From A Sermon On Confession: I will give you rain. By St. Antony Of Padua. Translated by Paul Spilsbury

The Lord speaks of the rain of confession in Leviticus:

I will give you rain in due seasons, and the ground shall bring forth its increase: and the trees shall be filled with fruit. The threshing of your harvest shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time; and you shall eat your bread to the full.[Lev 26.3-5]

When the Lord gives the penitent rain, that is, a full confession, he will bring for an increase that is his own, not another’s. This increase is the beginning of good works, which he brings forth by the rain of confession. And the trees shall be filled with fruit. Strong and fruitful, the trees are the minds of penitents, strong with the firm intention of not falling again. They are fertile and full of virtues. The threshing of your harvest, when you afflict your flesh, shall reach unto the vintage, heartfelt joy, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time, eternal life, in which we shall eat bread to the full, according to the words: I shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear [Ps 16.15]. See how much good confession does!

Abiding Sorrow For Sin, part 2, By Father Faber

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It consists also in a dread of forgiven sin, not so much because of purgatory (though it is far from affecting to be above these mixed and lower motives-poor soul, how should it venture to think itself above anything!),but because of the way in which old habits revive, and the species of old sins haunt the imagination, making it often, to use the forcible words of Scripture, like a cage of unclean birds. It dare not go to sleep with the seemingly dead enemy by its side. Through the cold night and on the strewn battlefield it wakes and watches, and in a low voice sings the triumphs of grace, that it may repel the approaches of slumber.
It consists also in a growing hatred of sin,-an increase of the spirit of Gethsemane in our souls, a communication from that solitary mystery beneath the olive trees, when even apostles slept. It is the Sacred Heart touching our hearts, and leaving faint stigmata of His own lifelong sorrow upon them.
It consists in a growing sensitiveness of conscience as to what is sin. Ineffably bright as is the sanctity of God and His refulgent glory, to gaze upon it strengthens our soul’s eye unworthy, and dishonourable in actions. We discern the complication and mixture of motives more distinctly. And entangled in a confusion of infirmities, a very inevitability of imperfections, where self-love can find no single resting-place for the sole of its foot, we grow in a divine sadness which humility and faith will not allow to be disquietude. With all this, and in the way of consequence, our personal love of Our Most Blessed Lord increases, and love of Him as our actual Saviour from sin. It is our joy to “call His Name Jesus, because He saveth His people from their sins.”
There are two classes of persons trying to serve God,-those who do not feel this abiding sorrow for sin and those who do. Or it would be more accurate to say that the one class has not got it and does not feel the want of it, and the other either has it or wants to have it. Various causes hinder men from feeling this want; the most common is tepidity. Lukewarmness is incompatible with this holy sorrow and cannot coexist with it. But the characteristic of such men is the absence of spiritual growth, and their perseverance in the ways of devotion doubtful.
On the contrary, those who have not this sorrow but feel the want of it have this consolation, that the very feeling of the want is a sign of a healthy state or at least of returning health; though it may be even with them that lukewarmness has brought their necessity safely home to them.
Many men are unhappily without it from their having suddenly or prematurely taken too high a place in the spiritual life, left the Purgative Way too rapidly, vitiated their palates by mystical books, or undertaken penances too hard for them and works beyond their existing grace. If we insist upon our souls growing upward before they have taken root downwards they are sure to be stunted. Little birds that try to fly before they are fledged fall from the eaves, and are hurt or killed according to the height from which they fall. The love of such men for Our Blessed Lord is cold and poor, and anything like ardour looks to them mere highflown romance or a wordy enthusiasm.
That the sorrow, however, is not always sensible, is no proof that it is not habitual. Yet sensible sorrow, like sensible sweetness, is a great gift, and to be moderately desired and asked of God.
The Apostle tells us there are two kinds of sorrow: one of them is sorrow unto death, the other a sorrow unto life. The sorrow unto death is more like self-vexation than genuine sorrow. It is often the consequence of an exaggerated human respect. It is a sorrow for sin which causes fresh sins, by filling us full of irritability both towards others and ourselves. It is without any trust in God, without any realization of grace, and leads to no amendment of life. This is the sorrow unto death in its earlier stages, during which it may occasionally mingle unperceived with the dispositions of excellent and interior persons. Its later stages are the preparations of despair; and its consequence, worked logically out, is final impenitence and an unfavourable doom.
The sorrow which is unto life is of two kinds. The first is that which works conversion. It is impetuous, outwardly demonstrative, full of self-revenge. This sorrow is naturally transient; for it has an end to accomplish and then it goes.
The other is the sorrow which we should wish to retain with us always. As I have said, it is lifelong, quiet, supernatural and a fountain of love. Hence it is affectionate and not reproachful. It knows how to deal gently with self, without dealing indulgently. It is humble, and never downcast at falls. Strange to say, its fear of hell is infrequent, faint, and intermitting; yet it is never,-not for a moment nor even in ecstasy,-without a solemn, reverential fear of God’s inscrutable judgments. The celestial raptures of Our Lord’s Sacred Humanity interrupted not for one moment the reverential fear with which His Body and Soul were penetrated. Moreover, this abiding sorrow is devotional. It inclines to prayer, brings pleasure in prayer, and though a sorrow, is itself a sweetness. It is very confident, and its confidence rests solely upon God. It lives by the fountains of the Saviour’s Blood, weeps silent tears like one who is continually hearing good news, and is hopeful.
