Novissima

Front matter

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

OR,

Chapter I. Introductory

We all ask ourselves the question: "Where do our departed go?'' It has been asked by all mankind in the past, as it is at present — A belief in the survival of the soul and in a future state underlying this question — The pagans believed in a future life — Glorious witnesses of this truth and of a belief in the resurrection of the body among the Hebrew race — The seven Machabee martyrs and their mother — St. Paul attests the faith of his race — Apostolic testimony to the Christian belief — Christian heroism and self-sacrifice founded on the hope of eternal rewards — Armies of the self-sacrificing in both hemispheres — ' ' The perfect way ' ' and "the treasure in heaven."

Chapter II. With Christ

The rest which death gives to the weary — The rest which the true Christian looks forward to — To be with Christ everlastingly — Christ gave us a foretaste of our destiny in being on earth our Emmanuel, "God with us" — In heaven we are to be " with God" — "God with us" — Preludes to the incarnation in the old law — The angel Jehovah — God's intercourse with Moses, and His abiding with the Hebrew people — "Show me Thy glory," spoke the yearning of the human soul — Our Emmanuel coming among us " in a cloud " — How He made His divinity to be felt by those who approached Him — His Spirit communicated to Mary and Joseph, and to other personages — The ecstasy of the transfiguration a foretaste of paradise — The risen Christ "walking with" the disciples of Emmaus.

Chapter III

"to be dissolved and be with christ" — the yearning.

St. Paul before and after his conversion — Raised up to paradise while still in the body — Preaching " the unsearchable riches of via SYNOPSIS.

Christ, " ' ' the charity of Christ which surpasseth all knowledge' ' — "Desiring to be dissolved and be with Christ" — The idea of "dissolution" to the Christian is the welcome permission to depart for home — Examples-: The poor fever-stricken immigrant woman and her son ; St. Ferdinand, the conqueror of Cordova and Seville,

CHAPTER, IV, .

WITH CHRIST AT THE FOUNT OF LIFE — THE REALIZATION.

What constitutes the life eternal ? The possession of God byclear knowledge and love — The Eucharistic Sacrament and sacrifice a pledge and foretaste of the eternal possession — The banquet of earth and the banquet of heaven — The particular judgment after death — The first meeting of Christ with the holy soul on the frontier of His everlasting kingdom — The "peace be to you ! " on passing out of the shadow of the valley of death — The sight of His glorified human countenance a preliminary to the Beatific Vision — What the "Fount of Life" is — In heaven we are not absorbed in the abyss of the Godhead : we preserve our personal identity and exercise our proper vital acts — What God gives us in heaven — The heaven of Eastern pantheism and the Christian heaven — The yearning for the clear sight of God, as expressed in the Old Testament — Christ's explicit declaration and definition of life eternal — The Beatific Vision — What the council of Florence decrees it to be — The great dogmatic fact concerning the bliss of the life to come affirms that the blessed ' ' see God as He is in Himself ' ' — Xo sleep of the soul after death — A passage from a lower to the highest life.

CHAPTER, V.

WITHIN THE OCEA.N DEPTHS OF LIGHT AND LIFE — SEEING AND POSSESSING GOD.

We are tried by faith in this life, and rewarded by clear sight in the next — This, probably, was also the trial imposed on the angels in the beginning — Harmonies, anticipations, and aspirations in our nature and in the duties of human society — Apostolic testimonies bearing on the Beatific Vision — The pursuit and possession of knowledge, the tendency and felicity of the human mind — The supreme good the necessary object of the heart's desires — Both of these necessary aspirations and appetites of

/SYNOPSIS. • IX

rational nature fulfilled in the Beatific Vision— Supernaturalness of this Vision and the consequent felicity — Illustrations — St. Paul explains our present imperfect knowledge and longings, and their fulfillment — What takes place in the Beatific Vision— The embrace of God our Father— Illustrations.

CHAPTER VI.

STILL AMONG THE DEPTHS.

