Am I of the chosen

Front matter

Chap. Copyright No,

ShellJtL::

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Preface

Schoolmen, in the universities, do a valiant service, standing to the breastworks — first of all, keeping at bay the external enemies of our religion, afterwards winning them over to the standard of the Cross. The present volume, however, is designed for those, within. We, the children of Holy Mother Church, need the daily bread of life, with care lest our own souls perish, — not, perhaps, through the enemy's lances directed from without, by a broken faith — but, through neglect of the soul and starvation, within the very walls, by indifference, or a wicked life. If it be observed, that tension marks the speech, the author begs that the season, which inspired the words may hasten to his defence ; for, be it understood that Lent is a time when a loud call — 'sound a trumpet in Sion,' as the prophet says, — and a persistent one must be employed to stir up the drowsy faithful.

Neither the low whisper of the lyre, nor the delicate note of the lute will pierce the din and tumult of the world's vast machinery and absorbing activities. Loud must sound the bugle's call, for, God's people have wandered afar. This volume, then, is an appeal to the heart ; an incentive to action, for ' cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book, to do them.' — (Gal. iii, 10.) ' l For the rest, brethren, we pray and beseech you in the Lord Jesus, that as you have received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, so also you would walk that you may abound the more." (I. Thess. iv, i.)

To insure fair results on all sides, the author strenuously recommends that the eleventh chapter of the volume shall be read throughout, or not at all ; for only by a thorough reading of it can the equilibrium of the chapter be adequately conserved and an evenly balanced judgment of the question made possible to the mind of the reader.

The ecclesiastic law has its appointed times of penance. When these terms expire all ecclesiastic obligation subsides with them, whereas the divine virtue of penance urges at all times, and at no time w r holly ceases.

As, moreover, the book contains the truth, it suits all times, since truth, not being subject to change, owns no seasons. We must be always about the things l that are of the Father ; ' we must ever be intent upon doing the ' one thing necessary ; ' for, fail in whatsoever else we will, let us, at any cost, save our immortal souls, redeemed by the blood of the Lord. Others may have this world, but give us the next.

HENRY A. BARRY.

Boston, April i, 1897.

Chapter I. Sinners In Israel, Pardoned Yet Punished

" Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." With these words, the Master inaugurates His public ministry : This is the starting point; the first thing to be done: "Unless ye do penance ye shall all perish." God lays the corner-stone of religion in penance ; we hear our Lord telling us, we cannot be saved without it ; we hear the voice of the prophet above the fierce winds of the wilderness: " Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Again we hear it, as the prophet of the wilderness runs along the shores of the seas and the banks of the streams, in a voice, weird, resonant and awful, above the din of splashing torrents and the battle-roar of white-plumed waves : " Do penance ! do penance ! " Jesus and John preached to Israel ; but, now as of yore, the Word of God falls upon men's ears and dies away, like the waves, leaving us unchanged as the waters after a momentary agitation ; and yet, all the time, the wild and mournful wail of the lost souls breaks in upon our pensive moments, and the flames of hell light up our fancy as we read the awful fate, and hear the warning: " Unless ye do penance ye shall all perish" : — ye shall suffer as we; for, this is what it means, not to have done penance — to be consigned to everlasting torments : " Depart from Me ye cursed ; " " Unless ye do penance ye shall all perish." Yes, I hear the jeers of the world ; I hear their mocking 'Hell !' 'Everlasting fire !' — 'pooh ! ' I hear the taunt: "Ye are deluded," 'morbid in your piety;' and, all this carping is because we strive to gain the kingdom of heaven and are earnest in our endeavor so to do, by attaining to the mastery of -our lower nature, and by the living in a manner at once pleasing to God, disastrous to our sensual nature, and disheartening to the enemies of our soul, within and without. Yes, they say, it is well with our nature ; it is healthy ; nature's antagonism to the soul — a trick of priestcraft ! Hell is a bugbear, a mere affair of a beguiled fancy ; and to sum up all, — we are saint-mad !

The daily violences, the momentary struggles, the sacrifices essential to salvation, are beyond the capacity for understanding of the carnal world, whose motto with more or less modification is, invariably, and substantially : "Dum vtvtmus, vivamus" — Whilst we live let us make merry for there is nothing more : Death is the final, deep sleep, whence there is no awakening. Still, for all the world's incredulousness, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence ; for, Christ's Word must stand : " Heaven and earth shall pass away but My Word shall not pass away."

ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. I 5

Many fail to understand penance in the plan of salvation. So, too, are there men who have no ear for music ; they cannot read a simple melody, and a symphony is to them a deep secret. To suchunspiritual ears penance means nothing but a discord. They do not catch its tone in the grand harmonious scale of redemption, because they have not the ear. They say, someone is singing out of tune. The world, I repeat, does not understand penance. If you practise it, you must do so, alone. You must not follow the crowd : you must part with the 'many,' who tread the broad way, and take to the brambled ' narrow way/ apart, which only the ' few ' know. We all need penance, because we have sinned : " Fast," says the saint with tongue of gold, ''because you have sinned." Let him that is without sin cast the first stone at penance. But the genius of Phariseeism is not extinct ; we find a shade of it in the studied but false gravity of the prick-eared Puritan : the affected, calm, ashen face, and gaunt wasted form, are in our midst — 'whitened sepulchres !' But their outward appearances are the result of the hidden enormities of their hearts, or of the seething ambitions and shocking pride, which, though hidden from themselves, none the less effectually consume them. They seem to have struck the high C of piety, but it is all without. The note is forced and unnatural ; the voice is falsetto. Within, lie buried their sins, but not destroyed, nor concealed from God's view, though, so, from their own clouded eyes. How appalling ! Self-pleased, self-distinguished from their fellows, unlike the ' rest of men, ' they ask : "What have we done ?" and the query rankles in our bosoms and grates on our ears, at the very moment when our eyes are observing the words of St. John: "And if we say we have not sinned we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." At last, then, we seize upon the purpose of St. John and grasp the import of his words, and the kind of men to which he alluded when he spoke these words. He levelled them at the hypocrite, who fancies himself sinless and unsinable.

"Who amongst you shall charge Me with sin?" Methought the Master alone could own such words ; but, the Pharisee usurps the Master's words, and asks us confidently what he has done or would have done, or could have done, that he should have to do penance. Perhaps penance is vulgar and only for beginners, not for the advanced class. Let the Pharisee's own word stand for our verdict on his prodigious temerity : the same words he shall speak later on of the Saviour before the Master's judges: "The man blasphemeth." Upon all such as have but once sinned the duty of penance is incumbent. So, then, Lent is meant for you and for me — ' the rest of men,' sinners like David and Peter, — thank God, not Pharisees, spin-texts and roundheads, who court the letter of the Gospel, and carry the Bible hanging from their armpits ; who shun the spirit of Christ, and to whom the divine and inner meaning of revelation has not been made known, as to the ' little ones.'

To a sensuous generation the trumpet-flourish of Mother Church, summoning the nations of the world to pause and reflect; her prophetic tongue crying out in the cities, towns, villages and hamlets of Sion, with the solemn authority of Jesus Christ, calling Israel to their tents to fast and pray — to the immoral and unbelieving world, I say, the Church, announcing the approach of Lent, is a herald of tidings that are sad. Memories of fine flavors haunt the palate, and the odors of insipid fish come up to them as the rules of Lent are read out from the pulpit, saddening their poor nature with the idea of sacrifice to their sensuous tastes, and of retrenchments not soothing after a season of revelry and liberty. Thabor is vastly more agreeable than Calvary.

We have enjoyed the delights of the world, and we exclaim, in the spirit of Peter, James and John : "It is good for us to be here." They caught the foregleams of heavenly glory on Thabor : they would fain tarry there and build them tabernacles, and live and serve far from the way of the cross. We, too, have tasted the world's pleasures, though not altogether guilty, and, so, we say, I repeat, ' It is good for us to be here.' We would linger to serve the world in our sensuous ease ; but, the Son of Man clothed in glory on Thabor is the Child of Destiny : " This Child is set up for the rise and fall of many in Israel." Signals are already set above the trees at Olivet, on the ramparts and turrets of the distant praetorium, — on Calvary. He, the great Prophet, alone can read them. The will of the Father beckons Him on. The way of the cross, gloomy and bloody, stretches itself out before Him — "My hour is not yet come" — for glory ; "Arise, let us go hence." As He descends Thabor's grassy slope, methinks He renewed His vows: "Behold I come to do Thy will."

Like the youth to whom our Lord laid down the conditions of Christian perfection, men want to be saved ; but, grumble over the means of attaining to that happy end ; they want to enjoy the promises of Christ, and they haggle over the conditions ; they argue on the price. They want to be saved, but they do not want penance. They want the end, but they do not want the means.

