlightenment, an attack was organized such as the world had never seen. This most baneful of all persecutions was reserved to Catholic princes and governments. They forced their way into the very sanctuary and hesitated not to lay their unhallowed hands upon the altar itself. They pretended to regulate everything and endeavored to gain control of even the most sacred functions. They hemmed in the Church on all sides, assumed tutelage over her and robbed her of her rights, her liberties and her possessions. They destroyed order and discipline, and forbade the conferring of ecclesiastical orders, the giving of blessings, the holding of processions and pilgrimages—all the manifestations of the Church's life. What was the result? Catholic life, once so flourishing, now languished, works of piety were forgotten, the zeal for charitable institutions died out, old habits of industry and honesty vanished and respect for constituted authority became a thing of the past even among Catholic nations. The Lord's day was neglected. Instead grew up religious indifference, ignorance of man's most sacred obligations, impiety, immorality, luxury, dishonesty, discontent, and, finally, revolution. Whole generations were corroded and remain so to this day. But just as the pagan emperors ended by becoming self-made gods and then went down to their destruction, just as the heresies deified reason and are now in a state of dissolution, so the third persecution naturally culminates in the deification of the State. The mask is fallen, the State is without religion, without God—it is its own god. Therefore it has but one battle to fight and that is against the Catholic Church.—Its ultimate purpose is the dechristianization of the peoples. A State without a God must necessarily hate the Catholic Church as its natural-born enemy. 1. The dechristianization of the nations is effected in a twofold manner : First, the deified State declares that it is the source of all right and justice. But if the State is the only source of right and justice, it strictly follows that no other law or right has force or value; then there is no divine or ecclesiastical or international law, no personal or civil rights, no true freedom, no justice, no liberty of conscience or of opinion, except only in so far as the State may be pleased to allow it. Every justifiable opposition is branded as rebellion against the State, and so every effort is made to destroy the life and the activity of the Catholic Church. On the contrary, under pretext of enlightened toleration,—the toleration of the pagan emperors of old,—every protection and facility is given to lies and slanders and errors, aye they are welcomed with open arms as staunch allies in the one great fight—the fight against the Catholic Church. 2. Secondly—the aim is the dechristianization of our children by means of schools without religion, where the Catholic faith is misrepresented and held up to the scorn of the pupils in a multiplicity of ways; the dechristianization of the family by means of civil marriage and divorce; of the student body by means of infidel or irreligious universities under the pretext of advancing the cause of liberty and of science; of the adult world by means of a subsidized press, of theatres reeking with lewdness and immorality, and of secret societies. When the child, the family and civil society have been thus gradually dechristianized—then, of course, it is assumed that the Catholic Church will be very near her last end, and what is left of her can be destroyed without great difficulty. This saddest of all the persecutions is very much like the action of Herod, who did not indeed condemn Jesus, but clothed Him with a garment of mockery with the purpose of robbing Him of the last remnant of respect and love in which He was held by the people. In like manner godless governments clothe the Church in a robe of derision by abandoning her to every possible insult, with a view to depriving her of the people's love. God also permits this persecution. It has furnished an excellent opportunity of drawing a sharp line of demarcation between the good and the wicked, between virtue and vice, between hatred and love; indeed it is a glorious time for the Catholic Church and her loyal children. It is particularly in our day, when the iniquities of the world have conspired against her, that the Catholic Church stands forth in all her grandeur and majesty, the true beacon light of unity in faith and salvation, a sure guide and consolation for the oppressed peoples. And it is this commanding attitude that fills her enemies with rage and drives them to despair. 3. The pagan emperors of old have gone down to ruin and their world-empire has been destroyed. The different heresies are now undergoing a slow but sure process of disintegration. Like them, all the States that have discarded God and His law are hastening to inevitable destruction. And it cannot well be otherwise. The adorable wisdom and providence of God have admirably adapted the Catholic faith to the life, the habits, the needs, the liberty, the aspirations of the individual as well as of whole nations. Take it away from them, and the individual as well as the nation will perish. Take a being out of the proper sphere of its existence, and see how it suffers. Look at the fish out of water, the bird deprived of air and freedom, the beasts of the woods and the mountains enclosed within the confines of a cage. Thus and much more does man suffer, do nations languish, when they are rudely torn from the atmosphere of Catholic life and faith. Such a life is no longer natural; it is injurious and a menace to existence itself. Those who tamper with the faith of a nation, who work at its dechristianization, call it by whatever name hypocrisy dictates, enlightenment, liberty or toleration, they are the peril and the enemy of that nation, for they are undermining its very life and existence. It is the first endeavor of every sectary and revolutionary to dupe the people, by means of insidious definitions, into throwing aside their Christian faith, so that in the resultant turmoil he may gain the mastery and acquire wealth. In fact the man who has lost his Christian faith, who rejects Christian teachings and precepts, no longer believes in honesty, conscience, retribution, or charity. He throws off every restraint, he seeks his personal advantage in everything and earth is his paradise, procured, if necessary, by a life of public or private crime. What is true of the individual is equally true of the nation. If there be any honesty, morality or loyalty left, it is owing solely and alone to Catholic faith, to Catholic life,—not so-called enlightenment, not to the promised happiness and brotherhood of man nor to the swarm of worthless periodicals. My dearly beloved! When the Catholic Church opposes this avowed purpose of the deified State, when she vindicates her divine mission and her rights, she defends thereby the Christian family, true liberty, the true welfare and rights of the individual as well as of the nation. And if for this she is made to suffer, if she is persecuted and hated, she suffers and is persecuted because she, and she alone, can warn and save the nations. Infidelity and vice and error and secret conspiracies have never yet retarded the downfall of a people but have rather hastened it. The public press of our country is barely tolerant of, certainly not friendly to, the Catholic Church. For once that it is forced by circumstances to say something in her favor, it is a thousand times the vehicle of the vilest slanders and insults against her, her institutions and her children. And in this it enjoys the protection of the country's fundamental law. Why should this be so? Because the Catholic Church is the hereditary enemy, and the people must be taught to hate and to despise her and all that she stands for. We Catholics have indeed been obliged in the past to listen to many a malevolent misrepresentation, many a sneer and taunt cast on our glorious faith. And we, good poor fools, have accepted all and kissed the rod that struck us. In this land of liberty, we alone are considered aliens and must apologize for having the temerity to exist. Are these the limitations of freedom of conscience? Are these the equal rights guaranteed to us by the constitution which our forefathers helped to frame and for which so much Catholic blood was shed? The Catholic Church by strenuously opposing the dechristianization of the nations and suffering for her principles, can alone save the peoples. And if she cannot attain this