the faintest and poorest idea of the joys of heaven. Men seek for
wealth as the means of defending themselves from the ills of
life, but there is perfect rest only in heaven. Men seek for
pleasure, but earthly joys are short and unsatisfactory; the
pleasures at God's right hand are for ever sure. Men seek for
honor, but the real honor comes from God alone. And these are
within the reach of each one of you. When Father Thomas of Jesus,
was dying in captivity, his friends came around his bedside, and
expressed their regret that he should die, away from his home,
and their hope that the King of Spain would even yet ransom him;
but the holy man replied: "I have a better country than Spain,
and the ransom has long been paid. That country is heaven, that
ransom is the blood of Christ." The Holy Church says: "When thou
hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the
kingdom of heaven to all believers." Yes! by the blood of Christ,
by the sacrament of baptism, the gates of heaven are opened
before us. The path is straight and plain. If by sin we have
strayed from it, by penance we have been recalled to it, and now
there is nothing to do but to advance and persevere, and heaven
is ours.
{262}
Will you draw back, Christian? Will you, by mortal sin, throw
away that immortal crown? No drunkard or adulterer, nothing that
is defiled, can enter there. There is only one road that leads to
heaven--the road of Christian obedience. Will you renounce your
birthright? Will you, by sin, take the course that leads you away
from your heavenly home? "Oh!" I hear you say, "I will choose
heaven." But, remember, heaven is to be won. "Heaven," says St.
Philip Neri, "is not for the slothful and cowardly." Strive then,
henceforth, for the rewards that are at God's right hand. Strive
to attain abundant merits for eternity. Remember that he that
soweth sparingly shall reap sparingly, and he that soweth
plentifully shall reap plentifully. God is not unmindful of your
works and labor that proceedeth from love. Things so small as not
to be taken notice of, things that happen every day, add a new
glory to our mansions in heaven. With this aim, then, let us
henceforth work. "Oh, happy I," says St. Augustine, "and thrice
happy, if, after the dissolution of the body, I shall merit to
hear the songs that are sung in praise of the Eternal King, by
the inhabitants of the celestial city!" Happy I, if I myself
shall merit to sing those strains, and to stand before my Lord
and King, and to see Him in His glory, as he promised! "He that
loveth me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and
will manifest myself to him." "How amiable are thy tabernacles,
Thou Lord of Hosts! My soul hath a desire and a longing to enter
into the courts of the Lord." Grant me this, O Lord. Give and
withhold what Thou wilt. I do not ask length of days. I do not
ask for earthly honor and prosperity. I do not ask to be free
from care, or labor, or suffering. But this I do ask, O Lord:
when this life is over, shut not up my soul in hell, but let me
look on Thy face in the land of the living. Make me so to pass
through things temporal that I lose not the things eternal.
{263}
Hail, Heavenly Queen! our life, our sweetness, and our hope! to
Thee do we cry, poor, exiled children of Eve. Oh, then, from Thy
throne in heaven, lift upon us, who are struggling in this world,
those merciful eyes of Thine! and when this our exile is over,
show us the blessed fruit of Thy womb, JESUS!
Note.--This was the last Sunday-Sermon which F. Baker preached,
two weeks before he was seized with his last illness.
--------------------
Sermon V.
The Duty Of Growing In Christian Knowledge.
(First Sunday in Advent.)
"The first man knew not wisdom perfectly,
no more shall the last find her out.
For her thoughts are vaster than the sea,
and her counsels deeper than the great ocean."
--Eccles. XXIV. 38, 39.
I think we Catholics, when we lay claim to the possession of the
whole truth--the entire revelation imparted to the world from
Christ through the apostles--sometimes forget how small a share
of that truth each one of us possesses in particular. It is the
Church that the Holy Ghost leads into all truth, not individuals.
Each Catholic, who is sufficiently instructed, knows some truth;
he knows what is necessary to salvation; but there are many
things which he is totally ignorant of, many things concerning
which his conceptions are inadequate or distorted. Now if this be
so, it cannot but be useful to remember it, and I will,
therefore, this morning, show you how it must be so, and some of
the consequences which flow from it.
{264}
Each one's knowledge of truth must be more or less partial and
incomplete, because it varies with each one's capacity for
receiving truth. When God gave man reason, He conferred on him
the faculty of receiving truth; but the degree in which this or
that man is capable of receiving truth, depends upon the strength
and cultivation of his particular reason. The eye is the organ of
sight, but one man's eye is stronger and truer than another's.
