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I will frequently retire into my heart in the course of the the day, and in silence hold communion with my Saviour.
Our Father
Hail Mary
Our Father
Hail Mary
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Monday, December 19, 2022
The End of All Things
After summing up the history of this earth and humanity, and awarding to the just and unjust what each has merited, the Lord Jesus Christ will rise up from the now vacant, silent, and exhausted earth, and will lead the whole of His heavenly court of angels and men to that larger universe of heaven where the new eternal era will begin. "We . . . shall be taken up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ into the air, and so shall we be always with the Lord" (1 Thess. iv. 16). In His first Ascension, Jesus Christ ended His own personal course on earth; He ascended corporally to His throne; the souls only of a few of His elect mounted with Him; their bodies remained in the dust; and the rest of His saints had yet to be called into being to carry out their long struggle. The final Ascension will be complete. Then will Christ ascend with the whole of His mystical body the Church, a great multitude whom no man can number, glorified both in soul and in body. "The chariot of God is attended by ten thousand, thousands of them that rejoice; the Lord is among them in Sion, in the holy place. Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captivity captive" (Ps. Ixvii. 18, 19). Imagine to yourself the exultation of Christ and His elect, and the glory rendered to God beyond all that has ever gone before. How magnificent that triumph ! How blessed those who shall take part in it!
Sunday, December 18, 2022
The Eternity of Hell
The most terrible element of hell, its eternity, depends, like all other of its details, on the nature of man and the nature of sin. Man is immortal, his decision at death is final, his sin if not recalled is eternal, hell therefore cannot be otherwise than eternal.
1. The soul is indestructible. God gives and does not withdraw; He creates and does not destroy; His action tends towards being and what is positive, and not towards the negative and to non-being, which is the direct opposite to Him. The soul then cannot be annihilated. Neither can it die; for dying is the resolution of the atoms, and their entrance into new combinations; the soul is not composed of atoms. The soul, as the noblest being and greatest force on earth, cannot be less durable than the particle of granite which remains from the foundation of the world, than the ray of sunshine whose effect goes on till the end.
2. The effect of the soul's action is in itself eternal; for no force ordinarily is dissipated and lost; it continues in its consequences. The one exception is when sin expends its energy on Our Lord Jesus Christ, and is reversed by the infinite power of His atonement, which is applied to us by means of repentance and the sacraments. How great is the importance of man in the universe; how great the responsibilities of his life! The effect of your works this day will never be lost. Take care so to act that they may abide unto eternal life and not unto death.
Saturday, December 17, 2022
The Punishments of Hell
The nature of the punishments of hell follows upon the nature of sin. The first thing in sin is that it is essentially opposed to the divine nature; consequently the chief punishment or effect of this is the loss of God; this is the pæna damni, or damnation strictly speaking. The loss of God is the loss of all that is good in every kind and degree. Consider what one loss is in this world, even if we retain everything else; the loss of sight, of nerve, of health, of possessions, of companionship, of occupation, of bride or bridegroom, of food or water or liberty for a short time. One such loss makes all else useless; it may drive a man to desperation, madness or death. The loss of God is the loss at once of everything; of the object and aim of existence, of wholesome activity, of all that makes life happy, of all that constitutes the life of the mind and spirit apart from bare existence. Life without God, even on earth, is empty, unsatisfying, wearisome, disappointing: life for ever with out Him is the accumulation of every misery. Consider the gains which accrue from sin; some slight gratification or advantage which generally lasts but a short time, a little wealth, the approval of a few men, the satisfaction of pride, hatred, lust. For a few years of this, or perhaps for the gain from one sin, a man sacrifices the totality and eternity of all good. To run the slightest risk of this is the height of folly.
Friday, December 16, 2022
The Existence of Hell
Hell is primarily separation from God in the other world, as heaven is the possession of God. Hell is the necessary consequence of sin, as darkness is the necessary consequence of excluding the light; or rather hell is sin under another aspect, viz., as transferred from time to eternity. It may be said that sin is its own punishment, or at least that it works its own punishment. The variety of pains in hell are only the different ways in which the loss of God and the action of sin are apprehended by the body and soul. All that is of the essence of hell is the immediate product of sin. Hell then is no arbitrary punishment devised by God and inflicted by His action; it flows from the sinner's own act, for God can do nothing but what is beneficent. Evil and death cannot proceed from Him who is essential goodness and life. "Destruction is thine own, O Israel; thy help is only in Me" (Osee xiii. 9). Hell is the continuation of the sinner's life as commenced on earth; it is a transformation and also a conservation of the same energy of sin which worked in him here. If you love and seek sin, you are loving hell under a thin disguise. If you cut yourself off from faith and virtue, you are cutting your self off from God and from heaven, which are now presented to you under those forms.
