An Introductory Talk
on
The Catholic
Religion
BY
REV. G. J. MACGILLIVRAY M.A.
LONDON CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY No. Do 98 (1963)
AN INTRODUCTORY TALK ON THE CATHOLIC
RELIGION
IF you take up this little pamphlet at all, I suppose that your
attention must have been drawn to the Catholic Religion somehow.
Perhaps you have friends who are Catholics. Or you may have been struck
by the fact that so many people in these days are becoming converts to
the Faith. You may sometimes also have attended services in Catholic
churches, and been rather puzzled by them. In any case, your interest
has been aroused somehow, and you would like to know more about it. But
you do not know where to begin. Before going into details, you want to
get a general notion of what it is all about. You know that we
Catholics have a lot of curious ceremonies. Especially we have a
service called Mass, to which we attach great importance. And we go to
Confession, and eat fish on Fridays, (or do other 'penances' on that
day,), and other strange things. But what is it all about? What is the
meaning of it all? What is the good of it? What are we aiming at? If
that is how you feel, if that is the sort of questions that you are
asking, this little pamphlet is for you.
THE
WAY TO ETERNAL LIFE
Let me begin by giving a short and plain answer to all these questions.
The answer is, that the Catholic Religion is the way to Eternal Life.
God has prepared for us an eternal life of perfect happiness after this
short earthly life. And notice, this does not mean a life of lazy,
selfish enjoyment, like the paradise of the Moslem follower of
Mohammed. No, the eternal life for which we hope is one in which men
will be happy, just because they have been purged of all that is mean
and base, because all the noblest powers of the soul are freely
employed, and because they live not for self, but for God. It is a life
of perfect unselfishness and perfect activity, in which the soul,
forgetful of self, is absorbed in God, and finds its happiness in
seeing, loving and glorifying Him. That is the end for which we were
created. But we do not reach that end inevitably or (as it were)
automatically. On the contrary, there is the awful alternative of
missing it, and drifting away into eternal misery. That glorious end
can only be reached if, during our life in this world, we follow the
right way. And the right way is nothing else than the faithful practice
of the Catholic Religion. That is the plain statement of our belief.
And you will certainly agree that, if this is true, the Catholic
Religion is of tremendous importance, and worth taking a great deal of
trouble about. And it is worth your while to make enquiries, and to
satisfy yourself whether it is so. You know that there are some 300
million people (in 1963, today the figure is more like 1.1 billion,) in
the world who believe that it is true, and you must at least admit the
possibility of their being right. At least, with so much at stake, it
is worth your while to examine the matter carefully.
GOD'S
WAY
But here, I think, your first question will be: On what grounds do
Catholics believe all this ? The answer is that we believe it, because
God has said so. This is the next fact to get clear in your mind. The
Catholic Religion is not a collection of human opinions. It is not the
product of human reasoning. It is revealed by God. Of course I do not
expect you to take my word for this. It is true. But you must examine
the evidence for yourself, and form your own conclusion. I am not
attempting in this little pamphlet to prove to you the truth of the
Catholic Religion. Later on you can look for the proofs elsewhere, and
examine them at your leisure. I am merely trying to give you some
preliminary notions of what it is. And this is the next fact about it
to grasp clearly, that it is (or at least claims to be) a revelation
from God.
Briefly, the facts about the origin of our Religion are these. About
1,900 or 2,000 years ago there appeared in the world a unique
Personality, a Man unlike any other man whom the world had ever seen,
the Man whom we call Jesus Christ. Not only did He far surpass all
other men by His perfect goodness, His marvellous wisdom and strength
of character. But He made the most extraordinary claims, and did the
most extraordinary things. He claimed plainly to be the Son of God; not
a Son of God, in the sense in which any man may be a son of God, but in
the literal sense, that He was Himself God, the eternal Divine Son of
the eternal Divine Father. And in proof of His claim He did many
wonderful works which no mere man could do. He healed the sick, the
lepers, the blind, the deaf and the dumb with a word, He raised the
dead to life, He changed water into wine, He fed 5,000 people with five
loaves, He commanded the winds, and the storm ceased at His word. And
finally, after He had been put to death. He Himself rose from His grave
alive, and appeared to many witnesses. Now this Jesus Christ, who thus
claimed and proved Himself to be the Son of God, came into the world to
teach us just those things about God, and our relation to God, our duty
to God, our destiny after this life and so forth, which we could not
find out for ourselves. And then, in order that His teaching might be
handed on, and taught to all nations and all generations, He founded a
permanent Teaching Body, which He called His Church, with St Peter as
its first Head, and commissioned it to carry on His teaching.
Moreover, He promised that He would remain with that Church, guiding
and enlightening it, so that it would never go wrong, but would always
teach without error just those truths which He came into the world to
reveal. Now the Church which Jesus Christ founded is the Catholic
Church, that great Body ruled by the Pope, the successor of St Peter.
