During the time of our Lord's public life he performed many astounding miracles which proved His dominion over the forces of nature, which proved His power in the spirit world beyond the grave. He gave sight to the blind, health to the sick, life to the dead. He multiplied a few loaves of bread and some fishes so that the hunger of five thousand people was appeased. All these were miracles that fell under the senses. They are evidences of His power which come to our understanding through the ordinary channels of human thought and knowledge.

  But in the great mystery we celebrate during this octave, my dear brethren, faith and not the senses tells us of the greatest of all His miracles: His presence in the Holy Eucharist. Our eyes see nothing that would of itself convince us of His presence. Our senses cannot perceive that our Lord is truly present under the appearances of bread and wine. It is only by the aid of faith that we can penetrate the veil that hides Him from our view. We believe solely on the testimony of our Lord; we call to mind the words He spoke at the Last Supper, and remember that He has declared those blessed who have not seen and yet have believed. So when we receive Holy Communion, when we assist at Benediction, when we make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, we make an act of faith in the Real Presence.

The mysterious life that our Lord has chosen in the Blessed Sacrament is the greatest of all miracles, and when considered attentively fills the mind with wonder and amazement. By a constant and perpetually recurring miracle He abides with His creatures, He still dwells among us, and finds delight in distributing gifts and blessings to the children of men. It was not sufficient for the accomplishment of His plan that He should assume our human nature, that He endeared Himself to the poorest and most destitute of the people among whom He lived. He laid plans and appointed ambassadors to secure the peaceful conquest of all nations; he entered into an agreement beforehand with all who should receive His doctrine: He promised to reward every one who would live righteously, in conformity with the law that He established.

He is still living with us. He is as really present on our altars as He is in the home of His eternal Father. He is with us because of His personal love for each one of us. His presence among us is a great and unceasing wonder, but it is a wonder that can only be explained by His love. Wherever the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is celebrated, there is He present not only in His Divinity, but in His ever-adorable humanity as well. Thrones and temples have been built for Him in all nations, and from His presence the sorrowful find comfort, the weak find strength, the cowardly find courage, and all find the pledge of eternal life." Five Minutes Sermons by the Paulist Fathers, 2nd Sunday after Pentecost

This disposition of St. Thomas was very wrong. He ought to have believed without hesitation. He had seen our Lord work miracles without number; he had seen Him give sight to the blind, even those blind from birth; make the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak; he had seen Him raise the dead to life, raise Lazarus after being dead and buried already four days. He knew that our Lord had predicted His resurrection. He ought to have believed, and he sinned in not believing. He was obstinate in unbelief, refusing to credit the testimony of his companions, whom he knew to be honest and trustworthy.

Our Lord in the kindness of His heart forgave him, and made him put his finger into the print of the nails and into the wound in His side to convince him, and also to convince us by His testimony of the reality of His resurrection. But at the same time He rebuked him, and taught us all a grand lesson. He said: "Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed; blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed.”

We have the faith on the testimony of the apostles and disciples who recorded it in the Gospels, and who sealed their testimony in their own blood.

We have the testimony of all the disciples who repeatedly saw our Lord after His resurrection, sometimes a great number of them, over five hundred at once.

We have the testimony of the Catholic Church; of all those millions on millions who have lived from that day to this; of the wonderful providence of God and His care of His Church until now.

This ought to be enough. This ought to be enough to make us say our act of faith, "O my God, I believe whatever Thy Holy Church proposes to my belief, because Thou hast revealed it to her. Thou who canst neither deceive nor be deceived."

This is the age of unbelief. Very great numbers of men are occupied in trying to undermine the faith. The newspapers are full of infidel objections. The press is teeming with works written expressly to destroy the faith. The flimsiest reasons are brought forward with a bold face as if they were unanswerable. The very fact that the things of God and religion are so high and incomprehensible is brought forward as the principal reason why they are not to be believed.

We have believed once for all, on the truest and most solid evidence. Our business now is to "live by faith." To put in practice the precepts of our faith, and to follow the example of the Author and Finisher of our faith, our Lord Jesus Christ.