object, not she, but the nations will suffer. Like her Divine Lord she battles against the impiety and the corruption of the world. And in this particular point she proves herself worthy of the Redeemer as His true Church. In this warfare she is more splendid than in peace and gives evidence of the divine power that is assisting her. She fights and suffers because she seeks for souls and desires to save the faith and redemption for the coming generations, until finally her efforts will be crowned with victory, and there will be but one flock and one shepherd on earth. We too, my dear friends, must fight, at least for ourselves and for those who belong to us, so that we may preserve that most precious treasure entrusted to our care,—our Catholic faith. Everything depends on it, —not only grace and truth and eternal life, but also our very temporal existence, right and justice, order and well-being. And if in our sphere we have saved the Catholic faith from the machinations of the Herods, the Pharisees and the Jews, it will in turn save us for time and eternity and will lead us to the blissful vision of our Divine Saviour, to whom be praise forever. Amen. The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church, Imprimatur 1911 THE FEAST OF THE GUARDIAN ANGELS We celebrate today, Christian wives and mothers, the feast of the Guardian Angels. The Gospel for this Sunday relates the story of the widow of Naim, whose tears and sorrow induced our Divine Saviour to raise her son to life. Truly, two important points for Christian mothers from which they may learn how to fulfill their calling. One of the most touching proofs of the sublime providence of God for the welfare of our bodies and of our souls is the mission of the Holy Angels for our protection. It may appear strange to many that the Angels, who by their nature are so high above us, surround the throne of God and ceaselessly behold the face of God, should care for the earthly needs of mankind. But then it must, by far, appear more incredible, that the eternal and immortal God has made not only man but even the worm that crawls in the dust and the grass that grows unobserved in the fields the object of His Providence. Precisely this Providence over all, even over the smallest of His creatures brings the Majesty and Power of God nearer to the heart as to the understanding. Behold, thus increases the dignity of the Angels who, in a certain measure, share the sublime privilege of God in providing for the life of His creatures. And, in fact, the activity of our Guardian Angel is shown especially in the following: 1, they protect us in body and soul; 2, they encourage us to good and keep us from evil, and 3, they assist us in death. 1. The holy Guardian Angels protect us against the dangers that threaten body and soul. The body becomes the object of their solicitude because it is the dwelling-place and instrument of the immortal soul which is, as it were, the sister of the Angels and in the eternity of bliss the companion of the Angels in the beatific vision of God and in the praise of God. This truth is confirmed in Holy Scripture emphatically, and also in the marvelous saving of so many Christians, especially children, from great dangers. But the soul is, more than the body, the particular object of the protection of the Holy Angels. Our soul is the sister of the Angels who never forget the high price by which they were purchased with the blood of Jesus. The soul is, moreover, the temple of the Holy Ghost, who watches over it. For this reason the Angels watch with such care over the souls confided to their protection. They are careful for the preservation of holy innocence and fight with indignation against the tempter. Our Divine Saviour Himself earnestly admonishes us: "Beware lest you scandalize one of these little ones," that is, lead them into evil "for their Angels behold the face of my Father" they are the accusers of the criminals against childish innocence. 2. But the Angels also encourage us to good and keep us from evil. As often as a good voice is heard within us, behold there is the voice of the Angel who encourages us to good or warns us from evil. If sin has been committed, then the Holy Angel speaks in our conscience in order to induce us to return. Soft and mild is his voice, and if we listen to it, it lisps from the justice and mercy of God. Well for the Christian who follows the voice of the Angel! 3. But the Guardian Angel also assists us in death. As he beholds full of pity the little child in the cradle, just baptized, so he beholds with still greater compassion his protege when attacked by the agony of death. There he appears to the dying, as the Angel appeared to our Saviour in His agony on Mt. Olivet and reached to Him the chalice of strength. The Guardian Angel inspires the dying Christian with contrition and confidence and leads the soul to the judgment of the Lord. Thus, too, you Christian mothers, share with the Angels the privilege to provide for the life of your children. With the Angels, Christian mothers should protect their children from dangers to their bodies and their souls,, encourage them to good and keep them from evil, and if God wills, assist them in a good death. The adults need above all in the manifold dangers of soul the invisible Angel as protector and counselor, but the children need the visible angel in the form of their parents and especially of their mother. Yes, God has placed over the paradise of innocent children's souls the mother in order that she by word and example may cultivate it and keep far from it the poisonous breath of sin. In union with the Angels of God she should stand by the side of the child, in order that in this protecting hand it may not lose the right path through this earthly life. As the Angel of God battles with the soul of the adults, as soon as it is in danger of giving itself up to sin, so must the Christian mother battle with the weakness, the sickness and the death of the child. She assists the child against the partisanship of the brothers and sisters and against the excessive strictness of the father: she helps him through the gulfs of youthful inexperience and passion and through the different trials of this earthly life. And if the heart of the mother has gone silent to the touch of death, the child still looks back to the memory of her as to a friendly star. Have you, Christian wives and mothers, after the example of the Angels of God, striven with might and main to be, by word and example, visible guardian angels to your children, and is the success, nevertheless, lamentable: are the grown-up children in consequence of many dangers, of bad example and allurements of the world gone astray, then there remains to the Christian mothers still an example for imitation and a consolation for a better future. It is the widow of Naim, who by her tears moved our Divine Saviour to compassion and to call back her dead son to life. Yes, verily, the tears and prayers of Christian parents for the salvation and the betterment of their wayward children are not lost, they arise to God and move Him sooner or later to dispense grace and mercy. Therefore Christian mothers, never give up the hope to obtain the betterment and conversion of your sons and daughters. Well for the wayward son, for the wayward daughter, well for them if a Christian mother weeps and prays for them ! But the poorest among all poor children is the one who has no father or no mother to weep over him, for whom no father, no mother moves the Sacred Heart of Jesus to compassion in order that He might stop the funeral procession to open destruction and the child dead in sin be called back to life again. Therefore, may the mercy of God grant you, Christian mothers, always His grace and His blessing, in order that you may fulfill your dignity and task as visible guardian angels for His honor, for your salvation and for the welfare of your children. And may none of you be placed in the position of the widow of Naim and be obliged to follow your children with a broken heart, with tears and entreaties. Amen. Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church, Imprimatur 1913 The planners are finally available for you to download and print. My files were corrupted and I needed to start from scratch again. There are no saints listed on the calendar this year in order to be able to make them available sooner. Circumstances have changed and I can no longer offer a printed version only the free PDF. The scribd file is below the PDF can be found here. God bless you all in the coming school year!