Thursday, December 15, 2022
Heaven
Heaven is chiefly and substantially the supernatural state on the other side of death. We must not press figurative language so far as to think of heaven as an enclosed space into which any one, good or bad, could enter, whether qualified or not. Heavenly beatitude involves two things: subjectively, an aptitude for God; objectively, the unveiled presence of God, so as to be seen and possessed by man in the risen state. The presence of God would be a torment worse than hell to the soul in which the aptitude for Him had not been developed. Beings which have not that aptitude formed by grace and virtue in the state of probation, such as inanimate objects, beasts, and sinners, are not capable of enjoying the delights of heaven. Those who have that aptitude are in heaven. The Guardian Angels, so far as they are in place, are on this earth; yet they are not, for that, outside of heaven (Matt, xviii. 10). The throne of God is situated only in boundless immensity. To be in heaven is a matter of internal aptitudes and not of geographical locality, like being in the grace of God or in the Church. These aptitudes can only be formed in the soul by supernatural life while on earth. Failing this, the unrepentant soul cannot enter heaven; God could not admit it to the enjoyment of heaven, being what it is, for this would be a contradiction in terms. That which harmonizes with the spiritual condition of the blessed and constitutes their supreme joy, is repugnant to the formed habits and tastes of the wicked, and so would excite their antipathy and inflict pain upon them. You must spiritualize yourself during this life, else you will remain forever unapt for heaven.
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
The Personal Condition of the Blessed
"The sentence of the great Judge on the blessed will be: "Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matt. xxv. 34). They will at once enter upon a new life, complete in every way, perfect in happiness, and eternal. The change that takes place will not be only in their external circumstances, it will be also in themselves. The same consciousness will remain, the same memories of the past, the same bodies in which they worked and suffered; but every department of their being will be brought to perfection in ways that are beyond our present comprehension. God has not given us full enlightenment. We know that in the resurrection we shall be as the angels of God in heaven (Matt. xxii. 30). We shall possess our material bodies, yet they will be spiritualized. "The dead shall rise again incorruptible; and we shall be changed. . . . We shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be changed" (1 Cor. xv. 51, 52). We shall receive certain new bodily qualities which are incongruous with our present bodies; our bodies therefore must be so changed that these qualities will not be unnatural but harmonious. Thank God for such knowledge as He has given you, viz., that you will really rise again in your present body, in a state of inconceivable glory.
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
The Sentence of Condemnation
"The Judgment of God on the world will be different from all those that we know of on earth.
1. It will be most complete. The knowledge of the cause will be perfect, and there will be the fullest consideration of all the circumstances. There will be no concealment of facts, no obscuring of the issue, no pretended excuses. All will be most rigid and equitable.
2. No intervention will be possible to change the sentence. All intercession, viz., the voice of the Precious Blood, has been rejected by the sinner during life; and failing that, "there is no man that can deliver out of Thy hand" (Job x. 7).
3. There will be no appeal to a higher court, for there is none higher.
4. There will be no pleading of repentance to move the Judge, for the criminals are those who have finally refused to repent, and have hardened themselves against pardon.
5. No atonement can be made by the guilty; man is not capable of it, and they have rejected the atonement of their Saviour. Therefore "no brother can redeem, nor shall man redeem. He shall not give to God his ransom nor the price of the redemption of his soul; and he shall labour for ever, and shall live unto the end" (Ps. xlviii. 8-10). Now, the future is to you as plastic as wax: you can now make that inexorable judgment to be what you like: you can pay the price of the redemption of your soul. Do not wait, as many do, till the opportunity is past.
Monday, December 12, 2022
Open Camp
How did Mary feel after the Angel left her? (She was very happy.) Yes, and Mary stayed very quiet, praying and thinking. Mary was thinking that Jesus was coming at last, to live on earth. She was to be His Mother.
