Section I. Our Blessed Lord

I. His Eternal Generation.

1. Infinitely noble.

2. Infinitely pure.

3. Eternal.

4. Unspeakable and incomprehensible.

II. His residence in the Bosom of the Father.

1. His sojourn there.

2. His going forth.

3. His sojourn among men.

III. His Divinity.

1. His union with the Father.

2. His equality.

3. His independence.

IV. The mutual love of the Father and the Son.

1. Their conversation.

2. Their love.

3. The fruit of their love, the Holy Ghost.

V. The eternal plan of the Incarnation.

1. The fall foreknown.

2. The exclusion of the angels from the remedy of the Incarnation.

3. The choice of the Word of His Sacred Humanity.

VI. His eternal choice of sufferings.

1. Of the sufferings of His whole life.

2. Of His Death.

3. Of the Cross in particular.

VII. The Predestination of His Mother.

1. His choice of her.

2. That choice the source of her greatness.

3. That choice the source of her graces.

4. That choice the source of her crosses.

THE LIFE OF JESUS IN THE WOMB OF MARY.

VIII. He "begins a new life in her womb.

1. Infinitely precious.

2. Infinitely pure.

3. All for us and at our disposal.

IX. His beatitude from the first moment.

1. It was from the first moment.

2. He was the first of all the blessed.

3. He obtains beatitude for us.

X. His clear view of God from the first moment.

1. The first Man who enjoyed it.

2. The only one in this life.

3. More clearly than all men and angels.

XI. His first act of love.

1. The most perfect act which has been or can be.

2. Extended to all the works of God. 8. And ardently to all men.

XII. Ineffable joy from the first moment.

1. His Soul s joy in His Divinity.

2. His joy in infusing graces into Mary.

3. His joy in destining graces for each one of us in particular.

XIII. His adoration of the Father from the first moment.

1. Humble submission as to the Creator of His Sacred Humanity.

2. Profound reverence from His view of the perfections of the Father.

3. Worship from a sense of the nothingness of His Soul.

XIV. His praise of God from the first moment.

1. By the affections of His Sacred Heart.

2. By His works.

3. By exciting His Mother s Heart to join with Him.

XV. He thanks God from the first moment.

1. His Soul for the Hypostatic Union.

2. For all benefits received at that moment.

3. For all blessings to all creatures, past or to come.

XVI. His union of Viator and Comprehensor.

1. The state of Viator a violence to the Son of God.

2. A voluntary violence.

3. Love unites these incompatible states.

XVII. Oblation of Himself to the Eternal Father.

1. Offers the graces that instant received.

2. Offers Himself without reserve.

3. And for everything.

4. And with purity of oblation.

XVIII. His compassion for our miseries at that moment.

1. General pity.

2. For sin, our greatest misery.

3. For our sins in particular.

XIX. Takes our sins upon Him from that moment.

1. Takes the burden with love.

2. Embraces sufferings needful.

3. Takes the Cross from His Father s Hands.

XX. Works for the glory of God and our salvation from that moment.

1. Begins His work that instant.

2. With fervour.

3. Continues it with constancy.

XXI. Begins to merit from that moment.

1. His perfect freedom.

2. Infinite merits.

3. Each action infinitely meritorious.

XXII. The desires with which He inspired Mary.

1. To give Him to men.

2. To see Him with her eyes.

3. To serve Him as her Son and for God.

Love must be to us instead of mind, and heart, and spirit, in order that we may understand and feel, and worship the mystery of the cry of the Infant God breaking the silence of the winter s midnight at Bethlehem. And what was it first of all that the angels sang? Glory to God in the highest. This is the temper in which we must keep our feast.

I. God s glory the first thought.

1. To look out for it was the habit of their blessed spirits.

2. So also must it be ours.

3. We lose half the joy of feasts by thinking only of ourselves.

II. But God s glory is the same as man s happiness.

1. How touching and how beautiful is this thought!

2. How intensely it ought to make us love God, Who is so mixed up with His creatures.

3. What a lesson it teaches of trustful submission to His Will.

III. And God s glory in the highest is in His humiliations in the lowest.

1. This is the grand character of Jesus, and of all His mysteries.

2. The discernment of the angels saw the immense glory of His humiliation.

3. As it was our Master s glory, so is it ours. IV. Now enter the cave.

4. The shepherds, humhle men, adoring their newborn King in humble simplicity.

5. Joseph, overwhelmed with pious humility as foster-father.

6. Mary had won the Incarnation by humility; so now who shall tell how she abased herself?

7. On that wisp of straw the Everlasting God!

Oh, my dear Brethren, we think too well of ourselves. We are less happy than we should be, because we are less humble. We do not advance, because we do not keep ourselves doWn. We do not love God as we desire, because we do not despise ourselves. 0, it is so delightful a thing to be humble, so full of joy, and peace, and love: let it be our practice now. It is a devotion in which we can make no mistake, in which we can never go too far. Let us keep to the side of our Infant Lord, and sink with Him out of the sight of men and of self, into those depths of dear humility which will gently leave us at the last, not in the poverty of Bethlehem, but in the boundless riches of our Heavenly Father s house above.

FOR THE CHILDREN.

Bethlehem is more wonderful than a fairy tale. The persons in the cave.

I. Jesus.

1. Eternal God: so disguised.

2. Beauty of His Body and Soul.

3. He saw this chapel of His foster-father, and longed for our little love.

II. Mary.

1. No other of God s creatures is like her.

2. The unutterableness of her joy.

3. She is our own Mother, and it is part of her joy to be so.

III. Joseph.

1. Joy of God in the love of His Son this was St. Joseph s joy.

2. His familiarities with Jesus.

3. His love of all children for the sake of Jesus. IY. Shepherds.

4. Simple-hearted and very reverent.

5. Jesus thought of them first.

6. What they must have felt when they heard the angels singing.

Y. The Wise Men.!

1. Nobody wise but those who come to Jesus.

2. We must give Him our best when we come to Him.

3. But, oh! what will not He give us in return? Love each other let the houses love each other you shall hoth be together, happy, peaceful, bright, at the Feet of our dearest Jesus for ever!

IY.

NEW YEAR S EVE.:

I. The view which the saints take of the world as a howling wilderness compared with the view ordinarily good men take of it: the latter view stated.

1. The pleasure in living, especially if we have health.

2. The pleasure of doing good, and being kind to others.

3. The pleasure of relationship and love.

4. The pleasure of earth s sunshine and the world s pastimes, especially society.

5. The pleasure of sorrow, when it is blunted.

6. The pleasure of past adventures, and of memory.

7. The pleasure of the dead we possess as ours in another state.

II. If to ordinarily good men the world is such, wherein does it fail?

1. In not keeping its promises.

2. In not coming up to its own standard.

3. In its continual changing.

4. In having nothing to satisfy an interior want, whose hunger increases as the soul loves God more and more.

III. The Rest of the Soul.

1. What we thought last New Year s Eve, and how we have been baulked.

2. Have we the heart to ask no more of the coming year?

3. What our soul is, and what its destinies are.

4. The world at its best estate compared with the soul.

5. What it is to be from home, we have never seen our home.

6. Our home is in the Bosom of God, amid the assemblage of His Attributes.

7. The Infant Jesus was at home as soon as He was conceived: Mary s lap the Bosom of the Eternal Father.

He starts His Years so let us start ours and with Him and keep close by the side of our Elder Brother: but what of the past? Aye, what of the past? Let us go to Mary, and ask her what we are to do with that. Tomorrow our Brother sheds blood for the first time; let us go to the temple, and ask to be touched with it, and like a lightning flash the past is done away!

