Epistle.
Romans xiii. 11-14,

Brethren:
Know that it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is passed, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light; let us walk honestly as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Gospel.
St. Luke xxi. 25-33.

At that time Jesus said to his disciples: There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars: and upon the earth distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves, men withering away for fear, and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world. For the powers of heaven shall be moved: and then they shall see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with great power and majesty. But when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads: because your redemption is at hand. And he spoke to them a similitude. See the fig-tree, and all the trees: when they now shoot forth their fruit, you know that summer is nigh; so you also when you shall see these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God is at hand. Amen I say to you this generation shall not pass away, till all things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

Sermon I.

Heaven and earth shall pass away.
—St. Luke xxi. 33.

Ah! my friend, how are you? How do you do? Where are you going? These are everyday expressions, dear brethren. Probably some neighbor spoke to you thus as you were coming to Mass. This is the first Sunday in Advent, the Sunday of judgment, and I am going to put the same questions to you. I begin with the last one. Where are you going? Young men, old men, women, girls, children, people, priests, rich and poor, where are all of you going? Are you going to church or for a walk? No, we have a trial at court and are summoned to appear. Whose trial? Our own. Yes, we are all going to judgment, the trial of eternity before the all-seeing Judge. We are all formed in a great procession. No matter whether we are good or bad, in a state of grace or of mortal sin, no matter whether our case is a good one or a bad one, no matter if our cause be just or unjust, we are all going to judgment—all going to the great trial, in which every living soul, each man and woman and child, shall be the prisoners at the bar, and God, the judge of all, shall sit upon the great white Throne. When will that trial-day come? No one knows, not even the angels, our Lord says. Judgment will come suddenly. Time has been given you. You have been told "beforehand." The actual coming will be sudden. "Behold, I come as a thief in the night." "Behold, I come quickly." "Behold, I come as the lightning." Such are the terms in which our Lord speaks of his second advent. When men are eating and drinking, marrying, buying, and selling, burying the dead, laboring, praying, waking or sleeping, then there will be a cry heard, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; go ye forth to meet Him." Go forth just as you are; just as the moment finds you; without a moment more to prepare, without an instant in which to say, "God help me!" Where are you going, then? Going to judgment. Going to a sudden judgment. Going to meet accusers who will rise out of the graves of earth and from the pit of hell to bear witness against sinners for all the commandments they have broken, all the duties they have neglected, all the scandal and bad example they have given. Woe to bad parents in that day! Woe to disobedient children in that day! Woe to the drunken, the impure, the thieves, the liars, the false witnesses, the apostates in that day! Ah! then, how do you do. Christian, Catholic? How are you, baptized of God? How is your health, the health of your soul? Are you in the fever of sin? Do you see upon your souls great livid plague-spots of mortal offences against the Almighty? Then tremble, for you have to face the God "whose eyes are brighter than the noonday sun"! He will ask: "How are you? What mean these stains upon your soul? Where is the white garment that I gave you? Where is my image and likeness?" Woe to every one who cannot answer these questions; for to be unable to answer means to be unable to go to heaven, means that you will be found guilty by the Eternal Judge and condemned to everlasting death. Let, then, these two questions ring in your ears: Where are you going? How are you in God's sight? You are going to judgment. Are you in a fit state to appear there? Brethren, it will be an awful day, that day of judgment, even for the just. "Where, then, shall the unjust and the sinner appear?" Look up to the heavens as you leave this church. The clouds are not yet riven. The sun is not yet darkened. Oh! then there is yet time. There is a moment's lull before the storm breaks; a second's pause before the trumpet sounds. But the day of judgment will come, for Jesus Christ has told us so, and, as he says: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."

Rev. Algernon A. Brown.

Sermon II.

Brethren: Know that it is now the hour
for us to rise from sleep.
—Romans xiii. 11.

To-day, my dear brethren, is the New Year's Day of the Catholic Church. Today she begins again that round of seasons and festivals which will never cease to be repeated till that day comes of which this season of Advent reminds us—that day in which, as St. Peter tells us, "the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it shall be burnt up"; that day when He who died for us on the cross shall come to judge the living and the dead.

The church begins her year with Advent, because this season represents principally, not that last coming of our Lord of which I have just spoken, but rather that time which went before his first coming—that long period of several thousand years, answering to the four weeks of this season, with which the world's history began, and in which it was waiting for the promise of redemption to be fulfilled. But there is another very good reason for each one of us to begin our own new year now, and it is one of the reasons why the second advent of Christ is presented to our minds by the church, as well as his first, at this time.

