testimony of Christ; for we have not the time to enumerate all.
Now, what is very strange, and yet characteristic of all these,
they appear to live as though they were unconscious of their
obligations, and of the guilt which they incur. They seem to
think that if they are allowed to assume the name of a Christian
or Catholic, they are safe. Well then, asks one, why not exclude
them from the Church altogether, so that the whole world can see
what they are? This is the way we do away with unprofitable
subjects in other institutions. Take, for example, a railroad
corporation. Sometimes a company of this kind starts with great
prospects. The number who travel on the road is prodigious. The
stockholders congratulate themselves on a heavy dividend; when to
their wonder, on reckoning up their accounts, they find the
company running fast into bankruptcy. Investigations are made,
and it is discovered that a large number of the passengers have
been paying no fare, riding as "dead-heads." These being struck
off, the corporation begins to prosper again. Not so with the
holy Church. She is in this respect unlike all other
institutions. She is likened by her Founder to a field of wheat,
in which the enemy had sown cockle.
{74}
And when one of the servants said to the master: "_Wilt thou
that we go to gather it up? and he said, no; lest while you
gather up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with
it. Let both grow until the harvest; and in the time of harvest,
I will say to the reapers, gather up first the cockle, and bind
it into bundles to burn; but gather the wheat into my barn._"
[Footnote 34]
[Footnote 34: Matt, xiii., 28-30.]
The time to cut off the faithless children, the "dead-heads" of
the Church, is not now, but "in the harvest time," the day of
general reckoning, when our Lord shall appear in power and
majesty to judge the world. Then he will say to these: "I am your
Lord and Master, why have you not obeyed me?" He will show them
his wounds, and say: "Behold the price I paid to redeem you from
sin! What right had you to refuse my service? I came upon earth
to give an example that you might follow my steps, and you turned
your back upon me! You were a scandal to the Church, and a
stumbling-block in the way of others. You refused to give
testimony to my mercy, now you shall give testimony to my
sovereign justice. Gather up this cockle, these faithless, false,
treacherous disciples," he will say to his servants, "and let
their portion be in the pool which burns with fire and
brimstone." [Footnote 35]
[Footnote 35: Apoc. xxi., 8.]
{75}
Could but our voice reach the ears, and our entreaties penetrate
the hearts of these guilty Catholics, we would lift it up and cry
out to them: Do penance speedily! Repair by a good example the
evil which your bad example has caused to your neighbor. Strive
to gain more souls to Christ than your wicked life has lost to
him heretofore. Let your good works shine out the more, so that
like the servant of the eleventh hour, you may obtain the full
wages of eternal life.
As for you, dearest brethren, who have manfully withstood until
now all temptations to be disloyal to your faith, whose lives,
full of good works, have borne noble testimony to Christ, lift up
your eyes and hearts to heaven at this season of our Lord's
ascension. "_I go,_" he says, "_to prepare a place for
you. I will come again, and will take you to myself; that where I
am, you may be also_." [Footnote 36]
[Footnote 36: John xiv., 2, 3.]
-------------------
{76}
Sermon V.
Spiritual Death.
"Behold! a dead man was carried out."
--St. Luke vii., 12.
(From the Gospel of the 15th Sunday after Pentecost.)
What a touching occasion was this, in which our Blessed Lord was
pleased to manifest his power, and perform one of his many acts
of infinite mercy; an act, which like all his miracles, was not
only full of loving-kindness to those for whom it was performed,
but also replete with spiritual instruction for all.
A widow is bereaved of her only consolation, a son, in whom were
centred all her hopes, in whose happiness all her own was bound
up; the pride of her eyes, her joy in adversity, and the sunshine
to her poor heart in the cloudy days of sorrow.
{77}
Perhaps, too, he was her only support; his the arm which labored
for their daily bread, and she looked forward to the time when
age and gray hairs should bring infirmity, and her enfeebled body
tremble on the verge of the grave; then would he be the light to
her dimmed eyes, and a guide to her tottering steps.
And now, alas! he is gone! Is the world all dead? Is it always
night? Do the birds sing no more? Are the earth and sky all
wrapped in a great, gloomy mantle of grief? Where is her heart,
does it beat no more? Ah! so it is indeed to her.