THE EPIPHANY.

No history in the Gospel more strange, more singular, or more apart.

Lesson. God will lead the most unlikely people in the most unlikely ways to Jesus, rather than that they should miss the salvation of their souls.

Yet though so singular a mystery, there is none which describes more faithfully what has happened or will happen to every one of ourselves.

I. We are to be led to Jesus, the End of our creation: how sweetly our Father cares for each of us.

II. We were unlikely people; alas! who more unlikely?

III. We were afar off; oh yes! how very far by sin, by coldness, by ignorance, by relapses.

IV. We were led in unlikely ways look back on life how strange is all that God has done and how plain, when we are far enough off to get a good view of it! Yet all in one way, which is the true faith.

V. What is all life but stars of Bethlehem? this is the meaning of everything.

1. Every sorrow is a star to lead us to Jesus.

2. Every joy is a star to lead us to Jesus.

3. Every change in life is a star to lead us to Jesus.

This is the simple view of life: what is life without God, without Jesus? How it passes away in joy; how it lingers in sorrow; how perilous, how anxious, how doubtful it is when it comes to end in death! Oh poor, poor life of man! it means nothing, but one only thing Jesus Christ and Him crucified, the Son of Mary, the Babe of Bethlehem!

THE EPIPHANY THE FEAST OF CONVERTS.

The Three Kings the first-fruits of the G-entiles glory of the wideness of the Church. Epiphany a time of prayer for the conversion of the whole world; also a time for those who have had the grace of conversion to reflect upon the past.

Parallel between the kings and converts.

I. The life of the kings before they saw the star, seeking the true God among the starlit rocks of Arabia, and by the shores of its melancholy murmuring sea; seeking yet uncertain: trying to attach themselves to their home, and rest there, and yet God would not let them.

II. The star rises they hardly know why they trust it but their heart tells them to follow: it is but a star, and yet so little: a glimmer those who love them blame and wonder, expostulate and weep yet for them the glimmer is enough.

III. They lose it in Jerusalem in crowds even when so near: yet enquiry is quickened by the very withdrawing of the light.

IV. They had false counsel given to go back and tell: now, they must first mind their own souls, and go home another way.

V. The star comes out again, and stands over

Bethlehem over Jesus and Mary: they hardly know whether it is the Mother or the Son they saw first.

VI. They were, for the most part, allowed the kiss of Jesus sensible sweetness, or undoubting faith, or heaven awhile made plain.

VII. They had to offer the costliness of affections, of worldly goods, and of sufferings both in ward and outward gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

VIII. Now, what is left but that their lives must be lives of faith?

The great grace of conversion is enough for them to feed upon: that one first sight of Jesus and Mary is a living vision in their hearts, and onward they go, into the unfading light of that more perfect vision, whose truth and beauty, satisfying joy and deep tranquillity, abide for ever more.

VII. THE EPIPHANY.

The mystery narrated in detail.

I. The three kings an example of faith in their long journey. How much more sure are we? yet how do we act?

1. In coming to mass.

2. In coming to confession.

3. In putting ourselves out of the way in coming to Benediction.

II. Their journey a pattern of the pilgrimage of life.

1. In constant change, letting us have no abiding home.

2. In dangers and difficulties.

3. In disappointments, as when we lose our star.

4. But our end is the same Jesus.

5. And we have a "better star even Mary.

III. What did they do all this for, and consider themselves well paid by?

One sight of Jesus, one kissing of His little Feet, one look, one conversation with Mary and they waited patiently thirty-three years for baptism, and shed their blood in martyrdom, so deep had the loveliness of the Infant Jesus passed into their souls. We have not kissed His feet once only, but even received His Blood in penance, Himself in communion how many, many times and an eternal vision of Jesus before us! Ah! see the difference between those who love, and those who love not, my dearest children! why will you not love Jesus more? Is life so sweet, is earth so peaceful, that you need no better home, no dearer friends? You know how you look lovingly, and yearn over your little babes when you rock them to sleep in their little cradles so take the Infant Jesus into your hearts, let every beating of your hearts be like the rocking of His cradle; let no rude word, no rough oath, no loud immodest word awaken the sleeping Babe; let no angry tempers, or evil deeds cause Him to cry with pain when He awakes. Mary will come and teach you how to be a mother to her little Jesus, in sweetness, and humility, and chastity; and the thought that He of whom we speak so lightly, and so playfully, this pretty Babe is none other than our God!

VIII. FEAST OF THE NAME OF JESUS.

The Name of Jesus 1. the greatest power on earth 2. the greatest miracle 3. the greatest happiness 4. the greatest attraction 5. the most common of all the Divine Mercies. What the name means: Thou shalt call His Name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.

L Without Him there could be no salvation.

1. Men could do nothing with all their penances and sufferings.

2. Nor angels with all their merits and holiness.

3. God wills to do it only through Him.

4. The misery of the earth without Jesus.

II. With Him is "copious redemption."

1. The faith of the Church.

2. The abundance of grace.

3. The abundance of the sacraments.

III. With Him salvation is easy.

1. The little He requires from us.

2. The facilities of pardon.

3. His own interests in our salvation.

IV. The whole is done by Him.

1. He is beforehand with us in Baptism and in grace.

2. Our merits are all by His grace.

3. He gives us His own merits besides.

4. Our perseverance is His own gift.

V. How He has been a Saviour to each one of us.

1. His knowledge and love of us in His thirty-three years.

2. The time past of our lives, full of mercies and graces.

3. The time present all is from Him.

4. The time of death will be His choosing, and the best for us.

5. All our future glory is from Him.

And all this is ours for a little generous love: nay, He seems to count Himself as under some obligation to us if we will only accept it. Let His name then be our tower in which we dwell, a safe refuge and a happy home!

DEVOTIONS FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO LEAD AN INTERIOR LIFE,

IN HONOUR OF TEE EIGHTEEN HIDDEN YEARS

OF JESUS.

I. To the silent eternity of bliss which God enjoyed before He created anything, in order to gain detachment from creatures.