That is a plain historical fact. The Catholic Church is the only one
which goes back to the time of Jesus Christ Himself, the others having
all been founded at later dates by various people who broke away from
the Catholic Church. Therefore the Catholic Church is
the one that Jesus Christ founded. Moreover, God's promises cannot be
broken. He promised that He would remain always with His Church, and
guaranteed that it would always teach the truth revealed by Him, and
nothing else. Therefore we are sure that whatever the Catholic Church
teaches is no human invention, but the truth revealed by God. Therefore
the Way to eternal life, which the Catholic Church teaches, is God's
way. By this we do not mean to assert that no one who is not a Catholic
can ever reach that eternal life. There are many people who have really
no chance of knowing the Catholic Religion, and so it is not their
fault if they do not practise it. And we are sure that God, in His
infinite mercy, will not let them suffer for what is not their own
fault. If they do their best, He will lead them to the end somehow.
Nevertheless, the Catholic Religion is God's Way, and that is what
concerns us here.
OUR
UNHAPPY SITUATION
Now let me try to give you some idea of what that Way is. In other
words, I must give you an outline of what God has taught us to believe
and to do. First of all, then, God has explained to us the situation in
which we find ourselves, when we come into this world. It is necessary
to understand this, in order that you may understand God's plan for
delivering us from it and leading as to eternal life. When God created
our first parents, the first man and woman, whom we call Adam and Eve,
He first of all gave them that wonderful gift of a rational soul, which
no mere animal has. But He gave them a still higher gift, namely what
is called 'Sanctifying Grace'. The reason was this. God had prepared
for Man a, glorious destiny. He intended that he should actually share
eternally His own Divine Life and happiness. But to make that possible
it was necessary that he should receive the gift of a supernatural
life, a new kind of life, which would raise him altogether above the
level natural to a mere creature. And that is what sanctifying grace
is. It is the germ of a supernatural life, the supernatural life in its
first stage. And if a man keeps the gift of grace till death, then the
life of grace passes into what is called the life of 'Glory', which
makes him actually capable of the most intimate union with God in
Heaven.
This, then, is the gift that God gave to Adam. And if he had kept it,
he would have been able to transmit it to his descendants, and we
should all have come into the world with the Divine life of grace in
our souls. But Adam rebelled against God and broke His laws.
Consequently he lost that gift of grace. And having lost it, he
naturally was not able to transmit it to us. Therefore we are born
without it. That is what is meant by saying that we are born in
'original sin'. We are born without that gift of grace, which we ought
to have had, and should have had, if Adam had not sinned. And you see
what a miserable state it is; because not having that divine gift, we
are by nature utterly incapable of reaching that glorious destiny, for
which God created us. And even that is not all. For, in losing grace,
man lost also certain other divine gifts, which accompanied it. These
included the power of easily and completely controlling all the
passions and impulses of our lower nature. That being lost, he became
subject to that immense difficulty in doing what is right, of which we
are all painfully conscious. Even if we will to do right, our lower
nature rebels. We are assailed by temptations to pride, avarice,
sensuality, sloth, and all the other passions that war against the
soul, so that we cannot do the things that we would. And so great is
this difficulty that it is morally impossible for us to resist
throughout our lives temptation to sin. And so if God had not provided
a remedy, there would have been no hope for the human race,
Having fallen from God's grace, it could only drift away into that
eternal separation from Him, which is hell.
GOD
OUR SAVIOUR
But it was not God's will that through the fault of Adam we should all
perish, and therefore He has not left us in that hopeless state, to
which the sin of our first parents would have brought us. He has
provided a remedy, by which all who will may still receive the gift of
grace, and so be made capable of eternal life.
But to understand this we must first grasp the fact that in God there
are three 'Persons'. This is one of the great mysteries which God has
revealed. There can, of course, be only one God, one infinite Divine
Being; but somehow in that one Divine Being there are what for want of
a better term we call three 'Persons'. By teaching us to use this term
God means, no doubt, to tell us that the mysterious Three have at least
all that we mean by personality, although without those limitations
which we associate with the word, when we use it of human persons. It
is quite impossible for us really to understand this. We can only
accept what God has revealed, that somehow there is in God this
distinction of three Persons, who are known to us as the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Having then revealed to us this first great mystery about His own
Being, God has next taught us how the second of these Divine Persons,
God the Son, came to us to deliver us from the hopeless state, in which
the sin of Adam had left us, and to restore to us the gift of grace
that he had lost. To do this He actually became Man, and lived amongst
us as Man. That is to say, that He made for Himself a human nature,
uniting, it to His Divine Person, so that it was His very own, and He
therefore really became Man, while at the same time of course remaining
God, as He was before. This is the Person who became known on earth as
Jesus Christ, who is therefore both God and Man. He is God made Man.
This again is a great mystery, which we cannot understand, but which we
accept on the word of God.
