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Section II. Special Occasions

I. The Church and the large towns of modern times. Influence of Paris over France. Growth of the influence of London. Problems.

  1. Absorbing and irreligious character of politics.

  2. Intricate morals of trade and commerce.

  3. Antichristian bent of literature and philosophy.

  4. Degraded and vicious poverty in almost un controllable masses.

  5. Luxury and indifferentism in the higher classes.

  6. Want of method in well-intentioned energy.

  7. Low principles and mere worldly prudence in the faithful from daily intercourse with un believers and heretics.

The power of evil in London hopeless look of all this to all but Catholics.

II. London in Lord George Gordon s riots com pared with London now. It is as if Jesus were weeping over the city, and the saints, one by one, were coming down to do His work, S. Alphonso, S. Philip, S. Ignatius. There is hope for London in the energetic spirit of St. Ignatius. He was the saint

  1. Of common sense.

  2. Of simplicity.

  3. Of confidence in God.

  4. Of holdness for truth.

  5. Of carelessness for human respect.

  6. Of urging on us our own sanctity first of all.

III. Thoughts which naturally come to mind on this occasion.

  1. View of the conversion of England in the spirit of S. Ignatius.

  2. His love of concealment.

  3. Not looking for great things. The way of the Spirit.

  4. Waiting on God s will and grace.

  5. Not strangers in the land, as Redemptorists and Oratorians are, but linking us with the days of domestic persecution.

  6. Joy at the Church heing under the Immaculate Conception, the Virgo Pradicanda. The sweet persuasiveness of truth openness-loving Saxons.

Let us conquer for Mary with Mary s name burning on our lips, and blazoned on our banners what better eloquence to persuade Jesus to fight our battles, than that the nerve of our courage and the fruit of our triumphs should be the glory of His Immaculate Mother?

ir.

THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL.

I. Good always comes out of every evil which God permits on the face of the earth; so good has come, and more is yet to come out of the ordeal which English Catholics have had to pass through during the last half year or more. It comes in the shape of lessons to ourselves.

  1. It has surprised us to find how old prejudices, misconceptions, and dislikes have come up just the same, and as virulent as before.

  2. It teaches us by this that it does not do to smooth down or explain away our doctrines-no good comes of it.

  3. It convinces us of the essential antagonism between the world and the Church; we must take our side with one or the other; the war will never end till the day of doom; the wrongs are unpardonable, the hatred unextinguishable.

  4. It shows us the necessity of internal union, and of avoiding jealousies, lest through ill temper we get on the wrong side and so offend God.

  5. It ought to drive us to our supernatural weapons of prayer and sacraments; for there is our strength, and by them we shall prevail. 21

II. We now see before us the prospect of the battle commencing once again, how shall we meet it?

  1. By showing that we have not been studying our dearest Saviour s Passion in vain.

  2. By humbling ourselves perpetually under the hand of God.

  3. By gentleness of word and demeanour.

  4. By frequenting the sacraments, and using intercessory prayer.

  5. By remembering that it is the Month of Mary.

III. Consolations.

  1. Numerous conversions, and growing trouble in thoughtful minds.

  2. Weakness of Protestantism shown in its recurrence to mere force.

  3. Number of scandals contrived together show the devil is alarmed, and has a plot, and he would not be frightened for nothing. 4. It has knit us together much more in Eng land, and shown us whom we can trust. 0. It has bound the Irish and English Catholics together in a closer bond. Pray, be gentle and loving, think well of your enemies, and leave the matter in the hands of Mary.

CONFRATERNITY OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT, ISLINGTON.

I. Picture of a true catholic parish.

  1. Confraternities suiting each man s taste.

  2. Chapels in the church under their care.

  3. Cultivation of different interior devotions; intercession and thanksgiving founded on them.

  4. Works of mercy divided among them.

  5. Their three loves. 1. The beauty of the parish church. 2. The comforts of the poor. 3. The reconciliation of feuds.

II. The position of confraternities in a parish.

  1. "What religious orders are in the church: they satisfy a kind of vocation.