H. To the nine months of Jesus in the womb of Mary, to impetrate a love of the hidden life.

III. To the agony in the garden, to impetrate fortitude in interior pains, and in repugnances in prayer.

IV. To the life of Mary in the house of St. John, to impetrate continual recollection of Jesus and union with God.

V. To the holy Angels, especially our own guar dian, to impetrate the union of inward recollection with outward duties.

VI. To the Blessed Sacrament, to impetrate the grace of holy abjection.

VII. To the Holy Ghost, as the minister of the marriage of our souls with Jesus.

VIII. To the souls in purgatory, to impetrate conformity in suffering.

IX. To St. Joseph, to impetrate interior peace.

X. To St. Philip for the gift of tears, and tenderness at mass.

XI. To St. Ignatius for the love of concealment.

XII. To St. Teresa for the gift of mental prayer.

XIII. To the interior life of Jesus to obtain a thirst for the glory of God.

XIV. To the priesthood of Jesus to obtain the spirit of sacrifice.

XV. To the infancy of Jesus for simplicity and a love of helplessness.

XVI. To St. Paul for a special devotion to the Eternal Father.

XVII. To St. John for a devotion to the Sacred Heart.

XVIII. To St. Clare of Montefalco, to obtain a special devotion to the mystery of the most Adorable Trinity.

THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

Now this is eternal life: that they may know

Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom

Thou hast sent. St. John xvii. 3.

I. Beginning of Lent, troubled clouds of past sin, p enance, &c. now amid the clouds comes out clearly the person of Jesus Christ, He Whose Passion we are called upon to commemorate.

II. No mathematical God idea or form of words but a living Person, two Natures-this is the solid of Catholic devotion; all else is from this Blessed Virgin Mary Real Presence feasts of the year.

III. The one grand object of the Church is to make the Person of Jesus Christ better known and better loved in a forgetful world; this in its measure presses upon every Catholic of every age, rank, or ability.

IV. Now, in Lent, we have also to reconcile ourselves to Him, or to engage ourselves more deeply in His service, or to pledge ourselves more solemnly to Him.

V. What sort of a Person was He? 1. A Child flying to Egypt. 2. Sitting at the well of Jacob. 3. Refusing to accuse the adulteress. 4. Defending the Magdalen.,5. Trying even in the garden to save Judas. 6. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. 7. Feed My lambs.

Wonder that men do not love Him! Look at what He has done for you in past life: we when we grow old weary of sin: He wearies not in pardoning. Come then, give Him a Palm -Sunday entry into your hearts and while the thrones of the ancient earth are tottering, enthrone Him more firmly, more honourably, aye and above all more lovingly than ever, as King over you, over all you are and all you have, and all you can suffer for His

Bake. Oh, what a day will Easter-day be, if thereon you solemnise the coronation of our dearest Jesus in your hearts!

XI. OUR LORD S CHOICE OF POVERTY.

The Holy Ghost was called Pater Pauperum: so were the saints also: so was Jesus: love of the poor is a characteristic of true holiness, as well as of the true Church. The poor you have always with you, but Me you have not always. This shows how completely they came to occupy His place, even more than direct texts. I. The choice of Jesus.

1. He being the Eternal Wisdom, chose poverty.

2. As the state fittest for His great end.

3. As the one in which He could raise His Sacred Humanity to heights of holiness.

4. How consistently He kept to His choice through the three and thirty years.

5. How it satisfied the longings of His Sacred Heart and His Divine Compassion.

6. The result of this fact that Jesus chose poverty is that the poor are made authentically the favourites of God.

7. Hence in the Church.

8. Voluntary poverty, and

9. Sacrifice for the poor.

II. The blessed effects of this choice of Jesus, to all, rich as well as poor.

1. The abundance of holy charity and liberality.

2. It rebukes the spirit of the world in us, and so raises us to perfection.

3. It likens us to the Sacred Heart, and so makes us dear to God.

III. Consolations of the poor: for there is no dignity or poetry about poverty, as about other suffering.

1. God has been a Doormantried it allscant food, hard lying, trust in alms, labour: those that are sick even have no such consolation: many an evening darkened in where was He to lodge?

2. Not wrong to feel, and feel keenly, the priva tions of poverty.

3. New and supernatural motives for patience, supplied by the choice of Jesus.

What then is your riches? The Sacred Henri of Jesus. What have you but love of God? How foolish not to take what is yours! What have you else to make you happy? blessed Poverty, if it drives you into the Sacred Heart this is its one blessing, in which are all blessings. Forfeit this, and you are the dull thing the world pro nounces you to be.

XII. POVERTY THE CHOICE OF JESUS.

I. Discontent of a poor man his comparison of his fortune with that of the rich and noble the ill temper which results from that comparison the childishness and uselessness of it all.

II. Let him turn his thoughts another way.

1. Jesus was God, and might by His power hare chosen any state yet He chose poverty.

2. He was infinite wisdom yet He chose poverty.

3. He came to do His Father s work, as we do; and He chose poverty.

4. He chose it of the hardest and most continual sort. Comparison between His poverty, and the comforts of poor men in general.

5. The love He bore to the poverty He had chosen.

III. Privileges of the poor.

1. Absence of temptation.

2. Penance for sin.

3. Special promises of the Gospel.

4. Easy deathbed so little to part with.

5. Companionship of Jesus.

However dark your way may seem, however multiplied your hardships and your woes, you are what Jesus chose to be, and is not that fortune enough to make you richer than all this poor perishing world can give?

XIII. OUR LORD S PRAYER.

Many things about our Lord are wonderful none more wonderful than His prayer. I. What prayer was in Him.

1. It combined all the eminences of His Soul.

2. It was the abundance of the treasures of the Sacred Heart.

3. It met and saluted all the Divine Perfec tions.

4. It did to each of those perfections what was necessary for us.

5. Its thanksgiving, intercession, and congratulation mysteriously peculiar..

6. It was the prayer of true Man.

7. It was by an awful mystery the prayer of true God.

II. Characteristics of His prayer.

1. Li-felong.

2. Principle of all He did.

3. Recorded ways and times.

4. Its efficacy.

5. Its lastingness in the Church.

6. Its privacy public only once.

7. Intense reverence of it He was heard because He feared.

III. Our Practice.

1. The thing most needed to imitate in Jesus.

2. The thing most perfectly imitable.

3. The best prophecy of our final perseverance.

4. The most sure relief from present difficulties.

5. Prayer brings all other holiness along with it.

6. It is like nothing else in the world.

7. But a life of prayer is the only true prayer. No prayer is unheard, none is wasted, there is none that we shall not meet again in the world to come. Oh when we die, how bitterly shall we mourn that we have prayed so little, prayed so negligently; ah! we shall see then that life was hardly life, when it was not also prayer!

XIV.

THE MYSTERY OF JESUS BEING THOUGHT MAD.

I. The Mystery of the Eternal Word being thought mad.

1. As the Passion is a marvellous disclosure of the creature s treatment of the Creator, so is this mystery of the look which the Creator when visible had to His creatures. The Passion discloses their will, and this mystery their understanding.

2. It was a witness borne to His ways being above our comprehension.

3. It was a terrific measurement of the distance which the world had drifted from Him.

4. It should be a continual subject of trembling sorrow, and of frequent acts of the most ten-- der and respectful reparation.

5. And it was, of all the Three Persons, the* Eternal Wisdom who was thought mad!

II. The lessons to be learned from this mystery.

1. The world, even the good and kind part of it, does not comprehend supernatural princi ples it was His own who laid hands on Him.