God the Son, then, came into the world to restore to us the Divine
life, that we had lost. But before doing so, it was the Father's will
and His will that He should first make reparation to the Eternal Father
on behalf of the human race, as its Representative and Head, for the
injury done to Him by man's rebellion. And this He did by the complete
surrender of Himself as Man to the Father's will, even to the
acceptance of suffering and death. Again a tremendous mystery, into
which we can only see a very little way. But beware of a common
mistake. People often totally misunderstand this great act of God's
love. They talk as if it meant that God was punishing one of His
creatures, who was sinless, for the sins of the rest, and they
naturally describe such a transaction as horribly unjust. But that is a
mere travesty of the Catholic doctrine. I cannot go into this mystery
here at length. But I will just say this. Those people forget that
Jesus Christ is not a creature. He is not a Being separate from God. He
is God, Although He is a different 'Person' from the Father, He is not
a separate Being. He is one and the same Divine Being. He is God.
Therefore, when you see Christ upon the Cross, the Sinless One
suffering for the guilty, you do not see God punishing one of His
creatures for the sins of the others, but God Himself in a mysterious
way taking upon Himself the burden of our sins. Truly no injustice, but
a marvellous act of mercy and love.
God is Our Saviour!
Jesus Christ, then, the Son of God made Man, having made this
reparation for the sins of men, having died upon the Cross, rose again
from death and ascended into Heaven with that same human nature, which
He had created and made His own. And so He remains for ever with that
human nature most closely united to His own Divine Being. This is the
first step in the restoration of Humanity. For there now is Humanity,
in the Person of its new Head and Representative, taken into the most
perfect union with God. But how does that benefit the rest of us? In
this way. That Human Nature of Our Lord now becomes the nucleus, as it
were, of a new Humanity, a new human race gathered out of the wreck of
the old race of Adam, and united through it and in it to God. Our Lord
said Himself: 'I, if I be lifted up from earth, will draw all things to
myself.' He is like a great magnet, drawing to Himself all men of good
will, But He does more than the magnet. For as He draws men to Himself,
He pours grace, which is His own Divine life, into their souls, and so
makes them one with Himself, united to His Sacred Humanity, and so
united to God, and living in God, or, to put it all in a phrase, we are
united to God by being 'incorporated' into Christ, that is to say, made
one Body with Him.
Mgr Kolbe, in his book called The
Four Mysteries of the Faith, gives a beautiful illustration,
which may help to make this clear, and which I therefore venture to
borrow. In the middle of the Victoria Falls in Africa, he tells us,
there is a little island-rock standing up alone. All round it the
waters of the great Zambezi river rush along, carrying everything
before them, plunging down into the abyss. But on the rock and clinging
to it all round are innumerable forms of animal and vegetable life. The
rock is the only refuge where anything can live and escape destruction.
The meaning of the parable is obvious. The Rock is Jesus Christ, the
Incarnate Son of God. Apart from Him we are helpless. We have lost God,
we have no power or strength to deliver ourselves from the forces of
evil, or to rise to that divine life for which we were created. We can
only drift helplessly along, until we plunge into the abyss. You may
think that this is exaggerated, but it is not. It is what God Himself
has told us. The Incarnate Son is our only refuge. We can only be
rescued from the flood and find life by taking refuge in Him, clinging
to Him, being made one with Him, and so living with the life that flows
from Him, like those innumerable living creatures that cling round that
rock in the Zambezi, and find shelter and nourishment there.
UNION
WITH CHRIST
But what is the nature of this union with Christ, and how is it to be
accomplished ? First of all, it is clear that it must be founded on
faith and love. We cannot have union with Christ unless we believe in
Him and love Him. Again, union with Him must be a moral union. It must
mean that we are gradually transformed into His likeness. But this will
necessarily follow if we really love Him. Love is the great uniting
force and the great transforming force. Study, therefore, that sublime
figure of Jesus Christ, as He is depicted for us in the Gospels. Read
the Gospels again and again, dwell upon His gracious actions and words,
His kindness, His patience, His courage, His strength, His purity, His
compassion for sinners, His boundless charity, until that wonderful
Personality takes possession of your heart, and awakens your love. With
that awakening love will come the desire for His love, the desire to
please Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him. And when you really love
Him, that love will begin to transform you into His likeness. You will
begin to see things as He sees them, to think with His thoughts, to
will with His will. You will begin to love what He loves, and to hate
what He hates. You will hate all your miserable sins and faults, which
keep you apart from Him. And as you hate them, you will get power to
conquer them. You will find yourself insensibly growing more unselfish,
purer, stronger, more generous, more charitable.
But union with Christ is more than mere moral transformation. It is not
only change of moral character, or improvement of our natural life. It
implies, as we have seen, the reception of a higher kind of life
altogether, that supernatural life of grace, which flows from Him, and
raises us to His level. And that is the question which we must consider
next: how are we to get into vital contact with Christ, so that grace
may actually flow from Him into us?
THE
BODY OF CHRIST
The normal way by which we are united to Christ is through membership
in His 'Mystical Body', which is the Catholic Church. Let me try to
explain. We have seen that during His earthly life Our Lord founded a
Society, with St Peter as its first Head, which He called His Church.