Slight variations of color or form, wholly indistinguishable by
one man, are detected in a moment by another. So, one man's
reason is stronger than another's. What makes the difference, is,
of course, in part the diversity in natural endowments, but it is
not altogether due to this cause; it is due in great measure also
to cultivation. Moral dispositions, too, have a great deal to do
with it; and in the case of Christian truth, the grace of God
also exerts a special influence. The degrees in which these
various elements are found in particular cases, are so different,
that there is an almost infinite gradation in the measure in
which men are capable of receiving truth. No two men can receive
it in exactly the same degree. In all this congregation, where we
recite the same Creed and use the same prayers, there are,
perhaps, no two of us who mean by them precisely the same thing.
The intelligence of each one, his past history, his moral
dispositions, will determine how far the faith that is in him
corresponds to the faith that is without him--the faith as it is
in itself, the object of faith as it is in God. I can make what I
mean plain to you by an illustration. Let us suppose a beautiful
picture of the crucifixion, for instance, [is] put up in a public
gallery. Men of every kind enter and pass before it. There comes
a man who has never heard of Christ; he is ignorant and
uneducated. He looks up and sees the representation of extremest
human agony, mingled with superhuman dignity and patience. Some
ray enters his mind; he pauses, is startled then passes on. Now
there comes another, who is an anatomist, and he is arrested by
the skill with which the body is proportioned, and the play of
the muscles and nerves is exhibited. Every line is a study to
him, and he stops a good deal longer than the first.
{265}
Then there comes an artist, and he sees in the picture something
greater even. He takes in the genius of the conception, the
fitness of attitude and expression, the light and shade, the
tints of color, the difficulties overcome by art; and he comes
and sits before it, day after day, for hours, absorbed in the
study of its beauties. And another comes who is a poet, and to
him it brings back the scene of Calvary. In a moment he is far
away, and the sun is darkened, and the earth quakes, and there
are thunderings and lightnings, and once more the Holy City pours
forth its multitude to witness the death of Jesus. And then there
comes a sinner. Ah! that story of love and suffering! which tells
how God so loved the world, and gave His only-begotten Son, that
all who believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life. To him, that picture speaks of the horrors of sin, of
mercy, of heaven and hell, and thoughts are awakened by it which
lead him back to God. There hangs the picture, unaltered. It is
just what the artist made it, neither more nor less, yet see how
different it has been to different beholders.
Now, just so it is with the preaching of the truth. As we recite
the Creed, as we preach to you, Sunday after Sunday, the Creed
itself is indeed unchangeable, but it is a different thing to
each one of us who preach, and to each one of you who hear,
according to your intelligence, your past history, and your
present dispositions. How can it be otherwise? Does not the very
word, God, mean something different to us from what it does to a
saint? Do not the words Presence of God, mean something different
to you and me from what they did to St. Teresa, to whom the soul
of man appeared as a castle with seven chambers, each one more
sacred than the others, as you advanced into the interior, until
the innermost shrine was reached, where God and the soul were
joined together in a manner which human language knows not how to
utter?
{266}
Do you not see that the doctrine of the Incarnation is something
very different to us from what it was to St. Athanasius, who
spent his whole life in conflict for it, who endured years of
exile and calumny, the estrangement of friends, the suspicion
even of good men, rather than falter the least in fidelity to
that verity on which his soul had fed? Or the Real Presence--is
that not a different thing to the crowd who come to church and
kneel from custom, but hardly remember why, from what it was to
St. Thomas, who composed in honor of it the wonderful hymns
_Pange Lingua_ and _Lauda Sion_, or to St. Francis
Xavier, who spent nights in prayer, prostrate upon the platform
of the altar? Why, St. Thomas, who has so written of the
Christian faith that the Church has named him the angelical
doctor, threw down his pen in hopelessness of being able to
express the high knowledge of divine things which filled his
soul. And St. Paul confesses, in writing to the Hebrews, that
even in that primitive community, taught by apostles and living
in a perpetual call to martyrdom, there were some points of
Christian truth which he found himself unable to utter, "because
you are become weak to hear." [Footnote 30]
[Footnote 30: Heb. v. 11.]