This affectionate sorrow delivers us from many spiritual dangers. It throws a tenderness into our whole character, and makes us deep and pliant. It brings with it the unction of that special gift of the Holy Ghost which is named “piety.” It hinders our getting into a formal way both of doing our ordinary actions and of going through our accustomed devotions. The sap subsides in the trees as the cold weather comes, and the chilly nights quicken its descent. So is the gradual declension of fervour in our souls. But this sorrow saves us from it; it is the sap of our spiritual lives, whose character it is to be perennial and its foliage evergreen. The leaves may be cold-crumpled and frost-bitten; but the tree is still green. It also saves us from making light of venial sins, and is always stopping (even when we know it not) little untruths, teasing jealousies, wounded conceits, and sins of the tongue.
For it is the sorrow which was the Lord’s mantle. We are holding the sacred fringe, and virtue goes out of Him into us, and the issue of the bleeding soul is stayed.
The fruits which it produces in us are of equal importance with the dangers from which it preserves us. It makes us charitable towards the falls of others, and this reacts upon ourselves in the way of an increase of humility. It involves a continual renewal of our good resolutions, additional reality and fortitude in our wish to do more for God, and an increasing power of perseverance, with more stability and less effort. It blessedly diminishes our taste for the world and its pleasures. It flings the charm of heaven around us, and disenchants all other spells. It leads to a more fruitful, because a more reverent, humble, and hungry use of the Sacraments; and no grace that comes to us is wasted while this sorrow possesses our souls. It grinds all grist in its mill. There is nothing which makes our endurance of crosses more patient or more graceful,-nothing which gives us so calm and fertile a pertinacity in works of mercy to others. We are always flooded with inward tenderness, so that there is not an ache or a pain in one of Christ’s members which does not awake our sympathy and find its account in our sensibility. Devotion to Our Lord’s Passion is meant for the daily bread of Christian thought, and it keeps fresh and new in this sorrow as in a genial atmosphere. Our perceptions of the invisible world become finer and keener; we are more liable to be excited by spiritual interests, and more alive to the soul’s wants and dangers; and there is about us a liveliness of thanksgiving which only shows the copiousness of the hidden joy in this apparent sorrow. It is as though the happy resurrection of the flesh were partially anticipated. The coils and drags fall off our soul, and we have a new facility and promptitude for everything which has to do with God.
But how are we to get, or if gotten how keep, this dear and precious sorrow? Need I say that we must make it a subject of special prayer? We must not give way to disgusts with common devotions, tame books, ordinary practices, and commonplace direction. We must prepare carefully and leisurely for sacraments, and make much of them. We must have a great devotion for the conversion of sinners, and be very simple in the accusation of ourselves in the confessional. We must be jealous of anything which hinders our constant growth in personal love of Jesus. Whatever else stops for awhile, often inculpably, this love can never stop. There is no end to it. It partakes of God’s infinity. Nothing is above it in kind, nothing coequal with it in degree.
We must never consciously seek consolation as a primary object either in sermons, direction, devotion, voluntary bodily inflictions, or spiritual conferences. We must not seek to be consoled in a sorrow which is our treasure, and which we are fain should abide with us not only until the day of this world is far spent, but until the new eternal day has veritably dawned. And if we be in the Illuminative, or even in the Unitive Way, never let us part company altogether with, meditation on the Four Last Things.
But particularly we must be upon our guard against two foolish mistakes which betray an ignorance of the first principles of the interior life, and which nevertheless are not uncommon. The first mistake is the putting lightly away of movements of remorse and inward upbraidings, as if they were, mere scruples. Directors, in a hurry to get rid of their penitents, or anxious to keep them calm at all costs, often cast them into this delusion. But it is a serious misfortune as well as a grave mistake. It may be some old root of bitterness which is causing the twinge, or some secret reserve with God which has found voice and is upbraiding us. What shall we lose if we leave these things still in us? Or it may be that Our Lord is doing to us something like what we read of various saints,-that He is squeezing the last drops of bad blood out of our hearts. And are we to meddle, and unclasp the kind firmness of His fingers from the aching place, when if we knew our own good fortune we should see that that ache is worth kingdoms to us? A cloud is always a cloud; but it is wisdom to know when the cloud that is overshadowing us is the Holy Ghost.
The other mistake is thinking it un-Catholic to take serious and religious views of things. Converts are very liable to this from the ordinary laws of reaction and recoil. So also are priests, seminarists, and religious, as thinking seriousness professional. Levity will not make us happy, and I never read the life of a saint who thought it fine to speak lightly, or who was given to do so. They said little, and what they said was invariably grave. I believe it was their gravity that made them cheerful. There is something undergraduate about this levity. It is partly the conceit and partly the vulgarity of the spiritual life.*
I am confident no vocation to perfection will be frustrated by a soul in which there is this abiding sorrow for sin. It is the quintessence of devotion to the Sacred Heart, and it is there that we must seek it.