How she watched him in the long hours of his racking pains, his
burning fever. At times he did not know her; _her_, his own
dear mother. Oh! how she prayed for him. Oftentimes, as he lay
upon his dying bed unconscious, she would kneel down beside him,
and take his thin wasted hand in hers, and lift up her streaming
eyes to God, the Father of the fatherless, and pour forth her
soul in an agony of supplication, beseeching Him to spare her
only son, her life, her all.
{78}
In vain. That hand grows cold within her grasp; those eyes, which
erewhile were so full of expression, have assumed a dull glassy
unmeaning stare, there is one shuddering convulsion, the
breathing ceases, his jaw drops, and she is a broken-hearted,
childless widow. That body, once so cherished and tenderly cared
for, must soon be removed far away out of sight, and now, amid
the lamentations of a sympathizing multitude, they carry it to
the grave. She feels her loss so keenly that the very carriers of
the bier seem to her to be heartless and unfeeling. Thus the
scene in the Gospel opens: "_Behold, a dead man is carried
out_." I know that poor widow. I have seen that dead man, her
only son, the cherished idol of her heart, many a time. I know
well those bearers, and they are assuredly most heartless and
unfeeling. I have seen the Lord stop them on their way, as they
carried him to the portals of death and hell.
Would you know who they are? Sinner! offspring of Holy Mother
Church, part and parcel of her own life, who by sin hast lost the
life of grace; it is thou! Behold thou art the dead man who is
carried out. Contemplate thyself as in a mirror in this example
from the Holy Gospel.
{79}
The Church has done for you all, aye, and more than this poor
widow did, or could do, for her only son.
She has given you a noble birth in Jesus Christ. She nourished
you, watched over, and cared for you, in your infancy. She
flattered herself, poor mother, that you would do honor to her
one day; she looked forward to the time when you would become her
support. She was so bound up in you, that she often exclaimed
with a truth, "Why do I live if it be not for my child?" Her very
occupation, her unceasing labors were for you. How proud she was
to see you increasing in grace with God and men, your manly soul
strong in virtue; your conscience bright and fair to look upon as
the face of an angel, thrilling her maternal heart with gladness,
as she beheld reflected there the lineaments of the sacred
countenance of her Divine Spouse.
Alas! that any thing so bright? and beautiful should ever know
decay or death!
Hear the sad story. Disease came. Sin entered into your soul, as
does the insidious pestilence into the very marrow of the bones.
And now the frightened mother looks with dismay upon your changed
features.
{80}
You are becoming emaciated, your soul, starving in sickness, is
no longer cheerful with the love of God. Although so haggard and
so woebegone, there is yet the hectic flush of the fever of
passion. At times in the height of that fever your mind wanders:
you do not know her, _her!_ your own dear mother? So low has
sin brought you, so far has sin abased you, that you have
forgotten your noble descent and your glorious destiny. The crime
of disobedience to the law of God has done its work, and that
soul which once walked so proudly erect now lies completely
prostrated.
Oh! how that Mother Church prays for you! With outstretched arms
to heaven she implores the divine mercy. "_Spare, O Lord, spare
thy people, and give not thine heritage to reproach_." Leave
me not alone without this only son of my heart, for whom Christ
died! But you are in your agony now, and hear nothing. You are
not moved to tears, as you would be, if you could but hear those
agonizing prayers.
{81}
You lie indifferent to all around, while the disease fastens upon
your very vitals: one sin after another, one temptation given way
to after another, until the life-blood of your soul has frozen in
its channels: and before your weeping, inconsolable mother, the
Church--before God, and in sight of His holy Angels and Saints,
you are dead! dead!! dead!!!
Like the fruitless church of Sardis, in the Apocalypse: "_Thou
hast a name that thou livest, but art dead_." [Footnote 37]
[Footnote 37: Apoc. iii., 1.]
What are the signs, my brethren, by which you would pronounce a
man dead? Surely, that he has no longer the use of any of his
senses; that he can neither see, hear, taste, touch nor smell. If
nothing remained to him but faint breathing, and a fluttering,
feeble pulse, you would already weep for him as lost to you, and
consider it only as the matter of a few moments to draw the sheet
over his face, and prepare his shroud.
Now this is just the deplorable state of a man in mortal sin.