2. It is the cross which the world cannot take into its calculations, and so blunders.

3. How hidden must Jesus have been so then also must we be!

4. How this mystery is realised in the saints: this is half the wisdom of the Gospel we should lay it to heart, and make it thoroughly our own!

5. What a contempt it ought to give us for the world so foolish in its wisdom that it thought its God mad: one trembles to say the words: surely the very angels invisibly shrink around us.

adorable foolishness of God! how shall we worship our own honour and reputation, when He so annihilated Himself, and stripped Himself of His? So let us be thought mad:- 1. In our faith by heretics.

2. In our holiness, even by our own people. Jesus! dearest Lord! give us the heart which was in our father St. Philip, the heart not to be wise with men, but to be mad with Thee; and of the world too we have one thing to ask which it will not be slow to give, that as it made wild sport with Thee in the court of Herod s house, so it may for Thy dear sake make sanctify ing sport of us!

XY.

THE WEARINESS OF JESUS AT THE

WELL.

I. The Creature would desire to see to have a long steadfast undazzled look at the Creator of all this Universe to look to learn to love to worship: look at Jesus sitting on the broken wall of Jacob s Well: He made that cold sparkling water far down, and now He asks it of His sinful creature: the weariness of God made Man; awe-inspiring yet consoling also.

II. Weariness of Jesus

1. With our sin and ingratitude.

2. With His own toils for us.

3. With the fervour of His love, which parched Him on the Cross.

III. Consolation for us.

1. As sanctifying our toils for Him, even our bodily fatigues, and the aching of the sleep less head, the throbbing of the footsore limb.

2. As showing how He forgot Self to save a soul, whereas she left her pitcher and went to the city forgetting His thirst.

3. As rule and model for us in trying to convert others.

He made, I say, that cold sparkling water far down, and now He asks it of His sinful creature: so it is in all things: He gives us hearts, He gives springs of love to flow there as into a well, He sits and looks down with a sweet thirsty envy, and we will not give Him drink!

XVI. EASTEK SUNDAY.

The three points of the world at the midnight of Easter were the Soul of Jesus in Limbus, the Body of Jesus in the tomb, the Mother of Jesus in the house of John. I. The Soul of Jesus in Limbus.

1. Enjoying as it ever had done the Beatific Vision.

2. Imparting it to others and so making Paradise.

3. Freed from the interior agonies of the Passion.

4. Delighting in its present conquests of grace.

5. Still full to overflowing of love for men.

II. The Body of Jesus in the tomh.

1. The silence around the tomb.

2. The angels watching.

3. The guards sleeping.

4. The seal set upon the stone.

5. The adorable Body in its grave-clothes, all seamed with wounds.

III. Mary in the House of John.

1. Her Dolours accomplished, as well as His Passion.

2. She is supporting the apostles.

3. She watches in prayer, as at the Annunciation.

4. Her Heart holds the Faith of the whole Church in it.

5. She keeps adoring the Body and the Soul of Jesus in spirit.

IY. The mystery of the Resurrection.

1. The angels collect the Precious Blood, and worship it.

2. The soul of Jesus comes to the tomb, and enters.

3. The retinue of angels and Souls that are with Him.

4. He opens the tomb, and discloses His Body, pointing out the Wounds.

5. Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, David, St. Joseph, the Baptist, and the rest adore it.

6. The grave-clothes are unfastened, and laid in order on one side.

7. Jesus by His power as God, and at the word of the Father, resumes His Body with the Blood.

8. Its instantaneous life and beauty; yet retention of the Five Wounds.

9. Just as the light dawned upon the hill-tops^ He with His retinue enters His Mother s room; and strengthening her heart, He shows her His everlasting Godhead, the surpassing beauty of the Person of the Eternal Word.

Thus it was, beautiful consummation! that He who died for our sins, rose again for our justification.

XVII. THE VICTORY OF THE RESURRECTION.

The hour of weakness and of suffering was past the triumph come the dawn of the morning was the time to the eyes of Mary first of all the victory was proclaimed. Emancipation pro claimed to a whole nation of slaves, what it would be like! The resurrection was the emancipation of the world. The slavery of men the slavery of Jesus in His passion here it ended. Easter dawn is come, and with it man s victory. I. Victory of the Flesh.

1. Its weakness, pains, ignominies.

2. The prison-house of the soul, almost forcing it to sin.

3. The veil that hlinds our eyes, and darkens us.

4. The glory, heauty, power, brightness, new self of the resurrection.

II. Victory over sin.

1. Sin had done its worst to Jesus.

2. Sin does its worst to us.

3. Sin separates body and soul.

4. Resurrection the reunion of the two for glory.

III. Victory over death.

1. The empire of death.

2. The cowardice with which men crouched under it.

3. How faith comes and sets us free from this dastardly bondage.

The extreme beauty of a disembodied soul in a state of grace its return as a conqueror to re animate the body God s care of the precious particles of the body for that great day the entry of the soul into it heralded by angels into the Presence of the Face of God!

XVIII. THE EASTER JOY OF JESUS.

I. There are no marks of the Crown of Thorns upon His brow yet He looks more than ever a King! The placid sunrise is beautiful, but there is not half so much quiet beauty about it as reigns over that incredibly sweet Face. What maturity and yet what youth! look into His eyes, what a depth of love, what a tenderness of love, yet what an overwhelming power of love. That smile upon His lips, so royal and yet so wonder fully familiar, how human it is in its gentle winning gravity. What a light of unspeak able expression shines over His whole Face, glows like sunshine on His beautiful hair, and runs down like an unction into His comely beard!

II. But He must not speak: if He speaks our hearts will break with love. It is true He will speak to us the very first time we see Him: but He must not speak now. Jesus Risen! W^hat think you? Is that beauty the old beauty of dear Bethlehem? or is it the look of the boy at Nazareth? or the sweetness of the preacher and miracle-worker of Galilee? It is all of them and it is none of them. It is something of its own. Somehow the Human Soul fills all the features marvellously with a most human loveliness; and yet His Divinity shines through with a masterful majesty, and with a gladness so hright that it makes us worship to look at it.

III. I interpret His Easter look to be an immense joy human joy carried to its utmost limit the joy of His Godhead made visible by His Human Soul overflowing His Glorified Body with an incomparable jubilee.

IV. His Easter joy was one of a constellation of His joys let us think of them.

1. His joy at the moment of the Incarnation.

2. His delight in the worship of God at that moment.

3. His delight in His Body and Soul.

4. His delight in the sweet sanctity of His Mother.

5. His joy at His first sight of Mary.

6. He gazes, and reads each feature; re joices in His likeness to her.

7. She was His own creature.

8. He exulted in her extatic delight at seeing Him.

9. His joy at her first Communion.

10. Like the Incarnation over again.

11. The graces He found in her, and the new ones He gave.

12. The joy of her joy at this fresh ineffable.union.

These three joys met now, were all blended, and were surpassed by the Easter joy.