APPENDIX: INDULGENCED ASPIRATIONS**

We might recite all or any of the following indulgenced aspirations from motives of divine charity and contrition, with the particular intention of begging from God grace for sinners and of helping to make reparation, in union with the redemptive mysteries of Our Lord, both for our own sins and for the sins of all our brethren of the human race. In this way we should be acting in the spirit of Father Faber’s advice to us in this pamphlet.
Any aspiration may be repeated over and over again (e.g. on a decade or even on a full round of our Rosary beads). In this connection let us recall that St. Francis de Sales regarded a single aspiration recited a hundred times as more fruitful than a hundred different ones, each recited once. But let us beg God for the grace of saying the aspirations attentively and from our hearts. Mere quantity of prayer without good quality could not greatly please Him.
* Father Faber is finding fault only with heartlessly unseasonable flippancy and the like. He has no quarrel with the virtue of happy Christian lightheartedness and even playfulness. Similarly sorrowfulness of heart for him is consistent with-and indeed presupposes- the grateful joyousness of a soul that knows it has been created and redeemed by an infinitely loving God. (Editor’s Note.)

** Added by the editor.

As for the Indulgences, we cannot do better than to place them in the hands of Our Lady, with the request that she should apply them as she sees fit, either to our own souls or to the suffering souls in Purgatory. Slow, thoughtful reading of the pamphlet, interspersed with these aspirations, would be an excellent way to make a Holy Hour in honour of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The aspirations are

1. O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
2. O Lord, deal not with us according to the sins that we have committed, nor according to our iniquities.
3. O Lord, remember not our old iniquities and be merciful to our sins for the sake of Thy name.
4. Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us.
5. From all sin deliver me, O Lord.
6. Lord, save us, we perish.
7. My Jesus, mercy!
8. Dear Jesus, be to me not a Judge but a Saviour.
9. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.
10. O Jesus, be to me a Jesus and save me.
11. Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer.
12. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us peace.
13. O Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament, have mercy on us.
14. Hail, O Cross, our only hope!
15. Through the Sign of the Cross deliver us, O God, from our enemies.
16. Lord, I thank Thee for having died on the Cross for my sins.
17. O good Jesus, hide me within thy wounds.
18. We beseech Thee, therefore, help Thy servants, whom Thou hast redeemed by Thy Precious Blood.
19. Divine Heart of Jesus, convert sinners, save the dying, free the holy souls in Purgatory.
20. Dear Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us and on our erring brethren.
21. Sacred Heart of Jesus, convert poor blasphemers.
22. Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.
23. God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on us.
24. May the grace of the Holy Ghost enlighten our thoughts and our hearts.
25. O Holy Virgin, deign to let me praise thee; give me strength against thine enemies.
26. Mary, our hope, have pity on us.
27. Mother of love, of sorrow, and of mercy, pray for us.
28. Holy Mary, preserve us from the pains of hell.
29. O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
30. Mary of Sorrows, Mother of Christians, pray for us.
31. Virgin Most Sorrowful, pray for us.
32. Holy Mother, pierce me through; in my heart each wound renew of my Saviour Crucified.
33. Holy Mary, our Deliverer, pray for us and for the souls in Purgatory.
34. Our Lady of La Salette, who bringest sinners to repentance, pray without ceasing for us who have recourse to thee.
35. Grant, O Blessed Joseph, that we may pass through our lives free from sin, ever secure under thy fatherly care.
36. Saint Michael Archangel, defend us in the battle, that we may not be lost in the dreadful Judgement.
37. That Thou wouldst recall the erring to the unity of the Church, and lead all unbelievers to the light of the Gospel: we beseech Thee, O Lord, to hear us.
38. From a sudden and unprovided death, O Lord, deliver us.
39. That Thou mayest deign to humble the enemies of the Holy Church: we beseech Thee to hear us.
40. O Most Pure Heart of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, obtain for me from Jesus purity and humility of heart.

Here, to conclude, is a prayer to ask for the grace of doing our work well. It is directed to St. Joseph, head of the Holy Family, patron of the Universal Church, who by his work provided for Jesus and Mary-for God and God’s Mother. We might say the prayer slowly, from time to time, with an eye on how far our own work habitually shows forth the qualities the prayer asks for. The prayer was indulgenced by Saint Pius X (who was named Joseph at baptism):
O glorious Saint Joseph, model of all those who have to spend their lives in work, obtain for me the grace of working in a spirit of penance, to make amends for my many sins,-of working conscientiously, putting devotion to duty above my own inclinations,-of working gratefully and joyously, considering it an honour to employ and develop, by means of my work, the gifts I have received from God,-of working methodically, peacefully, temperately, and patiently, never flinching before weariness and difficulties,- of doing above all entirely selfless work with the pure intention of pleasing God, death being always before my eyes and the account I shall have to render of time lost, of talents left unused, of good left undone, and of that self-satisfied conceit in success which is so fatal to work for God. All for Jesus, all through Mary, all according to thy example, O Patriarch Saint Joseph, -that shall be my watchword in life and in death. Amen.

