CAPG's Blog 

We have something more precious to us than that young maiden was to her father. Does it not shame us to remember his love for her, and his faith in Christ our Lord, contrasted with our apathy about our souls? Where is our daily earnest prayer, our anxiety about the state of our souls, whether dangerous, dying, or dead? Do we fall at our Lord's feet, praying Him to come into our house?

If we were ill, you will say, we should pray thus, and be as anxious as that father was. No, the preparation for a holy death is not made when we come to die. It is during life that we should prepare for the end. If we have little or no desire, no fervent longing for Holy Communion during life, we shall not have it when we come to die. Each Communion should be a preparation for the last one. And oh, how much depends on our Blessed Lord coming to us then! For so great a favor, is it not well worth to pray for it day after day? Each time we receive our Blessed Lord in the Holy Eucharist our most earnest prayer and desire should be, that He will come to us at the end, and then our soul" shall be safe."

How the saints longed for that safeguard when death approached! St. Benedict had himself borne to the church, and, supported in the arms of his brethren, standing before the altar after receiving His Master and his true King Christ, he gave up his soul to God. A fitting end for such a blessed life. And St. Thomas Aquinas, when the Holy Viaticum was brought to him, though dying, raised himself and knelt and prayed aloud,

I firmly believe that Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, is present in this most holy sacrament. I receive Thee, the price of my soul's ransom, I receive Thee, the Viaticum of my soul's pilgrimage. Thou, O Christ, art the King of glory, Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father." And so needful and precious is it to our souls to receive the Holy Viaticum that St. Mary Magdalen was transported by a miracle from her hermitage to receive It ere she died.

If hitherto we have been careless and negligent in this respect-seldom thinking and praying for a holy death, and piously longing that our Lord in His sweet mercy may come to us at the end, let us begin at once, heartily, fervently to make it our daily supplication. Our divine Lord longs to save us, but He does expect to be asked, to be implored, to be desired and yearned for. Let us pray like that father in the gospel, and say like David, "O God, I have declared to Thee my life. Thou hast set my tears in Thy sight. In what day soever I shall call upon Thee, behold, I know that Thou art my God. In God I have hoped. . . ..because Thou hast delivered my soul from death; that I may please in the sight of God, in the light of the living " (Ps. lv. 9, 13).

Prepare in life, pray in life, for at our last illness, through misery, pain, and weakness, there may be little zest for prayer. The faithful Lord will remember all the supplications and holy desires and He will come to us, with Peter and James and John, as the gospel says, typifying faith and hope and charity, and our soul shall be safe. The words with which the priest administers Holy Viaticum show us the danger of that hour, and how, indeed, we need an almighty guardian. The priest holding the Blessed Sacrament, which is

given to us as the food of the wayfarer, for our soul's journey to the other world, says, "Receive, brother, the Viaticum of the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who may guard thee from the malignant enemy and lead thee to life everlasting."

Thus our dear Redeemer comes to our soul that it may be safe and may live. Yes, this life may pass away, but our soul's life is just beginning-the eternal blessed life, to which our Lord will lead it. That blessed life which we shall pass in beholding, glorifying, loving our good God, our Savior for ever and for ever." Short Sermons on the Epistles & Gospels of the Sundays of the Year By Fr. Francis Paulinus Hickey (23rd Sunday after Pentecost)

Then what does Almighty God expect from us? First to refer everything to Him. By a pure and holy intention to offer Him all our thoughts, words, actions, and sufferings. They may be poor things indeed, but coming from a child they are accepted and blessed by our Father. And this good intention would certainly keep us from anything unworthy and sinful, for how could we dare to offer that to our heavenly Father! Thus we see we have to renew this pure intention and offering to God many a time, for how often do sudden gusts of temper, of temptation sweep us from the path of perfection! But we must never despond. What God loves is that we should at once begin again, trusting that He will help us.

Another thing that God expects from us is that all we do for Him should be done with exactitude and promptness. Our work for God must not be done slovenly. Our self-respect would forbid us to act thus to our betters, even to one another: then how dare we treat God with disrespect! Duties have their fixed hours, and duties to God, then, must not be put off or curtailed. And punctuality is true politeness; then to Whom should we be polite if not to the Almighty? How many of our prayers and Mass attendances have been so spoiled by want of exactitude and punctuality! Promptitude shows a good and willing heart.

To persevere in acting up to grace requires, then, a pure intention, exactitude, and finally fervor. This is a devout disposition of heart, which enables us to offer to God our thoughts and our prayers with earnestness, zeal, and love. One devout Hail Mary from the heart is of more worth than a rosary hastily slurred over with a distracted mind. And here again, the good intention comes to our help. A moment's thought! and we should remember Whom we are addressing, and in Whose presence we are. We may be on our knees, but our hearts are not worshiping. The thought of our great needs and necessities; the thought that the great God in heaven is listening to us, the thought that we are supplicating help through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who died for us, Who purchased these blessings that we are imploring, and Who, perhaps, is present on the altar before us—this thought should make us reverent and fervent.

