The Apostle and Doctor of the Gentiles here goes on, forming to the Christian life the new recruits, whom his own voice and that of his fellow-apostles, dispersed as they are throughout the world, are every day leading, by hundreds, to the fount of salvation. Although the Church is all attention to the events which are preparing for Judea, yet is she full of maternal solicitude for the great work of the training those children whom she has given to her divine Spouse. While Israel is obstinate in his fatal refusal to accept the Messiah, another family is growing up in his place; and by its docility, richly repays our Lord for all the rebellion and slights offered him by the children he had first made his chosen ones. They were the ancient people, and are jealous of others being now called to the same privilege. The contradictions of which Christ complains in the Psalm, are anything but over; and yet, thanks to the Church, the Man-God is already the Head of the Gentiles.
Admirable is the fruitfulness of the Bride; for, wonderful is the power of sanctification which she is using all through the world of various nations. Scarcely has she sprung into her beauteous existence, than she offers to her Lord and her King a new empire, consolidated in unity of love; she presents him with a generation that is all pure in the intelligence and practice of every virtue.
It is quite true that the Holy Ghost acts directly on the souls of the newly baptized; but there is something else to be considered in the divine plan. It is this: the Word having been made flesh, and having taken to himself a Bride (which is the visible Church on earth), whom he has made his associate in the work of man’s salvation—he has willed that the invisible operation of the divine Spirit, who proceeds from him (the Word) shall not be in its normal state, unless there be added to it the extrinsic cooperation and intervention of this his Bride. Not only is the Church the depository of those all-potent formulas and mysterious rites which change man’s heart into a new soil, cleaning it from thorns and weeds, making it able to produce a hundred-fold—but she also sows the seed of the divine husbandman into that same soil, by her countless modes of teaching the Truth. To the Holy Ghost, indeed, a magnificent share is due of that fecundity and that social life of the Church; still her portion of work is exquisite; it deals with the elect taken as individuals, and consists especially in getting them to profit of the divine energies of the Sacraments which she administers, and in developing the germs of salvation which her teaching plants in their souls.
How important, then, and sublime will ever be that mission which is confided to those men who are set over particular churches, as teachers or directors of souls; they represent, to these isolated congregations, the common Mother of all the Faithful, for in her name, they really provide for the Holy Spirit those elements upon whom he is to make his all-powerful action felt. For that very same reason, woe to those times when the dispensers of the divine word, having themselves naught but halved or false principles, give but weak shriveled seed to the souls entrusted to them! The Holy Ghost is not bound to supply their insufficiency; ordinarily speaking, he will not supply it, for such is not the way established by Christ for the sanctification of the members of his Church.
The common Mother, however, has a supplementary aid for such of her children, as may be thus treated—it is her Liturgy. There they will find not only the holy Sacrifice which will support them, and the graces of the Sacrament of love which will nourish spiritual life within them,—but moreover, the surest rule of conduct, and the sublimest teachings of every virtue. Such souls as these have perhaps got the idea that the poor subjective system they have made for themselves is the royal road to perfection; but if they be of an earnest good will, desirous to find the best way, God will, some happy day, lead them to find, and finding, to appreciate the inexhaustible and divinely given treasures of the Church’s Liturgy; possessing and enriching themselves with these, they will soon put aside what the Prophet Isaias terms bread without strength, and water without power. The same Prophet would thus urge them in the Church’s name, to what is best: All ye that thirst, come to the waters! And ye that have no money, make haste, buy and eat. Come ye! buy wine and milk, without money, and without any price. Why spend ye money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which doth not satisfy you? Hearken diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and your soul shall be delighted in fatness!
And truly, there is a fact which should rouse, both to attention and gratitude, any Christian who longs to be enlightened as to the best way of getting to heaven: this fact is that the Church herself has made a selection, for our reading, from the treasury of the Scriptures and, in her Missal, which she puts into our hands, she has inserted practical teachings from the same divine Books, which she knew were best suited to the wants of her children. A Christian who is humbly and devoutly assiduous in the study of this admirable book of the Liturgy will abound in spiritual knowledge. His guide will say to him, and with a well-grounded assurance: This is the way! walk in it! And go not aside, neither to the right, nor to the left! We have no need to wonder at all this; for in the guidance of souls, the Church is far superior to the most learned Doctors and to the greatest Saints—all of whom were humble disciples in her school.
But it must be The Holy Holocaust of Tradition and not the impoverished Lil' Licit Liturgy if one is to be led to Heaven