  2. Their twofold life. 1. Functions, 2. An interior spirit. Neither must be neglected; they are related one to another.

  3. They give unity to a parish, and are the strength of a pastor: they blend the parishes of a city.

  4. How they are indulgenced by the Church.

  5. The help they are to perseverance, needed as the parochial grace: many more than you think for are watching you now, sympathising or criticising; so persevere.

III. Peculiar spirit of the Confraternity of the

Blessed Sacrament: necessity of keeping to this spirit, as in religious orders.

  1. Sacrifice, as He is in this sacrament.

  2. In bountiful alms to the poor.

  3. In decoration of the altar.

  4. In personal toil of mercy.

  5. In some allowed mortifications.

  6. In giving up your own will in confraternity and parochial matters.

  7. Joy, simply because He is there, shown

  8. In sweetness of manner.

  9. In frequentation of the sacraments.

  10. In delight with functions.

  11. In zeal to get rid of sin and self.

  12. In untiringness to get rid of it in others. Patronage of St. John. Worship of the Immaculate Lamb -caught and glassed in the Church on earth so be it here and when Lon don is converted, sweet mass-bells sound, &c., people shall think of how parish glories began, almost at a birth with the hierarchy, in the church of St. John of Islington.

IY.

AT THE PROFESSION OF A SEPULCHRINE NUN.1

I. It seems simply the most natural tiling to give our hearts utterly to God an act of sheer justice and that no pomp or solemnity should be made about it, because 1. It is His right. 2. The gift is so poor. 3. It is our own interest. 4. The attraction is His own grace.

II. Yet the Church, the Spouse of Christ, does make a solemnity of it, and why?

  1. God, while blessing the earth with its beautiful and precious things, wants only for

Himself the spirits of angels and the hearts of men.

  1. The yalue which by the gift of free will is imparted to the gift of ourselves to God.

  2. It is the carrying out of the Incarnation, and each such sacrifice is a new triumph for Jesus.

III. Hence the life of a religious is not so much a life of duty as a life of love; it is heaven begun on earth, because it is a death to the world.

IV. The vocation of a Sepulchrine shadowed in the Burial of Jesus.

  1. Mary prepared Him for the tomb, and left her heart with Him.

  2. The bright city, the guilty city keeping feast hard by.

  3. The tomb is in a garden of fruits and flowers and aromatic herbs.

  4. Jesus makes no use of His senses.

  5. Angels watch the precious deposit with ador ing love.

  6. It is cloistered, the stone rolled up against it, and the world watches it with fear.

  7. Yet the body is all the while God, united to the divinity, and so deserving of worship.

V. Thus must a good Sepulchrine

  1. Die by inches hour after hour in little things.

  2. To the world without.

  3. To self will within.

  4. Even to spiritual sweetness and the caresses of Jesus.

  5. And this death must be by the love of a hid den life of modest obedience.

Therefore it is that the Church makes a solemn pomp when a heart sacrifices itself to God; but the pomp is not concluded here; there is a function one day in heaven which will correspond to this, and be its true conclusion Jesus receiving there the heart that dedicates itself unto Him this day. As it is on our Lady s feast here, so will it be her feast there: Heaven is the perpetual feast of Mary. Remember then the hour of which this hour is prophesying, whether it be night or day, after earth or after purgatory, when this heart shall kiss the five glorious Wounds of Jesus, and find its home for ever in the wonders, and the joys, and the surpassing peace of that same Eden wherein the Holy Trinity finds ineffable delights, the Sacred Heart of the Eternal Word, of God made Man.

THE SEOUL AK CLERGY.*

St. Philip discerning the young priest; so let me discern for my own profit rather than yours the dignity of the secular clergy, and their vocation.