The doctrine of the clear sight of God immediately after death, the belief of the early Christian ages — St. Irenceus, martyr — St. Gregory Nazianzen — St. Gregory of Nyssa— St. John Chrysostom — St. Augustine — St. John Damascene— How the "light of glory" elevates and enlarges the mind — Analogies from the natural world and science — The will or affections simultaneously and harmoniously elevated, enlarged, perfected — The love or charity of heaven proportioned to the knowledge there given — Scope of the knowledge conveyed in tho Beatific Vision — Helps and illustrations toward understanding its immensity — Its blissfulness derived from the perfect insight into the nature and operations of the Godhead— Inability of the human intellect in our present state to sound these divine depths— Besides God, the primary object of this clear sight, all outside of God, are known and seen perfectly— His mysteries and the whole course of His providence — The heavenly empire, its worlds and inhabitants — The material universe, its substances and laws.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SOCIETY ENJOYED IN HEAVEN.

I. The parents of regenerated humanity — The companionship, of Christ and of those who were upon earth called His parents — Bliss arising from the clear sight of Christ in heaven, and from intercourse with Him— His beautiful character, as known through the gospels, the object of intense and enthusiastic study in our day — Incomparably greater the knowledge of Him enjoyed by the blessed — St. Bonaventure's ecstatic prayer to Christ — We cannot study Christ in His earthly career without finding by His side the ^Blessed Mother and St. Joseph — We cannot dissociate them from Him in heaven — They are near Him where He thrones as King and Head over the elect of our race.

X SYNOPSIS.

CHAPTER VIII.

AMONG THE MULTITUDES OF THE BLESSED.

II. The society of the Saints and elect — Theirs is the assemblage of the truest, best, and loveliest — The friendship of such an assemblage — A pause to consider what is this moral perfection which renders the Saints in heaven so admirable — Transfiguration of the entire man in the life to come — Analogies and illustrations — The present life too short for the earnest worker to attain perfection in anything — The mighty moral growth witnessed here a guarantee of the perfection attained hereafter — St. Paul's witness — Glimpses of paradise.

CHAPTER IX.

LOST AMONG THE HUMAN WORLD IN HEAVEN ITS IMMENSITY.

1. Christ's human kingdom in heaven — Intoxicating effect of beholding such countless numbers of the glorious and the good — The felicity derived from the friendship, the love, and merited praise of such a kingdom — The holy ties of earth bind souls together in heaven — Examples : Who those are who ' ' shine like stars ' ' among these multitudes of the good and great — Holy •families — Holy Patriarchs — Peoples who have kept the faith — The ancient Hebrews — Modern peoples.

2. Population of Christ's human kingdom in heaven — What may be, at present, their real numbers — Bases for forming an estimate — How we are to interpret the words of Christ about ''the small number of the elect" and the "narrow gate" — Those who labor among the masses know how many there are who are faithful to God — If we may compute the number of the elect at one thousand millions, the present estimated population of the globe — If so, what glory and felicity to be one of such a kingdom! — Illustrations — The real nature and source of social happiness: To feel that those we are with are our own; loving us, beloved by us, and deserving of our utmost love.

CHAPTER X.

FROM THE HUMAN TO THE ANGELIC SOCIETY — AN HOUR WITH THE ANGELS IN HEAVEN.

1. Lingering to count accurately the millions of the blessed — Everything in eternity partakes of the infinite — In the Middle

SYNOPSIS. XI

Ages all men sought to die well — Men then remembered Christ's bestowing from the cross paradise on the penitent criminal crucified with Him — In these Christian ages the oppressed and suffering multitudes were not all excluded from Christ's grace and love — We may, without exceeding, estimate Christ's kingdom on high at three thousand millions.