We are not of those who are to be "beat about by every wind of doctrine.” We are not to be moved by the vain babblings of men, who are wise in their own conceit and think they know everything, though they know very little after all. We will not imitate St. Thomas in his unbelief, and refuse to believe the wonderful things of God because they are so high and wonderful, but imitate him when in wonder and admiration he cried, "My Lord and my God." Believing in the testimony of God and His Church, and putting away all sceptical and imaginative doubts, we shall receive the blessing pronounced by our Lord: "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed." (Low Sunday - Five minute Sermons by the Paulist Fathers)

It seems to me that this feast is a great day for sinners - meaning, of course, repentant sinners. For look at the facts? Who is the saint of the Resurrection by excellence? Certainly dear Mary Magdalen, the type of all the penitent. She stood beneath the Cross when Jesus died, comforting Him and His Mother in that dreadful hour of His doom and of that Mother's woe. And when the dead corpse was lowered down, Mary Magdalen pressed His limbs and feet and hands to her bosom while our sorrowful Mother clasped His heart to her own and kissed His pallid face a thousand times. Mary Magdalen helped to lay Him in His grave. She watched then; when driven away by the soldiers she bought spices and came again to embalm Him. And whose words are those repeated to-day all round the world as the dawn greets the watching glances of the faithful. "They have taken away my Lord! I know not where they have laid Him"; and again the amazed and ecstatic exclamation when she saw Him in the garden: "Rabboni! Master."

What a great store of love, says St. Gregory the Great, was in that woman's heart, who, when even His disciples were gone away, could not tear herself from the grave of the Lord!

See, then, my brethren, the reward of the love which is in true sorrow for sin; it is given a singular kind of pre-eminence; it is selected above that of innocence and placed on guard at the post of honor to receive the first public greeting from the Immortal King of Glory, triumphant over sin for ever. I say public greeting, for doubtless Jesus visited and greeted His Mother in private first of all; but this is not written down for our edification, and Mary Magdalen's privilege is. Sinners need encouragement, and certainly they get it today in the honor paid to their glorious patron, to the woman who had many sins forgiven her because she loved much.

I say again that sinners need encouragement. In truth, there is no shame so deadly as that which conscious guilt brings to the human soul. There is no degradation like vice - in fact, there is none other but vice. Hence many sinners are met with who do not turn to God and who hold back from confession and communion because they are ashamed and afraid. It is not so much love of sin as want of confidence that now hinders them. They have felt the force of passion as the slave feels the whip of the slave-driver; or they have repented before and fallen again, and this fills them with distrust in themselves; or their surroundings are a constant source of temptation; or they have been so long away that the very process of reconciliation to God, the very practice of the simplest acts of religion, have grown strange to them. These, and other reasons, varying from mere timidity to utter despair, show the need of a strong word of encouragement to sinners. This is the day for giving sinners courage to repent. Oh! let every man and woman partake of Christ's courage today. All who are sinners, let them loath and detest their sins, and let them feel that if our Lord is with them they can conquer any passion, resist any temptation, and persevere to the end.

Now, in considering this question let us not get into a panic. God knows us just as we are, and far better than we know ourselves. Therefore He is not so cruel as to hold us strictly to all our promises. "God is true and every man is a liar," says Holy Writ, and our experience of human nature demonstrates that although we are honestly determined to tell the truth, and do tell it, when we promise to God to behave ourselves properly, yet we know very well that in a moment of weakness we may break down, and that is understood when we make our promise. I remember reading of St. Philip Neri that sometimes on waking in the morning he would say, "O Lord, keep thy hand on Philip today or he will betray Thee."

Hence it is a great folly to say, "I do not want to make a promise for fear I could not keep it." That would be good sense if you were going to swear to your promise, or if you were to make a Vow. But a promise to attend Sunday Mass, to keep out of saloons, to stop stealing, to be more good-natured at home, and the like is a very different matter. In such cases we must shut our eyes and go ahead, and meantime pray hard for God's assistance.

And at Bethlehem - still the least of all seeds- "she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him up in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn " (Luke 2. 7). And outcasts again were the Child and His Mother, for the Angel warned St. Joseph to flee with them to Egypt for fear of King Herod. And the long years at Nazareth, where the child grew up - how poor, secluded, uneventful were they. How despised a life in the eyes of the world, for when her Son began His public life, was it not cast against Him, "Can anything of good come from Nazareth?" (John 1. 46).