4. His joy in seeing her now; Mary, so familiar with all His old beauty, is struck with His Easter brightness and loveliness.

5. The joy to His human eyesight, as if long years had parted them, such vast mysteries had they both traversed.

6. Her fresh beauty from her dolours.

7. His extasy in filling each abyss her woes had made in her heart, with fresh love and grace.

V. Dearest Lord! He had yet another Easter joy: He thought of us and of our salvation, of each one of us by name and look: He will have it over again when we see Him first; it is little, yet nothing is little to Him, nothing little to love, while nothing of His is little to our exceeding littleness to Him and to us it will be like His first apparition to His Mother.

1. His joy at the particular judgment in passing a favourable sentence.

2. His joy in being our Redeemer.

3. His joy in His mother s gladness at our salvation.

4. His joy in the beauty and sweetness of our souls.

5. His joy in our unutterable joy.

Easter is a happy day: but I think our true Easter will not be till we look that first time on the beautiful welcome of His Easter Face.

XIX. DIES QUAM FECIT DOMINUS.

Can there be light after such a darkness? Can there be day after such a night, peace after the death of God, joy after the passion of our dearest Lord? What is Easter like? Like the begin ning of eternity, like the dawn of God s endless day! Easter has come with its thousand thoughts, its thousand doctrines, its thousand graces: how can the Church express it? With that sublime simplicity, with that artlessness of a child which is close upon the wisdom of an angel, she sums it all up in one word, Htec dies quam fecit Dominus This is the day which the Lord hath made. I. Quam fecit Dominus.

1. This is the one joy of all things that God made them.

2. It is our joy that we are created by God, and by such a God.

3. So we congratulate all creatures that they have the happiness of having been made by God.

4. But He makes some things specially, and keeps a special royalty over them.

5. Easter Sunday is one of these things.

II. But did He not make all days, and cause all suns to shine? yes! but never a day like this the sunrise of the Everlasting Saviour!

1. Because from it comes the blessing of all days.

2. Because the glory of Jesus was so infinitely dear to the Father.

3. Because He is the true sunshine of the earth.

4. And His glorified body the sun and moon of Heaven.

5. And He is a sun who has no setting oh the joy of this to us! He is a day which is all morning, fresh, pure, grateful, full of sweet light and of sweetest odours!

III. The Eesurrection.

1. The sun is not yet above the hills: in the pearly dawn we see St. Mary Magdalen looking down into the sepulchre: why does her face shine so brightly if the sun is not risen? It is from the two angels in white sitting in the sepulchre: how her tears glisten in the light!

2. Dear loving Magdalen! is it the memory of the Passion which makes her weep? The angels, beaming with gladness, say, Woman! why weepest thou? Who has any right to weep at Easter? Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him, Earth without Jesus! no! that could not be. So Jesus had said about her brother Lazarus Where have you laid him? 8. When she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and she knew not that it was Jesus. Did she not feel, or was she so engrossed in seeking Jesus? Her eye was full of that wounded Body on the Cross. She turned herself back what were even angels when she was seeking Jesus? Jesus, as if to have time to drink in her fond faithful love, as if it was so great an Easter joy to Him, saith to her in a feigned voice, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? dearest Lord! thus to play with her grief and love, to ask Thy servant such a question whom seekest thou, as if Magdalen could seek any but Thee. She, thinking it was the gardener poor Mary! truly He was the gardener the gardener who had once planted the paradise of old saith to Him, Sir, if thou hast taken Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him: and I will take Him away. What! in thine arms like a child, Mary? as thy great namesake carried Him at Bethlehem and in the Wilderness? I will take Him away beautiful as if He was hers, as if He should not be a charge to any one but her, as if she was hostess of Jesus by office, now and for ever. Then she seemingly turned her face to the sepulchre. Did not the empty sepulchre remind her of

His words to Martha, her sister, I am the 11 resurrection and the life? If any word is like the last trumpet of the archangel it is Ego sum resurrectio et vita.

4. Jesus saith to her, behind her, in that voice, Mary. Does she live, or has that one word broken her heart with the abruptness of its jubilee? She turning, with what speed, with what surprise, with what unmanageable extasy of love, said, Rabboni, which is to say, Master. in the long history of the world how many sweet surprises has love contrived for love but was there ever any one half so sweet as this?

5. Joy says short words and few ones. Her beautiful bright face may have told the apostles all when she met them, for her face had been sad enough for days past; but as for her tongue, she could only sa} r I have seen the Lord! and these things He said to me. happy, happy Mar-y! help us to our Heavenly Easter, to that morning when Jesus our Judge will have spoken a few words to us; it is only a few years distant now, and then we can come to thee in Heaven, and repeat thy simple but all-sufficient words, I have seen the Lord, and these things He said to me.

THE RESURRECTION A MYSTERY OF

CALMNESS.

The peace around the tomb the peace of Mary s desolation: we almost fear lest the notes of holy triumph should break a spell so sweet, so calm, so heavenly, so beautiful; for peace is more like God than anything else on earth.

I. The Mystery of the Resurrection.

1. The sunrise a type of its exceeding calm, its tranquil glory and effulgence; light makes no noise.

2. The soul of Jesus, not fluttered, not elated.

3. Calm adoration of the souls by which He is accompanied.

4. Calmness of the Adorable Body lying separate in the tomb.

5. Calmness of the Body and Soul in their joyous union: witness the grave-clothes, and the rolled stone, and the sleeping guards all unawakened.

6. Calmness of the bodies of the dead which rose and walked the streets.

7. Calmness of His immense and unperturbed Divinity.

How unlike the world is all this!

II. Peace and calm the gift, the special foremost gift of Jesus Risen.

1. Exemplified in His apparition to His Mother at the dawn.

2. To Magdalen He reveals Himself gradually so as to leave her calm, and by His voice, which stilled the seas.

3. To the disciples going to Emmaus.

4. On Easter evening to the disciples Pax vobis breath, priesthood of peace and calm.

5. On Low Sunday to St. Thomas Pax vobis again.

6. This peace displayed in the subsequent conduct of the apostles.

7. Persevered in by our dear Lord all the forty days.

III. All this because He was God, for God is the God of calmness and peace.

1. The unworldliness of it all in itself is a proof of His Divinity.

2. Calmness is His spirit, and a token to us how far that spirit is on us.

3. Calmness of God in His incomprehensible Self.

4. Unutterable calmness round about His throne.

5. Into that calmness we are day by day being drawn, by prayer, by sacraments, by the silent stealing away of life from under our feet.

heavenly Jerusalem, city of light and of the Lamb, our true home, our real country, when will our exiled spirits pass from all this sound and noise and fatiguing distraction, into that joyous, boundless, endless peace of God of which the great apostle himself can only say that it sur passes all our understanding?

XXI.

SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF CORPUS CHRISTI.

I. One of the greatest surprises at our judgment will be the sight of what we might have done for God and have not done.

1. Natural talents unused.

2. Graces neglected.

3. Inspirations slighted or culpably unheard.

4. Opportunities wasted, and supernatural pro vidences unperceived through want of a sense of the presence of God: amazing loss of souls through idleness alone.