+ J.M.J. + Dear Friends, By the grace of God I was able to get this site up and running again. I hope to make the planners available again soon. Time gets away from me these days. They will be a free PDF file that you can print yourself. Circumstances have changed and I can no longer offer the printed versions. Copyright - The purpose of this website is to share the beautiful Catholic resources that God has so richly blessed us with. All texts--unless they are my own words--have their sources quoted, and most of them are in the public domain. Any educational items that I have made for or with my children are NOT TO BE USED FOR PROFIT, but are meant to be used for personal use by individuals and families. In other words, "Thou shalt not steal." If you would like to share these files please provide a link to our website. Thank you and God bless you! J.M.J. St. John Bosco, patron saint of Catholic Journalism, pray for us! To know and to understand the Church is a sacred duty for every Catholic. Loyalty to the Church is not merely one among many loyalties. It is the one great loyalty of our lives in which all other loyalties are rooted and from which all derive their life and strength. For the Church is Christ and in the Church we are united with Him and with one another as members of one Body. Hence, a burning love for the Church must always be an outstanding characteristic of a good Catholic. (adapted from "Story of the Church" Imprimatur 1935) There are braver soldiers than those who fight on a field of battle, and these are the men and women, boys and girls, who fight in the army of God. Their weapons are not guns and swords; they are prayer and good works. Christ is their Captain. He leads His soldiers against the enemy, and all who follow Him and do as He commands are victorious. Since the world began there have been thousands of faithful soldiers who have fought in God’s army. Among them were bishops and priests, monks and nuns, kings and queens, rich men and peasants, grown people and children. These have now gone to live forever in Heaven with the Captain, Christ. Some of them have been canonized by the Church, and these we call Saints. The names of many of Christ’s soldiers we know, and the stories of their lives are written in books, that we may learn to love the brave and noble deeds they performed for God. As we read about these holy people, let us resolve to imitate their virtues, that we, too, may enlist in God’s army as soldiers of Christ. (adapted from "Misericordia 5th reader" Imprimatur 1929) "In the beginning, and through the centuries, there has been a rivalry between the sword and the pen. Which is the mightier has been the question. Rightly the decision favors the pen. The sword is trenchant and quickly hurls souls to their eternal destiny. The pen, incisive as the blade, has left a mark deeper and broader than the sword. "One drop of ink makes millions think." The pen shapes the activity of mankind when the sword lies idle in its sheath. The scabbard must at times put the sword to sleep. The pen never slumbers." ~ Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson ~ So with the pen it is that we shall fight! Onward Christian Soldiers! In Their Hearts! Julie Taken from: “EXPLANATION of the EPISTLES and GOSPELS for the SUNDAYS, HOLYDAYS, and FESTIVALS throughout THE ECCLESIASTICAL YEAR” By: Rev. Leonard Goffine, Imprimatur 1918
"One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all." (Ephes. iv. 5. 6.) THESE words of the great Apostle of the Gentiles show clearly, that it is not a matter of indifference, what faith or religion we profess. Yet in our times so poor in faith, we often hear the assertion from so-called enlightened men: "It is all the same to what religion we belong, we can be saved in any, if we only believe in God and live uprightly." This assertion is impious! Consider, my dear Christian, there is but one God, and this one God has sent only one Redeemer, and this one Redeemer has preached but one doctrine, and has established but one Church. Had God wished that there should be more than one Church, then Christ would have founded them, nay, He would not have preached a new doctrine, established a new, Christian Church; for the Jews also believed in one God. But Jesus cast aside Paganism and Judaism, promulgated a new religion, and founded a new Church. Nowhere does He speak of Churches, but always of one Church. He says that we must hear this Church, and does not add, that if we will not hear this Church, we may hear some other. He speaks of only one shepherd, one flock, and one fold, into which all men are to be brought. In the same manner He speaks always of one kingdom upon earth, just as there is only one kingdom in heaven; of only one master of the house and one family, of one field and one vineyard, whereby He referred to His Church; of one rock, upon which He would build His Church. On the day before His death, He prayed fervently to His Heavenly Father, that all who believe in Him, might be and remain one, as He and the Father are one, and He gave His disciples the express command to preach His gospel to all nations, and to teach them all things, whatsoever He had commanded them. This command the apostles carried out exactly. Everywhere they preached, one and the same doctrine, establishing in all places Christian communities; which were all united by the bond of the same faith. Their principal care was to prevent schisms in faith, they warned the faithful against heresy, commanded all originators of such to be avoided, and anathematized those who preached a gospel different from theirs. As the apostles, so did their successors. All the holy Fathers speak with burning love of the necessary Unity of faith, and deny those all claim to salvation who remain knowingly in schism and separation from the true Church of Christ. Learn hence, dear Christian, that there can be but one true Church; if there is but one true Church, it naturally follows that in her alone salvation can be obtained, and the assertion that we can be saved by professing any creed, is false and impious. Jesus who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, speaks of but one Church, which we must hear, if we wish to be saved. He who does not hear the Church, He says, should be considered as a heathen and publican. He speaks furthermore of one fold, and He promises eternal life only to those sheep who belong to this fold, obey the voice of the shepherd and feed in His pasture. The apostles were also convinced that only the one, true Church could guide us to salvation. Without faith it is impossible to please God, writes St. Paul to the Hebrews, (xi. 6.) and this faith is only one, he teaches the Ephesians. (iv. 5.) If the apostles had believed that we could be saved in any religion, they would certainly not have contended so strenuously for unity, they would not have declared so solemnly, that we should not belong to any other than to Christ alone, and that we must receive and obey His doctrine. As the apostles taught so did their successors and all the Fathers agree that there is no salvation outside of the true Church. St. Cyprian writes: "If any one outside Noah's ark could find safety, then also will one outside the Church find salvation." (De unit. eccl. c. 7.) From all this it follows, that there is only one true Church which insures salvation, out of which no one can be saved. But which is this Church ? The Roman Catholic, Apostolic Church, for she alone was founded by Christ, she alone was watered with the blood of the apostles and of thousands of holy martyrs, she alone has the marks of the true Church of Christ, [see the Instruction for the first Sunday after Easter] against which He has promised that the powers of hell shall not prevail. Those who fell away from the Church three hundred years