Epistle.
1 Thessalonians i. 2-10.
Brethren:
We give thanks to God always for you all: making a remembrance of you in our prayers without ceasing, being mindful of the work of your faith, and labor, and charity, and of the enduring of the hope of our Lord Jesus Christ before God and our Father: knowing, brethren beloved of God, your election: for our gospel hath not been to you in word only, but in power also, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much fulness, as you know what manner of men we have been among you for your sakes. And you became followers of us, and of the Lord: receiving the word in much tribulation, with joy of the Holy Ghost: so that you were made a pattern to all who believe in Macedonia and Achaia. For from you was spread abroad the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place, your faith which is towards God, is gone forth, so that we need not to speak anything. For they themselves relate of us, what manner of entrance we had unto you; and how you were converted to God from idols, to serve the living and true God. And to wait for his Son from Heaven (whom he raised from the dead), Jesus who hath delivered us from the wrath to come.
Gospel.
St. Matthew xiii. 31-35.
At that time:
Jesus spoke to the multitude this parable: The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took and sowed in his field. Which indeed is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown up it is greater than any herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and dwell in the branches thereof.

Another parable he spoke to them. The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened. All these things Jesus spoke in parables to the multitudes: and without parables he did not speak to them. That the word might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: "I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world."

Sermon XXXII.
How To Make Converts.

The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven,
which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal,
until the whole was leavened.
—Gospel of the Day.

By the kingdom of heaven is meant in this Gospel, as in many other places, the holy Catholic Church; the spiritual kingdom of God, which is of heaven, though on earth; and leaven is another word for what we call yeast, and is used in the making of bread.

Our Divine Lord, then, tells us that his church, to which we belong, is like yeast; and his meaning, if we consider a little, is plain enough. It is, that as a little yeast is put into a mass of flour or dough, to raise it, as we say, so he has put his church, which was in the beginning a very small thing, into the world, to raise the world to life and the knowledge and love of him.

And certainly his comparison of the church to yeast was fully justified. In the beginning the world was everywhere attracted and moved in spite of itself by the lives of the first Christians. The heathen could not help admiring their mutual charity, their patient and forgiving dispositions, their temperance and self-sacrifice; and they could not refrain from asking themselves and each other: "Who are these that they call Christians? What do they believe, and what do they teach? What is it that makes them so loving and so amiable, so calm and peaceful, so happy in all their troubles, so ready to assist and serve not only each other, but all the world beside?" But no one could answer these questions but the Christians themselves; so the heathen had to go and get instructed in this faith which had been made so charming to them. Thus they were converted, and in their turn became apostles in the same way to others.

So the leaven spread through the mass; the contagion, so to speak, of faith, piety, and virtue was diffused over the world; people caught it from their neighbors. The Apostles had no need to make many converts in any one place which they visited. If they got a few, these few would take care of the rest. The little congregations which they founded grew and multiplied wonderfully, in spite of distress and persecution, by the force of the holy lives and good example of their members.

But was this way of growing only meant for God's church in the beginning? No, by no means. Our Lord says that the leaven of his kingdom was to go on working "till the whole was leavened." Does it, then, still move the world in this way? If so, how rapidly ought the church now to increase, when there are a thousand faithful for one in those early days!

Yes, my brethren, it ought. For in spite of the boasts which the world is making of its reformed religion, especially just now, and of its progress and civilization, it feels at heart very uneasy. It has fallen away from God, and lost the truth, and in its inmost soul it knows this; and it is looking for somone to bring light to its darkness, and to put its confusion in order.

Why, then, does not the church increase more rapidly? Why does not the world now come to us as it did in those former days of its anxiety and doubt? Prejudices it has now against us, I know; but it had its prejudices then, too. There are many slanders believed against us, but that has been so from the very beginning; our Lord warned us of this, and it is a mark of his true church to be thus belied. So this is not the real trouble; no, the trouble is that most Christians do not by the good odor of their lives induce the world to inquire into their faith, and thus overcome its prejudices. We may argue till we and everyone else are ready to drop, but we shall never be as the first disciples were—the leaven of God's kingdom—till we show by our lives that there is something more in us than the natural feelings, good or bad, which make up the lives of others. Christians who forgive and excuse their enemies, who have charity for all, who are chaste and pure in word and deed, who are humble and self-denying, those are the ones—and, thank God, such there are—who make converts; and if we want the leaven of the kingdom to spread and raise the world to Christ we must be like them.

Sermon XXXIII.
The Blessings Of The Faith.

I will utter things
hidden from the foundation of the world.
—Matthew. xiii. 35.

These are the concluding words of to-day's Gospel, and they refer to the great truths that are made known to us through the revelation of Almighty God. For as believers in a divine revelation we know things that have been hidden from the beginning, and we have a knowledge that transcends all human knowledge. Our faith gives us light which our reason could never supply. We might spend our whole lives in the most profound study and investigation, we might dip into all the systems and master all the sciences, and we should still be ignorant of certain truths which our faith makes known to us. When we look back over the world's history and see the greatest minds of every age and country groping in the dark, seeking in vain for the knowledge which we possess, we can appreciate what a glorious privilege it is to be enlightened by the divine light of faith. For where its rays do not penetrate there can never be sufficient security in regard to the most vital truths of human origin and human destiny. We see the sad evidences of this all around us in the world to-day. Men who refuse to accept the revelation of Almighty God and the teachings of his church are in ignorance, or at least they are in doubt, about the origin and end of life. They are even in doubt as to the existence of God himself, though the universe by a thousand voices proclaims his presence and their own souls reflect his image.

From age to age the human mind busies itself over the deep questions of philosophy and the discoveries of science. From generation to generation men seek to solve the great problems of life by the force of reason; but revelation alone can adequately disclose the "things hidden from the foundation of the world," and without its divine light and guidance mankind must ever remain liable to sink into darkness and doubt.