5. Faith not converted into practice.

II. God the opposite of all this.

1. Full of the most considerate love of us.

2. Minute in His legislation and arrangement for us.

3. Marvellously faithful to His promises.

4. Economical, even while abundant, in His giving of grace.

5. Setting an immense value Himself on the least of His graces, because it cost His Son so much.

III. Example of all this in the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament.

1. The wonder of the mass, yet our infrequency and indevotion.

2. The miracles of communion, yet the little change they make in us.

3. The potency of Benediction, yet how cold, how uninfluenced are our hearts.

4. The facility and opportunity of His presence in the Tabernacle, yet how unused, or how little used, or how badly used.

5. The reiteration of all these things makes our life an almost incomprehensible miracle: and yet we perversely manage to make it trivial, commonplace, childish, and undivine.

Yet Jesus is not a little grace! He is the eternal riches of the Father. He has been His Father s fascination and delight from all eternity. He has been the gladness, the glory, and the most dear treasure of the Holy Ghost, from all eternity as He is at this hour. His own delight, un speakable, unintelligible taste of a Divine Person! is to be with the children of men and we treat Him as we do! The Father and the Holy Ghost follow Him to the altars of the Church, while He comes to satisfy His insatiable longing for human love by haunting the company of men. And ice meanwhile? Do we lavish our riches on Him, give Him our time, put Him foremost among our occupations? Do we lavish our love even upon Him, our reverence, or our fear? A Catholic without enthusiasm for the Blessed Sacrament! Oh, what manner of Judas is he? Ah, my brethren, you know, each of you in your hearts, how you treat the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus does not look you visibly in the face now; He shrouds His face in the white veils of His dear Sacrament. But if we saw His look, would it not be a look of reproachful sadness? Oh, can you not picture to yourself the piercing look of tenderest reproof which He will cast upon us, as He reminds us of all this at the judgment? Truly if we go straight to heaven, it will be no little purgatory to pass into the gates of the Golden City under that dear and intolerable look!

XXII.

THE LENT EXPOSITION OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT.

The days of pilgrimage and sanctuary, with all their peculiar graces, are renewed in the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. But no sanctuary is equal in the spiritual magnificence of a real presence to the Catholic altar. Let us then prepare for this great gift by renewing our faith in the presence of our dearest Lord. "Who is it that comes to us? Who is the Blessed Sacrament, who this Guest, upon whose created robes of childlike white we are to gaze?

I. It is our Creator.

1. The immensity of the world the wisdom required to plan it the power to put it into execution.

2. The end of all creation was His own glory in obtaining our love.

3. He knows our weaknesses He has known us from all eternity He seeks our love He values it ahove ten thousand stars.

Think of Him during the seven days think of Him when choosing our souls out of possible souls think of Him burning the world up at the last, and saving not our souls only, but our bodies also, from the conflagration.

II. It is the Son of Mary.

1. Of like nature with us, not the less the Creator, though part of His own creation.

2. All Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and Calvary, are there the memories are in His soul the wounds are in His hands,

3. We had a place in that Sacred Heart during the agony, we have a place there now He woos us to enter more deeply in.

We are men met together to worship our fellow-man, who is our God as well.

III. It is the Eternal.

1. He is coming who never had any beginning, who leans on none, has none to lean upon, unchangeable, and yet unspeakably changed.

2. He loved us eternally there was never a time when we did not exist in His love: how overwhelming is this thought! He loves each one of us in Church, and changes not, though we have done so much to forfeit His exceeding love.

3. Now He desires to have us to spend the rest of eternity with Him He comes to give graces for the simple end of giving graces He for that object is about to spend forty human hours of His long eternity in a special way with us, to fit us for our eternity with Him.

sweet thought! comforting sustaining truth! the years as they go by so quietly and swiftly, are drawing us fast into His eternity, when He will welcome us to His own home, and press us to His Heart, and put aside His veils, and show us His face, and take the sight of it away from us no more.

XXIII. THE LENT QUARANT ORE.

The business of our sanctification is carried on by two sorts of opportunities, those which we impose upon or make for ourselves, and those which the Church in her office as mother is careful to supply us with; and these last advance us most because there is no self-will in them, and we have the Benediction of the Church. I. God s choice of times and places.

1. This is a feature in God s manner which is very much to be observed.

2. Old Testament examples of it.

3. Christian pilgrimages and seasons.

4. Miraculous shrines and apparitions.

5. The end of these is not only to confirm faith, hut to destroy sin and increase holiness.

II. Lent is one of God s times.

1. Apostolic institution: supernatural vigour of the Church all the world over.

2. It is far more than the great feasts of the year.

3. It is the spiritual rudder of the year.

4. Fasting is a means, pra} T er the end.

5. Those who cannot fast are the more obliged to prayer and interior mortification.

III. Church is one of God s places, especially at the time of Exposition.

1. Exposition is a substantial part of Lent nowadays.

2. More than La Salette, Loreto, or Palestine.

3. Angels are amazed at the graces ready, and which only need our reverent taking.

4. What one Exposition could do if fervently corresponded to.

5. For self. 2. For the Church. 3. Robbing Hell. 4. Purgatory. 5. Glory of heaven.

6. Oh for fervent persevering prayer! whether mental or vocal, with book or without, what matters; only let us pour out our whole souls in prayer.

XXIV. THE SACRED HEART.

Today s feast as refreshing as a cool wind in the wilderness.

Need of consolations in these times: nowhere to be found but in the Sacred Heart.

I. The Sacred Heart itself.

1. It is not a mere emblem.

2. But lives a human life this day.

3. In heaven.

4. In the Tabernacle.

5. It has been in us at Communion.

6. Its power, science, love, for He is God.

7. The touchingness of the devotion.

8. And He Himself revealed it.

II. What it is to us.

1. No other real shelter from the world.

2. Nor consolation in sorrow.

3. Nor home so kind.

4. Nor welcome so sure and sweet.

5. Nor such fulness of satisfaction.

6. Nor such abounding love.

7. Nor such assurance of heaven.

8. Nor such dear mercy when we have fallen.

9. Its maternal character Mary- like.

III. It is so utterly our own.

1. The empire we exercise over it is like Mary s.

2. The place, a particular one, we have always occupied in it.

3. Its fidelity, and rewarding of little services.

4. The identity of its will and interests with our own.

5. Yet it is the cabinet of the treasures of the Godhead.

How hidden is this treasure! Comfort to us that it is hidden; for the world takes all from us that it can.

XXV. THE SACRED HEART.

I have given them Thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world. St. John xvii. 14.

Earth is a rehearsing for heaven: yet the world forces us abroad; it will not let us face God and duty and the thought of eternal things. It is in this very thing that we must beat it down be bold in the love of Jesus and assert our liberty. Yet here is the secret of the Christian life. How shall we be in the world, yet out of it, upon the flood and riding safely on it, in the heat, but under shadow; in the storm, yet sheltered from it? By living in the Heart of Jesus. Ah! let us invoke the gentle St. John to get us grace to dwell continually as hermits in that sweet hermitage, as doves in the cleft rock, always in charitable activity, yet always in contemplation. The Sacred

Heart of Jesus our model our love our sanctuary.