I. The secular clergy the divine pattern of all religious orders.

  1. The vocation of the Incarnate Word to His apostles it began in abjection He was thought mad.f

  2. Jesus Himself at once Founder and Member of the secular clergy, though God.

  3. The papacy a perpetuation of Jesus, in mixed majesty and weakness on earth.

  4. The secular hierarchy a shadow of the celestial just as mass is our real worship of the Immaculate Lamb.

  5. Dignity of the apostles. Our Lord died leaving His work unfinished, so did St. Ed mund.

Preached at St, Edmund s College, Nov. 16, f Mark iii. 21.

II. History of the secular clergy.

  1. Secular clergy in apostolic times the whole work of the world s conversion done by them.

  2. Age of martyrs, and early councils."

  3. Parochial system in the middle ages, un celebrated, but like the Hidden Life at Naza reth.

  4. The relation of the secular clergy to religious. 1. Precedence in the spiritual hierarchy. 2. Religious orders borrow their priesthood. 3. A bishop requires greater perfection than a religious. 4. Pveligious are devoted to special ends. 5. The secular clergy represent the vita communis of the Incarnate Word.

  5. How much it has to do in England just now!

III. If the secular clergy is an order, then it must have a cognizable spirit of its own.

  1. Its attraction to Rome an instinct as well as a denned duty.

  2. Love of Mary an essential part of the sacerdotal vocation.

  3. Spirit of prayer not too much activity no hurry all supernatural.

  4. Dogmatic theology, which is more necessary as science spreads, lest physics should exclude, it, and so the sacred science of the Incarnate Word be lost.

  5. Fight with the world, of which fight celibacy is the symbol it is easy to fight with force, but our most dangerous warfare is with the subtle moderation and masked deformity of low principles.

Present tumults snow that the world is not dead, or changed. The world in its badness changes just as litjble as the Church. May I suggest a devotion? The weariness of Jesus at the well!

CLOSING OF THE ORATORY IN KING WILLIAM STREET.

The one great lesson taught in this chapel has been that God is our Father and so to be loved and trusted. Now we are all of us called to practice what we have been taught.

I. The immutability of God.

  1. "When we realise God as our Father, all His perfections are so many consolations.

  2. None so great as His unchangeableness; for the pain of earth is its change.

  3. Yei in a way God Himself seems to change on earth.

  4. And reveals Himself especially in the past, as in the cases of Jacob, Moses, and Elias, and at Emmaus..

  5. Yet the gifts which He has given when we hardly knew it are solid and enduring.

II. Yes, the great overshadowing thought of life should be God.

  1. To have personal relations with God is an unspeakable delight.

  2. To have received private and personal marks of favour from Him.

  3. We love the place where He spoke listened appeared.

  4. All these are so many signs of our predestination.

  5. If memories of earth live in heaven, these will.

III. All this is but a description of what you and I feel about the Oratory.

  1. Present feelings. 1. Love and confidence in S. Philip. 2. Daily word of God, customs, ways, hymns, look of things. 3. Voices and faces familiar to us are now about to pass away.

  2. Four years ago, we came here as strangers and converts with a new and untried institute, bringing apparent novelties and foreign ways.

  3. What you have given us. 1. Confidence. 2. Forbearance. 3. You have made us your home.

  4. What are we to do? 1. We for our uncertain future must trust God and dear S. Philip. 2. You too must do the same. God cannot leave you: S. Philip will not. Put up his picture. 3. Lesson of today s feast, the Name of the daughter of the Eternal Father Mary pondering things.