And we have seen that one reason for the foundation of this Society was
that it might continue His teaching. But the Church is more than a mere
teaching institution. It is the body of Christ, His living and
life-giving Body. It is not a mere organization, but a living organism,
of which Christ Himself is the Life. St Paul often speaks of the Church
as the Body of Christ. And he is careful to explain that he is not just
using a loose phrase, but that he really means that the Church is a
living organism, a real living body, whose life comes from Christ, and
flows from Him to all the members of it. Our Lord Himself taught the
same thing under the figure of the Vine and the Branches. 'I am the
Vine, you are the branches.' The Vine is Christ. The Vine is also the
community of the faithful, the living organism, the Church. So,
although Our Lord has gone away into Heaven in His natural Body, He
continues to live on earth in His Mystical Body. Therefore it is by
membership in this Body that we are brought into vital union with
Christ. That is to say, not by mere membership, but by a living, active
membership, sharing in its life of prayer and worship and good works,
and using all those means provided in it which we shall discuss
presently, whereby we are brought into living contact with Christ, and
receive His grace into our souls.
THE
NEW BIRTH
The next question is: By what means are we made members of this living
Body of Christ? And the answer is that this is normally done by the
Sacrament of Baptism. But before dealing with Baptism I must say a few
words about Sacraments in general. What are Sacraments? A Sacrament is
defined as 'an outward sign of inward grace, ordained by Jesus Christ,
by which grace is given to our souls'. But perhaps the best way of
getting an idea of what they really are is by comparing them to the
arteries in the human body. Just as the blood flows through the
arteries, carrying nourishment and life to all the different parts, so
the grace of God flows through the Sacraments to us, who are members of
the Body of Christ.
It may seem strange to you at first sight that grace should come to us
through such curiously material means. Is not grace a purely spiritual
thing, you may say? Why, then, should it be associated with such
material things as water and bread and wine and oil? The answer is
that, although grace is a purely spiritual thing, we are not purely
spiritual beings. We are composed of body and soul, spirit and matter.
Therefore it is eminently suitable that the means, by which God's gifts
come to us, should have the same double nature. It makes it far easier
for us to appreciate and realize those gifts, when we can see and touch
the material elements, through which they are conveyed. It helps to
bring home to us the reality of the gifts.
The first of the Sacraments, then, is Baptism. It is the Sacrament by
which the new supernatural life of grace is first given to us. By it we
are made members of the living Body of Christ, and the new divine life
flows from Him into the soul. That is why Our Lord Himself called it
our New Birth. It is to the supernatural life what natural birth is to
our natural life, its external beginning. So Baptism is a very
wonderful thing. Although we can see no difference between an
unbaptized child and a baptized child, the difference is enormous. The
unbaptized child has only its natural human life. The baptized child
has in addition to that a supernatural life, which makes it capable of
union with God, of sharing the eternal life of God Himself.
When, therefore, a person (whether child or adult) has been baptized,
he is in a state of grace. He has received the new gift of life. But
that is only the beginning. This new life of grace has to be kept and
nourished, so that it may not be lost, but go on growing until the end.
How do we keep and nourish this life? By keeping God's commandments, by
prayer, by joining in the worship of the Body of Christ, to which we
now belong, and by using the other Sacraments which God has provided
for the purpose.
GOD'S
COMMANDMENTS
A young man came to Our Lord one day and asked Him: 'Good Master, what
good shall I do that I may have life everlasting?'
And Our Lord's answer was: 'If you will enter into life, keep the
commandments.'
That is the first essential; we must regulate our whole lives by the
rule of God's commandments. And what these commandments are, and the
meaning of them, the Catholic Church teaches us. You have of course a
conscience, which guides you to a great extent as to what is right and
what is wrong. But no man's conscience is infallible, and therefore God
has given us definite commandments, and has given power and authority
to the Church to teach and explain them. So the Catholic Religion
enters into the whole of life and teaches us how to regulate all our
daily conduct. First it teaches us our duty to God, which is to love
Him and worship Him. Then it explains our various duties to our
neighbours and to ourselves. There is the law of justice, commanding us
to do no wrong to any man, but to give to all their just rights. Then
the law of charity, which goes beyond mere justice, and bids us love
our neighbours as ourselves, doing all we can to be kind and helpful to
them, and to seek their good in every possible way. Then the laws of
temperance and purity, teaching us to be moderate in all things, and to
restrain and regulate all our unruly passions. But I cannot here give
all God's laws in detail. Enough to say that the Church, by God's
authority, teaches us a complete and perfect code of morals regulating
all our lives, and to that code we must strive to conform ourselves, if
we would enter into eternal life.
PRAYER
AND WORSHIP
Prayer is defined as 'the raising up of the mind and heart to God, by
adoring, praising, and thanking Him, and by begging of Him all
blessings for soul and body'. And that being its nature, it must be
obvious to everyone that there can be no living union and fellowship
with God without prayer. It is the very breath of our spiritual life.
