MM Of >*.i>ir or 5 CO CO p a. UJ Q 3? . CO csZ*^ r~^ ',,;,,„ j / /Su^Ai. . ( IUN 9 1961 LEGTUEESW ^ SERMONS Very Rev. THOMAS N. BURKE, OP, TO WHICH 13 ADDED IRELAND'S CASE STATED, IX REPLY TO MR. FROTJDE. P. M TIAVERTY, NEW YORK. . P. J. KENEDY, EXCELSIOR CATHOLIC PUBLISHING HOUSE, 5 Barclay Street, N. Y. Filtered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1372. by P. M. HAVERTY, lu the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington tm x/rimatur, F. Dominicxjs Lil/,y, F. Petrus Sablon, Bedsores Ordinis. 80 Si$ ®vw THE MOST REV. JOHN MAO HALE, ARCHBISHOP OF TUAM. (Llnrum tt bencrabile gomcn. THE GREAT ARCHBISHOP OF THE WEST THE LOVER OF THE POOR; THE DEFENDER OF THE WEAK ; THE SHIELD OF THE PERSECUTED ; THE HONOR OF IRELAND'S PRIESTHOOD; THE JOY AND THE GLORY OF THE IRISH PEOPLE AT HOME AND ABROAD THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE HUMBLY AND LOVINGLY jbcuiCiiteb. PREFACE &■ m FEEL that some apology is due to my readers for the appearance of this book. I certainly never should have permitted the publication of these lectures if it were in my power to prevent it ; but as parties, strangers to me, had announced their intention of publishing them in book form, for their own benefit, I thought it incumbent on me to antici- pate this by publishing the lectures myself. First, that they might have the benefit of my own revision (however hasty and imperfect), and secondly, because I considered that my Order had the best, and in fact, the only just title to any profits that might arise from the sale of the book. There is no pretension to anything like style in these lectures, as they are merely, with some exceptions, the newspaper reports, hastily revised. If, however, there be anything in them contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, that, I am the first to condemn and re- oudiate. CONTENTS. St. Patrick, 9 Funeral Oration on O'Connell, - 34 The Solemn Triduum, 46 The Christian Man the Man of the Day, ...... 62 The Catholic Church the Mother of Liberty, 78 The Church, the Mother and Inspiration of Art, - - - - - 99 The Groupings of Calvary, ........ 120 Christ on Calvary, -...--.... 137 Temperance -- 160 The Attributes of Catholic Charity, 173 The History of Ireland, as Told in Her Ruins, 193 The Supernatural Life, the Absorbing Life of the Irish People, - - 224 The Catholic Church the Salvation of Society, - - - - 238 The Immaculate Conception, 261 The Immaculate Conception. Second Sermon, - - - - 271 The Pope — The Crown which He Wears, and of which no Man can Deprive Him, 287 On the First Beatitude, 309 On the Second Beatitude, 315 The Church, - 322 The Incarnation, 329 Activity of Faith, 336 Music in Catholic Worship, -.---.-- 344 Catholic Education, 352 8 Contents. rA«H The National Music of Ireland, «• 370 The Resurrection, 397 The Pope's Tiara — Its Past, Present, and Future, .... 4.09 Good Works with Faith Necessary to Salvation, - - - - 4.31 The Peace of God, 440 The Exiles of Erin, ...--.... 453 The Confessional: Its Effect on Society, ------ 479 The Blessed Eucharist, 500 The Month of Mary, 519 The Catholic Church the True Emancipator, 531 Christian Charity, - - - - - 550 The Irish People in Their Relation to Catholicity, 567 The Catholic Church the True Regenerator of Society, - - - 590 The Catholic Church and the Wants of Society, ... - 61c The Divine Commission of the Church, -. 634 Lectures and Sermons VERY REV. THOMAS N. BURKE, O.P. ST. PATRICK. [Delivered in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, on Sunday, March 17th, 1872.J " Let us now praise men of renown, and our fathers in their generation ; * * * these men of mercy, whose godly deeds have not failed ; good things continue with their seed. Their posterity are a holy inheritance ; and their seed hath stood in the covenants : and their children for their sakes remain for ever ; their seed and their glory shall not be forsaken. Let the people shew forth their wisdom, and the Church declare their praise."— Eccles. 44. <*ffiffi%JE are assembled to obey the command of God express- ^tfVifc? ed in my text. One of the great duties of God's Church, to which she has ever been most faithful, is y the celebration of her saints. From end to end of the year the Church's saints are the theme of her daily thanksgiving and praise. They are her heroes, and therefore she honors them ; just as the world celebrates its own heroes, records their great deeds, and builds up monuments to perpetuate their names and their glory. The saints were the living and most faithful representatives of Christ our Lord, of his virtues, his love, his actions, his power, so that He lived in them, and wrought in them, and through them, the redemption of men ; therefore the Church honors, not so much the saint, as Christ our Lord in the saint; for, in truth, the wisdom of saintli- ness which she celebrates, wherever it is found, is nothing else, as described to us in Scripture, than " a vapour of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty God ; * * * the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of His goodness ; * io St. Patrick. and through nations she conveyeth herself into holy souls, she maketh the friends of God and prophets." Nor does the Church's honor of the saints derogate from that of God, as some say; otherwise the Lord, who is jealous of His divine power and glory, would never command us to praise the saints as he does in the words of my text, and in many other parts of the Holy Scriptures : " Praise ye the Lord in his saints," " God is wonderful in His saints," etc., etc. Nay, so far from lessening our love and praise of God, the saints are the very channel through which praise is most acceptably given to Him, and if the Scriptures command us to praise the Lord in all His works, how much more in His saints — the masterpieces of nature and grace ! Let no one, therefore, suppose that we are assembled to- day to dishonor God by honoring his saint: let no one imagine that we are come together to bless and praise other than Our God Himself, " the Father of lights," " for every best and every perfect gift " which He has given us through our great Apostle, St. Patrick. He was "a man of renown," for his work and his name are known and celebrated by all men ; " and our father in his generation," for he " begat us to God by the Gospel." He was, moreover, " a man of mercy," for, when he might have lived for himself and for the enjoyment of his own ease, he chose rather to sacrifice himself, and to make his life cheap and of no account in his sight, and this through the self-same mercy which brought the Lord Jesus Christ forth from the bosom of the Father, namely, mercy for a people who were perishing. His " godly deeds have not failed," for the Lord crowned his labors with blessings of abundance. " Good things continue with his seed," for the faith which he planted still flourishes in the land. " His posterity are a holy inheritance," for the scene of his labors, grown famous for holiness, obtained among the nations the singular title of "the Island of Saints." "And his seed hath stood in the covenants," for it is well known and acknowl- edged that no power, however great, has been able to move them from the faith once delivered to' the saints. " His children for his sake remain forever," for he blessed them, as we read, that they should never depart from the fold of the " one Shepherd " into which he had gathered them, and his prayer in heaven has verified for 1500 years his prophetic blessing on earth. "His seed and his glory shall not be forsaken," for ' they are the St. Patrick. 1 1 children of saints, and look for that life ^hich God will give to those that never change their faith from Him." Seeing, there- fore, that all the conditions of the Inspired Word have been so strikingly fulfilled in our saint, is it wonderful that wc should also desire to fulfill the rest of the command, " Let the people shew forth His wisdom, and the Church declare His praise ? " I nropose, therefore, for your consideration — first, the character of the saint himself; secondly, the work of his Apostleship ; and thirdly, the merciful providence of Almighty God toward the Irish Church and the Irish people. The light of Christianity had burned for more than four hundred years before its rays penetrated to Ireland. For the first three hundred years of the Church's existence the sacred torch was hidden in the catacombs and caves of the earth, or, if ever seen by men, it was only when held aloft for a moment in the hands of a dying martyr. Yet the flame was spreading, and a great part of Asia, Armenia, Egypt, Spain, Italy, and Gaul had already lighted their lamps before that memorable year 312, when the Church's light, sud- denly shooting up, appeared in the heavens, and a Roman Emperor was converted by its brightness. Then did the spouse of Christ walk forth from the earth, arrayed in all the " beauty of holiness," and her " light arose unto the people who were seated in darkness and in the shadow of death." The Christian faith was publicly preached, the nations were converted, churches and monasteries were everywhere built, and God seemed to smile upon the earth with the blessings of Christian faith and Roman civilization. A brief interval of repose it was; and God, in His mercy, permitted the Church just to lay hold of society, and establish herself amongst men, that she might be able to save the world, when, in a few years, the Northern barbarians should have swept away every vestige of the power, glory, and civilization of ancient Rome. It was during this interval, be- tween the long-continued war of persecution and the first fall of Rome, that a young Christian was taken prisoner on the north- ern shores of Gaul, and carried, with many others, by his captors, into Ireland. This young man was St. Patrick. He was of noble birth, born of Christian parents, reared up with tendercstcare, and surrounded from his earliest infancy with all that could make life desirable