The Undying Tragedy of the World

“The following pages contain a series of Lenten Lectures, delivered in St. Francis Xavier (College) Church during the season of 1919. In them an attempt has been made to tell the story of the sorrows and sufferings of Jesus Christ.” Let us consider this: “the special attention which MotherChurch pays to the Passion of our Blessed Lord is a well known fact. She begins her religious functions with the sacred sign of the cross marking her brow and signing the foreheads of her children. She blesses the objects that are set aside for holy purposes by tracing above them the same hallowed symbol. She crowns the spires of her temples of worship with this august standard of her King and' Spouse. And the cross is the epitome of the Passion.” Thus begins the chapter on Judas and Disloyalty. “The Apostles were disloyal: for, though the Master had given them permission to depart, leaving Him to tread the wine-press of sorrow alone, still they were faithless to their boast that they were "ready to go to prison and to death" with Him. Peter, who was to be the foundation-stone of Christ's everlasting Church, was faithless: for, that same night which had blessed him with the heaven-like joy of his First Holy Communion and had hallowed him with the elevation to a share in the very priesthood of Christ, witnessed his cowardly denial of his Master and his cursing and swearing that he "knew not the man," whom he had once gloriously confessed to be "the Christ, the Son of the living God."” And thus the Church was indeed in the Blessed Virgin Mary alone at this time. We next consider the Sanhedrin and Duplicity. “Let us proceed to treat of another powerfor evil, which often leads to the wretchedness of disloyalty, and which numbers its victims by uncounted millions. This is insincerity, double-dealing, crookedness, craftiness-in a word, duplicity.”“But there is still another force for evil which binds many a slave with the chains of degradation and drags many a victim down to his undoing. It is the spirit of time-serving. This is the spirit of those who look only to the main chance of temporal advantage; who will do right, so long as no sacrifice is entailed; who are so wrapped up with the littleness of self that even patriotism becomes egotism; who will abandon everything and everyone-friends, family, reputation, justice, and right-that their own personal ends may be subserved.” we read int eh chapter on Pilate and Time-Serving. In Herod and Lust we find: “But there is another fatal agency whose track down the ages is marked with desolation and death. It is probably but too sadly true, that its slaves outnumber the victims of any other enemy of righteousness. The dungeons of eternal hell are filled with the broken dupes that it has "cast out into exterior darkness," where there are ' 'weeping and gnashing of teeth"; and the pathways of this life are strewn with the wrecks that it has made. For, it has degraded the human nature of countless men and women and has dragged them down to a debasement below that of brute beasts. It has crushed manhood and defiled womanhood; it has crowded madhouses with gibbering fools; it has disrupted families: it has eaten into the vitals of nations and has left them decayed skeletons along the highway of history. And the name of this enemy of God and man is lust.” This book concludes with chapters on the Soldiers and Cruelty, followed by the People and Apostasy. “The climax of evil is the total turning away from God, the final and decisive casting off of allegiance to Him. It is apostasy.”