We must pray each of us privately, and we must also join in the common
prayers of the Church. Otherwise we should be isolated; we should not
be sharing in the common life of the Body of Christ. We shall see
presently that there is in the Catholic Church one special act of
worship, which is something more than mere prayer. That is what is
called the Mass. It is the central act of the Church's worship, in
which all are bound to join. But it is so closely connected with the
greatest of the Sacraments, that I must deal with them together, and
that I will do presently. But first a few words about another important
Sacrament.
CONFIRMATION
When a child has been baptized, for a few years that is all that he
requires. The gift of life is his, and during his infancy he can
neither lose it nor receive anything more. But presently he grows to an
age when he is capable of understanding something about God, and the
difference between right and wrong. And then his difficulties begin. He
knows what is right and what pleases God, and he is tempted to do
wrong. Therefore he now needs a new help, in order that he may keep the
grace of his baptism, and not lose it through sin. I shall have more to
say later about how grace may be lost, and how, if lost, it may be
recovered. Enough to say here that it can be lost through sin.
Therefore as soon as the child is old enough to commit sin, he needs a
new power from God, that he may be able to resist temptation to sin,
and so keep the grace given him in Baptism. And this God provides in
the Sacrament of Confirmation. It is administered by the Bishop laying
his hand on the child, praying that he may receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost, and anointing him with a special kind of oil mixed with balsam,
which is called Chrism. And the gift conveyed by it is the power to
fight against temptation and resist evil. Like Baptism, it is only
given once, because this gift once given remains for ever.
THE
CENTRE OF OUR LIFE
We now come to what is the very centre of the life and worship of the
Church. I mean the Mass, and that great Sacrament, which is closely
connected with it, or rather forms one thing with it, that great
Sacrament which is called the Holy Eucharist, or Holy Communion, or
very often simply 'The Blessed Sacrament'. What, then, is the Mass ?
And what is the Blessed Sacrament ?
The Mass is the Christian Sacrifice. But this needs explanation,
because unfortunately the idea of sacrifice is no longer familiar to
most of the people of this country. Yet it is an essential part of
religion. Sacrifices of some sort are found in all religions. The root
idea of it is an offering made to God in acknowledgement of His supreme
sovereignty over us and over all things. The most common form of
sacrifice in pre-Christian religions was the offering of an animal by
killing it. This is a natural symbol of what the worshipper wants to
express, which is the complete offering, the total surrender of himself
to God. To do this be takes an animal to represent himself, and offers
that to God by destroying it. Then several other subsidiary ideas also
come in. The worshipper remembers that he is a sinner, and so offers
his sacrifice also as an act of reparation for his sins. He thinks of
God's goodness, and offers it in thanksgiving. And finally, in return
for this act of worship he hopes for future benefits, and so it is an
act of petition. Thus Sacrifice is really the highest and most complete
act of worship.
But there was one great defect in all those old sacrifices of animals
and the like. That is that they were of no real value in the sight of
God. The worshipper did his best, but he had nothing of any real value
to offer. But the coming of the Son of God changed all that. I have
already spoken of how He offered Himself to the Father in His
acceptance of suffering and death upon the Cross. Now this offering by
Our Lord of Himself was really a perfect sacrifice, made by Him on
behalf of the whole human race. It was offered by Him as a supreme act
of worship, in acknowledgement of God's sovereign majesty, as an act of
reparation for the sins of men, as an act of thanksgiving for all God's
goodness to His creatures, and as a petition to the Father to bestow
further benefits upon them.
Henceforth, therefore, no other sacrifice could be required. And yet we
must have a sacrifice that we can offer, for we have seen that it is an
essential part of religion. Consequently God has made a wonderful
provision whereby we can continue to offer the sacrifice of the Cross,
and to offer it as our
sacrifice. That is what the Holy Mass is. It is the continual renewal
of Our Lord's Sacrifice of Himself upon the Cross. Our Lord instituted
it on the evening before His death. After He had eaten His Last Supper
with His Apostles He took bread into His Hands, blessed it, and said:
'This is My Body.' Then He took a cup of wine and blessed it, and said:
'This is My Blood of the New Testament, which shall be shed for many
unto the remission of sins.' And, as He said these words, He actually
changed the bread into His Body, and the wine into His Blood. And then
He gave to His Apostles and their successors power to do the same. So,
when a priest says Mass, he simply repeats what Our Lord said and did
at that Last Supper. And when he repeats the words, 'This is My Body .
. . This is My Blood', the bread and wine are again changed into the
Body and Blood of Christ. That is to say, that Our Lord becomes
actually present under the appearance of bread and wine. And, as He
does so, He, in a mysterious way, renews the Sacrifice that He offered
long ago upon the Cross. He renews it in such a way that we can take
part in it. We could not take part in it, when it was offered on
Calvary, because that was long before we were born. But now that it is
continually renewed in our midst, it is very easy. All we have to do is
to unite ourselves in will and intention with the sacrifice which Our
Lord is offering, asking God the Father to accept it as ours.