It is that we may now make that serious examination of our past life, and those firm resolutions for the future, that we can best make at the beginning of a new year, when we feel most strongly that one more of those short cycles by which our life is measured has gone for ever beyond our reach, and brought us so much nearer not only to the day of general judgment, but also to that more imminent one in which each one of us shall stand alone before the throne of God to give an account of the use which we have made of these precious years which he has given us, and which are passing so rapidly away.

This new year's day of the church is a time, then, above all others in which we should make those resolutions without which we cannot be saved.

It is said that hell is paved with good intentions; it may with equal truth be said that heaven is paved with good resolutions. What is the difference between the two? An intention is a purpose the carrying out of which is put off till some other time; a resolution is one which is carried out now. So, as the putting off of our good purposes is the sure way to lose our souls, the carrying them out at once is the means absolutely necessary to salvation and certain to secure it.

No one ever saved his soul without some time or other making a resolution to keep the law of God, and going to work at once to carry it out, and persevering in it to the end of life, Such a resolution has got to be made at some time, and now is the time to make it.

Look back, then, my brethren, on this first day of the new year, at the one which has just gone never to return, and see if you are satisfied with the way you have spent it. Ask yourselves if you have not been trifling away enough of the short time which was given you to be spent in the service of God, and if there is any too much left to make some recompense to him for all that he has done for you; and say, with the church in the Epistle of this Sunday, that now it is indeed the hour to rise from sleep, from this fatal sleep of indifference and ingratitude, and go to work in real earnest on the business of your salvation, and not rest again till the time for rest has come. God will surely give that eternal rest to those who labor during life, but he has not promised it to sluggards and traitors, as those certainly are who care only for themselves and not for him, and who expect their reward without doing anything to deserve such a favor at his hands.

Sermon III.

Heaven and earth shall pass away.
—St. Luke xxi. 33.

By the word "heaven" our Lord does not mean that heaven to which we shall be admitted if we are faithful, for that, as we know, is eternal. No; he means some part of the visible heavens with which our earth is immediately connected. The earth, and to some extent the visible heaven also, we do not know how, will pass away as to their present state—they will be so changed that it may be said that the old earth and the old heaven have been destroyed.

It is to remind us of this second coming, or advent, of our Lord, when the world and all that it contains shall pass away, as well as of his first coming, which we are to celebrate at Christmas, that the church keeps this season on which we have just entered, and calls it by this name of Advent.

This truth, that the heavens and earth which we see shall pass away, or be destroyed, is a matter of faith. We cannot, probably, prove by science that this must take place, certainly not that such a change is so near as the Scriptures seem to indicate; but we do not need the light of faith to show us that they shall pass away from us, and that, perhaps, very soon. In a few years—perhaps in a few months or days—we shall close our eyes in death, and the heavens and earth which we now see shall disappear from our sight for ever. There are two lessons which we may learn from this evident and certain truth, and which the church wishes us to consider at this time.

The first is that the pleasures of this world are so fleeting and uncertain that it is not worth while for us to take any pains to secure them. We can only hold them for a little while at the most; they are like the treasures which one sometimes possesses in a dream and which melt away in the hands on waking. A moment after death it will make no difference to us whether we have had them or not; they will seem to have been possessed only as in a dream when we wake to the reality of the next world. "They have slept their sleep," says the Psalmist, "and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands." The life of one who makes pleasure his object is like a sleep; and, as St. Paul warns us in the Epistle of to-day, "it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed."

Our real salvation, the only life which is really worth enjoying, is coming very soon. This life is only a season of Advent to prepare for that eternal festival to which we have been invited by the King of kings.

So, as our first conclusion is that it is not worth while to seek for the pleasures of this life, our second is that it is not a matter for great grief if we have pain and affliction in it. One would not mind suffering for a day, or even for a week, if the rest of only this short mortal life was to be passed in uninterrupted enjoyment. So, if it be the will of God, perhaps we can manage to pass a few years in pain and sorrow, with the promise, which will not fail us, of happiness that shall be eternal.

Especially when we remember that pain and sorrow in this life make that promise all the more sure. "Blessed are ye poor," says our Lord, "for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh. … Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." "Behold," he says, "I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to render to every man according to his works." Let this, then, be our care, not to seek pleasure nor to avoid pain which shall soon pass away, but so to live that we shall be anxious to meet him and have a well-grounded hope of receiving that reward; that when he says, "Surely I come quickly," we may be able to answer with the apostle, "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus." For that life is the best in which one is most willing and ready to die; in which one hears most gladly that this heaven and this earth shall pass away.