God's altars are hung round with sombre draperies ; the purple vestments of the priest impress us with the character of the season ; the bright colors of the glorified saints, the golden, the white, the purple and the ruby, become obtrusive, and are, for the most part, laid away. The huge black cloud of penance, which extinguishes the lights of the social world, renders the soul in a sense sad and pensive. Some are deaf as the very stones to the summons of the Lord, but the serious soul has opened its ears to the prophet's voice : " Unless ye do penance for your sins ye shall perish all." Do penance, or perish! This is a hard word ; but, it is thrice harder to hear the words: "Depart from Me ye cursed into everlasting fire." We must heed the one or the other ; we cannot contemn the two. If the soul has heard the prophet's voice ; if we are not deaf

ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. IC>

to the call of the Lord, we are with Christ in the desert. At length the holy season arrives, the soul has heard the prophet's voice : "Unless ye dc* penance ye cannot be saved." The sounds of revelry and garrulous wassail, the chitter-chatter,. the gossip and brilliant nothings of social events have been hushed ; for, it is only by retiring for a time from the noise, the vanity, and revelry of the world, that we may be truly said to be with Christ in a solitude. " I will lead her into the wilderness, and there I shall speak to her heart." The feast of Cana is over, and, alas, there were found more at the festive-board on the wedding day than are found by the Master's side in His agony.

" Solitude," says Lenau, "is the Mother of God in man;" it is the "flight of the alone to the Alone ;" " it is the essence of joy in piety," says Plotinus. " But," you say, "you would not have us who are called to live in the world become solitaries?" No, I confess, you are not, indeed,, commanded nor asked to abandon the fireside, or office-desk, or sales-counter, to wend your way, apart, to a hermitage on the prairie ; or to the mountain-caves of the Rockies or Sierras, like Anthony and Paul, or even to bury yourself in the living tomb of the cloistered monastery, were it even for a few days ; though, it would not be incongruous nor unhealthful to observe how silent is the cemetery — that monastery of the dead ; how noiseless are its gravelled and unroofed corridors ; and how secluded and silent the little cells in the earth where eternity will find us, willing or no, monks in death, — communing with our God, I hope, but cannot surely say — and, perhaps, regretting our past dislike and disinclination to any portion of true solitude, saying, with the fullest power and deepest sigh of our soul, the words of Augustine: "Lord, how late I have loved Thee."

The solitude of Lent, for you, shall consist in the substitution of a prevailing spirit of religiousness and more earnest devotion to your eternal interests, for the pleasure-seeking passion that rules your life throughout other seasons ; and for your warm pursuit after the pleasures of this world. Yours may be, though a lesser one, still, a solitude, when you shut out from your life dissipations and distractions that hinder the solemn thought that pervades the Church of God when the whole Christian world is in retreat. * 'Remember, man, for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." You will not go into solitude, but you may bring the solitude to you. Say then to all your distracting amusements what the Lord said to His friends, whose talk, harmless at other times, distracts Him now : "Tarry ye here whilst I go yonder and pray." Under such conditions the heart of God and the heart of man are brought together. God has something to say to each of us when He beckons us, apart, from the dusty highway to the woodland path ; He has something to say to us in private : "I will lead her into solitude and there I shall speak to her heart," says God to the soul. If, indeed, the sun of the social world is eclipsed, and a midnight silence broods over the carnal world ; if we retire, indeed, from the life that is without to the truer one that is within the soul, by shutting out the external light, we shall see all the better the light that is within. The Holy Spirit will, as it were, overshadow us.

Silence ! solitude ! reflection ! — this is not a welcome work for the multitudes. Few men would seize a lantern and walk into a cemetery at dark night, alone, and, entering the lonely tomb, release the rusty, clanking chain from the great, gloomy iron gate, push back its ponderous bolt, and approaching, raise the lid of the casket and behold the white face of the dead man, though it be that of a friend, a brother, or a father. The souls of many men are wrapt in the black folds of a worse than mortal death. What is the white face of the dead man, his hollowed cheeks, from which the skin has receded ; the prominent teeth, and empty eye-wells? The bodies of so many men as live in sin are but as moving sepulchres : their souls are rigid, cold, and damp in death, within the world's vast charnel-house. Yes, men will find it hard to go into a spirit of reflection, accept the lesser solitude of the mission, and observe the retirement of the Lent. This is going into the grave-yard, entering the tomb, unscrewing and raising the lid of the coffin, and gazing in upon the features of one's own dead soul ; yet, if you will do it, the sight will rouse you from your torpor or death to Christian life and perfection.

It will sanctify you like the crumbling remains of Isabella moved Francis Borgia to love God with all his heart and soul, to the very highest pitch of human endeavor. Meditation and self-examina tion is a solitude of the soul.