I know that you are Catholics, that you have the Apostles' Creed
by heart, that you believe in one God in Three Persons, in the
Incarnation and Death of the Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity, and in the two eternities before us; but neither you nor
I know what all this implies. Our knowledge is very imperfect: we
are but babes in Christ, lisping and stammering the Divine
alphabet--children, wetting our feet in the waves which dash on
the shore of the boundless ocean of truth.
It is good for us, as I have already said, to remember this, for
it gives us at once the true method of forming an estimate of
Christianity. A tree is known by its fruit, but it is by its best
fruit.
{267}
If you have a tree in your garden bearing only a small quantity
of very delicious fruit, you prize it highly and take great care
of it, though many of the blossoms fall off, and a great deal of
the fruit never ripens. So you must judge of the Catholic Church,
by its best and most perfect fruit, that is, by the men of great
wisdom and great virtue whom it produces, and not by its
imperfect members. Who is likely to be the best exponent and the
truest specimen of his religion, a man of prayer and study,
deeply versed in the Holy Scriptures and sacred learning, or one
of small capacity, little learning, and little prayer? Evidently,
the former; and yet how often do men take the contrary way of
judging of the teaching and spirit of the Church. They visit some
Catholic country, they see some instance of popular error,
ignorance, or disorder, and they say: "This is Catholicity." Or,
at home, they see or hear a Catholic do or say something which
gives them offence, and they exclaim: "That is your doctrine!"
"That is your religion!" Now, supposing the offence they take to
be justly taken, which is not always the case, what does it
prove? It may prove that the rulers of the Church have not done
their duty; but it may prove just the contrary, that they have
done their duty-that in spite of the obstacles of ignorance and
rudeness, they have succeeded in imparting to some darkened souls
enough knowledge to lead them to God, though it be the very least
that is sufficient for that purpose. But it does not show what
the doctrine of the Church really is as intelligently understood.
To find out this, you must look at men who are in the most
favorable circumstances for understanding it, and they are the
saints of God: St. Basil, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Sales,
St. Teresa. St. Vincent of Paul.
O my brethren! how can men turn away from Catholicity? I
understand how they can turn away from it as you and I express
it; how we can fail to remove their difficulties, or even put new
perplexity in their way. But how can they turn away from
Catholicity as it is expressed by the great saints of the Church?
{268 }
What a divine religion! What majesty, what sweetness, what
wisdom, what power! How it commands the homage of the world! What
a universal testimony it has in its favor, after all! Do you
know, my brethren, I believe men are far more in favor of
Catholicity than we suspect. I believe half the difficulties they
find in our religion are not in our religion at all, but in us;
in our ignorance, in our prejudices, in our short-sightedness and
narrow-heartedness. What renders the world without excuse is the
line of saints, the true witnesses to the genius and spirit of
the Catholic religion. And yet, even the saints themselves are
not the perfect exponents of the faith, for even the saints were
not altogether free from ignorance and error. To understand fully
the nobleness of the Christian faith, we should need the help of
inspiration itself. Did it never occur to you, my brethren, that
the expressions of the prophets and apostles in reference to the
light and grace brought by Jesus Christ into the world, were
extravagant? "_Behold, I will lay thy stones in order, and will
lay thy foundations with sapphires, and I will make thy bulwarks
of jasper: and thy gates of graven stones, and all thy borders if
desirable stones. All thy children shall be taught of the Lord:
and great shall be the peace of thy children." "Thou shalt no
more have the sun for thy light by day, neither shall the
brightness of the moon enlighten thee: but the Lord shall be unto
thee for an everlasting light, and thy God for thy glory_."
[Footnote 31]
[Footnote 31: Isaiah liv. 11-13; lx. 19.]
Does the Catholic Church, as you understand it, come up to these
descriptions? Is Catholic truth, as you appropriate it, so high
and glorious a thing as this? No! And the reason is, that you are
straitened in yourselves. Your conceptions are so low, your
knowledge of the truth is so partial and limited that you do not
recognize the description when the Holy Ghost presents that truth
as it is in itself, as it is seen and known by God.
