Epistle.
1 Corinthians xv. 1-10.
Brethren:
I make known unto you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand: by which also you are saved, if you hold fast after what manner I preached to you, unless you have believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all, which I also received: how that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures: and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures: and that he was seen by Cephas, and after that by the eleven. Then was he seen by more than five hundred brethren at once, of whom many remain until this present, and some are fallen asleep. After that he was seen by James, then by all the apostles. And last of all, he was seen also by me, as by one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace in me hath not been void.
Gospel.
St. Mark vii. 31-37.
At that time:
Jesus going out of the borders of Tyre, came by Sidon to the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the territories of Decapolis. And they bring to him one that was deaf and dumb; and they besought him to lay his hand upon him. And taking him aside from the multitude, he put his fingers into his ears, and spitting, he touched his tongue: and looking up to heaven, he groaned, and said to him: Ephpheta, which is, Be opened. And immediately his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke right. And he charged them that they should tell no man. But the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal did they publish it. And so much the more did they wonder, saying: He hath done all things well; he hath made both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.
Sermon CXI.
Want Of Confidence In God.
He hath done all things well.
—St. Mark vii. 37.
The spectators of the double miracle related in this day's Gospel were filled with admiration at our Lord's power and goodness; they could not help exclaiming, "He doth all things well." Would to God, brethren, that such a sentiment of our Lord's love and power filled our hearts! Confidence in God, however, is the very virtue many Christians lack most. True, we say and believe that God is infinitely good—that he is mercy itself. But such language is very indefinite and may express a very dim conception. It is something like saying that a stone is very hard or that water is very wet. We are apt to form pictures of God's attributes in our minds, just as a painter may make a portrait of some historical personage he never saw; many of our notions of God are fancy portraits, all imagination.
But just think of the actual grounds of our confidence in our Blessed Lord. Just realize that this wonderful being is filled with the tenderest human love for the worst of us, and has all the divine power at his command—being both man and God—to make good his love by bringing about our spiritual and temporal welfare. The Incarnation is the divine Mercy made man for the love of us. Can we suppose that such a being, having begun the good work of our salvation by giving us the true religion, will leave anything undone, that we will let him do, to bring us to the kingdom of heaven? Do you think that such a loving Father would teach us, his children, A B C except with the set purpose of going clean through to X Y Z? Just think, that it positively never happened that any wretched sinner, how ever degraded, ever implored our Lord's forgiveness and was rejected; nay, that he himself secretly inspires sinners with their grief and horror for their evil ways, and then imparts forgiveness in return for his own gift. The fact is that the question is not whether God will forgive us, but whether we will let him do it. In a word, this infinitely good and infinitely powerful being is bent and determined that we shall enjoy perfect happiness, world without end.
What a wonder, then, that we can treat our Lord in our cold-hearted way! Scrupulous persons treat him as if he were a tyrant; lukewarm Christians treat him like a stepfather; obstinate sinners treat him with open contempt. The practise of prayer, the reception of the sacraments and other aids of religion—we treat them as school-children do their lessons: we do it all because we are afraid of the consequences if we don't. Considering how much God loves us his service should come as easy to us as breathing the air; it should be the element in which we live. If our faith were a little more practical God's loveliness would be as plain to us as the open day and the sun in the heavens.
Furthermore, and this is still more practical, lack of confidence in God is why we repine at his visitations. It is easy enough to say, be resigned to the will of God, but how can we be content to suffer unless we are penetrated with confidence in the divine goodness? Brethren, you know how we sometimes take medicine. We wrap it up in a pleasant-flavored wafer or hide it in a spoonful of sugar, and down it goes and we never taste its bitterness. So a lively confidence in God, if we only had enough of it, is the sweetness to wrap around the bitter things of life. Temptations, long and wearisome poverty, ill-health, unpleasant companions in the household—these and other such trials are the bitter pills of the soul; when we fairly realize that God means them for our spiritual good we can bear them with patience, even with thankfulness.
Did you ever hear of the witch-hazel, and how people used to fancy that a crooked branch of it thrown into the air would fall on the spot where a good spring of water could be found? Well, the witch-hazel of the Christian soul is just this question: How much confidence have you in the love of our Lord Jesus Christ for you? If that does not reveal the hidden springs of your heart and bring the waters of love gushing forth, then that heart is hopelessly dry.
Sermon CXII.
Devotion To The Blessed Virgin.
Why do Catholics pay so much honor to the Virgin Mary? Are they not doing an injury to her Son by over-honoring his Mother? What is the reason, the doctrine, of the Catholic's devotion to Mary?
Very fair questions, brethren; questions which you should be ready to answer with intelligence and kindness. So that now, as we approach the Feast of Our Lady's Assumption into heaven, let us renew our faith in her dignity. What, then, does the Catholic faith teach us about her? It teaches us that she is the Mother of God; and further, that, on account of the foreseen merits of her Son, she was preserved from the stain of original sin; that she was always a virgin; and that it is lawful and profitable to ask her prayers. Such are the articles of faith concerning the Blessed Virgin.
Once you know something about her Son's divinity you easily perceive her dignity of Mother of God. Her title of Mother of God plainly rests upon the fact that her Son is God. Jesus Christ is God; his nature is divine and his person is divine. And here you must bear in mind the distinction between nature and person. He has the nature, being, essence of God. And he has the person of God; for our Saviour is God the Son, second person of the Most Holy Trinity. What, then, is human about him? for we know that he is as truly man as he is truly God. The answer is that he has a human nature as well as a divine nature. He became man; and he did so by taking human nature from Mary, his Mother. But, you ask again, is he a human person also? No, for we have seen that he is the divine person, God the Son. There cannot be two persons in Christ. He is but a single person, one individual, and that is divine. So that the divine personality of the Son of God takes human nature and unites it to the divine nature. The one divine person whose name is Christ, and who is of both divine and human nature, has no human personality, but divine.