The unbelieving world, I repeat, does not, or affects not to, comprehend penance — 'A morbid doctrine ! ' they say ; " quite out of tune with all humanity and reason ! ' Rabid worldlings and radical naturalists cry out : Suicide ! But these men do not take into account the fundamental fact that human nature is fallen and radically out of joint. Yes, alack, the instrument of our poor, frail, delicate nature, fell once from the grasp of Adam and was broken. Christ, Who could alone do it, as being God, has restored the lost chord, and put together the broken pieces and severed parts of the instrument of our nature. Benighted sectarians and wilful agnostics repudiate the neweconomy of Christ. They have not the true Faith. A chord is wanting to their soul, and their harps cannot interpret the divine harmonies of our venerable religion.

The genius of penance is justice : " Render to God the things that are God's." A pious fear of that justice, which should dwell in the hearts of all virtuous men, finds expression in penance ; "Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord." A key to the understanding of penance is found when we shall have grasped the truth that God is just. When offended, the wrath of God is withering as the dry north-wind . ' 'Who kno weth the power of Thy

ISRAEL, PARDONED YET PUNISHED. 2J

anger and for Thy fear can number Thy wrath ! " Keep, then, before your mind's eye, the word of the Church in her third Nocturn of October:: Her apostrophe to God: " Creator of all things,. God terrible and mighty, just and merciful." If you offend God, fancying He loves you too much to punish ; oh, what an insult to His justice t Fie! vapid but perilous fancy: Out upon your modern conceit ! Shame upon your affected humanitarianism ! — He cannot punish ! He will punish ; He must punish. Much indeed as God is merciful, He is still under obligations to His own justice to punish the sinner. His mercy cannot defeat, nor will it try to defeat the hand of justice. Let no man trifle, then, with God, and fancy to himself that he can sin, aye, or take from the forbidden tree one particle of fruit, a bud, a leaf, and say: "I defy Thy justice; "or, "I challenge Thy mercy ; Thy love will and must withstand Thee and Thy justice !" What mad, blasphemous sport it is making with the terrible attributes of the Divinity ; what insolent familiarity and boldness it is to take God so flippantly and trivially ; to harlequin His perfections, and turn the God of truth into a make-off God. "In whatsoever day thou shalt sin thou shalt die the death." This vow of satisfaction condemns the dreadful thought that justice will be frustrated by love. God says He will punish sin; God keeps His promises. We are free as the mountain air to sin or not to sin :, but, if we sin, God will punish us. God is not free not to punish when we shall have sinned.

Let us go to the first vespers of the apostles assigned by the Church for the office of her priests. Psalm ex. speaks the whole truth, clearly, indisputably, and infallibly: " His justice remaineth forever and ever." We pass on and new thoughts arise and occupy us, until we reach Psalm cxi. and lo ! again the same words we find in the third verse: "Glory and riches are in His house, and His justice remaineth forever and ever." We read on and in the same psalm we are confronted by testimonies bearing on the wondrous kindness of God to the poor and the lowly; but, lest we forget the previous idea of His justice, or lest it be lost in the medley, or outshone in the group of God's marvellous attributes, of His splendors and munificence, between the praises of His generosity, power, beauty, and the dazzling brilliancy of His glory, the prophet's voice recalls and repeats the terrible truth: " His justice remaineth forever and ever." The justice of God is as old as His love. It shall live as long, unchanging and imperishable. The brilliant pageantry of the divine attributes march before our fancy as David marshals them to the sounds of psalm and timbrel, of psaltery and harp in his inspired muse (Psalm lxxx.) His song now excites us, lifts us up, thrills us with joy and hope, and in a twinkle he touches the chord of justice, — sounds the timbrel, and the ruby color of our hopeful countenance deepens to carnation, and fades away to paleness ; a tremulousness comes upon us, a fear creeps over us ; the soul is stirred, and vibrates with fear, when he tells Israel how just God is ; how loving, and yet how terrible !

"Sing we to the Lord a new canticle: because He hath done wonderful things. His right hand hath wrought for Him salvation, and His arm is holy." Yet under the empire of Jesus Christ, justice must be respected. " The Lord hath made known the salvation, and hath revealed His justice in the sight of the Gentiles." (Psalm xcvii.) The understanding of penance means a trembling, a fear lest we offend Almighty God, and by our offences bring down upon our heads Divine chastisement to match them. The prophet has it: " The mountains tremble and they smoke in His presence, and the very fibres of the deep quiver and proclaim that the God of Nature is in anger."