{269}
This thought leads us naturally to another; namely, that it is
the duty of each one of us to extend his knowledge of Christian
truth as far as possible. There is a story told of a foreign
gentleman visiting Rome, who went one day to St. Peter's Church,
and, after entering the vestibule, admired its noble proportions,
and returned home fully satisfied that he had seen the church
itself, which he had not even entered. So it is with many persons
who never pass beyond the vestibule of Christian knowledge. They
never enter the inner temple, or catch even a glimpse of its vast
heights and its dim distances, its receding aisles, its intricate
archings, its glory, its richness, and its mystery. O misery of
ignorance! which has ever been the heaviest curse of our race. O
Morning Star, harbinger of eternal truth, and Sun of Justice,
when wilt thou come to enlighten those that sit in darkness and
in the shadow of death! Alas! this is our grief, that the true
Light is come into the world, but our eyes are holden that we
cannot see it. Truths, the thought of which rapt the apostles
into ecstasy, truths which the angels desire to look into, are
published in our hearing, and awaken no aspiration, no stirring
in our hearts. We go away, to eat and drink, and work, and play.
O brethren! burst for yourselves these bonds of ignorance. Do not
say, I am not learned, I am not acute or profound, I cannot hope
to understand much. Remember that there were some servants to
whom one talent was given, who were called to account as well as
those who had ten. Do what you can. A pure heart, a blameless
life, and prayer, are great enlighteners. Read, listen, meditate,
obey. Ask of God to enlarge your knowledge, and to teach you what
it means to say you believe in Him. Ask of Jesus Christ to teach
you what it means to say that He was made man and died for us on
the cross; what it is to receive His body and blood; what is the
meaning of heaven and hell.
{270}
Awake thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light! He
will make you understand more and more what it is to be a
Christian. Often have I seen the fulfilment of this promise. I
have been at the bedside of poor people, who would be called rude
and illiterate, but to whose pure hearts and earnest prayers God
had imparted so clear a knowledge of the faith, that I have felt
in their humble rooms like Jacob when he awoke from sleep and
said: "Indeed the Lord is in this place." [Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: Gen. xxviii. 16.]
Men are talking about a Church of the future. They say the old
Church is decrepid, her theology is obsolete, she stimulates
thought no more. But we know better. The Church of the future is
the Church of the past. That Church is ever ancient and ever new.
Her truth is not exhausted. Men know not the half nor the
hundredth part of her hidden wisdom. O the victory! when men
shall understand this--when they shall come confessing to the
Holy Church, as the Queen of Saba did to Solomon: "_The report
is true, which I heard in my own country, concerning thy words
and concerning thy wisdom. And I did not believe them that told
me, till I came myself and saw with my own eyes, and have found
that the half hath not been told me; thy wisdom and thy works
exceed the fame which I heard. Blessed are thy men, and blessed
are thy servants who stand before thee always, and hear thy
wisdom_." [Footnote 33]
[Footnote 33: III. Ki. x. 6-8.]
Yes! the history of the Church is not accomplished, her triumphs
are not yet all written. Why does she, Advent after Advent,
publish again the glowing predictions of the evangelical prophet,
but because she knows that they await a still more magnificent
fulfilment? Take courage--the cloud that rests on the people
shall be lifted off, and the burden taken away. The Ancient
Church "shall no more be called forsaken, nor her land desolate."
[Footnote 34]
[Footnote 34: Is. lxii. 4.]
{271}
"_Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem: for thy light is come,
and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. And the Gentiles
shall walk in thy light, and kings in the brightness of thy
rising. Then shalt thou see and abound, and thy heart shall
wonder and be enlarged. And the children of them that afflict
thee shall come bowing down to thee, and all that slandered thee
shall worship the steps of thy feet, and shall call thee the city
of the Lord, the Sion of the Holy One of Israel_." [Footnote 35]
[Footnote 35: Isai. lx. 1-14.]
--------------------
Sermon VI.
The Mission Of St. John the Baptist.
(Second Sunday In Advent.)
"This is he of whom it is written:
Behold I send My messenger before Thy face,
who shall prepare Thy way before Thee."
--St. Matt. xi. 10.
The Scriptures of the Old Testament had foretold that a special
messenger should immediately precede the coming of the Messias,
whose duty would be to prepare men's hearts for His reception.