Come to Calvary! Behold that poor, heartbroken Mother standing by the Cross on which her Son died, scoffed at, derided, blasphemed by those for whom He died. Well may unbelievers sneer at such an apparent failure the life of the Virgin Mother and the death of her Son! But we - thank God for the faith within us- deny the failure and humbly adore God's marvelous providence. The seed must die in the ground before the growth ensues. Yes, Mary was "the least of all seeds", indeed, but we see and believe and bless God for the result of her humility, her acceptance of the Will of God, her hidden life, her poverty, her sufferings. Behold the result! Immaculate Mary herself tells us,"Behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. Because He that is mighty hath done great things to me" (Luke 1. 48, 49).

This poor, unknown, sorrowful Virgin - what has she become? The Queen of heaven, the Queen of Angels and of Saints! Acknowledged, reverenced from the earliest ages of the Church with a love and devotion increasing as the centuries roll on. A new era began for her at the Resurrection of her divine Son. Then did she realize, as He appeared to her, glorious, impassible, and immortal, what it was indeed to be the Mother of the Savior, for this was the Child of Bethlehem, this the Victim of Calvary. And at the Ascension what a vision of the glory of heaven was revealed to her longing soul! Ten days after, when the Holy Ghost came down upon the Apostles and filled their souls with His marvelous gifts, even Mary's heart was enlarged, she realized that a new work was laid upon her-she became the Mother of the infant Church. For twelve years she remained with the disciples, a living answer to all who doubted that God had become man to redeem the world, for there still amongst them was found His Mother. From the earliest days there were self-opinionated men holding heretical doctrines, but one after another they failed and perished as true belief in Mary was taught and maintained by the successors of the Apostles. The powers of the wicked one, having ensnared the hearts of so many, were concentrated against our Blessed Lady. But the prophecy of old was verified, and the Virgin Mother "crushed the serpent's head" when, in the days of St. Cyril of Alexandria, at the General Council of Ephesus, it was declared as an article of faith that Mary was the Mother of God. The least, indeed, of all seeds had grown and become glorious in its triumph. The title "Mother of God" was the test of orthodoxy.

Not only did Mary become the test and strength of our faith, but hope in her, as the mediator with her divine Son, en-kindled piety and devotion to her.

A moment's thought, the raising of our mind to God, the intending every word or work to be said and done in the name of Christ, for the love of Christ, would spiritualize our lives, and make of them an offering acceptable to God and blessed by Him with an eternal reward. And this pure intention, this morning offering, must be a daily work. We are so fickle, so inconstant, that even then self-love or yearning for praise will creep in. The fairest bud may have a canker in its heart.

No longer let our days be profitless for want of a little thought. With our morning prayers-yea, before them; as soon as our mind awakes-a moment's earnest thought will do-all for Jesus-and the day and all its thoughts, and prayers, and words, and works are offered to God and blessed by Him. "Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ."

You may say that is a trifling thing indeed, and can that bless and ennoble our daily life? Yes, it is a little thing, but, as St. Francis of Sales says, "Little things are but little things, but fidelity in little things is a great thing." And the fidelity in making this pure intention, this offering to do all in the name of Jesus, and for the love of Jesus, is a great thing. For it is this being united to our Blessed Lord that gives its value, its eternal value, to all we do.

Let us picture to ourselves what this pure, heartfelt offering would mean. Sloth and tepidity would instantly stand abashed and ashamed. Sin and all desire for sin would be warned off, for our souls are giving themselves to Christ. The evil one would see that his plans and intrigues were detected and thus rendered powerless. In a moment the bright thought of Mass, of Holy Communion, perchance, would irradiate our soul. Our thought would question-Have we time? Can we make time for them? What an offering indeed to our dear Lord if we can; yea, a pleasing offering indeed for only wishing that we could. The daily toil, whatever it may be-laborious, poorly paid, wearisome-also, offered humbly, without a murmur, according to the blessed Will of God. Recording Angels are busy throughout the day adding up the wages due to such a worker.