Conclusion: a chapter is closed a day will come when we shall be in heaven, tranquil and safe for ever. The work begun in the Oratory will have ended in that we shall be near S. Philip and can tell him so. Vision of earth planet now purified and brightened by fires of doom floating sweetly on its track the great city passed away, like a blot effaced an image comes before us amid the beautiful fires of the Beatific Vision, and the songs of angels, and the soft flashings of the light of glory, and the magnificence of Jesus and the queenly splendours of Mary the old chapel, with the echo of its long silenced hymns, and the poor ornaments of its well re membered festivals S. Philip by the altar-side busy with his Mother, our Lord dwelling there, like the Ark of God, for four years nay even the worn benches and the dingy stains upon the walls, which are tokens and witnesses of the presence and freedom of the poor. It will not mar the vision: it will be full of God, of Jesus, of Mary; and we shall see that it and all that was in it and about it, which is a silliness to the world perhaps, was nothing less than a thoughtful gift, a heavenly compassion, an act of love to rouse, to cheer, to help, to soothe, to bless, a sweet personal kindness to every one of us out of the abounding tenderness of our most dear Eternal Father!

OPENING OF THE ORATORY AT BROMPTON.

I. Picture of Catholics in the first ages of the

Church.

  1. Men with a single dominant master interest, Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

  2. Their position with respect to literature and philosophy.

  3. Their political position: vague horror of un social tenets, &c.

  4. Suffering, for the most part, their method of meeting their difficulties: yet St. Paul gives an example of using what may he called constitutional rights.

  5. Possessed of doctrines out of harmony with all around them.

  6. Yet teasingly imitated hy heretics without.

  7. Their position felt more as a duty than as a privilege, though it was both. This is exactly our position as Catholics in England.

II. Tactics of those opposed to us inconsistent, yet necessarily and naturally so.

  1. Fair and honest controversy.

  2. Exciting feelings without appealing to reason, as at meetings.

  3. Exaggerated expressions of panic: as the ecclesiastical titles bill, &c.

  4. Then the opposite denying our numbers, and being scornful, the contempt not hiding real fear. 5. Ignoring us and being silent about us, as in

Tertullian s time. III. Our warfare.

  1. Gentleness not getting out of temper believing the best where we know there is so much that is good.

  2. Teach our own doctrines show their reason ableness and connection and give a body of positive teaching.

  3. Prayer silent life of the Church, growing day and night, like the grass in the gospel, men know not how.

4, Cheerfulness, uuion, finding good in every one, trust in God, no set policy, fears, or coldness.

  1. Care of Christ s poor.

To look at St. Joseph, who would have said that he was trusted with the Treasure of heaven? so we in this mighty land as Catholics. Eng land, so dear, is yet lost, engulfed in material interests, with so much talent, and so little of it for God, with such a vast colonial empire, and so little planting of the cross in it. Think of her woods and fields, her hills and hollows, and run ning rivers, and sweet corners of domestic peace, which the quiet sunshine is lighting up, and think what it is to love her dearly and yet fear for her, lest one we love should haply be in all the wide wide earth the enemy of God,

VIII. FOR THE POOR SCHOOLS.

"Who loves Jesus so little that he would not rejoice if his Lord met him, and asked some thing definite of him, and asked it by His Sacred Heart?

I. History of the Sacred Heart.

  1. A Human Heart fashioned of Mary s blood, assumed by God, and to be worshipped as(divine.

  2. The mysteries It traversed.

  3. All were mysteries of love.

  4. And in all we were present by minutest and intensest love.

  5. So that the Sacred Heart is the perpetual rapture of spirits and of souls.

II. By the Sacred Heart we have our highest knowledge of God.

  1. Enjoyment of this knowledge.

  2. Value of it.

  3. Misery of being without it.

III. By the Sacred Heart we have the gift of faith.

  1. Enjoyment of it.

  2. Support of it.

  3. It is hell on earth to be without it.

IV. By the Sacred Heart we have grace, and sacraments, and Church.

  1. Enjoyment of them.

  2. Abundance of them.

  3. Who are more pitiable than those without it?

V. All these things, how much are they to us?

  1. In sin.

  2. In sorrow.

  3. In death.

Eternity depends upon them.