The terrors of The Judgment
"That day is a day of wrath, a day of tribulation and distress, a day of calamity and misery, a day of darkness and obscurity" (Soph. i. 15). Consider the day of judgment from the point of view of the sinner, a point which may perhaps be yours. The first horror will be the sinner's sight of himself. He will perceive the hideous deformity which sin has wrought in his soul; he will see himself to be a blot upon creation, and out of harmony with the supreme order of things; he will see that he has no place and no utility in the supernatural sphere in which God and the faithful live. Sin will then appear as it really is, not as a pleasant indulgence, or as an amiable weakness, or as matter for amusement, or as obedience to a pretended law of nature; but as a foulness, a folly, a fatal disappointment, an outrage on God, and the sinner's own destruction. They had expected, or pretended to expect, impunity; they had enjoyed it for a while and would not believe the warnings of God. But it will be said to them: "These things thou hast done, and I was silent. Thou didst think unjustly that I should be like to thee; but I will reprove thee and set it before thy face" (Ps. xlix. 21). The sinner will loathe himself for his sins, and will hate the Most Holy and His saints because of the contrast of their purity and glory with his own condition. There is much in you that is horrible. Ask God to help you to see it, so that you may purify yourself in time by penance and love.
Sunday, December 11, 2022
Circumstances of The Judgment
Consider the Judge before whom we shall appear. He is Jesus Christ "who was appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead" (Acts x. 42). "We must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ" (2 Cor. v. 10). This is one of the distinctive offices of Our Lord. He is the Mediator both of grace and of justice; the medium of God's mercy to the repentant, the mouth-piece of divine judgment on obstinate sinners. "Neither doth the Father judge any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son" (John v. 22). "Who is He that shall condemn? Christ Jesus that died" (Rom. viii. 34). Our Lord was judged and condemned by every class of men; He is the first to whom justice has to be done. He suffered from calumnies, misapprehension, unjust judgment, the intensity of all human wickedness during His life on earth. In return He must be elevated in the sight of all men, and compensated in proportion to the injustice done; He is therefore made the Judge of the world. "He hath prepared His throne in judgment, and He shall judge the world in equity, He shall judge the people in justice" (Ps. ix. 8, 9). Do not forget this office of Christ, and hold Him in awe accordingly, as well as in affection. It should fill us with confidence to think that our judge is He who has experience of our infirmities, who died for us and always makes intercession for us.
Saturday, December 10, 2022
The General Judgment
Holy Scripture has made most important revelations to us about the General Judgment at the end of the world. It frequently repeats that God is a judge, and that He will come to judge the world, its good and its evil together. "Know ye that there is a judgment" (Job xix. 29). "Behold the Lord cometh with thousands of His saints to execute judgment upon all, and to reprove the ungodly for all the works of their ungodliness . . . and all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against God" (Jude, 14, 15). "God shall judge both the just and the wicked, and then shall be the time of everything" (Eccles. iii. 17). The thought of this should always be kept in mind, as an encouragement in doing good and a restraint upon sin, for comfort in tribulations, and for the better understanding of the ways of Providence. Men forget that every deliberate word, thought and action has its full effect, that the effect includes responsibility, and that this means judgment: and so an important restraint is removed. "Because sentence is not speedily pronounced against the evil, the children of men commit evils without any fear" (Eccles. viii. 11). Recall this thought frequently, and let it exercise a continual influence on your life.
Friday, December 9, 2022
The Resurrection of The Dead
One of the most definite truths of the Old and New Testament is that we shall live again, not only with the same consciousness, but in our present material bodies. "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth, and I shall be clothed again in my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God" (Job xix. 25, 26). The mother of the Machabees said to her sons: "The King of the world will raise us up who die for His laws, in the resurrection of eternal life. . . The Creator of the world . . . will restore to you again in His mercy both breath and life" (2 Mac. vii. 9, 23). St. Paul draws out the proof of our corporeal resurrection from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And Our Lord tells us that "all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God . . . and shall come forth unto the resurrection" (John v. 28, 29). All nature points out to us the great facts of the permanence of life under change of form, revival after death, the indestructibility of matter and force. The imperfect revivals that we see in progress are figures and assurances of our more perfect revival in a better form, and of the permanence of man, who is the greatest created force on earth. It is a most wonderful illumination of our lives to know that we shall live, not merely in the effects of our actions, like the sunlight; or in the senseless atoms of our bodies, like the trees; or in our descendants; but in our present personal identity with continuous consciousness.