We have help, too, given us by our Blessed Savior, to keep us fervent and to increase our devotion. One such help that should spur us on is to remember purgatory. There all the penalties for remissness and carelessness have to be purged away in sufferings far greater than we can picture to ourselves here on earth. What a dreadful store of punishment are we, perhaps, accumulating for ourselves now! God knows. But would not this thought check us in our tepidity and sloth? Would it not spur us on to do our very utmost, praying and working, with zeal and generosity of heart?

Another and a more consoling help is to call on our Mother Mary," our life, our sweetness, and our hope." We offer up our prayers through her: surely, then, we should offer her of our best. And how transformed our poor prayers will be when they have passed through the hands of Mary Immaculate! She will not despise our petitions. She lovingly accepts every little prayer. And more than that: she prompts us to pray, and blesses our hearts with fervor and persevering love.

This life is the time for tilling and sowing the seed; the harvest-time comes later, when God perfects the good work. Look forward to that time, and we shall be strong and manly in acting up to God's graces and blessings. The wonder to us will be that our little efforts, our poor, faulty prayers, our beginning again at once after every failure, have been received and blessed by God; that day after day He has led us on to persevere, perfecting the good work, making us "sincere and without offense" until the day of recompense shall come. Our pure intention—all for God, our careful exactitude, our fervor have led us on safely to persevere "through Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God." Short Sermons on the Epistles & Gospels of the Sundays of the Year By Fr.  Francis Paulinus Hickey (Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost)

Take what the saints have done and said. The great St. Teresa prays thus: "Forgive us, O Lord, not because of our prayers and good deeds, but because we have forgiven." When Blessed Juvenal Ancina was dying, poisoned by an enemy, he not only refused to mention the name of the assassin, whom he knew well, but strictly forbade that any inquiry should be made to lead to his punishment. And St. John Gualbertus, about to kill the murderer of his brother, at the sign and mention of the Cross, forgave him from his heart. And this was the turning-point-a proud young nobleman changed into a saint.

Not only were the saints ready to forgive, but they practiced active and kindly charity amongst the poor, the sick, and the afflicted. When we read the lives of holy men we cannot help but be struck by this humble and penitential habit. Even exalted personages and profound scholars steal time from their other labors to visit hospitals and the poor in their homes. This is one of the surest marks of real holiness. And others, again, devoted their whole lives to such work and founded religious Orders to perpetuate their labors. Oh! they had compassion on their fellow-servants. Call to mind St. Vincent of Paul. Who shall ever tell all that has been done in his life and since his death, by himself and those he taught to succor human misery? Their name is legion who have followed in his footsteps. And St. Camillus, the patron of a holy death, whose holy calling it was to tend the dying, winning poor sinners over in his hospitals to repent and die in peace. These are the heroes of charity, and so many more that could be named, and whom you of yourselves will remember. Heroes of charity, who loved to tend the most loathsome diseases, and whose touch wrought so many miraculous cures. We cannot be like them heroes, but we can and must pray to have a little of their spirit of kindness and compassion.

Come down! Yes, daily upon our altars, and yet the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not content. There is another yearning, another longing that inflames it. Come down, He bids us pray again. Come down, dear Lord, into the very depths of our poor souls, come down and heal them in Holy Communion. Have we no pity for our own poor souls, that are dying-frail, languishing, wasting for nourishment and health and strength? And our Blessed Lord comes down to us, saying to us, "I am the Bread of life. . . . If any man eat of this Bread he shall live for ever" (John vi. 48, 52). All that is wanting is our desire and longing to come to Him to be healed.

What shall we answer to Christ the Judge if our souls die? It will be all our own fault. No shadow of an excuse. No one upon whom to lay the blame except our own selves. We may say we were tempted by the devil; but here was our Lord to succour us. We were weak and sinful; yes, and we neglected to seek strength and holiness here in the Blessed Sacrament. We were busy and occupied with many cares and the pursuits of the world; ah! had we not time to secure eternity? Passing pleasures of an hour were more thought of than the eternal joys of heaven, of which the Blessed Eucharist is the token and the pledge.

Our divine Lord is longing to come to us; but we, alas! have little longing or desire to come to Him. Where is our faith, our hope, our love for Him? Where is the fear within us lest our soul should die? It humbles us to remember the devotedness of others, and how in response to the cry of their hearts, our Saviour has come and made His abode with them, and transformed them into saints. Yes, they have become saints because they were anxious about their souls, and their faith taught them how their souls could be safeguarded. The cry of their heart was, "Lord, come down"; they knew they could not do without Him. And the safety, the growth, the perfecting of their souls was in this-that our Lord had come with His blessed healing and nourishing, and had stayed with them. His Presence made them realize more and more His blessings and His love, and then on their part their desire and longing for Him and wholehearted response to His graces grew more and more.

Mass and Holy Communion must not become matters of custom and habit, and there is here a great danger, especially for the young and thoughtless. But they must be so prepared for and longed for each day, that this love of receiving our divine Lord may be intensified each time. We are humbled, when we think of the devotion of the saints that we read of. How St. Gerard, a mere little boy, longed so for his Lord that St. Michael the Archangel brought him his first Communion. How the Sacred Host left the altar and came of itself to St. Catherine of Siena at the end of the church.