ago, do, indeed, contend that the Church fell into error and no longer possessed the true, pure gospel of Jesus. Were they right, Jesus might be blamed, for He established this Church, promising to remain with her and guide her through the Holy Ghost until the end of the world. He would, therefore, have broken His word, or He was not powerful enough to keep it. But who dare say this? On the contrary, she has existed for eighteen hundred years, whilst the greatest and most powerful kingdoms have been overthrown, and the firmest thrones crumbled away. If she were not the only true and saving Church, founded by Christ, how could she have existed so long, since Jesus Himself said: Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. (Matt. xv. 13.) If she were not the Church of Christ, she would have been destroyed long ago, but she still stands today, whilst her enemies who battled against her have disappeared, and will continue to disappear; for the gates of hell shall not prevail against her, says our Lord. He has kept His promise and will keep it, notwithstanding all the oppositions and calumnies of her implacable enemies. You see, therefore, my dear Christian, that the Catholic Church is the only true, the only saving Church; be not deceived by those who are neither cold nor warm, and who say: "We can be saved in any religion, if we only believe in God and live uprightly," and who wish to rob you of your holy faith, and precipitate you into the sea of doubt, error, and falsehood. Outside of the Catholic Church there is no salvation; hold this firmly, for it is the teaching of Jesus, His apostles, and all the Fathers; for this doctrine the apostles and a countless host of the faithful have shed their blood. Obey the teaching of this Church, follow her laws, make use of her help and assistance, and often raise your hands and heart to heaven to thank God for the priceless grace of belonging to this one, true Church; forget not to pray for your erring brethren, who are still outside of the Church that the Lord may lead them into her, that His promise may be fulfilled: THERE WILL BE ONE FOLD AND ONE SHEPHERD! Taken from, "Explanations of the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays, Holydays and Festivals Throughout the Ecclesiastical Year" by Rev. Leonard Goffine, Imprimatur 1918 Why was this Festival instituted? 1. To thank God that He has given to each of us a special angel to lead us through the dangers, of this world to heaven; 2. That we may show ourselves grateful to the holy angels, who have done us so much good. Is it certain that every one has a special guardian angel? Yes; for many passages in Holy Scriptures attest it; ii. Exod. xxiii. 20, 21. Ps. xxxiii. 8; xc. ii. Job. xxxiii 23., Acts. xii. 15,but especially the words of Christ: "See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you that their Angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven;" (Matt, xviii. 10.) which words of the Saviour the holy Catholic Church has always expounded to mean that to every one is given a special guardian angel. What is the office of guardian angels? To protect us from dangers of body and soul. So it is written in Ps. xc. ii.: "For he hath given his angels charge over thee; to keep thee in all thy ways. In their hands they shall bear thee up: lest thou dash thy foot against a stone," that is, that thou mayest not sin or fall into any other misfortune. "Oh what a great favor of God," exclaims St. Bernard, "O what wonderful love! Who has commanded? .... Godl Whom has He commanded? .... The angels, those noble spirits who share God's home! What has He commanded them? .... To protect and guard us poor mortals! O Lord! what is man that Thou art mindful of him!" The holy guardian angels perform the greatest service for the soul. They protect us in dangers and temptations, warn us against evil, encourage us to good, offer to God our prayers and stand by us in the hour of death. Yea, they minister to us after death, as Christ said that the poor Lazarus was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. (Luke xvi. 22.) Have wicked men also a holy guardian angel? God protects the body of even the most hardened sinner, that he may not perish before the time, but the holy angel can have no pleasure in a sinner. St. Basil the Great says: "As smoke scatters the bees, and offensive smell - disperses the doves, so does horrible, lamentable sin turn from us the angel, the guardian of life. But if a sinner repents: then there is joy in heaven, as the Saviour asserts: There shall be joy before the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance! (Luke xv. 10.) What do we owe our guardian angel? According to the doctrine of St. Bernard: Reverence on account of his presence; Gratitude for the solicitude he has for us; Confidence and Love, by virtue of which we turn to him and entreat his protection in all difficulties and temptations. What consolation does the presence of our guardian angel give us? That of being fearless and courageous in all dangers of body and soul, for "of whom need we be afraid," writes St. Bernard, "with such powerful protectors?" They cannot be conquered or led away, they protect us in all our paths. They are faithful, mighty and wise, why should we tremble? Only let us follow them, cling to them, and remain under the protection of God, the Lord of Heaven. What ought we to do on this day? We ought to spend the day in a most devout manner, reverencing our holy guardian angel, and thanking him for all the benefits received through the course of our whole life, ask his pardon for the vexations we may have caused him through our sins, recommend ourselves again to his protection and promise him constant fidelity and obedience. PRAYER. Almighty, eternal God! Thou, who in Thy great goodness hast given to every man a guardian angel, grant that I may honor, love and obey my guardian angel, that through Thy grace and his protection, I may be saved and with him behold in heaven Thy divine face for all eternity. Holy guardian angels, defend us in the combat that we may not perish on the dreadful Day of Judgment. [The Introit is the same as on the feast of St. Michael-September 29th.] PRAYER OF THE CHURCH. O God, who in Thy unspeakable providence vouchsafest to send Thine angels to keep guard over us: grant unto Thy suppliants that we may be continually defended by their protection, and rejoice eternally in their society. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. LESSON. (Exod. xxiii. -20 23.) THUS saith the Lord God: Behold, I will send my angel, who shall go before thee, and keep thee in thy journey, and bring thee into the place that I have prepared. Take notice of him and hear his voice, and do not think him one to be contemned: for lie will not forgive when thou hast sinned, and my name is in him. But if thou wilt hear his voice, and do all that I speak, I will be an enemy to thy enemies, and will afflict them that afflict thee: and my angel shall go before thee. We should often think of them, place confidence in them, and pray to them. We owe to our guardian angels reverence, confidence and gratitude. It is God himself who commands us to show reverence for our guardian angels. "Behold," said our Lord to Moses, "I will send my angel who shall go before thee, and keep thee in thy journey, and bring thee into the place that I have prepared. Take notice of him and hear his voice, and do not think him one to be contemned, for my name is in him." (Exod. xxiii, 21.) Of such excellence and dignity is the guardian angel, that he is the vivid expression of the Divinity. He is the first ray of God's beauty, the first work of his hands, the first production of his omnipotence, the first masterpiece of his wisdom. St. John, upon seeing him, fell prostrate to adore him, thinking he was the Son of God himself.