{82}
Let me illustrate this. If you saw a person walking upon a
railroad track, and the train came thundering along directly in
front of him, and yet he proceeded on his way, totally unmindful
of your shouts and warnings of danger, you would throw up your
hands and exclaim: "Ah! God have mercy on him, poor man; he must
be totally blind and deaf--he is as good as dead." And so he is
in effect; for the train passes over him, and scatters his
mangled body hither and thither. Of what use to him was his power
of motion? He had the name of a living man, and is dead. So death
is coming upon you, sinner, sudden and destructive. How many
sermons have you not heard upon that awful subject? How many
warnings have you not had in the deaths, ever unlocked for, alas!
too often unprovided for, among your friends, acquaintances, and
in the very bosom of your family. You hear not, you see not; no
warning will turn you from your fatal track. You are as good as
dead.
If you saw a young girl walking to the brink of one of those
dreadful precipices formed by the lofty palisades on the North
River, and, despite the cries of her friends, she continued her
walk, gazing up at the sky, would you not say: "Ah! poor thing,
she must be killed; she is as good as dead."
{83}
Oh, young woman, you are walking upon the brink of a precipice,
by your dangerous familiarities, your late hours, your improper
company-keeping; and despite the cries of your father, your
mother, the pleadings of your friends, and the warning voice of
your confessor, your heedlessness in sin will destroy you, body
and soul, and you must lose reputation, honor, salvation,
eternity. Deaf to the voice of God, you are as good as dead.
Jesus daily prepares his divine banquet for you; but, alas! you
have lost your spiritual taste for that heavenly food, and there
is no life in you--you are dead; according to the words of the
divine Saviour: "_Amen, Amen. I say unto you, Except ye eat the
flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you shall not have
life in you_." [Footnote 38]
[Footnote 38: St. John vi., 54.]
[Transcriber's note: The USCCB reference is: St. John vi., 53.]
The Lord strikes you with afflictions of various kinds: disease,
loss of friends, misfortune in your business. He sends his angel
of death to your very doors; but you are insensible to his
chastisements: they affect you no more than if you were a statue
of marble. Is not this to be indeed dead?
{84}
"_You have put on malediction as a vestment, and it has entered
like water into your veins, and as oil into your bones_."
[Footnote 39]
[Footnote 39: Psalms cviii., 18.]
[Transcriber's note: Psalms cviii ends at verse 14.]
Yes; corruption has commenced; you have become offensive as a
corpse, of bad odor, and scandalous to the Christian community.
The finger is pointed at you, your bad life is every where spoken
of, but you do not believe it; like a corpse, you are not
sensible of the disgust you excite. As the sister of Lazarus said
to the Lord: "_It is now four days since he died, and already
he stinketh_." Four days! Why, it is four months--four
years--forty years, since _you_ died--since you committed
mortal sin, and continued in it, oh! unrepentant sinner; and you
have become insupportable. You have reaped the blasting curse you
sowed: "_For he that soweth in the flesh, of the flesh also
shall reap corruption_," the words of this day's Epistle.
[Footnote 40]
[Footnote 40: Gal. vi., 8.]
Your dead soul is in the hands of the bearers, your companions in
sin, your fellow cursers and blasphemers. The grog-shop keepers
have got hold of you, and every step is a closer approach to the
tomb, the gates of hell, the last home of fornicators, liars, and
drunkards.
{85}
How insensible you lie in their hands! The multitude may weep, in
company with your poor mother, piercing cries and sobs which are
heard throughout heaven and hell, but make no impression on your
dull ears. No! there is no sound [that] can wake you now, but the
voice of Jesus Christ, or the last trump which will summon your
guilty soul to judgment.
Will that voice of Jesus Christ be heard? I know not. Will the
Lord be moved to pity toward his weeping Church? I know not. Will
he touch the bier upon which you are stretched stark dead, and
command those companions of yours in sin to stop? I know not.
Will Jesus arrest the steps of that infamous woman, of those
debased, pitiless, heartless, unfeeling dram-sellers? (Did I not
say that the widow was right--that they are heartless and
unfeeling?) I know not. What I do know is that, if Jesus is not
moved to pity, if he does not strike fear into the heart of that
young man or woman, your companion in sin, if the arm of the
vengeance of Christ does not fall upon that grog-shop keeper,--no
other sound will waken you, so dead in sin, but that one upon the
Last Day, which rather than to hear, it were better for you to
sleep in eternal oblivion.
{86}
"Ah! father," you say, "that's dreadful doctrine." Yes; and there
is something more dreadful about it. It is true. What saith the
Apostle? "_It is impossible for those who were once illuminated
and have tasted the heavenly gift, and are fallen away, to be
renewed again to penance, crucifying again to themselves the Son
of God, and making him a mockery._" [Footnote 41]
[Footnote 41: Heb. vi., 4-6.]
