The Faith of Our Fathers. Gibbons James
recorded serve like bright stars to guide them over the stormy ocean of life to the shores of eternity; while the history of those who have fallen from grace stands like a beacon light, warning them to shun the rocks against which a Solomon and a Judas made shipwreck of their souls.
Our books of piety are adapted to every want [pg 020] of the human soul, and are a fruitful source of sanctification. Who can read without spiritual profit such works as the almost inspired Following of Christ by Thomas à Kempis; the Christian Perfection of Rodriguez; the Spiritual Combat of Scupoli; the writings of St. Francis de Sales, and a countless host of other ascetical authors?
You will search in vain outside the Catholic Church for writers comparable in unction and healthy piety to such as I have mentioned. Compare, for instance, Kempis with Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, or Butler's Lives of the Saints with Foxe's Book of Martyrs. You lay down Butler with a sweet and tranquil devotion, and with a profound admiration for the Christian heroes whose lives he records; while you put aside Foxe with a troubled mind and a sense of vindictive bitterness. I do not speak of the Book of Common Prayer, because the best part of it is a translation from our Missal. Protestants also publish Kempis, though sometimes in a mutilated form; every passage in the original being carefully omitted which alludes to Catholic doctrines and practices.
A distinguished Episcopal clergyman of Baltimore once avowed to me that his favorite books of devotion were our standard works of piety. In saying this, he paid a merited and graceful tribute to the superiority of Catholic spiritual literature.
The Church gives us not only the most pressing motives, but also the most potent means for our sanctification. These means are furnished by prayer and the Sacraments. She exhorts us to frequent communion with God by prayer and meditation, and so imperative is this obligation in our eyes that we would justly hold ourselves guilty of grave dereliction of duty if we neglected [pg 021] for a considerable time the practice of morning and evening prayer.
The most abundant source of graces is also found in the seven Sacraments of the Church. Our soul is bathed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ at the font of Baptism, from which we come forth “new creatures.” We are then and there incorporated with Christ, becoming “bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh;” “for as many of you,” says the Apostle, “as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ.”40 And as the Holy Ghost is inseparable from Christ, our bodies are made the temples of the Spirit of God and our souls His Sanctuary. “Christ loved the Church and delivered Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water, in the word of life; that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.”41
In Confirmation we receive new graces and new strength to battle against the temptations of life.
In the Eucharist we are fed with the living Bread which cometh down from Heaven.
In Penance are washed away the stains we have contracted after Baptism.
Are we called to the Sacred Ministry, or to the married state, we find in the Sacraments of Orders and Matrimony ample graces corresponding with the condition of life which we have embraced.
And our last illness is consoled by Extreme Unction, wherein we receive the Divine succor necessary to fortify and purify us before departing from this world.
In a word, the Church, like a watchful mother, [pg 022] accompanies us from the cradle to the grave, supplying us at each step with the medicine of life and immortality.
As the Church offers to her children the strongest motives and the most powerful means for attaining to sanctity of life, so does she reap among them the most abundant fruits of holiness. In every age and country she is the fruitful mother of saints. Our Ecclesiastical calendar is not confined to the names of the twelve Apostles. It is emblazoned with the lists of heroic Martyrs who “were stoned, and cut asunder, and put to death by the sword;”42 of innumerable Confessors and Hermits who left all things and followed Christ; of spotless virgins who preserved their chastity for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. Every day in the year is consecrated in our Martyrology to a large number of Saints.
And in our own times, in every quarter of the globe and in every department of life, the Church continues to raise up Saints worthy of the primitive days of Christianity.
If we seek for Apostles, we find them conspicuously among the Bishops of Germany, who are now displaying in prison and in exile a serene heroism worthy of Peter and Paul.
Every year records the tortures of Catholic missioners who die Martyrs to the Faith in China, Corea, and other Pagan countries.
Among her confessors are numbered those devoted priests who, abandoning home and family ties, annually go forth to preach the Gospel in foreign lands. Their worldly possessions are often confined to a few books of devotion and their modest apparel.
And who is a stranger to her consecrated [pg 023] virgins, those sisters of various Orders who in every large city of Christendom are daily reclaiming degraded women from a life of shame, and bringing them back to the sweet influences of religion; who snatch the abandoned offspring of sin from temporal and spiritual death, and make them pious and useful members of society, becoming more than mothers to them; who rescue children from ignorance, and instill into their minds the knowledge and love of God.
We can point to numberless saints also among the laity. I dare assert that in almost every congregation in the Catholic world, men and women are to be found who exhibit a fervent piety and a zeal for religion which render them worthy of being named after the Annas, the Aquilas and the Priscillas of the New Testament. They attract not indeed the admiration of the public, because true piety is unostentatious and seeks a “life hidden with Christ in God.”43
It must not be imagined that, in proclaiming the sanctity of the Church, I am attempting to prove that all Catholics are holy. I am sorry to confess that corruption of morals is too often found among professing Catholics. We cannot close our eyes to the painful fact that too many of them, far from living up to the teachings of their Church, are sources of melancholy scandal. “It must be that scandals come, but woe to him by whom the scandal cometh.” I also admit that the sin of Catholics is more heinous in the sight of God than that of their separated brethren, because they abuse more grace.
But it should be borne in mind that neither God nor His Church forces any man's conscience. To all He says by the mouth of His Prophet: “Behold [pg 024] I set before you the way of life and the way of death.” (Jer. xxi. 8.) The choice rests with yourselves.
It is easy to explain why so many disedifying members are always found clinging to the robes of the Church, their spiritual Mother, and why she never shakes them off nor disowns them as her children. The Church is animated by the spirit of her Founder, Jesus Christ. He “came into this world to save sinners.”44 He “came not to call the just but sinners to repentance.” He was the Friend of Publicans and Sinners that He might make them the friends of God. And they clung to Him, knowing His compassion for them.
The Church, walking in the footsteps of her Divine Spouse, never repudiates sinners nor cuts them off from her fold, no matter how grievous or notorious may be their moral delinquencies; not because she connives at their sin, but because she wishes to reclaim them. She bids them never to despair, and tries, at least, to weaken their passions, if she cannot altogether reform their lives.
Mindful also of the words of our Lord: “The poor have the Gospel preached to them,”45 the Church has a tender compassion for the victims of poverty, which has its train of peculiar temptations and infirmities. Hence, the poor and the sinners cling to the Church, as they clung to our Lord during His mortal life.
We know, on the other hand, that sinners who are guilty of gross crimes which shock public decency are virtually excommunicated from Protestant Communions. And as for the poor, the public press often complains that little or no provision is made for them in Protestant Churches. A gentleman informed me that he never saw a [pg 025] poor person enter an Episcopal Church which was contiguous to his residence.
These excluded sinners and victims of penury