St. Anselm assures us that, if an angel could make himself visible in all his glory in place of the sun, the light of the latter would altogether disappear in the light and splendor of the angel. The majesty of a mortal king impresses respect on all those who approach him: with what reverence, then, should we not be filled in the presence of this prince of heaven ! Now, the best manner of showing this reverence in presence of our guardian angels is, as the catechism says, often to think of them, often to remember their presence. "Wherever you may be," says St. Bernard, "in the church, at home, on a journey, in public or private places, your angel is near you. Do not do before him what you would not dare to do before me." To reverence, we must join confidence in our guardian angels. We should show confidence in their protection. If we had a friend who appeared to us the most enlightened, the most faithful, and the most powerful of all men, what confidence would we place in him ! Now, such friends are the guardian angels, says St. Bernard: "They are wise, faithful and powerful." They cannot be deceived, drawing, as they do, their light from God himself. Much less can they deceive us. They are friends of tried fidelity. Their power is beyond conception. One of them alone can do more for our salvation than all the demons can do to ruin us. One of the chief duties towards the guardian angels which is neglected almost by all men, is the duty of gratitude for the numberless blessings, spiritual and temporal, which God bestows upon us by his holy angels. After the angel of the Hebrew people had divided the waters of the Red Sea; to make a dry passage for them, he continued to assist them, by the order of God, until he had introduced them into the land of promise. It is thus that our guardian angels act towards us. After we have escaped, by the waters of baptism, the powers of hell, these zealous and charitable protectors accompany us through the dreary desert of this life which we must traverse to arrive at the abode of eternal happiness. Sometimes, like a refreshing cloud, our guardian angels temper the ardor of our passions sometimes, like a column of fire, they enlighten us in the night of sin. If necessary, they let fall the manna of heavenly consolations, to sweeten the bitter waters of penitence and afflictions of our lives. They make us hear the law of God, and endeavor to engrave it on the living table of our hearts. It is to the Lord, it is true, that we are indebted for all these blessings ; for we would not have guardian angels, had not our dear Lord given them to us." He hath given his angels charge over thee." Glory to God who gave them this command ! But we owe, also, much to those who execute it, especially as they unite to their obedience an admirable charity. If they had a life to offer, and blood to shed, for our salvation, they would willingly give up all. Let us never be ungrateful towards such friends. How should we be grateful to them ? By listening to their words and following their inspirations ; by avoiding what would wound the sanctity of their presence ; by practicing the virtues so dear to them : purity, humility, zeal, charity, and conformity to the will of God. "If thou wilt hear his voice," said the Lord to Moses, "and do all that I speak, I will be an enemy to thy enemies, and I will afflict them that afflict thee." (Exod. xxiiii, 22.) Finally, we should also pray to our guardian angels. The good angels often intercede for us, and obtain for us many graces through their prayers. The Patriarch Jacob entreated most earnest the angel with whom he had wrestled, that he would give him his blessing (Gen. xxxii, 26) ; and on his death-bed he prayed the angel who had conducted and protected him, to bless his grandchildren, Ephraim and Manasses. (Gen. xlviii, 16.) The Prophet Daniel was informed in his visions how vigorously the guardian angel of Persia interposed in favor of that country, and what good offices St. Michael and other angels did for the Jews, in removing obstacles which retarded their return from the captivity. The Angel Gabriel told Daniel that he had exerted his efforts for this purpose in Persia twenty-one days, and that St. Michael, the prince or guardian of the Jews, came to his help (Dan. x, 13), so that they conquered the impediments. The Angel Gabriel added : "From the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up that he might be strengthened and confirmed" (Dan. xi, 1), viz.: to promote the deliverance of God's people. The same prophet, speaking of the cruel persecution of Antiochus, says : "At that time Michael shall rise up, the great prince that standeth for the children of thy people." (Dan. xii, 1.) This implies that St. Michael would support the Machabees, and other defenders of God's people, whose protector he was, by standing up for them, that is, by praying for them. The Prophet Zacharias was favored with a vision of angels, in the seventieth year of the desolation of Jerusalem. The prophet saw an angel (probably St. Michael), in the shape of a man, standing in a grove of myrtle trees ; and several angels, the guardians of other princes, came to him and said : "We have walked through the earth, and behold, all the earth is inhabited, and is at rest." Then the angel made this prayer : "Lord of hosts ! how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Juda, with which thou hast been angry ? This is now the seventieth year." (Zach. i, 12.) The Lord answered his prayer: he told the angel that he would return to Jerusalem in mercy, and that his house should be built in it. From these examples, and other passages of Holy Scripture, it is clear that the good angels pray for us. The Church has always invoked the holy angels and paid religious honor to them ; and teaches that it is an article of faith that their patronage is piously invoked. Let us entertain a great devotion to our guardian angels. We read, in the lives of many saints, that their lively faith and tender devotion towards their guardian angels obtained for them the grace of seeing and conversing familiarly with them. We find this especially in the lives of St. Camillus, St. Philip Neri, St. Frances of Rome, St. Rose of Lima, St. Lidwina of Holland. If we recommend ourselves often to them, we shall experience their ardent charity, their wonderful protection, and the miraculous effects of their prayers on many occasions. The great Prophet Isaias had no sooner complained that his lips were defiled, than a seraph purified them with a burning coal from the altar. (Isa. vi.) If the blessings which God has bestowed upon every one through his guardian angel were to be written down, they would fill a large volume. These blessings will become greater and far more numerous from the time that we begin to be more grateful and more devout to the guardian angel. Often repeat this prayer, indulgenced by Pius VI and Pius VII : "Holy angel, to whose care I am committed, enlighten, protect, direct, and govern me this day !" Source: The Apostles Creed, by Father Michael Muller, Imprimatur 1880 Yay! The planners are finished and ready to download and print for FREE (files are below) or order a printed version here. May God grant each and everyone of you a fruitful and blessed school year! We keep you all in our prayers please keep our family in yours! Thank you!