And this is the Son of Mary. Is she not the Mother of our Lord, personally his Mother? Can any one be a mother and not be mother of a person? Is he not personally her son? What a dignity! What a mysterious and wonderful eminence, to be mother of the divine person of the Son of God made man. No wonder that we honor her; although we know full well that all she has of dignity and sanctity she has by no power of her own, but by gift of God, and that she is purely a human being. Those who do not honor Mary fail to appreciate the majesty of Christ; fail to understand the doctrine of the Incarnation; fail to grasp the immensity of the divine love in God becoming man.
No wonder, then, that God should have saved her from the taint of Adam's sin, should have preserved her a spotless virgin, should have saved her pure body from the grave's filth by the Assumption into heaven. The Angel Gabriel tells us what Mary is: "Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and thou shalt bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High. … The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, and therefore the Holy (One) that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
Now, brethren, to be a mother is to hold an office. It is to exercise by divine right the highest powers committed to a human being. What wonderful rights a mother possesses! An affectionate allegiance is due her from her son: an obedience instinctive, sacred, supreme; a reverential and hearty loyalty which arouses the noblest emotions in the hardest heart and gives birth to heroic deeds even in men of the weakest natures. A mother is entitled to her son's love by the most sacred of all obligations. Well, just think of it: our Blessed Lord was, and is yet, bound to his Mother by that imperative divine law; he was, and is yet, subject to the sweetest and, for a noble nature, the most resistless impulse to do his Mother's will and to make her happy. He owes her love, obedience, reverence, friendship, support, companionship, sympathy. And he that doth all things well, would he not do his whole duty as Son, would he not be a model Son? Would he not grant her lightest wish while he lived with her on earth, will he not gladly do so now in heaven?
Hence our Lord Jesus Christ spent nearly his whole life in his Mother's immediate company, consenting to postpone for her sake his Father's work of publishing his divinity and preaching his Gospel. Hence he worked his first miracle at her request at the wedding of Cana. Hence he inspired her to prophecy that all generations would call her blessed. Hence, too, our Lord has instilled into every Christian heart some little glow of his own deep filial love for her.
In truth, brethren, whatever Christ's Mother is to him by nature, that she is to us by adoption. Just in proportion to our union with him are we bound to her. And if we wish to know him well we can study in no better school than his Mother's. If we wish to love him tenderly, her maternal heart can best teach us how. And if we have favors to ask him we shall be glad, if we are not too self-conceited, to secure her prayers to assist us.
Sermon CXIII.
Gratitude.
My brethren, we have had a word to say before this about the vice of ingratitude, and of how mean a vice it is, especially in a Christian. Now let us consider the opposite virtue—gratitude. It is, to be sure, one of the little virtues. Yet how can we call any class of virtues little? No doubt there are, strictly speaking, grades of merit very much higher one above the other. But that is not so much from the action done in each case as from the motive that inspires the action. One saves a man's life for the love of money; another gives a glass of cold water for the love of God. The glass of water is nothing compared to a human life; yet the glass of water will be rewarded for all eternity, and the saving of the human life is paid for as we pay for a load of coal. Brethren, beware of thinking there is any thing to be called little that has to do with God and eternal life; and always bear in mind that, by practising little virtues with an earnest purpose to please God, your merit is according to your heart, and not according to your hand.
I do not intend to speak specially, just now, of gratitude to God; but between man and man gratitude is one of those gentle virtues that increase our fondness for each other. Gratitude is a short cut to sincere and lasting friendship. And if a supernatural motive inspires one's gratitude to his friends, then a holy friendship is the result. Some people complain that they have no friends. I think they are most to blame themselves. Have they never had a favor done them? Why, every one of us has had a score of favors done him every day of his life. Those who bear it in mind, who say a word of hearty thanks, who watch a chance to do a favor in return, never lack friends. Brethren, never forget a favor. Return it if you can, at least in part; but at any rate never forget it. Feel grateful at least; say a thankful word; offer up a prayer for your benefactors now and then. The best use we can make of our memories is to remember our benefactors. Favors done and favors gratefully remembered are the two halves of a happy life. It would be only simple justice if we looked on gratitude as we do on a just debt; for gratitude pays debts, first in good-will, and before long in a more substantial manner. You know that an honest debtor will always try to save a little from day to day to pay his debts. So we can do a little from time to time by way of instalments, so to speak; we can say a daily prayer for our benefactors, write an occasional letter, pay a visit now and then, often praise them to our friends.
Of course, those who have done us the greatest favors are entitled to the deepest gratitude. Now, who has done so much for us as our parents? Certainly, next to God, our parents stand first in the list of our benefactors. Yet many, especially after they have married and settled down in their own families, are wanting in gratitude to their parents. Married persons who are badly treated by their own children should sometimes ask themselves if it be not in punishment for their forgetfulness of their own parents. Of course, when we are in middle life, what was done for us in childhood seems very far away; it was diffused over many years; it was a regular habit and course of life; it was bound up in our parents own happiness. But let us bear in mind, all the same, how true and deep the love that inspired it; how unwearied the patience; how self-forgetful the devotion of our parents, and let us seek every chance to make their last years happy.
Brethren, shall I say a word about gratitude due to us of the sanctuary? Has not some priest done you a favor; converted you by a sermon, inspired you to perseverance by his advice in the confessional, soothed your sick and weary heart, or reconciled you to a dreary burden? If so, you ought to pray for him, and especially for your pastors.
But gratitude to God is, of course, the first and best of all. From him we have received all, and, having forfeited every favor, again and again received them back from the divine bounty.