I. Its perpetual intention: to glorify God always speaking of it in St. John s Gospel thirsting after it the first great end of the Sacred Humanity.

II. Its interior occupation. 1. adoring, 2. an nihilating self, 3. oblation of self, 4. incessant grieving for sinners and at them.

III. Its secret suffering: a secret consuming tormenting fire caused by love and sin from His Conception to His Cross, only the depths of that profound abyss may be poorly fancied from the few echoes that came up to the surface during the anguish of the Passion.

IV. Continual unbroken calm, putting away of all pleasing of self, and assuagement, as though He were in love with sorrow and interior bitterness. This is the mystery, this the long lesson of the Cross.

V. Horror of maxims of the world He was Eternal Wisdom.

World. Sacred Heart.

1. Esteem of great- Quod altum est liominess and glory. nibus abominatio est ante Deum.

2. Care of reputation. Saturabitur opprobriis.

3. Spirit of policy Cohimbcs parvuli. and management.

4. Attachment to Subditiis illis pleas-wills and ways. ed not Himself.

5. Pursuit of plea- United in itself all sures. body and mind most shrink from, and that from choice.

6. Worship of com- Stable flight poverty hard work houselessness be-fort and conveni ences.

nediction of the poor.

Ah! we have much to learn! but shall we sit down in idle despair? paradise! bright beautiful eternal how strange sound the words of thy wisdom on this distracted earth: we have but to love to love Him whom it is so hard not to love, so wonderful all men do not love we have but to love, and all that is oura thy brightness, thy beauty, thy eternity. false and miserable and cruel world this day we break faith with thee, solemnly and for ever.

XXVI. PERPETUAL FRESHNESS OF JESUS.

A deep changeableness in our nature often against our will making things grow dull to us easily, and making it hard for us to be faithful.

I. How even religious things grow wearisome.

1. Prayer, which was once so sweet.

2. Books, which it seemed we could feed upon all our life, and never want new ones.

3. Services, so full of unction to our souls.

4. Even sacraments, so fresh and exhilarating.

5. But Jesus Himself never: He is always fresh.

II. The freshness of Jesus.

1. He never tires us.

2. He is always equally loving;

3. Or rather each time more loving than before.

4. Always the same, so far as regards fidelity.

5. Always new, so far as regards His charms.

III. Experience of this.

1. Christmases: He seems really newly come.

2. Changes in life He suits Himself to them.

3. Sunshine He makes it passing bright.

4. Sorrow! ah, He is a new Jesus, so full of delightfullest consolation.

5. We have left Him and returned how do we find Him? Quite the same, yet altogether new.

IV. Experience of all things else.

1. The world, its promises and its fulfilments.

2. Our own will, its plans, wishes, enterprises.

3. Pleasures, its transitory feverish excitement.

4. Age always looking onward brings no thing like Jesus.

5. Even religious changes nothing satisfactory but Jesus.

And death what think you death will bring? It has but one alternative, either everlasting darkness, or Jesus to be eternally old, everlastingly new, in His own bright land above.

XXVII. THE LIFE OF JESUS A LIFE OF LOVE.

What it is to love! and what to lead a life of love!

I. The life of Jesus a life of love.

1. Love seemed to be His very life His whole life.

2. It was unintermitting.

3. Deeply hidden, yet for ever flashing out.

4. It swallowed up all other characteristics of His life.

II. His love s characteristics.

1. Its utter disinterestedness.

2. Its propensity to self-abasement.

3. Its excesses, and its being given to excess.

4. Its mixed character of human and divine.

5. Yet evidently following some deep laws, not appreciated or understood by us: it reveals God to us. For this is the life most like the life of God.

III. His loves.

1. Of God.

2. Of His Mother.

3. Of sinners. He seems to sacrifice the other two to this, as 1. My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me? as if He so clung to men and loaded Himself with their guilt, that the Father was compelled to forsake Him. 2. Our Lady, whom He martyred for our sakes.

4. It is our joy that we had even then a distinct and recognized share of that love.

Our lives must be copies of His.

XXVIII. OUR LORD S LOVE OF US.

As the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you. St. John xv. 9.

Is there any sight in all creation we should so much wish to see as the place we occupy at this moment in the Heart of Jesus? We know that 12

He really loves us, and immensely loves us: but how much, and with what kind of love? His own words quoted above answer this question. He loves us as the Father loved Him. I. Now how did the Father love Him?

1. He loved Him eternally, with an untiring love, vehement yet peaceful, a love that was an immense joy to Himself, a divine love. Think what it is for us to be loved with a divine love!

2. He loved Him with an enormous love, an unimaginable love. It is hard to picture an ocean without a shore, or a world without an end. Yet this is the figure of the Father s love of Jesus, and therefore of the love of Jesus for us.

3. An eternal love, a ceaseless love, must necessarily be a love of undistracted detail; so that those words of Blosius come true, " He would not even allow a cald wind to blow upon His elect, unless He knew it was expedient for their salvation."¹

4. But the most striking of all the features of the Father s love of Jesus, is that He loaded Him with crosses, cares, and sorrows: so will Jesus do to us.

5. Because His Father did so to Him.

6. Because it is His longing to conform us to Himself.

7. Because it is what is best for our souls.

Now, are we prepared for this? Do we take this view of our troubles? Alas! to strive against our cross, is to try to make Jesus love us less.

XXIX.

COME UNTO ME ALL YE THAT ARE

WEARY.

I. The intense happiness of Jesus in the Blessed

Sacrament.

1. Because He is God, Whose life is everlasting joy-

2. Because of the abounding joys of His vast human Soul.

3. The intense pleasures of the senses of His glorified Body.

4. His joy in His Mother, the angels, the saints, and the Church on earth.

5. His joy in the hiding-place He has invented for Himself in the Blessed Sacrament.

Why then does He seek sinners as if He needed them? Can we, or such as we, be a joy to Him?

II. The life of sin. Have we not all once lived it?

1. All we break through to begin it baptism, grace, faith.

2. Its poorness of pleasure.

3. Its rapid satiety.

4. Its discomfort of remorse.

5. The chilling prospect of its consequences. III. The invitation, Come unto me, will be some one day sounded in our ears.

6. Can we believe our senses?

7. But to such great sinners as we are?

8. If to Jew or Pagan, still can it be to us who have fallen from Him?

9. His authority to speak, and His power to fulfil His promise.

10. The proofs of His sincerity are in the Blessed Sacrament He has not tired these eighteen hundred years.

IY. The interview: Lord! what wilt Thou that I should do?