How widely different is the state of the mind established in the settled convictions of faith from that where there is nothing but the theories and opinions of human knowledge! In the one there is the repose of certainty, security, and peace; in the other there are many puzzles unsolved, promptings unsatisfied, disquiet, and unrest. One short lesson learned in the school of divine faith will give more light and bring more comfort to the soul than all the knowledge that can be acquired in a life-time in the schools of human learning.

Great stress is laid nowadays on secular education. And we are told that what the country needs, what the world needs, are intelligent and cultivated men and women; and certainly education is an excellent thing, and most desirable for all. But why make so much of a knowledge that concerns only the petty things of earth and the fleeting course of time, and ignore a knowledge that relates to the Infinite God in heaven and a life that is everlasting? What will it profit us on our death-bed to have learned the facts in the world's history, to have been familiar with the teachings of philosophy and the discoveries of science, to have studied the writings and mastered the thoughts of men, if we know nothing of our Creator and our relation to him and the course of our destiny; nothing of the preparation we should make beforehand and the thoughts that should animate us as we stand on the brink of eternity?

Here is the great contrast between the knowledge that God imparts to us and all human science—the one imparts to us the truths of eternity, the other teaches us the truths of time; and the difference between them is just as great as that between time and eternity. And if, as is generally the case, we estimate the value of a thing by its importance and permanence, there is surely no term of comparison here. The little child who has learned the first page of the Catholic Catechism has already acquired a knowledge which forty centuries of human speculation have never reached, and the simplest believer in Jesus Christ and his church is possessed of a wisdom far higher, far holier, than was ever conceived of by the greatest sages of old.

Let us realize, then, that faith is the highest knowledge, that it discloses to us "things hidden from the foundation of the world," and makes us sharers in the knowledge of God himself, and therefore elevates and crowns our reason.

Sermon XXXIV.
Good Example As A Means Of Making Converts.

The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven,
which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal,
until the whole was leavened.
—Matthew xiii. 33

This may seem a very strange comparison, my brethren, if, instead of letting it in at one ear, as the saying is, and out at the other, we stop to think of it a moment. For what sort of likeness is there between that glorious kingdom of heaven, which we hope some day to enter, and a little leaven or yeast put into flour to raise it and make it into bread? Surely, we should say, none at all. What could our Lord have meant when he said that the two were alike?

But let us think a little more about the matter. Is the kingdom of heaven of which he was speaking that heaven into which all the saved are to enter? Or is there not some other meaning which we may give to the words?

There is another meaning, and it is the true one in this place and in many others in the Gospel. It is the kingdom of God or of heaven, not in heaven, but on earth, of which our Saviour is here speaking. When he says the kingdom of heaven, he means the kingdom which he came to establish, his holy Catholic Church.

But how is this leaven, or yeast? Well, it is not so very hard to see this. It is because, being put into the world in the beginning in the form of a few weak, poor, and unlearned men and women, like the little spoonful of yeast put into a great mass of flour, it soon spread through the whole known world, and is even now spreading in the same way, changing and influencing in many ways all whom it meets with, even if it does not fully convert them: just as the yeast is spread through the whole of the dough, raising it and making it into good and healthy food.

Yes, my brethren, this was the way that the church spread through the world and made its converts, especially in the early times. It was not only by preaching. The Apostles and their successors did not have much chance to preach to the world in general. They were not allowed to do so; public preaching would have brought down on them much greater persecutions than those which they actually suffered, and it would have required great miracles on God's part to preserve his church had such preaching been tried, especially in the great cities. No, they had to teach their doctrine, as we may say, on the sly; in fact, part of it was reserved for those who had already become Christians. It may seem strange now, but in early times no one was allowed to hear anything about the real presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament till after he had been baptized. This was called the discipline of the secret, and was kept up for a long time.

So, you see, Christianity was not learned in the pagan Roman Empire so much by preaching as by private instruction joined with good example. One person caught it from another, as the particles of dough get raised by those next to them. Masters and mistresses, for instance, caught it from their servants, others from their friends and acquaintances—first, from noticing their virtues, so different from those which the pagans had. They saw how gentle and affectionate, and still how courageous, they were; how they bore suffering without a murmur; how they shrank from the idols worshipped by others, and from all the vices which these idols represented; how little they cared for pleasure; how each sacrificed himself for his neighbor. "See," said the world, "how these Christians love one another." Then the world began to inquire what was the reason of this love and of the other Christian virtues; and so religion spread from the lowest to the highest, till at last the Roman emperors themselves knelt before the cross.

Things are somewhat changed now, it is true. The Catholic faith can now be preached and taught openly; still, it is almost the same as if it could not, for people outside the church will seldom come and hear it, or even read books explaining it. The discipline of the secret still prevails, not because we wish it, but because the world does. So now, as before, the faith must catch and spread from one person to another if it is to make much progress in such countries as this of ours. Protestants run away from the priest, and will have nothing to say to him; so it will not do to say that making converts is the priest's business and does not concern you. No, my brethren, making converts is your business, as things stand, perhaps even more than his. But how are they to be made? Not by cursing, lying, and drunkenness, sins too common, alas! among many who call themselves Catholics, and specially liable to be noticed by others. It was not by these that the first Christians converted the world. Not by quarrels and slanders; it is not by these that you will convince people that we Christians love one another. Turn, then, from the vices which repel, and practise instead virtues which will attract unbelievers, and lead them to inquire why you are so good instead of wondering that you are so bad. Then they will come to you, as they did of old to your ancestors in the faith, to learn the doctrine which has taught you these virtues; and you will be, as you should be, the leaven which is to leaven the world.