(Biographical Note. -Frederick William Faber was born in Yorkshire on June 28th, 1814. He spent eight years as a clergyman in the Church of England before becoming a Catholic on November 17th, 1845. He was ordained a Catholic priest on Holy Saturday, 1847. He joined before long the Oratorian Fathers of St. Philip Neri, and spent the rest of his life in that Congregation. He died in the London Oratory on September 26th, 1863. He had great largeness of mind; his heart was most loving. His works include: All for Jesus; Bethlehem; Growth in Holiness; Spiritual Conferences, and The Foot of the Cross. He also wrote some well-known hymns, among them Faith of Our Fathers.)
********

Penance And Self-Denial: Why? by Rev. John O'Brien PH.D

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LENTEN DISCIPLINE FOR MODERN LIFE

“Lent is a relic from the Dark Ages. It is a shadow projected down the ages of gloom that falls athwart the sunshine of our modern life and happiness. As the Matterhorn that lifts its snow-crowned summit high into the skies of Switzerland, intercepts the slanting rays of the setting sun, and brings premature darkness to the little village nestling in the valley behind it, so Lent robs us of much of the brightness of social life and worldly amusement, casting prematurely across the noonday of our life the shadow of death and the here-after. Its doctrine of mortification runs counter to the very grain of our human nature. It is a killjoy, an anachronism in our enlightened twentieth century. We want a religion of joy and gladness, not of gloom.”
Such is the cry that we hear about us on every side -the cry of the epicurean, the cry of the cynic, the cry of the sophisticated, seeking through a thousand devious routes to find the Blue Bird of happiness. Is Lent really a barrier to our happiness? Is it the mere blind handing down of a custom from the hoary past, that has lost its purpose and its utility for our modern day? Let us face these questions frankly and fairly. For unless a person understands how the observance of Lent promotes his welfare and happiness he is not likely to enter into its spirit wholeheartedly.

EXAMPLE OF CHRIST

In the first place, Lent is but the following of the example of Our Divine Saviour Himself. For the Gospel tells us that immediately after His baptism in the Jordan and before beginning His public ministry, Christ went out into the desert and fasted forty days and forty nights. Through the lips of His precursor, St. John the Baptist, He said to the people: “Unless you do penance you shall likewise perish.” Unlike our modern generals who send their soldiers out into the front-line trenches, while they remain securely behind, Our Divine Master asks us to follow only where He Himself has led. For many centuries the Christian world followed the example of Our Saviour with a rigorousness which we to-day do not even remotely approximate. A few years ago I stood at the foot of Mt. Quarantana, within sight of the Jordan, where the Saviour spent forty days of fast. I saw the sides of the mountain studded with holes, where anchorites had come to dwell, and to follow literally the rigorous fast of the Saviour.
Until the ninth century but one meal a day was taken, and that at evening. During the Middle Ages not only the theatres but even the law courts were closed. War was forbidden under penalty of excommunication. Every activity that might distract the minds of the Christians from the consideration of the condition of their souls and the attainment of their eternal salvation was prohibited. It has only been in recent times that the severity of the Lenten fast has been so greatly mitigated that now we experience but little hardship in its observance.

ANALYSIS OF ST. PAUL

Catholics do not observe Lent, however, merely because Our Saviour fasted, but because of the reasons which lie behind His command-to do penance as the necessary condition for salvation. We do penance for a twofold purpose: First, to atone for our past sins and to satisfy the temporal punishment due for them; secondly, to strengthen our wills so as to prevent our falling in the future.
When psychology will have written its, final chapter on human nature, it will be found that it has given us no more penetrating revelation of its conflicting duality than that which St. Paul disclosed to the Romans when he said: “I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind., and captivating me in the law of sin that is in my members.” And to the Galatians he said: “For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary one to another, so that you do not the things that you would.” Because of this conflicting duality that lay at the very heart of his nature, he found himself yielding to the thralldom of the senses and to the imperious tyranny of flesh against the voice of reason and conscience, so that he was compelled to explain: “The good which I will. . I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do.”
How aptly do these words of St. Paul reflect the experience of all mankind. Because of this duality in our nature, we find a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde, a saint and a demon struggling for the mastery in each of us. In the last analysis it will be found that the whole purpose of all the exercises of the spiritual life is to emancipate the will from the tyranny of the flesh, to make it the ready servant of the reason and the conscience of man.
In order to secure such mastery, self-denial and self-discipline are necessary. The appetite, which is always pampered, petted and indulged, becomes imperious and domineering. By denying oneself at times pleasures that are lawful, we strengthen the muscles of the will, so that it will be more capable of resisting pleasures which are unlawful. That is why in Lent we are asked to give up some pleasures and amusements which are lawful in themselves. We thereby fortify the enthronement of our conscience and our intellect over our appetites and cravings. Then when the temptation comes we shall be able to stand unshaken.