1. What penance? only be sorry.

2. What reproof? absolutely none.

3. How long a process is forgiveness? mo mentary.

4. What forfeit? none.

5. As if He was the obliged person, not we.

Is not all this incredible except to the strength of faith? Does not it baffle all understanding, and transcend all explanation? It is said of heaven, Eye hath not seen, &c.; is not the same true of the forgiveness of a sinner? It is the first step to heaven, an earnest that He means to give us heaven, only let us hold fast and persevere. Heaven will soon be here; it will steal upon us almost before we are aware; and life with all its trials will be like a speck in the distant past, the memory of which will be almost forgotten in the beautiful delights of our celestial home. You and I, brethren, have seen many here in darkness and in struggle, in sin, in repentance, in the fight of poverty, the coldness of the world s neglect, and the achings of a comfortless and hard sick bed, who now are in the Bosom of Jesus in heaven, so bright and glorious, so radiant and beautiful, that we should die if we beheld them. dearest brethren! only love Jesus, and what an unspeak able eternity is ours!

XXX. THE TEARS OF JESUS.²

Man is never so like God as when he is consoling the afflicted; and this is one of the functions of the Confraternity; it reaches it by prayer; so consider I. The tears of Jesus.

1. Angels beholding with wonder the first tears of Adam and Eve.

2. They look up to the Eternal Word they will one day see Him weeping man s tears.

3. The tears of Bethlehem, for Himself, for sin, for sorrow, for us.

4. At the grave of Lazarus in sympathy with the sorrow of the sisters.

5. On the Mount of Olives over beautiful Jerusalem over sin and sin s punishments. II. The lessons of those tears.

6. The nature of sorrow.

7. It is an angel from God.

8. If it is punishment, it is that we may escape punishment in another world.

9. To make our hearts soft and gentle to others.

10. To conform us to the likeness of Jesus; how He loves those in sorrow.

11. Grief is no imperfection: tears of resignation are sweet to the Eye of God.

12. More confidence in Jesus.

13. What confidence means, and how little we have when proved.

14. Sinners, why He loved them most of all.

15. Littlenesses and meannesses of spiritual persons. He knows them so well and feels for them so compassionately.

16. We are inclined to despair because of temptations why, your own mother will not guide you so gently as Jesus will.

17. The Name of Jesus is our trust- -Thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins.

XXXI.

WITHOUT JESUS IN THE WORLD.³

I. My dear brethren! what should we do without

Jesus in the world? We have to live, we have to die, we have to he saved. what should we do without Jesus in the world? Dearest Lord! you see I am going to dare to speak of Him to you in His own presence.

1. In sorrow what should we do without Jesus?

2. In illness and pain?

3. In poverty and hardships?

4. In the loss of those we love?

5. In the hour of death?

II. Jesus because He shall save His people from their sins.

1. Look at heathen, what if we were like them?

2. Look at sinners, what if we were like them?

3. Those outside the Church, what if we were like them?

4. Ourselves in past years, what if we were like them?

5. Without Jesus, where should we be now? And can we ever spare Him now? in death? in judgment? after that? never, never.

III. And the Blessed Sacrament is our own Tery Jesus.

1. The Jesus who loved the poor.

2. The Jesus who wept over His dead friend.

3. The Jesus who consorted with sinners.

4. The Jesus who comforted the sorrowful.

5. The Jesus who feels more anxious that we should be saved than we do ourselves.

And what is the Blessed Sacrament a sign of? His unspeakable fidelity. He yearns over us while we stay away: He implores us while we ungraciously refuse His love: He clings to us even in our sins: He longs to take us in His arms, and bear us away to heaven, and to have us with Himself for evermore. Our beloved Brother! and shall we refuse to go? no, no! let us pour out our hearts before Him let us tell Him how deeply, how dearly we love Him let us beg Him to save us in spite of our own selves, and to make us love Him more and more- and more, and to bear with us a little longer, and we will serve Him better, and die in His arms, and then go with Him to His Father, and be at rest for ever.

XXXII.

THERE IS NOW THEREFORE NO CONDEMNATION TO THEM THAT ARE IN CHRIST JESUS.

Many words of wonderful beauty have been uttered in the world which have lived on for gene rations like music that could not die but few more beautiful than this, which came to St. Paul while making tents at Corinth, and which he wrote to the Romans.

I. No condemnation! Is not this just what we want?

1. Feeling of people who are on trial, as we are: it is just our business as creatures to be judged.

2. Conscience judges us within, and the world without: we fear the stern truth of the in ward judge, and we chafe under the invariable unkindliness of the outward one; all happiness and unhappiness depend on these judg ments.

3. But God, Who knows all, understands all, sees the secret truth of all, and is unutterably holy.

4. To be condemned by God; it is very easy, very likely; all merit it: to know that we should be saved is it not heaven before hand?

5. Well, there is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. II. But who are in Christ Jesus?

6. Those who have the true faith and practise it.

7. Those who have a great sorrow for their sins.

8. Those who love others for our Lord s sake.

9. Those who are trying to be holy even if they are not so yet.

10. Those who wish to love Jesus, though they do not feel as if they loved Him yet.

Ah, my dear brethren, you may have many years to live yet; many temptations, much unkindliness, much sorrow, much pain, many un worthy and sinful imperfections; but through it all you can truly keep saying to yourselves, as men murmur songs they love, those beautiful song-like words of our dear St. Paul: There is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.

XXXIII.

THE FIKST SIGHT OF THE FACE OF

Seek ye My Face! Thy Face, Lord, will we seek! What it is to have Jesus with us; how it increases our longing to see His Face; what joy and light and life would that veiled Face pour into our very inmost souls! I. Our first sight of Jesus.

1. We shall actually see Him, and it cannot now be very long.

2. But we must go through grave and solemn things to reach this sight.

3. St. Simeon s long years and then his Nunc Dimittis, is it a figure of our lives?

4. We must die, and are daily nearing the time.

5. The more we love God, the more real must he our fear of death.

6. The act of death the first moment of the separate soul.

7. First sight of Jesus judgment begins. What will our thoughts be? Saints have said they should be almost distracted with the sweetness of that first sight of His Face. Alas! I shall tremble, and be first ashamed, and then afraid.

II. We lose sight of that Face again.

1. Judgment is over wherever we go, shall we ever forget the beauty of that Face?

2. If to Purgatory, it is no light thing to dwell among those fires.

3. The pain of parting with that Face; for long years we may perhaps see it no more.

4. And yet it will haunt us like a ray of light in our punishment.

5. Yet is Purgatory inevitable?

6. No! To avoid venial sin, to break with the world, to have an abiding sorrow for sin, to be patient these are ways of avoiding Purga tory altogether.

7. Perhaps a particular devotion to the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament may have a peculiar power to avoid or shorten purgatory.

let no one be without hope of escaping Purgatory. It is less hard than many think. The punishment itself is fearful the delay of being with Jesus is intolerable to a loving heart. after a weary life, is there still to be another weary waiting for our deliverance and our rest? If we must burn, let it be with the fire of love now, not with the fires of chastisement hereafter!

PAPJ SECOKD.

Footnotes

1. lustitutio Spirituals, cap. viii. ↩

2. After the battle of Inkerman. ↩

3. Lent Exposition of the B. Sacrament, 1856. ↩