"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 "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. "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. The Signs of the Times - The Position and Prospects of the Catholic Church at the Present Day (1916)4/2/2022 ''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. 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. Penance and Self-Denial: Why? “Lent is a relic from the Dark Ages. It is a shadow projected from the ages of gloom that falls athwart the sunshine of our modern life and happiness. As the Matterhorn that lifts its snow-crowned summit high into the skies of Switzerland, intercepts the slanting rays of the setting sun and brings premature darkness to the little village nestling in the valley behind it, so Lent robs us of much of the brightness of social life and worldly amusement, casting prematurely across the noonday of our life the shadow of death and the hereafter. Its doctrine of mortification runs counter to the very grain of our human nature. It is a killjoy, an anachronism in our enlightened twentieth century. We want a religion of joy and gladness, not of gloom.” Such is the cry that we hear about us on every side the cry of the epicurean, the cry of the cynic, the cry of the sophisticated, seeking through a thousand devious routes to find the Blue Bird of happiness. Is Lent really a barrier to our happiness? Is it the mere blind handing down of a custom from the hoary past, that has lost its purpose and its utility for our modern day? Let us face these questions frankly and fairly. For unless a person understands how the observance of Lent promotes his welfare and happiness he is not likely to enter into its spirit whole-heartedly. Example of Christ In the first place Lent is but the following of the example of Our Divine Saviour Himself. For, the Gospel tells us that immediately after His baptism in the Jordan and before beginning His public ministry, Christ went out into the desert and fasted forty days and forty nights. Through the lips of His precursor, St. John the Baptist, He said to the people: “Unless you do penance you shall likewise perish.” Unlike our modem generals who send their soldiers out into the front line trenches while they remain securely behind, Our Divine Master asks us to follow only where He Himself has led. For many centuries the Christian world followed the example of Our Saviour with a rigorousness which we today do not even remotely approximate. A few years ago I stood at the foot of Mt. Quarantana within sight of the Jordan, where the Saviour spent forty days of fast. I saw the sides of the Mountain studded with holes where anchorites had come to dwell and to follow literally the rigorous fast of the Saviour. Until the ninth century but one meal a day was taken, and that at evening. During the Middle Ages not only the theaters but even the law courts were closed. War was forbidden under penalty of excommunication. Every activity that might distract the minds of the Christians from the consideration of the condition of their souls and the attainment of their eternal salvation was pro- hibited. It has only been in recent times that the severity of the Lenten fast has been so greatly mitigated that now we experience but little hardship in its observance. Analysis of St. Paul Catholics do not observe Lent, however, merely because Our Saviour fasted, but because of the reasons which lie behind His command — to do penance as the necessary condition for salvation. We do penance for a twofold purpose. First, to atone for our past sins and to satisfy the temporal punishment due for them. Secondly, to strengthen our wills so as to prevent our falling in the future. When psychology will have written its final chapter on human nature, it will be found that it has given us no more penetrating revelation of its conflicting duality than that which St. Paul disclosed to the Romans when he said: “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.” And to the Galatians he said : “For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary one to another so that you do not the things that you would.” Because of this conflicting duality that lay at the very heart of his nature, he found himself yielding to the thralldom of the senses and to the imperious tyranny of flesh against the voice of reason and conscience so that he was compelled to explain : “The good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do.” How aptly do these words of St. Paul reflect the experience of all mankind. Because of this duality in our nature we And a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde, a saint and a demon struggling for the mastery in each of us. In the last analysis it will be found that the whole purpose of all the exercises of the spiritual life is to emancipate the will from the tyranny of the flesh, to make it the ready servant of the reason and the conscience of man. In order to secure such mastery, self-denial and self-discipline are necessary. The appetite which is always pampered, petted and indulged, becomes imperious and domineering. By denying oneself at times pleasures that are lawful we strengthen the muscles of the will, so that it will be more capable of resisting pleasures which are unlawful. That is why in Lent we are asked to give up some pleasures and amusements which are lawful in themselves. We thereby fortify the enthronement of our conscience and our intellect over our appetites and cravings. Then when the temptation comes we shall be able to stand unshaken. Promotes Happiness Strength of will which comes through self-denial and discipline is necessary to success in every line of endeavor — in literature, in science, in art, in commerce, in athletics. Look at the athletes who are training day after day on the cinder track. See those muscles of theirs,at first soft and flabby, change under the dint of daily discipline until they become as sinews of iron. So it is with the Christian, whose will at first soft and flabby gradually becomes like iron under the lash of daily discipline during Lent. This strength of will devel- oped by spiritual exercises carries over into every department of life — making for success in scholarship, in athletics, in business, in life. Not only does it make for success, but it makes for that subjective correlate of success — happiness and peace of mind. True happiness is found not in the enslavement of the will to the passions, but in the enthronement of the conscience and the will over the appetites and the instincts of man. There is found that deeper and truer happiness which is not dependent upon external circumstances, but is found within — in the kingdom of the mind. Your entering generously into the spirit of Lent will have a far reaching influence not only upon the success of all your manifold activities, but also upon your happiness and peace of mind. Sometime ago the students at the University of Illinois honored at a public mass meeting the young man who carried the colors of Illinois to victory at the Olympic games at Amsterdam by winning the welterweight wrestling championship of the world. After congratulating him upon his great achievement, I asked him how long he had trained for the contest. “Father,” he said, “scarcely a day has passed in the last seven years that I haven’t gone through some special exercise designed to prepare me for that encounter.” No wonder that he was as hard as iron and steel and able to withstand the assaults of the best wrestlers among all the nations of the world. If men toil and discipline themselves through rigorous self-denial to win a race for an earthly prize, how much greater should be our zeal and earnestness in seeking to win the race of life that leads to a crown of imperishable glory! Christ’s Self-Control If one will study with care the character of Our Divine Saviour as portrayed in the Gospel stories, he will find it adorned in an eminent degree with all the qualities which have distinguished the illustrious heroes of the world. Wisdom, power, mercy and love shine forth luminously from His sublime personality. But as one studies that complex character at greater length and secures a more penetrating insight into it, he gradually becomes conscious that there is some subtle quality there, blending all these into a harmonious whole, which is lacking in the character of the great heroes of the world. There is no jar, no jolt, none of the strange inconsistencies that glare out at us from the lives