The Holy Mass - The Centre of our Life
This, then, is the great act of Christian worship, the Christian
Sacrifice. But it is more than that. For, after Our Lord has offered
Himself to the Father, He then gives Himself to us to be the Food of
our souls. After the sacrifice is completed, the Body of Christ is
distributed to the Faithful in Holy Communion. It is not bread that
they receive, but the actual Body of Christ, that is to say, Christ
Himself. He gives Himself to us to nourish and increase the Divine Life
in our souls. And so you see how it must be as I have said, that this
is the very centre of our life and worship. For here is Our Lord
Himself in the midst of us, offering Himself for us, inviting us to
join in His Sacrifice, and giving Himself to us.
But even that is not all that the Blessed Sacrament is to us. For, when
the Mass is finished, what remains of the Blessed Sacrament is placed
in a receptacle above the altar, called the Tabernacle, and there it is
kept perpetually, so that Our Lord remains always present in our
churches. The Blessed Sacrament is kept primarily that it may be always
ready to be taken to the sick, but also that we may have Our Lord's
continual presence, so that at any time we can go into the church and
find Him there ready to receive our worship and to hear our prayers. We
also make use of it in the beautiful service called Benediction. The
Blessed Sacrament is taken out of the Tabernacle, and placed in a
vessel called a monstrance, so that we can see it. And then, after
certain hymns and prayers have been sung and said, and after there has
been sufficient time for adoration and worship, the priest takes the
monstrance in his hands, and silently makes the sign of the cross over
the people, who kneel to receive Our Lord's blessing. For then it is
not the priest, but Our Lord Himself present there in the Blessed
Sacrament, who is blessing them. There are also other practices
connected with the Blessed Sacrament, such as 'Exposition', when it is
left exposed in the monstrance for several hours or even days for the
worship of the Faithful, and Processions of the Blessed Sacrament, and
so forth. But all these are easily understood, when once you have
realized the fact that it is Our Lord Himself who is present there
under the appearance of bread.
LIFE
LOST AND RECOVERED
I have already said that it is possible to lose grace by sin. Sin means
any action which is contrary to God's law, and therefore an offence
against God. But it is obvious that some sins are worse than others. In
fact they are divided, according to their gravity, into 'mortal' and
'venial' sins. A mortal sin is one which is so gravely offensive to God
that the person who has committed it no longer remains the friend of
God. He has, as it were, turned his back on God. Consequently God
withdraws from him the gift of grace. Then the soul has lost its
supernatural life, and if the person were to die in that state, he
would be for ever separated from God, and incapable of eternal life.
But he may afterwards repent and desire to return to God. And God, in
His infinite mercy, has provided a means whereby he may regain the gift
of life that he has thrown away. This is another Sacrament, called the
Sacrament of Penance, or more commonly 'Confession', or
'Reconciliation'. The penitent sinner has to go to a priest and confess
his sins, and then the priest, if he judges that the penitent is really
sorry for his sin and intends to try to avoid it in future, gives him
'absolution'. That is to say that by God's authority he conveys to him
God's forgiveness. And then immediately the grace which he had lost is
restored to his soul. Our Lord gave this wonderful power to the priests
of His Church after His Resurrection, as we read in St John's Gospel.
I should, however, mention here that Catholics are in the habit of
going to Confession even when they have not fallen into mortal sin,
because although Confession is not necessary for the forgiveness of
venial sin, it is a good thing to confess one's venial sins. and have
them forgiven in that way. The reason of this is that through this
Sacrament we not only get our sins forgiven, but also receive grace to
overcome our faults and to avoid falling into graver sins. So all good
practising Catholics go to Confession frequently.
TWO
OTHER SACRAMENTS
Besides the four Sacraments that I have mentioned there are three
others, making seven in all. But one of them, which is called 'Extreme
Unction', or 'Anointing of the Sick' is specially concerned with the
end of life, and so I will leave it until I come to speak about the
end. The other two are 'Holy Orders' and 'Matrimony'. These two differ
from the other five in this, that they are not meant for everybody, but
for special classes of persons. They make provision rather for the
whole community than for individuals. Holy Orders is to provide the
Church with priests, who are needed for the administration of the other
Sacraments, and to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and to give
them the special graces and powers that are needed for their holy
office. And Matrimony is to make proper provision for the propagation
of the Christian community. The real unit of human society is the
family. Marriage is normally the foundation of a new family. Therefore
God has provided a special Sacrament by which the family is sanctified
in its origin, giving to the married couple just that grace which they
need to be loving and faithful to one another, and to bring up their
children in the fear and love of God.
MORTIFICATION
You probably know that the Church has certain rules about fasting and
abstinence, as, for example, in 1963 that all her members must abstain
from flesh meat on Fridays. [Today this is commuted into an obligation
to perform some penance or mortification on Fridays.] I cannot give the
rules here in detail, but I must just explain the principle underlying
them, for indeed it is one of the important principles of our Christian
life. I have already said that, if we would enter into eternal life, we
are bound to regulate all our lives by the rule of God's commandments.