What does this mean but that, when one has fallen away into
mortal sin, it is as impossible for him to do any thing toward
the salvation of his soul, as it is for a dead man to raise
himself to life. Lay it to heart--a most important truth--that
Almighty God owes you nothing; is not bound, nor has he promised,
to give you grace beyond a certain degree; while he has most
emphatically warned the sinner that the time will come, and who
knows--oh! dreadful thought--but that it has already arrived for
you, when he will withdraw his countenance from you, and leave
you to the fate you have chosen, and so justly merited. Every
child has amused himself on the banks of the river or brook,
watching the eddies caused by the meeting of contrary currents,
and observing how the brown leaves which have fallen from the
trees into the stream are suddenly caught in the circling current
and whirled about, approaching at each revolution nearer the
centre of it.
{87}
Now, we are told by travellers, that in the vast ocean there are
powerful and dangerous eddies of this sort, called whirlpools;
and that large ships, if allowed to sail within their influence,
are drawn in, and carried round and round, no longer obedient to
the sails or rudder, and at last are completely swallowed up in
the yawning vortex of whirling waters.
Oh! unrepentant sinner: you are the brown leaf, fallen from the
tree of life into the water of iniquity. You are the ship which
has lost its compass, and strayed within reach of the dizzy
whirlpool. God stood upon the calm open sea, and each time that
you came around he warned you of your danger. He did more; he
sent strong and sufficient breezes of his holy grace; if you had
taken advantage of them in trimming the sails, and putting up the
helm, you might have escaped.
{88}
How many times did he not thus attempt your rescue: but you
heeded him not. There was even something pleasant and
intoxicating to be thus carried along in the powerful stream; and
now you go faster and faster, nearer and nearer, until the
yawning abyss opens upon your gaze, and you send forth a shriek
for help, a cry of despair. But you are so dizzy that you cannot
descry the form of God upon the sea. It is well; it would double
your agony to see him now, for he has turned his back upon you;
or worse, is mocking you, and laughs you to scorn. "_Because I
called and you refused; I stretched out my hand, and there was
none that regarded. You have despised all my counsel, and have
neglected my reprehensions. I also will laugh in your
destruction, and will mock when your fear cometh. When sudden
calamity shall fall on you, and destruction as a tempest shall be
at hand; when tribulation and distress shall come upon you; then
shall they call upon me, and I will not hear_." [Footnote 42]
[Footnote 42: Prov. i., 24-28.]
{89}
There is no help for you now. Your cries of distress, and prayers
and entreaties are drowned in the thundering din of the rushing
waters: as our Lord prophesied. "_Upon the earth distress of
nations, men withering away for fear, by reason of the confusion
of the roaring of the sea, and of the waves_." [Footnote 43]
[Footnote 43: St. Luke xxi., 25.]
What is that which is glimmering white like a sail upon the
waves? Can it be a friendly ship coming to your rescue? Hark!
Tramp, tramp, over land, over sea. Why does that sound send a
shuddering thrill of horror through every nerve? 'Tis no sail.
'Tis a pale horse, and he that rideth thereon is Death. Tramp!
tramp! over land, over sea! Oh! woe betide thee, wretched sinner;
thine hour is come. One last cry, and the waters of iniquity have
closed over you forever! Oh, God! have mercy on poor sinful men,
and according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out
their iniquities. If thy people Israel shall have sinned against
thee, and thou in thine anger hast delivered them up into the
hands of their enemies, and they return to thee with all their
heart, and confessing to thy name shall come, and pray, and make
supplication to thee, then hear thou in heaven, thy dwelling
place, their prayers; and forgive thy people, and have compassion
upon them, and help thy servants whom thou hast redeemed by thy
precious blood.
{90}
What answer dost thou make, O dearest Lord?--"_He that heareth
you heareth me_." [Footnote 44]
[Footnote 44: St. Luke x., 16.]
Thy words, O Jesus, are truth and life. Thou hast commanded thy
priests, the ministers of thy word, to speak in thy name; to
stand in the path of sinners on the way to destruction, and make
thy voice to be heard, ("_Arise! thou that sleepest, and awake
from the dead!_") as thou didst to the only son of the widow
of Nain. "_Be not deceived,_" says the holy Apostle in the
Epistle of this day. "_God is not mocked._" "_He that
despiseth you despiseth me_." [Footnote 45]
[Footnote 45: St. Luke x., 16.]