PROMOTES HAPPINESS

Strength of will, which comes through self-denial and discipline, is necessary to success in every line of endeavour-in literature, in science, in art, in commerce, in athletics. Look at the athletes who are training day after day on the cinder track. See those muscles of theirs, at first soft and flabby, change under the dint of daily discipline until they become as sinews of iron. So it is with the Christian, whose will, at first soft and flabby, gradually be-comes like iron under the lash of daily discipline during Lent. This strength of will developed by spiritual exercises carries over into every department of life-making for success in scholarship, in athletics, in business, in life.
Not only does it make for success, but it makes for that subjective correlate of success-happiness and peace of mind. True happiness is found not in the enslavement of the will to the passions, but in the enthronement of the conscience and the will over the appetites and the instincts of man. There is found that deeper and truer happiness which is not dependent upon external circumstances, but is found within-in the kingdom of the mind. Your entering generously into the spirit of Lent will have a far-reaching influence not only upon the success of all your manifold activities, but also upon your happiness and peace of mind.
Some time ago the students at the University of Illinois, U.S.A., honoured at a public mass meeting the young man who carried the colours of Illinois to victory at the Olympic games at Amsterdam by winning the welterweight wrestling championship of the world. After congratulating him upon his great achievement, I asked him how long he had trained for the contest. “Father,” he said, “scarcely a day has passed in the last seven years that I haven’t gone through some special exercise designed to prepare me for that encounter.” No wonder that he was as hard as iron and steel, and able to withstand the assaults of the best wrestlers among all the nations of the world. If men toil and discipline themselves through rigorous self-denial to win a race for an earthly prize, how much greater should be our zeal and earnestness in seeking to win the race of life that leads to a crown of imperishable glory!

CHRIST’S SELF-CONTROL

If one will study with care the character of Our Divine Saviour as portrayed in the Gospel stories, he will find it adorned in an eminent degree with all the qualities which have distinguished the illustrious heroes of the world. Wisdom, power, mercy, and love shine forth luminously from His sublime personality. But as one studies that complex character at greater length and secures a more penetrating insight into it, he gradually becomes conscious that there is some subtle quality there, blending all these into a harmonious whole, which is lacking in the character of the great heroes of the world. There is no jar, no jolt, none of the strange inconsistencies that glare out at us from the lives of the secular heroes.
That quality is the Saviour’s perfect self-mastery, self-control. Never for an instant in all the scenes of the Master’s earthly life is there an incident wherein a rash, hasty, headstrong action mars the even tenor and the surpassing beauty of the Saviour’s unfailing equanimity and perfect self-control. Washington’s greatness bears ever the tarnish of his profanity and ill-temper. Napoleon’s glory. is dimmed by his uncontrolled concupiscence. But when on trial for His life before the court of Caiphas, when buffeted and spat upon by His executioners, even when stripped of His garments and nailed to the Cross, the Master shows no sign of anger or vindictiveness. Never for a moment does He lose that marvellous mastery of Himself.
That is one of the reasons why the name of Jesus stands out among all the names in human history-the solitary example of perfect self-control. As Richter has said: “The purest among the strong, and the strongest among the pure, Jesus lifted with His wounded hands empires from their hinges and changed the stream of centuries.” He taught man the greatest of all arts-the art of self-control.
“Self-knowledge, self-reverence, self-control
In these alone lie sovereign power;
Who conquers self, rules others,
Aye, is lord and ruler of the universe.”

ESSENTIAL FOR SUCCESS

The person who would master the rudiments of the spiritual life must learn the lesson of self-discipline. It is one of the most essential elements for success in the earthly and spiritual warfare which we wage. The paths of life are strewn with the wrecks of men and women conquering others, mastering the arts, unlocking the secrets that lay hidden for countless centuries in the unfathomed bosom of the earth, only to fall victims to their own lusts, perishing in their own unconquered wilderness.
To me there is something tragically moving in the spectacle of Alexander the Great subjugating Greece, conquering imperial Rome, extending his little kingdom of Macedonia over the known world, until he found himself in distant Ecbatana, in Media, Asia, sitting astride his steed and weeping because there were no more worlds to conquer. Within a week Alexander the Great, conqueror of the world, making the earth tremble as his mighty battalion swept across Europe and Asia, lay dead in his tent, a victim to his own concupiscence-his unbridled passion for drink. Instead of sighing for new worlds to conquer, if he had but eyes to see, he would have perceived within himself a kingdom which stretched out as a huge jungle, untamed and unexplored. Alexander the Great will remain for all times as the classic example of the man who was able to conquer all the world, except himself-literally murdered at the very zenith of his greatness by his own untamed passions.
We need not go back to ancient Greece or Rome or Ecbatana, however, to witness the tragic wrecks of uncontrolled passions. Our insane asylums, our homes for wayward boys and girls, scream out at us their message of the frightful retribution meted out to those who allow their lust to subjugate their reason and their conscience. In the very bosom of our society are countless men and women in the untamed wilderness of whose hearts there surge unchecked, wild, primeval passions, pulling them down slowly but surely to the level of beasts, and murdering everything in their nature that is Godlike and divine. The ceaseless gnawings of remorse, the sapping of their manhood and virility by terrible diseases-these are the forebodings of the far greater punishments that await with inexorable justice the transgressors of the Divine law in eternity.