But the great difficulty about this is that our fallen human nature is
full of selfish, evil and unruly desires and inclinations, which hinder
us in our efforts to obey God's laws. Even the wonderful grace that we
get from the Sacraments does not altogether overcome this difficulty.
We must therefore practise what is called 'mortification'. That is to
say, we must practise ourselves in suppressing and restraining all
those evil inclinations. And the rules about fasting and abstinence are
intended to help us. By submitting ourselves in these matters to the
laws of the Church and sometimes denying ourselves things which in
themselves are perfectly lawful, we discipline ourselves and gain the
power to restrain ourselves when tempted to do what is not lawful. The
Church's rules in this matter are very simple and easy. But in obeying
them we learn the principle. And we are encouraged to use other
voluntary mortifications of our own.
OUR
LADY AND THE SAINTS
These, then, are the chief means by which the Divine Life given to us
in our Baptism is nourished and kept alive in our souls. But God in His
goodness has given us another powerful help. He has provided that all
the Saints and Angels in Heaven shall help us. He has taught us that we
can pray to them, not in the same way that we pray to Him, but asking
them to pray for us. And we believe that this is of very great use to
us. For the Saints in Heaven are much holier and nearer to God than we
are, and therefore their prayers must be of much more power than our
poor efforts. And then, greater and holier by far than all the Saints
and Angels, there is the Blessed Mother of God. You know of course that
we Catholics have a very great devotion to Our Lord's Mother, the
Blessed Virgin Mary. We do not worship her at all in the way that we
worship God. We know that, however great and holy, she is only a
creature, and between God and even the holiest of His creatures there
is an infinite distance. But we do give her great honour above every
other creature. Why? Simply because God Himself has honoured her above
all His other creatures. She is quite literally the Mother of God.
Jesus Christ is God, and the Blessed Virgin Mary is His Mother.
Therefore she is the Mother of God. And what greater honour could God
give to a creature? We believe also that, since God chose her for that
great honour, He kept her perfectly free from every stain of sin, and
filled her with most wonderful grace. That is why we love and honour
her so much. But besides that we regard her as our Mother. Our Lord has
adopted us all as His brothers and sisters. Therefore His Mother
becomes our Mother, and she is bound, out of love for Him, to regard us
as her children. And so, more than to all the Saints, we pray to her
with perfect confidence, knowing that she loves us, and that her Son
will deny her nothing that she asks of Him.
VARIOUS
DEVOTIONS
Besides the one great Sacrifice and the seven Sacraments instituted by
Our Lord Himself, the Church has devised many other ways of stimulating
and helping our spiritual life. Thus we have what are called
'sacramentals'. These are not Sacraments, because they do not actually
convey grace, as the Sacraments do. But they are called sacramentals
because they have a certain resemblance to Sacraments, and we get grace
by the devout use of them, through the prayers of the Church. Such, for
example, is Holy Water. The Church blesses this water, and prays that
those who use it may be defended from evil spirits, and receive health
of soul and body, and so forth. We trust, then, that God will hear the
prayers of His Church, and grant those graces to those who piously use
it. And so also the Church blesses many other things for our use, not
only pious objects like crucifixes and medals and statues, but houses
and food and medicine, and all kinds of things that we use daily. Then,
as you have noticed, we have crucifixes and statues and pictures in our
churches, to keep us constantly in mind of our Lord Who died for us,
and of His Blessed Mother and the Saints. Again, the Church has devised
many beautiful forms of devotion, such as the Way of the Cross, the
Holy Rosary, various practices of devotion to our Lord's Sacred Heart,
and so forth. But I have not space to describe all these things. Enough
to say that they are all just devout practices, which help to express
and stimulate our devotion and love of our Blessed Lord, who is the
Centre of all our worship.
APPROACHING
THE END
Sooner or later we all come in sight of that great crisis which we call
death, the end of our earthly life, which generally comes as the result
of some sickness. Now, when death is near, or when we seem to be in
danger of it, we have reached a time of great trial and difficulty,
when we need very special help and grace from God. And so to meet this
need God has made very particular provision. When a person is very ill,
and there seems to be some danger of the illness terminating fatally,
he receives what are called the 'Last Sacraments'. First of all he goes
to Confession, in order to make sure that all his sins have been
forgiven. Then he receives Holy Communion, which in these circumstances
is called the Viaticum, which literally means Food for his last
journey. Naturally, when the Christian is in danger of death he wishes
again to receive his Lord and have Him with him. And then he receives
the sacrament called 'Extreme Unction' or 'Anointing of the Sick',
which is the special sacrament for the sick. It consists outwardly in
the anointing of the sick person with oil blessed by the Bishop,
accompanied by prayer. And the effect of it is to give the sick person
just that grace of which he stands in need. Sometimes it has the effect
of restoring bodily health. But in any case, it takes away the remains
of sin, and gives wonderful consolation, courage and peace of soul to
the sick person.