In the name of God, then, obedient to the charge which I,
although unworthy, have received from the Lord Jesus, I say unto
you, arise! Arise from those disastrous habits of sin, which are
dragging you down to death and hell. Abandon, once for all, those
horrid haunts of vice and immorality. Put away all those
obscenities, evil speakings, and cursings, from your lips; of the
which I tell you, as has been already foretold you, that they who
do such things, shall not obtain the kingdom of God. Young man, I
say unto thee, arise!
{91}
Oh! wretched parents, whose miserable home is a very school of
Satan to your hapless children; whose daily lives are as an open
book before their eyes, every leaf of which is blotted and
blurred with drunkenness and disorder--I say unto you, oh, wicked
father, oh, slothful mother, arise! You, young woman, over whose
head ruin and shame are hanging, arise! send that young man away
to-night.
You who have dealt out disgrace, dirt, delirium tremens, ruin,
and the wrath of God, by the measure, to your poor fellow sinner,
and upon whose guilty head will fall a double weight of woe--I
say unto _you_, arise! turn to the Lord, and perhaps he will
have mercy upon you. Do penance, do penance! and think not to say
within your hearts: We have Abraham for our father; we have the
Church for our mother--she will watch over us Catholics, and
before it is too late, snatch us from the jaws of hell. I say
unto you, sinner, you are deceiving yourself with a lie, and your
supine indifference proves you to be of that un-happy number
described in Holy Writ, who resisted so long to the Divine call,
that, hardened in iniquity, God gave them over to believe a lie.
{92}
Thus, instead of your faith saving you, it will only be a surer
cause of your damnation. Oh! you hope in the mercy of God. Poor
soul! God, notwithstanding his mercy, permitted you to fall into
your present deplorable state. Why shall he not permit you to
fall into eternal death, which, howsoever terrible and hopeless,
is not so bad, so evil after all, as your spiritual death: for so
say the Doctors of Holy Church. "The punishment of sin is less
than the guilt."
Between spiritual and eternal death there is but a step--taken
every day by one or another in this sinful world--and that is the
death of the body; and if it happens to you to-day, without
doubt, without remedy or resource, you will find yourself
eternally lost; which may God avert from every one of you. Amen.
---------------
{93}
Sermon VI.
The Love Of God.
"And one of them, a doctor of the law, asked him, tempting him:
Master, which is the great commandment of the law? Jesus said
to him: Thou shall love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart,
and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind."
--St. Matt, xxii., 35-37.
(From the Gospel for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost.)
This doctor of the law had no good motive in asking his question.
He was full of malice, and desired, not to learn any thing good
himself, but to entrap our Lord. But God knows how to draw good
out of evil. Though the lawyers intention was bad, his question
was a good one; the very best question that he could have asked,
and the answer to it one of vast importance to us, involving all
our interests for eternity.
{94}
Let us to-day consider well the meaning of the answer given by
our Blessed Saviour in the words of the text. In the first place,
what does he mean by the love of God? and in the second, what
degree of this love must we practise?
What is the love of God, or in what does it consist? Many have a
false idea of it. They think it is exactly the same as earthly
love, the love of relations or friends. They know what that kind
of love is. They exercise it without difficulty. Why? because it
is spontaneous; it is a flowing out of the heart, an emotion or
feeling. They cannot _feel_ the same love for God as for
their friends, and therefore they conclude it is of no use to try
to love God. They make a great mistake. God is a pure spirit, not
to be seen, heard, or taken notice of by the senses, and
therefore, in the very nature of things, He cannot always be
loved with that same emotion or feeling that springs up in our
hearts, without effort, toward our neighbors and friends of flesh
and blood. Indeed God, considered as an infinite being, with all
his vast and unlimited perfections, seems in some way separated
from us and our thoughts, which makes a difficulty in feeling
emotions of love to Him.
{95}
The essence of the love of God is not in emotion or feeling, but
in our reason and will. Faith reveals Him to us, and we
acknowledge Him with our reason to be infinitely wise and
infinitely good, and worthy of all our love. The true love of God
consists, then, in acknowledging Him with our reason to be what
He is, and in the will to do that which is pleasing to Him.