A DYING WRECK

One evening some time ago I was called to the bedside of a stranger, dying in one of the rooming houses for transients in the city. He had gone through all the stages of delirium tremens, and was a complete wreck. The doctor said that he had gone on one spree too many. For this one had caused complications, a ruptured blood-vessel, and his end was a matter of hours. Though only in middle age, his hair was streaked with grey, and his face was heavily lined. Worry and dissipation were stamped unmistakably upon the scarred countenance. Heartbroken, he told me his story. Possessing a good education, he had risen to a high position with a rail-road, when he contracted the habit of drunkenness. Losing his job after a prolonged fit of intoxication, he was ashamed to face his wife and children. He went from bad to worse, finally becoming an outcast among the barrel houses in a large city.
After I heard his confession, he broke into tears, and his whole frame shook with sobbing as he cried, “Father, I would have given anything in the world to have freed myself from this terrible vice of drink. It has brought shame upon my family, whom I love more than anything in life. It has pulled me down into a living hell.” I shall never forget to my dying day the look of desolating anguish akin to despair in his wistful eyes, as he lay there sobbing as though his heart would break.
As I left that bare, drab room, with its dying victim, and came down the creaking stairs of the dingy rooming house, the scene haunted my mind. While hurrying home through the darkness of that winter night, illumined only by the distant stars shining as God’s silent sentinels in the sky, I prayed that God might protect my students, my people, myself, from a tragedy such as I had left behind. For that is the fate which awaits the boy or girl, the man or woman who allows any passion to grow unchecked, until it transforms him from a saint into a demon incarnate-the terrible tragedy of the man who is murdered, not by the hand of the assassin, but by his own brutal passions, slowly strangled to death by his own self.
The whole world watched breathlessly a few years ago the frantic struggle of men to free a victim from the jaws of Sand Cave in the Kentucky hillsides. But they resisted all the assaults of men and machinery, and clung to their victim until life was extinct. So, any passion-intoxication, lust, anger, jealousy-that is allowed to go unchecked, develops into a monster that clings to its victim until it strangles him to a physical and spiritual death. Worse than the fall of a meteor from the sky is the fall of a young man or a woman from the beauty and sunshine of God’s grace into the foul swamp of uncontrolled vice. It is the most tragic note and the saddest that can be sounded in the whole gamut of human life.

THE REMEDY

What now is the remedy? Knowledge merely? “Quarry the granite rock,” says Cardinal Newman, “with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then you may hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passions and the pride of men.” Not knowledge alone, but will power is needed. Self-control means strength of will applied to one’s own conduct. How can will power be developed? Our Divine Master has given us the answer when He said: “He that will be My disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” By daily discipline, daily self denial, such as Lent brings to us. In no other way under the heavens can there be developed willpower and self-control.
The same conclusion was reached by an altogether different method of approach by one of the greatest of all psychologists, William James, when he said: “Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.” Do something each day that is hard and more than is required in order that your faculty of effort, your will, may not become weak and atrophied through disuse. Thus, strikingly, does science reiterate and reinforce this age-old teaching of the Church.
Before the eyes of a world sick unto death with luxury and self-indulgence, the Church places during Lent the age-old picture drawn by the Master Artist, Christ, of will power developed through self-discipline, of self-control achieved through acts of self-denial. Greater than Napoleon Bonaparte, than Julius Caesar, than Alexander the Great, the conqueror of the world, is the man who has learned through the instrument of a vigorous will to conquer himself. For self-control is the open sesame to success in this life and to eternal happiness in the next. All the after ages have but confirmed the wisdom of those words of an obscure Flemish monk, Thomas a Kempis, written in his monastic cell at Zwolle centuries ago: “He who best knows how to endure . . . is conqueror of himself and lord of the world, the friend of Christ and an heir of heaven.”

“AND UNTO DUST. . . .”

