4th Sunday after Easter

Tomorrow is the 4th Sunday after Easter. Christ has been visiting His friends, the Apostles and disciples and the faithful. He is getting ready to ascend into Heaven, and take all of the faithful who had died prior to His death with Him when He goes. However, that time is not come. Jesus has been instructing His followers to TEACH them all he has proposed. This will be His new Church, fulfilling all the promises from the earlier times when He was told of. He didn't tell them to write anything, but to teach. He commanded them to baptize all in the NAME of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. These will be His friends, if we do ALL He commanded. He left us the Seven Sacraments, by which we are to do to gain eternal life.

Our Lord has left us the three things that keep us a One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church: Hierarchy, Dogma, and the Sacraments. These all contribute to make us one Body.

The Seven Sacraments supply everything needed; take one away, and you destroy the harmony. The Churches of the East, though severed now for long ages from Catholic unity, retain all seven; and when Protestantism broke the sacred number, it showed in this, as in all its other pretended reformations (or deformations), that it was estranging itself from the spirit of the Christian religion. No: the doctrine of the Sacraments is one that cannot be denied without denying the True Faith. If we would be members of God's Church, we must receive this doctrine as coming from Him Who has a right to insist on our humble submission to His every word. It is to the soul which thus believes that the Sacraments appear in all their divine beauty and power: we understand, because we believe, Credite, et intelligetis! It is the fulfillment of the text from Isaias, as rendered by the Septuagint: Unless ye believe, ye shall not understand!

We are destined, as St. Paul says, one day to see God face to face, and to know even as we are known, but we shall never be worthy to behold Him, unless even now the most ardent desire of our heart is to know Him aright. Faith teaches us to know God, and without faith no one can hope to go to heaven. May our faith remain sacred to us until we draw our last breath. May all that we learn and experience be regarded by us in the light of faith, i. e., may we refer it all to God, and employ it in learning to know Him better. Let us never waver in our faith, and never be infected with the spirit of worldliness, which cares for everything but God. Let us cherish a firm and steadfast faith in God, for thus we shall become worthy one day to behold Him and, as the Apostle says, to enjoy Him, to find unspeakable happiness in loving Him whose love alone is able fully to satisfy the heart of man. This is man's destiny, this is the highest possible bliss, but this love must at least begin on earth, for only a heart that has lived for God in this world will live in Him in the world to come.

Love of God is displayed in obedience to Him. The better we love Him, the more ready and joyful will be our obedience. If He one day asks us whether we had loved Him on earth, we shall answer with gladness proportionate to the humility and fidelity with which we have done our duty, to the number of good works that we have performed, and to the amount of self-restraint that we have practiced out of love of Him. The genuineness of our love will be proved in this way and by the solidity of the virtues that we have acquired; not by the number of fine speeches that we have made, or of pious books that we have read. We ought to love God not only in word and with our emotions, but in deed and in truth. We are destined some day to join the company of those blessed spirits, who stand before the throne and never cease their worship of God. Let us now prepare ourselves to fulfill this glorious duty by means of prayer, for prayer alone will furnish us with the grace of faith, will strengthen us to disregard the things of earth and to overcome temptations to sin, and will help us to be faithful in good works. Thoughtful prayer, proceeding from hearts earnestly desirous of salvation, brings us even now closer to God, and will some day unite us for ever with Him. Therefore let us pray without ceasing, as the Apostle bids us, but pray with a heart full of good will really to accomplish the task, for which our prayer obtains us strength.

We know whither our Lord has gone; He is in heaven, preparing a place for us. We know, too, whither He wishes us to go – also to heaven, to be happy with Him for ever. When in the common­place round of our everyday life we are tempted to forget our high calling, let us ask ourselves, "Whither ought I to go?" The answer will be, "To heaven, by faith, avoidance of sin, a life of virtue and incessant prayer." Amen.