2. Christ's Angelic Empire — It is that of our brethren and friends ; our own also — Its population — Testimonies from Scripture — The Book of Job asks if there "is any numbering" of them?— The "scientific imagination" of the theologian and the Christian readily adopts the grandest views of God's works — St. Denis, the Areopagite, and St. Thomas Aquinas — The latter' s doctrine and estimates most worthy of our acceptance — The angelic world numbering more substances than the whole inferior creation — We are safe in estimating the population of the angelic empire as incomparably superior to the human — St. John's vision of both of these worlds — Catholic theologians adopt the theory of the Areopagite about the division of the angels into three hierarchies, each including three orders : nine divisions in all — Nine concentric and subordinate worlds — Such is the angelic society — Magnificence of this subject of study on earth and contemplation in heaven — Glory and bliss of this fellowship.

CHAPTER XI.

THE PLACE ITSELF — THE LAND OF THE LIVING.

The Prophet Baruch's sublime conception of it—Ideas of the location of heaven — A world created apart — Bellarmine's conception of it — The immensity of the heavenly world and the Beatific Vision — St. Ignatius Loyola sees God in all things — We need to expand our minds in thinking of divine things — Every part of this heavenly empire accessible to the blessed — How easy intercourse with all its parts will be even after the resurrection — Illustrations — Magnificence of this empire — It is called m Scripture the bride, and, sometimes, the dwelling place of the bride — This argues the utmost magnificence the Bridegroom can display — It is the country and home of God's beloved children — Illustration from parental love — The paradise and garden of delights — Magnificence and glory of its inhabitants.

Xll SYNOPSIS.

CHAPTER Xn.

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE HEAVENLY EMPIRE.

These conditions are in harmony with the final perfection of the inhabitants — Analogy founded on the conditions for life on earth — Everything in the supernal world will satisfy the exalted imagination and the purified sensibility of man — St. John's descriptions imply all this — Comparison of the earthly Paradise with the heavenly — The heavenly prepared as a reward for the Saints — Social condition in harmony — Unspeakable happiness and greatness of this empire — God willed man from the beginning to set his heart on it — Impulses — Comparison with the greatest and happiest of earthly realms — Solomon's wisdom and folly — David's aspirations.

CHAPTER XIII.

HEAVEN BEFORE THE RESURRECTION — THE EMPIRE OF CHARITY.

The Church of heaven and the Church on earth — What is seen in the blessed city of God : The altar of the Lamb — What is seen in the Church on earth: "AH nations and tribes" around the altar of the Lamb — Wherever the children of the Church are encamped, the armies of angels ascending and descending — Divine security and unchangeableness of the city of God on earth — "God in her midst — She shall not be moved" — The charity which is the soul of the communion of Saints — Heaven "the kingdom of perfect charity" — "The charity of Christ presseth us" also — The two great armies of charity here below — Their labors and creations — Charity of men and women in the world — Example.

CHAPTER XIV.

* BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.

The Christian religion founded on the fact of Christ's Resurrection — Witnesses to the fact : The dogma of the resurrection before Christ; Christ's teaching; Facts of resurrection before Christ ; Persons restored to life by Christ ; Moses and Elias at the Transfiguration ; Resurrection of Lazarus ; The question, "Who has come back to tell ns of the life to come?" Christ has j Miracles of the Apostles in confirmation of this fact ; Stephen dying beholds Christ in heaven ; The world has accepted Christianity founded on this fact, and on the belief in the resur-

SYNOPSIS. Xlll

1'ection — St. Paul's testimony: He saw Christ last of all the Apostles and Disciples ; His doctrine on the resurrection — The plea of "impassibility" put in by unbelievers — Magnificent horizons opened up by our belief.

CHAPTER XV.

THE NEW BIRTH OF MANKIND.

St. Paul — Gospel of the resurrection — Christ's prediction — Events preceding the general resurrection — St. Paul's teaching and description of the event itself — The consummation of the Creator's work in the physical world — Clothing a barren continent with verdure and filling it with animal life, a work of Omnipotence, helping us to understand the new birth of mankind — With Him is the secret and the fount of life — St. Paul on the new bodily life— Objection : The total material changes occurring periodically in the human frame — "Which body shall we rise in ? Most probably the body consigned to the grave — The veneration of all ages and races for the remains of the dead — Violation of tombs by the Reformers and the Roundheads — Their example imitated by the French Revolutionists — French scientists desecrating Egyptian tombs — Desecration now openly practiced in the name of science — Reverence of the Church for the human body — Anointed temples of the Holy Ghost — Christian burial, a depositing in the furrows the seed for the future springtide — God giveth life and increase — St. Paul's text further examined — Coming down from heaven of the angelic and human spirits — Souls from the Limbus or intermediate world: fallen angels and fallen men — The sounding of the trumpet— The fairest sight ever beheld by the Creator Himself.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE RESURRECTION OF JUDGMENT.