of the secular heroes. That quality is the Saviour’s perfect self-mastery, self-control. Never for an instant in all the scenes of the Master’s earthly life is there an incident wherein a rash, hasty, head- strong action mars the even tenor and the surpassing beauty of the Saviour’s unfailing equanimity and perfect self-control. Washington’s greatness bears ever the tarnish of his profanity and ill temper. Napoleon’s glory is dimmed by his uncontrolled concupiscence. But when on trial for His life before the court of Caiphas, when buffeted and spat upon by His executioners, even when stripped of His garments and nailed to the Cross, the Master shows no sign of anger or vindictiveness. Never for a moment does He lose that marvelous mastery of Himself. That is one of the reasons why the name of Jesus stands out among all the names in human history — the solitary example of perfect self-control. As Richter has said: “The purest among the strong, and the strongest among the pure, Jesus lifted with His wounded hands empires from their hinges and changed the stream of centuries.” He taught man the greatest of all arts — the art of self-control. “Self-knowledge, self-reverence, self-control In these alone lie sovereign power Who conquers self, rules others Aye, is lord and ruler of the universe.” Essential for Success The person who would master the rudiments of the spiritual life must learn the lesson of self-discipline. It is one of the most essential elements for success in the earthly and spirit- ual warfare which we wage. The paths of life are strewn with the wrecks of men and women conquering others, mastering the arts, unlocking the secrets that lay hidden for countless centuries in the unfathomed bosom of the earth, only to fall victims to their own lusts, perishing in their own unconquered wilderness. To me there is something tragically moving in the spectacle of Alexander the Great, subjugating Greece, conquering imperial Rome, extending his little kingdom of Macedonia over the known world, until he found himself in distant Ecbatana in Media, Asia, sitting astride his steed and weeping because there were no more worlds to conquer. Within a week Alexander the Great, conqueror of the world, making the earth tremble as his mighty battalion swept across Europe and Asia, lay dead in his tent, a victim to his own concupiscence — his un- bridled passion for drink. Instead of sighing for new worlds to conquer, if he had but eyes to see, he would have perceived within himself a kingdom which stretched out as a huge jungle, untamed and unexplored. Alexander the Great will remain for all times as the classic example of the man who was able to conquer all the world, except himself — literally murdered at the very zenith of his greatness by his own untamed passions. We need not go back to ancient Greece or Rome or Ecbatana, however, to witness the tragic wrecks of uncontrolled passions. Our insane asylums, our homes for wayward boys and girls, scream out at us their message of the frightful retribution meted out to those who allow their lust to subjugate their reason and their conscience. In the very bosom of our society are countless men and women in the untamed wilderness of whose hearts there surge unchecked, wild, primaeval passions, pulling them down slowly but surely to the level of beasts, and murdering every- thing in their nature that is God-like and divine. The ceaseless gnawings of remorse, the sapping of their manhood and virility by terrible diseases — these are the forebodings of the far greater punishments that await with inexorable justice the transgressors of the Divine law in eternity. A Dying Wreck One evening some time ago I was called to the beside of a stranger, dying in one of the rooming houses for transients in the city. He had gone through all the stages of delirium tremens, and was a complete wreck. The doctor said that he had gone on one spree too many. For this one had caused complications, a ruptured blood-vessel, and his end was a matter of hours. Though only in middle age his hair was streaked with gray, and his face was heavily lined. Worry and dissipation were stamped unmistakably upon the scarred countenance. Heartbroken, he told me his story. Possessing a good education, he had risen to a high position with a railroad, when he contracted the habit of drunkenness. Losing his job after a prolonged fit of intoxication, he was ashamed to face his wife and children. He went from bad to worse, finally becoming an outcast among the barrel houses in a large city. After I heard his confession, he broke into tears, and his whole frame shook with sobbing, as he cried. “Father, I would have given anything in the world to have freed myself from this terrible vice of drink. It has brought shame upon my family whom I love more than anything in life. It has pulled me down into a living hell.” I shall never forget to my dying day the look of desolating anguish akin to despair in his wistful eyes, as he lay there sobbing as though his heart would break. As I left that bare drab room, with its dying victim, and came down the creaking stairs of the dingy rooming house, the scene haunted my mind. While hurrying home through the darkness of that winter night, illumined only by the distant stars shining as God’s silent sentinels in the sky, I prayed that God might protect my students, my people, myself from a tragedy such as I had left behind. For that is the fate which awaits the boy or girl, the man or woman who allows any passion to grow unchecked, until it transforms him from a saint into a demon incarnate — the terrible tragedy of the man who is murdered, not by the hand of the assassin, but by his own brutal passions, slowly strangled to death by his own self. The whole world watched breathlessly a few years ago the frantic struggle of men to free a victim from the jaws of Sand Cave in the Kentucky hillsides. But they resisted all the assaults of men and machinery, and clung to their victim until life was extinct. So, any passion — intoxication, lust, anger, jealousy — that is allowed to go unchecked, develops into a monster that clings to its victim until it strangles him to a physical and spiritual death. Worse than the fall of a meteor from the sky is the fall of a young man or a woman from the beauty and sunshine of God’s grace into the foul swamp of uncontrolled vice. It is the most tragic note and the saddest that can be sounded in the whole gamut of human life. The Remedy What now is the remedy? Knowledge merely? “Quarry the granite rock,” says Cardinal Newman, “with razors or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then you may hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passions and the pride of men.” Not knowledge alone, but will power is needed. Self control means strength of will applied to one’s own conduct. How can will power be developed? Our Divine Master has given us the answer when He said: “He that will be my disciple, let him deny Himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” By daily discipline, daily self denial, such as Lent brings to us. In no other way under the hea-vens can there be developed will power and self-control. The same conclusion was reached by an altogether different method of approach by one of the greatest of all psychologists, William James, when he said: “Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuituous exercise every day.” Do something each day that is hard and more than is required in order that your faculty of effort, your will, may not become weak and atrophied through disuse. Thus strikingly does science reiterate and re-enforce this age old teaching of the Church. Before the eyes of a world, sick unto death with luxury and self indulgence, the Church places during Lent the age old picture drawn by the Master Artist, Christ, of will power de- veloped through self discipline, of self-control achieved through acts of self-denial. Greater than Napoleon Bonaparte, than Julius Caesar, than Alexander the Great, the conqueror of the world, is the man who has learned through the instrument of a vigorous will to conquer himself. For self-control is the open sesame to success in this life and to eternal happiness in the next. All the after ages have but confirmed the wisdom of those words of an obscure Flemish monk, Thomas a Kempis, written in his monastic cell at Zwolle centuries ago: “He who best knows how to endure. . . is conqueror of himself and lord of the world, the friend of Christ and an heir of