Now, our Lord in the text tells us that St. John the Baptist was
this messenger. It is for this reason that the Gospels read in
the Church for the season of Advent are so full of the sayings
and doings of this saint. In Advent the Church desires to prepare
us for the twofold coming of Christ--at His Nativity and at the
Last Judgment; and it is natural that she should avail herself of
the labors of one who was divinely appointed for the same
purpose. Accordingly, from Sunday to Sunday, during this season,
she bring St. John the Baptist from his cell in the desert, clad
in his rough garment, to preach to us Christians the same lessons
he preached to the Jewish people centuries ago.
{272}
It has seemed to me, then, that I could not better subserve the
intentions of the Church, than by considering this morning in
what the mission of St. John the Baptist as a preparation for
Christ's coming specially consisted, and what practical lessons
it suggests to us.
St. John the Baptist was of the priestly race, yet he never
exercised the office of a priest. He was not a prophet, at least
in the sense of one who foretells future events. He worked no
miracles. He had no ecclesiastical position. What was he then?
What was his office? How did he prepare men for the coming of
Christ? The Scriptures tell us what he was. He was a
"_Voice_" and a "_Cry_"--the cry of conscience, the
voice of man's immortal destiny. His mission was simple,
elementary, and universal. It went deeper than ecclesiastical or
ritual duties. It touched human probation to the very quick. He
dealt with the great question of salvation, protested vehemently
against sin, and published aloud that law of sanctity which is
written on every man's heart by the finger of God.
We have some remains of his sermons, from which we can learn his
style. "_Begin not to say_," so he speaks to the Jews,
"_we have Abraham to our father, for God is able to raise up of
these stones children to Abraham_." [Footnote 36]
[Footnote 36: St. Luke iii. 8.]
See, how he sweeps away external privileges, and goes straight to
every man's conscience. "_The axe is laid now to the root of
the trees, and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit
shall be cut down and cast into the fire_." Nothing but what
is internal, nothing but what is sound at the core, can bear the
scrutiny. He descends to the particulars of each man's state and
condition of life. The people came to him and asked him, "What
shall we do?" And he said: "_He that hath two coats, let him
impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat let him do
likewise_."
{273}
That was a short and pithy sermon! Then the officers of the
custom came and asked: "What shall _we_ do? And he answered:
"_Take nothing more than that which is appointed you_." Do
not rob or swindle. Do not use bribery or extortion. And the
soldiers asked him, saying: "And what shall _we_ do?" And he
said: "_Do violence to no man: neither calumniate any man; and
be content with your pay_."
Such was the preaching of St. John the Baptist, pointed, direct,
homely, practical: an echo of that trumpet-blast which once shook
the earth, when God gave the Ten Commandments out of the Mount.
And it did its work. Our Lord himself has testified to the
success of St. John's mission. It prepared men to believe in
Christ. It was the school which trained disciples for
Christianity. They that believed in St. John believed afterwards
in Christ. On one occasion the evangelist gives it as the
explanation why some believed and some rejected the words of
Jesus, that they had first believed or rejected the words of the
Baptist. "_All the people_," such is the language I refer
to, "_justified God, being baptized with, the baptism of John,
but the Pharisees and the lawyers despised the counsel of God
against themselves, being not baptized of him_." [Footnote 37]
[Footnote 37: St. Luke vii. 29, 30.]
Nor is it difficult to explain how his preaching effected this
result. Christ came to save sinners. In point of fact, we know
that this is the reason why He has come into the world. He has
come to seek and save that which was lost. He has come to heal
the broken-hearted. He has come to give us a new law, higher and
holier than the old, yet easier by the brightness of His example,
and the graces He imparts. Now, unless a man feels the evil of
sin, unless he wants to keep the law, unless he feels an
interest, and a deep interest, in the question of his destiny, he
does not care for Christ.
{274}
True, our Lord has given to the understanding proofs of His
divine mission, so that belief in Him may be a reasonable act;
but until the conscience is stirred up, the understanding has no
motive for considering these proofs. To the carnal and careless
Jews, the announcement of Christ's coming was, I suppose, simply
uninteresting. In some points of view, indeed, they might have
welcomed Him. As a temporal prince and deliverer, His advent
would have been hailed by them, but salvation from sin was a
matter in which they felt no great concern. What did they want
with Christ? Why does He come at all to consciences which do not
crave rest, and wills that need no strength? What need of a
Saviour, if there is no sin to be shunned, no hell to be feared,
no heaven to be won, no great struggle between good and evil, no
eternity in peril?