Since the coming of our Lord, Israel sings a new canticle: "Let us praise the Lord because His mercy is brought down upon us ; " but, let us, at our peril, still remember the low, deep tone of the versicle, constant as the swell of the mighty deep : " His justice abideth forever and ever." In whatsoever accents the Church may sing of hope, of joy, of admiration, beneath every canticle the chord of His justice rolls out for a basis of true harmony. Since the Incarnation of our Divine Lord, Peace and Justice have embraced and kissed ; they are friends. Mercy and Justice are not enemies, and Mercy will never dethrone Justice. Let then the fear of God find always a dwelling with us. Hope in God without fear is spurious virtue. On the other hand, our very fear must be accompanied and qualified by hope, to be wise and true virtue. Listen to Peter: 4i Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." This was intemperate fear ; one which needed a dash of hope ; for, so the Master clearly said : " Do not fear," that is, do not fear too much ; do not fear without hoping. David, like Peter, felt the burden of his miseries : " My iniquities are gone over my head." — "I am become miserable and am bowed down even to the end." — "I am afflicted and humbled exceedingly." — " I roared with the groanings of my heart." But, after having numbered the vast array of his afflictions, hope still abided with him and never forsook his side. "In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped." Forsake me not, O Lord. " From the morning watch even until night, let Israel hope in the Lord." Fear without hope is despair. This was the sin of Judas. He feared God's wrath to be visited down upon his treason. He lost hope in mercy and perished. Fear with hope means salvation, but it is not well to hope at the expense of our fear : " Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." In religion, give everything its proper value and just proportion: "No man knoweth whether he be worthy of hatred or love." The angels are not pure in the sight of God. If we were to bring in before the altar to-day the body of a Francis or a Teresa, the minister of God's Church would be constrained to read over it the words of the Church: " Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord, for in Thy sight no man shall be found just." This tremendous word holds for all men. The fierce confession it makes is true. So infinite is the purity and holiness of God that for each offence against that sanctity, justice will insist on the full measure of reparation and atonement : " An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth " — for murder and the idle word.

Yes, sin is an injustice. " I have acknowledged my sins to Thee and my sin is an injustice." " I have acknowledged my sins to Thee and my injustice I have not concealed." (Psalm xxxi.) " Blessed is the man to whom the Lord hath not imputed sin." But who is such, and where is he, prithee ? " No man knows whether he be worthy of hatred or love." Shall you or I say : " I owe nothing to God's justice.'' Every man who breathes may yet be saved. Fear God's justice now in time. The damned fear it and tremble beneath its wrath, but it is too late to profit them. Fear in time eventuates in hope, and ripens into salvation. The fear of God, from which salvation is born, must in its turn have been born in time. Fear God now; mercy rules to-day. After this life * justice remains forever and ever.' There is no further mercy once we are lost: "It is decreed for man once to die and after death, judgment." Why go beyond the one fact that hell was created by justice; and if Justice were to take her course untempered by mercy we would, and might well, despair; and, oh, what must be the tortures of hell, where justice is in its full blaze, and whose awful fires shall gleam with a madding constancy.

The thief, the murderer, the incendiary, the harlot, and all such, serve out their full sentence^ work out atonement before society, and cancel all indebtedness to the laws of the state ; but, the sinner must reckon with a higher justice and a sterner one ; a keener and a stricter judge, a higher, a nobler and an eternal law. The sinner must stand before a judge who sees the inward guilt in the piercing rays of His august holiness.

By our voluntary and free choice we may serve out a moral sentence by penance, — less indeed than the smallest fraction of our dues ; but, voluntary and sanctioned of God, — and be pardoned of all we owe to God and to the Divine law. What shall it be ? Penance, whilst pardon is obtainable ; or, shall we serve out in a life without end a sentence hereafter, where pardon is impossible : "Depart from Me ye cursed into everlasting fire." We may catch a gleam of the wrath of God and snatch a faint idea of the punishment which justice allots to sinners, from the events that took place before the coming of the adorable Victim Whom the Father was to offer up for the sins of the world.

Sad and terrible was the fate of the angels. Gems of dazzling brilliancy set in the crown of God to attest His sovereignty, they fell from their setting, 'for the mighty are laid waste' (Zachary ii, 20.) Jewels they are still, but set in the robe of Justice, and it is their very brilliancy that makes hell so brilliant a flame. Mighty intelligences, noblest in character of all God's creatures, the angels sinned but once. Without pity,