AFTER
DEATH
It remains to give a brief outline of what God has revealed to us about
our life after death. Death, of course, is merely the parting of the
soul from the body. And the first thing that happens to the soul after
that is that it is judged, and its eternal destiny is at once settled
and made known to it. In this judgement everything depends upon whether
the soul is then in a state of grace or not. It will be evident from
what has been said that this must be so. It is grace alone that makes
the soul capable of union with God and of living for ever in perfect
happiness in Him. This grace the soul received in Baptism. Everything
depends upon whether it kept it to the end, or if it sometimes lost it
by mortal sin, whether it at least regained it before the end. And here
let us notice for our comfort that God is so merciful to sinners that
he gives them every chance even to the last moment. The way He has
appointed of being restored to grace is the Sacrament of Penance. But
if for any reason it is not possible for a person to receive that
Sacrament, then what is called an act of perfect contrition will
suffice. Perfect contrition means being sorry for your sins, because
you love God, and you know that they have displeased and offended Him.
If anyone is sorry for his sins in that way, even at the last moment,
and even if he cannot go to Confession, God forgives him and restores
him to grace.
But in any case, the last moment does come some time or other, and then
the soul is either in a state of grace or in a state of unforgiven sin.
And in the state in which it leaves the body it remains for ever. Now,
if it is in a state of unforgiven sin, it has not got that divine life,
which would make it capable of union with God. On the contrary, it is
in a state of enmity against God, and therefore it can only fall into
that state of eternal separation from God and eternal misery, which is
called hell. On the other hand, if it is in a state of grace, it must
reach that union with God which is Heaven, sooner or later. But it may
not be fit for that just yet. It may have committed many sins, of which
indeed the guilt has been forgiven, but for which it, still has to
suffer. Or, in other words, it has so defiled itself with sin, that
before it is fit for Heaven it has to go through a period of
purification by suffering. And the place of this purification is what
is called Purgatory. God has not revealed to us very much about
Purgatory, except that it exists, and that many people have to pass
through it before they can reach Heaven. And He has also told us that
we, who are still on earth, can help the souls in Purgatory by our
prayers, and by offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for them. This
is a very comforting piece of knowledge, for it enables us still to do
something for the friends who have been separated from us by death.
We have no idea how long the purification of souls in Purgatory lasts.
But sooner or later those who have died in a state of grace will reach
Heaven. What is Heaven? It is something so far beyond our experience,
that no power of imagination can form any idea of it. All we know about
it is that if and when we reach that state, we shall in some wonderful
way see God as He is, we shall be perfectly united with Him, and He
will fill us with perfect happiness, of which there shall be no end.
And is not that enough for us to know? What more can we desire to know,
if we are assured that somehow God will satisfy all the highest desires
of our nature, and make us perfectly happy for ever? We can well wait
for the knowledge of what the exact nature of that happiness is.
But even when the soul has reached Heaven, all is not yet. perfected.
For the human soul is not complete without the body. A soul is not a
complete human being. A complete human being is composed of soul and
body. And so there will come a time when our bodies will be restored to
us. That will happen at the end of the world. Our bodies will be
raised, not as they are now, but in some wonderful way 'glorified',
made free from suffering and change, and from all the limitations of
this earthly life, and fit for an eternal and glorious life. And so we
shall live in God for ever.
CONCLUSION
Such in brief outline is the Way to Eternal Life, which God has
revealed to us. I said at the beginning that God is very generous to
those who, through no fault of their own, fail to find this way. It is
quite certain that without the gift of grace no human being can attain
to heaven, and the way that I have outlined is the way that God has
appointed for receiving and keeping that gift. But at the same time we
also know that to those who without their own fault are ignorant of the
Catholic Religion and the Catholic Church, God gives grace in other
ways. That is a very comforting thing to know, because thus, of our
friends who have lived and died in ignorance of the true Religion we
may have a good hope that God has led them to the end in other ways.
But on the other hand it is obvious that it is far better to go by the
King's Highway. That is the only way for us who know the truth.
And as to you, my friend, who read these words, what are we to say ? If
you have taken the trouble to read this pamphlet, you have probably got
some idea that this may be
the right road. Then I would just say this in conclusion. You must take the further trouble to
study the question. Those who know nothing of the true way may be led
by God along other ways. But that does not apply to those who take no
trouble about the matter. If you are too much occupied with your
worldly business to take the trouble to enquire, you cannot expect God
to lead you. If, then, you have once got an idea that this may be the
right way, go on and look into the matter. I have not attempted here to
put before you the proofs that it is so. You have now to examine the
evidence, and you will find plenty of books in which it is set forth at
length. You will find a number of other pamphlets in the C.T.S. rack
where you found this, which will help you.
[You can read or down-load more pamphlets from this site:
www.pamphlets.org.au/cts ] Examine the evidence for yourself. And as
you do
so, pray very earnestly to God to show you the truth. If you will only
do that honestly, and with a sincere desire to know and to do what is
pleasing to God, without fear of the consequences in this world, I have
no doubt about the ultimate result.
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