God's triumph— A favorite subject with artists in the Christian ages — The mystery of free-will and divine providence cleared up — Man enlightened from the beginning about his supernatural destiny — Free to serve or not to serve God and gain heaven — Helps toward securing his eternal happiness — God, through Christ Crucified, taught the world the infinite value of the heavenly treasure, and the infinite loss entailed by its forfeiture — xiV SYNOPSIS.

Ttie book of the crucifix — The book of judgment — Hell is the loss of Christ — The judgment — Preliminaries — The scene as described by Christ — The two-fold law of charity, the soul of all divine legislation — Why Christ bases on its observance or violation the award He pronounces — God wills us to pay the debt we owe Himself to the poor and suffering who hold His place — Timeliness and necessity of insisting on this divine law of brotherly charity in our age — How and where we can find on our road Christ in the persons of the needy and suffering — Golden opportunities — Example of St. Francis of Assisi — Confirmation of the Christian doctrine on heaven and hell from ancient Persian literature.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE BLESSED.

Christ's glorious human empire — We must take the infallible Church's interpretation of the Scriptural doctrine of the Resurrection — Christ makes of each blessed human soul, on the last day, a "quickening spirit" like His own — The risen bodies of the blessed must bear ' ' the image ' ' of the heavenly Adam — Qualities or "gifts" of these bodies: Incorruption or impassibility: lightsomeness ; agility or power; explanations of the holy Father's subtility or spirituality ; analogies borrowed from the teachings of modern science ; imponderable fluids, their subtility, energy, velocity ; universal ether and its agency and spirit-like substance and qualities ; the Transfiguration of Christ, and that of each of His blessed — Peculiar happiness of soul and body auising from this re-union and this Transfiguration — This happiness a compensation for bodily privations and sufferings in this life — Christ's triumphant ascension.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TRIUMPH OF CHRIST.

The preludes to the Wedding Feast — -Exaltation after humiliation — Spoils won by the cross — Numbers added to the elect by the Church — The flock gathered into heaven by the Good Shepherd — The regal progress of our King — The select bands in the army of Saints — They sing Te Deum Laudamus as they go — The LXXXVIII Psalm — Joys of eternity and joys of earth — In

SYNOPSIS. XV

heaven all have the perfect power to enjoy — The divine harmonies of heaven — Human feet treading the soil of the heavenly empire — It blooms afresh beneath the feet of Christ triumphant — Beautiful legends about St. Francis of Assisi — "I have said, ye are gods, and all sons of the Most High" — The Bridegroom and the Bride — ''King of kings and Lord of lords."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE SUPPER OP THE LAMB.

A royal wedding feast the ideal on earth of magnificence and enjoyment — Even among the poor a wedding means sumptuosity and hospitality unbounded — What we know it to be among the wealthy — The banquets of Assuerus — What we are to understand by the Supper of the Lamb — It inaugurates a new era in heaven — Members of the elect to whom heaven is new — Magnificent pageant of their arrival at the Feast — True conception of the banqueting place — Two worlds, the angelic and human, seated at the Banquet — The heavenly fare at that Supper — Anticipations on earth of that divine Food: "I am the Bread of Life." " Take ye and eat : This is My Body. " "Drink ye all of this: For this is My Blood." "I will not drink from henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I shall drink it with you new in the kingdom of My Father" — What " this fruit of the vine " is — Partaking of the Divinity — Christ's instruction to His Disciples : "I am the Vine. . . . You the branches" — The cup which man and angel drink at that Feast — The Father's joy in giving ; the children's bliss in receiving — In what consists the "newness" of the wine given at that Feast — 1. Man in heaven only a spiritual being before the Resurrection ; now he lives there in body — After the resurrection the wine of the Beatific Vision intoxicates body and soul — New transports of that hour — The sight of Christ with our bodily eyes — 2. Intoxicating effect of beholding with the bodily sense the new heavens and their angelic and human inhabitants — It will be new for the parents of regenerated humanity to have their family around them there. . . . New for the Eternal Father to welcome to His kingdom the entire family of the elect — Joy, like "the rush of a river, inundating the city of God."