Thursday, December 8, 2022
The Immaculate Conception
Adam and Eve came into existence immaculate, in the state of grace. This was to have been the birthright of humanity; but Adam, at the suggestion of Satan, chose the lower state of the mere natural existence, and so lost the power of transmitting what He had rejected. Thenceforth all men are born defective, deprived of supernatural life; and in that fallen state they resemble Satan in his inaptitude for God and propension towards evil. This privation of grace and the higher life is the state of original sin. From this the Blessed Virgin was preserved. She was antecedently liable to it, as being descended by ordinary generation from Adam. She was saved by the Redemption, as we are, but in a better way, by prevention, and not by cure. No act of hers nor of her parents, but the intervention of the merits of her Divine Son, saved her from the torrent which was about to descend upon her. She came into life then, like Adam and Eve, adorned with sanctifying grace, living with the supernatural life, possessing God with her. This is her Immaculate Conception. Our Lady can say, and she alone: "I am clean and without sin; I am unspotted and there is no iniquity in me (Job xxxiii. 9). Admire here the great goodness of God, the great power of the merits of Jesus, who is "wonderful in His saints" (Ps. Ixvii. 36), and most of all in His Mother.
The End of The World
Our Lord has vouchsafed us some knowledge of the end of the present system on this earth. That there will be an end is certain, on grounds of science as well as of revelation. When it will be, we are not told. It is dependent on certain contingencies, the free action of men, the filling up of the cup of iniquity, and the making up of the numbers of the elect. "But of that day and hour no one knoweth; no, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone" (Matt. xxiv. 36). Certain signs of the approach of the end have been given to us in revelation; but these are not for the purpose of enlightening us as to its exact date; they are for the encouragement of the faithful under the awful trials of that time. Certain physical details have also been described for us: "The day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works that are in it shall be burnt up" (2 Pet. iii. 10). Science demonstrates the likelihood of such a violent termination of the earth's course before its vitality and heat are exhausted. The words of Scripture, therefore, may be taken in their most literal and material sense. Of how little consequence is this earth and our immense solar system in the scheme of the universe! When all comes to an end, it will not even be remarked by possible observers on a distant star. How trivial are all our material works here! Nothing will endure but the spiritual results of our actions. Think chiefly of this.
II. The great movement of human life that underlies the surface, is the struggle between good and evil. As the end draws near, this contest will grow more involved and more ruthless. Human powers increase more and more, every influence extends more widely, and all will be drawn into the conflict. There will be "wars and rumours of wars. . . nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom" (Matt. xxiv. 6, 7). There will be no final perfection of the whole race on earth, no extinction of evil; but the forces of each element will be concentrated. Good, let us hope, will gravitate towards good; and those who wish to serve God will be forced into union by the need of making head against the combination of evil. The spirit of wickedness is personified under the name of Anti-Christ; it exists indeed under many forms at all times (1 John ii. 18); but, according to historical analogy, it will probably express itself fully in some society, or even in some one dominant personality. You are taking a part now in the preliminaries of that final conflict. Your present life and actions will tell then on one side or the other. See that they tend towards good; and do your best.
III. Again at the end of all things, the general features of the conflict will be as always since Cain slew Abel. The two lines of good and evil will advance logically from principles to conclusions. There will be no mundane triumph of good over evil, but Christ will be again and again rejected and crucified in His followers. They "shall put you to death, and you shall be hated by all nations. . . . False prophets shall rise and seduce many. . . . Many shall be scandalised, and shall betray one another. . . . There shall be great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world. . . . The abomination of desolation shall stand in the holy place. . . . There will be danger that no flesh should be saved" (Matt. xxiv.). And at last the end will come, suddenly, when least expected, and cut short all the amusements, and the strivings, and the vain ambitions, and the accumulations, and the triumphant wickedness of this world. Is it in you to be faithful under such trials? Consider how badly you face the trials of these less critical times, how wanting you are in the dispositions of heroes and martyrs. (The above is today's entire meditation).
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
The State of Souls After Death
Although the final destiny of souls is fixed at the very moment of death, and is known to them, yet they do not attain at once to finality, but remain in an incomplete state till the resurrection of bodies at the end of time. The conscious soul is not the whole man; while separated from the body it is in an abnormal state. The effects of the life on earth assert themselves in the soul as soon as the gates of death are passed; for the first time the soul sees what the man has made himself; still the fulness of reward or punishment is not accomplished until body and soul combine again into the one being, and each is apt to receive its share. The souls of the wicked and of those who are perfectly sanctified enter however into the abode of their eternity; they are in hell or in heaven, i.e., they are excluded from God's presence, or are placed in possession of Him. In the case of the just, there may be obstacles to their immediate entrance into their reward. There was a time, before the Redemption, when heaven was not ready for them; and there are many who at death are not ready for heaven. These remain in a temporary state. God in His goodness has given us some scanty but sufficient knowledge of the great secrets of the future. Exact details are wanting to us, and men fill them up from their own conjectures or reasonings; but substantially we know what the future states are. The future is not absolutely dark to us: it is dim indeed, but still certain.
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