VI. Statistics.

  1. Thousands are lost for want of these things.

  2. They are without them because of schools wanted.

  3. The fearful littleness of what is done.

VII. The fearfulness of the Sacred Heart trusting so much to us; the greatness of what is in our power.

VIII. Shame of other measures than those of the Sacred Heart.

  1. Generosity.

  2. Sacrifice.

  3. Expiation of your own sins.

  4. Each of such calls hardens the hearts it fails to open.

  5. Lent Easter May Corpus Christ! have gone by. I must take what you do today as the measure of your advancement in them.

Could you see a soul falling into the hands of its Judge for eternal doom, and not rescue it if you could, the Judge Himself looking wistfully at it the while? my Brethren! do not be angry with me, if I implore you to turn for one moment from the bright life of earth s abundance which you are leading, from the sweet sights and cheery sounds of domestic peace and love, to the drear horrors of the everlasting hell the hell to which so many travel daily, even from this huge city, to which in a thousand ways the city s annual festive season sends so many fresh and additional victims, the hell to which you must not forget that you may go yourselves, and to which you are hy sin actually due; and then conjure up to yourselves, as if in one vision, the hright eyes, and the young open brows, and the pretty downy cheeks, and the smiling mouths, and the fair childish hair, and the ever changing light of attractive infantine intelligence of all those thousands of dearest little ones; and then, rather than make some sacrifice of worldly goods and gains, will you let the dark spirit steal all that from the Sacred Heart, and sweep it into his night of eternal fire and pain, while Jesus, the children s Lover, stands weeping by?

THE WORKHOUSE GRIEVANCE.

The Cardinal s mandate for the collection.

St. Francis of Sales, looking over his gifts and graces, thanked God most for the preservation of his faith, though he lived among those who were out of the Church, and read their books.

I. Let us consider the gift of faith,

  1. Its marvel why it is given to some and not to others its self-evidence which cannot be put into words.

  2. Its mystery it is so strange and unearthly, like another sense, a supernatural sight.

  3. Its being a mark of God s election and predestination.

  4. Its abounding joy, because of all these ac companiments, and also in itself.

  5. Its incredibleness because it is so exceedingly grand.

II. The value we set on this gift. The Apostles only asked two things, Teach us to pray, and Increase our faith.

  1. Of all our gifts it is the one we should most fear to lose: yet we may lose it, impossible as that may seem.

  2. It is a gift hardly ever given a second time.

  3. It is the gift on which the success of all our other gifts depends.

  4. It is the gift this age is specially trying to take from us: there is now a look of the last times: in days of Antichrist there will be the apostacy of two thirds of Catholics: should we persevere? This ought to fill us with a most salutary fear.

  5. The best way of keeping this gift is by using it, especially in devotion to the Church.

III. The workhouse grievance.

  1. It is a matter which turns simply on the question of faith.

  2. It is a hidden wound: for those outside the Church cannot even understand what we feel ahout it; our conduct seems to them either a pertinacity or an exaggeration.

  3. It is a spreading wound because of unborn generations of children.

  4. It is an evil so immense that it seems beyond us and our strength: hence it is just an evil which demands fcith for it is only to faith that all things are possible.

  5. It is an evil to which God is calling our special attention, because He has put it into so many minds and hearts.

A dteathbed without faith oh what a very wilderness it is nothing can make up for it all other beauty only darkens it have we not all or nearly all of us griefs of this sort in our hearts? How comfortless they are! for some griefs are more comfortless than others. The dismal deathbeds of many of these poor perverted children though we have no kith or kin, could we bear to see them? yet they might have been hindered by us! And have we none, none in our mind s eye now, whom we love and for whose last hour we fear? give, give to these poor children now, and the Father of the fatherless will give the gift of faith to those dear ones for whom TOU would lay down your life, to get them the light of faith!

PAST SIXTH.

Footnotes

  1. Preached at New Hall,, 1852. ↩

Chapter 14 of 18