XVI SYNOPSIS.

CHAPTER XX.

HOW TO FIXD HEAVEN ON EARTH.

The end in heaven; "God all in all" — Divine love finds means to be "all in all" to us, even in this life.

I. God present in all things — He fills heaven and earth : the immense and infinite — Present in all things as Creator, Preserver, Ruler — Easy to find Him — Present in man.

II. God works for us in all the energies and activities of the material, intellectual, social, and religious world — St. Paul to the Corinthians : ' "All things are yours ; " " the sufferings of time ; ' ' the glory to come" — God directs all things toward our good — Human infirmity supplemented by almighty power and divine generosity — The Three divine Persons working for us — The mystery of free-will — How man may work divinely for God — St. Francis Xavier — A docile instrument in the hand of God — Human weakness transformed into divine energy — How attentive meditation can help us — The "Ladder of Jacob" not yet withdrawn — The angelic world working for us — And the Saints in heaven — St. Paul's example : "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? ' ' — To die for Christ the privilege of the few — To live and labor for Christ that of many — "We should be spurred on to work by the prospect of winning an everlasting inheritance — "What we see gold-seekers daring and enduring.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE ETERNITY OF HEAVEN.

Precautions taken by business men to invest and secure money — Stability and perpetuity a great ground of confidence— Vain to seek either outside of God — Two memorable examples — The Christian's foundation — God and His eternity — Eternal life as explained in the light of revealed truth — The last article of the Creed — Utterances of our Lord and His Apostles on eternal or everlasting life — The Beatific Vision and the partaking of God's own life in heaven imply eternity — Conclusion : Everything divine in the heavenly life ; therefore its duration should be divine, eternal — The everlasting society of God, His angels and Saints — The eternity of the heavenly universe ; all our own, for evermore — The eternal God possessed eternally.

NOVISSIMA.

Chapter I Introductory

"Where are they gone, of yore

My best delight, Dear and more dear, though now

Hidden from sight?

— Lady Nairn.

" Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God ; believe also in Me." — St. John, xiv, 1.

THE QUESTION ASKED BY ALL MEN.

Where is the man or woman whose heart has not been troubled by the thought of that dread and mysterious hereafter, toward which the stream of life irresistibly hurries them ?

Around us, while the skeptic's doubts come out of the darkness, and take shape like the phantoms of a horrible dream, we hear our contemporaries asking aloud, with concern and with fear : Whether the generations which preceded us have been as utterly blotted out of life, of all personal existence, as the grass of the prairie over which the flames have passed destroying the very roots of every green thing, as the races of geological monsters which have left behind no living representative ?

\Ye who, arrived near the limit assigned to hitman life, behold the shadows fast lengthening on our road, and the sun about to disappear into a world to us unknown, cannot help seeing in his setting the image of our own existence. With troubled hearts we, too, ask ourselves : What sphere will receive our spirit when our day is ended ? Into what company shall we be ushered in parting with this body of clay ?

For we know that all living peoples, as well as those who have gone before us, are unanimous in believing that the soul survives the dissolution of the body. And we know as well, that they asked themselves in their day, as we do now, with anxiety not unmixed with fear : Where do our departed go ?

The question, and the grave thoughts it suggests, will not be put away, in the evening of life especially. Like travelers who have climbed a steep hill after a long road, we look back to find those who started with us, and perceive, with a shudder, that few, very few indeed, are by our side. Where are they ?