heaven.” “And Unto Dust ” In addition to the great lesson of self-mastery. Lent brings home to mankind the fickleness of the world’s applause and its insufficiency to satisfy the hunger in the soul of man. On Ash Wednesday the Church seeks by a colorful and impressive ceremony to drive home to her children the transiency of this earthly life and the wisdom of seeking to attain the life eternal. The palms which were blessed on the previous Palm Sunday to remind us of the Saviour’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when the multitudes waved them aloft shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David”, and strewed them in profusion on the road over which he rode — these palms the Church burns to ashes. Then summoning her children to the altar railing she places these ashes on the brow of each in the form of a cross, while she whispers in the ear of each the words of warning: “Remember man thou art but dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.” Why speak to youth in whose eager eyes there burn the fires of life, and on whose cheeks there rests the bloom of youthful vigor — why speak to them of dust and ashes, of death and the hereafter? Why lessen their zest for life and its pleasures? The Church thus speaks to them, not to lessen their zest for life, but to give them a sense of values. She shoves back the narrow horizon of youth, removes the veil from the senses, reveals the transient character of earthly things and points out the folly of seeking enduring happiness in that which is so ephemeral. The thought of death and the hereafter is salutary at times for old and young, for it prompts one to answer aright that supreme question which the Master addresses to each of us: “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” The wholesome effect of a profound realization of the transiency of human life and human beauty is illustrated by an incident in the life of St. Francis Borgia. Francis was Duke of Gandia and Captain-General of Catalonia, and one of the most honored chevaliers at the Court of Spain. Isabella was known throughout Europe for her charm, her Spanish vivacity and for the striking beauty of her countenance. Often had Francis braved death while carrying the banner of Aragon and Castile into the thick of the battle, knowing that he would be rewarded with a word of praise from his beloved Queen. He found his greatest happiness in basking in the sunshine of her smile and drinking in with greedy eyes her charming loveliness. A Last Look In 1539 there fell to his lot the sad duty of escorting the remains of his beloved Queen to the royal burial grounds at Granada. In order to verify the body as that of Isabella, the coffin was uncovered. Eagerly Francis stepped forward to take one last lingering look at the beautiful countenance of his beloved Queen. He had no sooner done so than his face grew livid, his eyes wild with terror, as he shrank back. “No! No! Good God!” he cried, “it can’t be! It can’t be! Those eyes that face, that smile! They can’t have perished so utterly.” What was the sight that greeted his eyes? A face of wondrous beauty? No. A face hideous and ugly in its putrefaction, the loathsome prey of worms and maggots pulling it back to dush and ashes. “God grant,” cried Francis, “that I seek not to find my happiness henceforth in that flesh which perisheth so quickly, but only in that eternal Beauty which never knows decay.” Francis devoted his services thereafter to a heavenly King, seeking as a humble missionary to win souls for Christ. From the most beautiful face in all Spain, for whose look of approval soldiers faced death with a smile, to a sight SO foul and loathsome as to fill the spectator with revulsion — what a change! Gaze at the most beautiful face you have ever seen, with eyes that speak like a rapturous symphony, with a smile that warms and endears, and in a few short years will you be able to overcome your loathing to gaze upon it when death has touched it with its finger of decay? “Remember man that thou art but dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.” We need not go back, however, to the sixteenth century for striking instances of the transiency of earthly fame and the fickleness of human applause. On March 4, 1917, I stood in a crowd of 90,000 people before the Capitol in Washington, to watch the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson into the Presidency for his second term. His name was cheered on every side. A gigantic parade marched proudly before him in review. At the triumphant close of the World War when he sailed for France to dictate the terms of the Versailles Treaty of Peace, he had reached the eminence of world fame. His words about freedom and democracy and the autonomy of small nations had rekindled the hopes of all the oppressed nations of the earth. Unprecedented crowds greeted him at Paris with tumultuous cheering. The eyes of all the world were turned to him, as he stood on the pinnacle of human eminence as a new Moses, heaven-sent to lead the groping feet of the nations into the Promised Land of perpetual peace. An Age Old Cry A few years later I passed by a little home on H Street where lived a broken old man, unable to take more than a few steps with the aid of his cane. Broken in body, broken in mind, broken in heart, his League of Nations plan contemptuously rejected by the Senate, his opponent swept into office by the greatest landslide in history, the nations of Europe shaking their fists at him for deluding them with false hopes. What a pitiable spectacle ! As he gazed out of his window at night toward the Capitol ablaze with light, the scene of his brilliant feats, what memories must have stirred within him ! One night, it is narrated, Mrs. Wilson happened to step into the parlor. The room was dark. Seated in a chair near the front window with his face resting in his hands she perceived her husband. There was the sound of a few broken sobs. Placing her hand tenderly upon the bowed head, she asked softly: “Are you ill, dear?” The former president raised his head and looked for a brief moment through tear-dimmed eyes toward the great shining Capitol that had resounded so often with his name. “No, not ill,” he said, “but I realize now as never before the fickleness of the plaudits of the multitude and the emptiness of the glory of this world.” As he sat there, broken in heart and alone, he tasted of that world weariness, that pang of the heart which caused Solomon in his old age to cry out: “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity save in loving God and serving Him alone.” It was echoed again by St. Augustine, when after running through the whole gamut of sensual indulgence in pagan Rome, he cried out: “Our hearts have been made for Thee, 0 God, and they shall never rest until they rest in Thee.” Such are the great eternal truths which Lent with its gospel of penance and self-denial, drives home to a world that is forever tempted to find its happiness over the more beguiling but mistaken paths of ease and self-indulgence. Source: Penance and Self-Denial: Why? The Significance of Lenten Discipline for Modern Life Nihil Obstat: REV. T. E. DILLON, Censor Librorum Imprimatur: +JOHN FRANCIS NOLL, D. D., Bishop of Fort Wayne Pardon me, O Perfections of my God, for having preferred imperfect and evil inclinations to Thee! Pardon me, O Justice of my God, for having outraged Thee by my sins. Pardon me, O Holiness of my God, for having so long stained Thy sight's purity by my sins. Pardon me, O Mercy of my God, for having despised so long Thy mercy's voice. In deep sorrow and contrition, I cast myself at Thy feet: Have mercy on me.
We would like to share a couple of printables that we use each Lent to help us keep on track. The child can either mark off each day as it passes or place one of the Sacred Heart stickers on their cross in the appropriate spot. May you all have a blessed and fruitful Lent.
|
Holy Mother Church
dedicates the month of February to the Holy Family COPYRIGHT
The purpose of this website is to share the beautiful Catholic resources that God has so richly blessed us with. All texts unless they are my own words have their sources quoted, and most of them are in the public domain. Any educational items that I have made for or with my children are NOT TO BE USED FOR PROFIT, but are meant to be used for personal use by individuals and families. You may link to our site if you so choose. A Saint for everyday and good reading at:
Archives
January 2024
|