In addition to the great lesson of self-mastery, Lent brings home to mankind the fickleness of the world’s applause and its insufficiency to satisfy the hunger in the soul of man. On Ash Wednesday the Church seeks by a colourful and impressive ceremony to drive home to her children the transiency of this earthly life and the wisdom of seeking to attain the life eternal. The palms which were blessed on the previous Palm Sunday, to remind us of the Saviour’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when the multitudes waved them aloft, shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” and strewed them in profusion on the road over which He rode-these palms the Church burns to ashes. Then, summoning her children to the altar railing, she places these ashes on the brow of each in the form of a cross, while she whispers in the ear of each the words of warning: “Remember, man, thou art but dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
Why speak to youth in whose eager eyes there burn the fires of life, and on whose cheeks there rests the bloom of youthful vigour-why speak to them of dust and ashes, of death and the hereafter? Why lessen their zest for life and its pleasures? The Church thus speaks to them, not to lessen their zest for life, but to give them a sense of values. She shoves back the narrow horizon of youth, removes the veil from the senses, reveals the transient character of earthly things, and points out the folly of seeking enduring happiness in that which is so ephemeral. The thought of death and the hereafter is salutary at times for old and young, for it prompts one to answer aright that supreme question which the Master addresses to each of us: “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?”
The wholesome effect of a profound realisation of the transiency of human life and human beauty is illustrated by an incident in the life of St. Francis Borgia. Francis was Duke of Gandia and Captain-General of Catalonia, and one of the most honoured chevaliers at the Court of Spain. Isabella was known throughout Europe for her charm, her Spanish vivacity, and for the striking beauty of her countenance. Often had Francis braved death while carrying the banner of Aragon and Castile into the thick of the battle, knowing that he would be rewarded with a word of praise from his beloved Queen. He found his greatest happiness in basking in the sunshine of her smile and drinking in with greedy eyes her charming loveliness.

A LAST LOOK

In 1539 there fell to his lot the sad duty of escorting the remains of his beloved Queen to the royal burial grounds at Granada. In order to verify the body as that of Isabella, the coffin was uncovered. Eagerly Francis stepped forward to take one last, lingering look at the beautiful countenance of his beloved Queen. He had no sooner done so than his face grew livid, his eyes wild with terror, as he shrank back. “No! No! Good God!” he cried; “it can’t be! It can’t be! Those eyes, that face, that smile! They can’t have perished so utterly.” What was the sight that greeted his eyes? A face of wondrous beauty? No. A face hideous and ugly in its putrefaction, the loathsome prey of worms and maggots pulling it back to dust and ashes. “God grant,” cried Francis, “that I seek not to find my happiness henceforth in that flesh which perisheth so quickly, but only in that eternal Beauty which never knows decay.” Francis devoted his services thereafter to a heavenly King, seeking as a humble missionary to win souls for Christ.
From the most beautiful face in all Spain, for whose look of approval soldiers faced death with a smile, to a sight so foul and loathsome as to fill the spectator with revulsion-what a change! Gaze at the most beautiful face you have ever seen, with eyes that speak like a rapturous symphony, with a smile that warms and endears, and in a few short years will you be able to overcome your loathing to gaze upon it when death has touched it with its finger of decay? “Remember, man, that thou art but dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
We need not go back, however, to the sixteenth century for striking instances of the transiency of earthly fame and the fickleness of human applause. On March 4, 1917, I stood in a crowd of 90,000 people before the Capitol in Washington, to watch the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson into the Presidency for his second term. His name was cheered on every side. A gigantic parade marched proudly before him in review. At the triumphant close of the World War, when he sailed for France to dictate the terms of the Versailles Treaty of Peace, he had reached the eminence of world fame. His words about freedom and democracy and the autonomy of small nations had rekindled the hopes of all the oppressed nations of the earth. Unprecedented crowds greeted him at Paris with tumultuous cheering. The eyes of all the world were turned to him, as he stood on the pinnacle of human eminence as a new Moses, heaven-sent to lead the groping feet of the nations into the Promised Land of perpetual peace.

AN AGE-OLD CRY

A few years later I passed by a little home on H Street, where lived a broken old man, unable to take more than a few steps with the aid of his cane. Broken in body, broken in mind, broken in heart, his League of Nations plan contemptuously rejected by the Senate, his opponent swept into office by the greatest landslide in history, the nations of Europe shaking their fists at him for deluding them with false hopes. What a pitiable spectacle! As he gazed out of his window at night toward the Capitol ablaze with light, the scene of his brilliant feats, what memories must have stirred within him!
One night, it is narrated, Mrs. Wilson happened to step into the parlour. The room was dark. Seated in a chair near the front window, with his face resting in his hands, she perceived her husband. There was the sound of a few broken sobs. Placing her hand tenderly upon the bowed head, she asked softly: “Are you ill, dear?” The former President raised his head and looked for a brief moment through tear-dimmed eyes toward the great shining Capitol that had resounded so often with his name. “No, not ill,” he said, “but I realise now as never before the fickleness of the plaudits of the multitude and the emptiness of the glory of this world.” As he sat there, broken in heart and alone, he tasted of that world weariness, that pang of the heart which caused Solomon in his old age to cry out: “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity, save in loving God and serving Him alone.”
It was echoed again by St. Augustine, when, after running through the whole gamut of sensual indulgence in pagan Rome, he cried out: “Our hearts have been made for Thee, O God, and they shall never rest until they rest in Thee.” Such are the great eternal truths which Lent, with its gospel of penance and self-denial, drives home to a world that is forever tempted to find its happiness over the more beguiling but mistaken paths of ease and self-indulgence.