We remember the aged to whom we looked up for guidance and counsel on beginning life's journey ; the strong, the wise, the venerable, on whom our soul leaned for support ; they dropped away, one after the other, like ripe fruit from the overladen tree. Does the earth cover all that we loved and revered in them ?

Our own parents too — the father who taught us all generosity of aim and deed ; the mother whose tenderness was deeper than the springs of ocean, whose pure and loving soul was to us as God's angel in human form ; they, too, in their turn, closed their race of devotion and suffering, with their eyes looking fondly for the dawn of a better life, in which we should be reunited with them. Is this reunion in a blissful eternity only a delusion sent by nature to deceive the hopes of earth's dearest and best ? Have we lost forever the sweet companionship of those who first discoursed with us on immortality? Are we never again to be folded within those dear arms ? Shall their loved voices never more make music in our souls ?

Every day, as we advance toward the goal, we hear fond parents mourning by our side over the grave of children cut off in the springtide of lovely womanhood, or a manhood full of brilliant promise. They were rearing children for heaven ; they watched over them as if they had to keep angels in the body free from earthly stain, while training them to all earthly heroism. Is there no heaven, then, for the bright, pure spirits departed from their home?

Within the Christian home, as outside of it, the young are called to watch by the death-bed of their best beloved ; nothing soothes for them the pang of separation but the faith in a better life, and the certain hope of meeting there those who are a part of themselves. Is there, then, to be no reunion hereafter ?

Has all mankind conspired to cheat themselves with this magnificent dream of a future life and a bettor world? Let us meditate seriously on this thought at the very threshold of our inquiry.

Has all mankind, therefore, believed, and believed firmly, in a future state ? Yes ; all !

ATTESTING VOICES FROM THE TOMB.

Examine, in every portion of the habitable globe, the records and monuments of the most ancient empires; consult the religious beliefs and the funereal customs of races the most civilized or the most savage ; from every land and age, from the literatures of the pagan world and the world worshiping the one true God, from the tombs of Egypt, Assyria, India, China, and Japan, as well as from the sepulchres of Palestine and Etruria, come solemn voices attesting the soul's immortality — everlasting rewards for the good, everlasting punishments for the wicked. From the reverently preserved remains of the half-famished tribes wandering around Hudson's Bay or through the forests of Alaska, from the sepulchral mounds of races long extinguished, scattered over the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi, down through Mexico and Central America, and the vast regions of the Southern Continent to Cape Horn — the care bestowed on the dead of yesterday, as well as the love and respect paid to the bodies of those who died thousands of years ago, alike proclaim that all these races believed in the survival of the soul.

More than that. The care taken by men, while living, to secure for their remains after death a safe and inviolable resting-place, as well as the sentiment in the survivors prompting to carry out the wish of the dying, and impelling children to give to parents the honorable sepulture which they hoped for in return — all spoke of the primitive revelation promising not only the life to come, but the revival of the body to partake thereof.

SURVIVAL OF THE SOUL.

Leaving all discussion of "the resurrection of the flesh" to a future chapter, w 7 e insist upon this unanimity with which mankind in the past, as in the present, all civilizations and religions, affirm the immortality of the soul, its future accountability to its Maker and Judge, and the everlasting happiness of the good, as an offset to the proud, pretentious and shallow few, who put out the eyes of their own intelligence lest they should see the necessity of the life to come, the magnificence of its rewards, and the salutary terrors of its threatened punishments.

The pagan Cicero and the pagan Plato revolted in their day against the few Materialists whose practice and teaching aimed at depriving the toiling and suffering masses — as well as all who set virtue and conscience above the honors, enjoyments, and happiness of the present life — of the comforting hope of a blissful immortality. And so, even now, heathen philosophy and heathen religions rebuke the purblindness of the false science, which, seated in the chair at Oxford, from which Roger Bacon taught, seeks to extinguish in men's souls, one after the other, the lights and the hopes which made Bacon's life so bright and happy amid toil, and obloquy, and persecution.