Nihil obstat:
F. MOYNIHAN, Censor Deputatus.
Imprimatur:
DANIEL MANNIX,
Archiepiscopus Melbournensis.
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THOUGHTS ABOUT PENANCE - From A Sermon By St John Vianney

Tell me, my dear brethren, what are the penances that are given to you? Alas!

A few rosaries, some litanies, some almsgivings, a few little mortifications. Do all of these things, I ask you, bear any proportion to our sins which deserve eternal punishment? There are some who carry out their penance walking along or sitting down; that is not doing it at all. Unless the priest tells you that you may do it while walking along or sitting down, you should do your penance on your knees. If you do perform your penance while walking along or sitting down, you should confess it and never do it again.

In the second place, unless you are not able to do it as required, in which event you must tell that to your confessor when you go to Confession the next time, I must tell you that the penance should be done within the time indicated; otherwise you commit a sin. For example, the priest might tell you to make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament after the services because he knows that you go around in company which will not bring you any nearer to God; he may order you to mortify yourself in something which you eat because you are subject to gluttony; to make an act of contrition if you have the misfortune to fall back into the sin which you have just confessed. At other times you may wait until the moment when you are ready to go to Confession to do your penance. You understand as well as I do that in all of these instances you are fully at fault and that you should not fail to confess that and that you should never do this again. In the third place, I tell you that you should perform your penance devoutly, that is to say, with reverence and with the sincere intention of giving up the sin. To say your penance reverently, my dear brethren, is to say it with attention to its spiritual importance and with devotion in your hearts. If you have said your penance with wilful distractions, you will not have said it at all and you are obliged to say it again. To perform it devoutly is to perform it with a strong confidence that God will forgive you your sins through the merits of Jesus Christ, Who made satisfaction for us by His sufferings and His death on the Cross. We should perform our penance overwhelmed with joy at being able to satisfy God, Whom we have offended, and at finding such an easy means of effacing our sins which should have earned eternal sufferings for us. Something which you should never forget is that all the time you are fulfilling your penance, you should be saying to God:

"My God, I unite this slight penance to that which Jesus Christ my Saviour has offered to You for my sins." This is what will make your penance meritorious and pleasing to God. I repeat that we should always carry out our penance with the true desire to give up the sin altogether, no matter what it may cost us, even if it involves death itself. If we have not these dispositions, very far from satisfying the justice of God, we will outrage it again, which would make us even more guilty.

I have said that we should never content ourselves with the penance which our confessor imposes upon us because it is nothing, or almost nothing, if we compare it with what our sins really deserve. If our confessor is so very lenient with us, it is only lest he might give us a distaste for the work of our salvation. If you really have your salvation at heart, you should impose penances upon yourself.

Choose those which suit your case best. If you have the misfortune to be someone who gives scandal, you should make yourself so watchful of your behaviour that your neighbour will not be able to see anything in your life which would give him anything but good example; you should show by your conduct that your life is truly Christian. If you are one of those unhappy people who sin against the holy virtue of purity, you should mortify that sinful body with fasting, giving it only what it needs to sustain life and to fulfil its functions, from time to time making it sleep upon bare boards. If you are one of those who has to have something to eat which will gratify your gluttony, you should refuse this to your body and despise it as much as you previously loved it. When your body wants to cost you your soul, you must punish it.

Your heart, which must often have thought of impure things, has carried your thoughts into Hell, which is the place reserved for the unchaste.

If you are attached to the things of this earth, you should give alms sufficient to enable you to punish your avarice by depriving yourself of all that is not absolutely necessary for life.

If we have been negligent in the service of God, let us impose upon ourselves the penance of assisting at all the exercises of piety which are going on in our parish. I would advise Mass, Vespers, catechism, prayers, the Rosary, so that God, seeing our eagerness, may be good enough to pardon us all our negligences. If we have spare time between the services, let us do some spiritual reading, which will nourish our souls -- above all, some reading of the lives of the saints wherein we may see how they behaved in order to sanctify themselves. That will encourage us. Let us make some short visit to the Blessed Sacrament during the week to ask God to pardon the sins we have committed. If we feel ourselves guilty of some fault, let us go and get rid of it so that our prayers and all our good works may be pleasing to God and more advantageous to our souls. Have we the habit of swearing or of flying into rages? Let us go down on our knees to say again this holy prayer: "My God, may your holy name be blessed for ever and ever! My God, purify my heart, purify my lips so that they may never pronounce words which would outrage you and separate me from you!"

Any time that you fall into this sin, you should immediately either make an act of contrition or give away something to the poor. Have you been working on Sunday? Have you been buying or selling without necessity in the course of this holy day?

Give to the poor some alms which will exceed the profit you have made. Have you been eating or drinking to excess? In all your meals you should deprive yourself of something.

Such, my dear brethren, are the penances which will not only suffice to make satisfaction to the justice of God, if joined to those of Jesus Christ, but which can even preserve you from falling again into your sins. If you want to conduct yourselves in this way, you will be sure, with the grace of God, of correcting your faults.