and happy. Now he is torn away from parents and friends, no eye to look upon him with pity, no heart to feel 12 St. Patrick. for the greatness of his misery; and in his sixteenth year, just as life was opening and spreading out all its sweets before him, he is sold as a slave, and sent to tend cattle upon the dreary mountains of the far north of Ireland, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness ; and there for long years did he live, for- gotten and despised, and with no other support than the Chris- tian faith and hope within him. These, however, failed him not ; and so at length he was enabled to escape from his captivity and return to his native land. Oh, how sweet to his eyes and ears must have been the sights and sounds of his childhood ! how dear the embraces, how precious the joy of his aged mother when she clasped to her " him that was dead, but came to life again I" Surely he will remain with her now, nor ever expose himself to the risk of losing again joys all the dearer because they had once been lost. Not so, my brethren. Patrick is no longer an ordinary man ; one of us. A new desire has entered into his soul and taken possession of his life. A passion has sprung up within him for which he must live and devote his future. This desire, this passion, is to preach the Christian faith in Ireland, and to bring the nation forth " from darkness into the admirable light " of God. In the days of his exile, even when a slave on the mountain-side, he heard, like the prophet, a voice within, him, and it said, " Behold, I have given my words in thy mouth. Lo, I have set thee this day over the nations and over kingdoms, to root up and pull down, and to waste and destroy, and to build and to plant. Gird up thy loins and arise, and speak to them all that I command thee." And when he was restored to his country and to those who loved him, the same voice spoke again, for he heard in a dream the voice of many persons from a wood near the western sea, crying out, as with one voice, " We entreat thee, O holy youth, to come and walk still among us." " It was the voice of the Irish," says the saint in his Confessions, " and I was greatly affected in my heart." And so he arose, and once more leaving father and mother, houses and lands, went forth to prepare himself for his great mission. Having completed his long years of preparatory study, he turned his face to Rome, to the fountain-head of Christian- ity, the source of all jurisdiction and Divine mission in the Church, the great heart whence the life-blood of faith and sound doctiine flows even to her most distant members, the new Jeru St. Patrick. 13 salem and Sion of God, of which it was written of old, " from Sion shall the law go forth, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem ;" and here in Rome St. Celestine the First laid his hands upon Patrick and consecrated him first bishop of the Irish nation. And now he returns to our shores a second time ; no longer a bondsman, but free, and destined to break the nation's chains : " You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free :" no longer dragged thither an unwilling slave of men, but drawn by irresistible love, the willing slave of Jesus Christ ; no more a stripling, full of anxious fear's; but a man, in all the glory of a matured intellect, in the strength and vigor of manhood, in the fullness of power and jurisdiction ; with mind prepared and spirit braced to bear and brave all things, and with heart and soul utterly devoted to God and to the great enterprise before him. Oh, my brethren, what joy was in heaven at that hour when the blessed feet of the Bishop Patrick touched the shores of Ireland — the ancient " Isle of Destiny." This was her destiny surely, and it is about to be fulfilled — that she should be the home and the mother of .saints — of doctors and holy solitaries, and pure virgins and martyrs robed in white, and of a people acceptable before the Lord. That the Cross of Christ should be the emblem of her faith forevermore, of her faith and of her trial, of her tears and sorrow, and of her victory, " which conquereth the world." O golden hour amongst the hours ! when the sands of the Irish shore first embraced softly and lovingly the beautiful footprints of him who preached peace and good things ; when Moses struck the rock, and the glisten- ing waters of salvation flowed in the desert land ; when the " Name, which is above all names," was first heard in the old Celtic tongue, and the Lord Jesus, entering upon his new in- heritance, exclaimed, "This is My resting-place forever and ever ; here shall I dwell because I have chosen it." The conversion of Ireland, from the time of St. Patrick's land- ing to the day of his death, is, in many respects, the strangest fact in the history, of the church. The saint met with no op- position ; his career resembles more the triumphant progress of a king than the difficult labor of a missionary. The Gospel, with its iessons and precepts of self-denial, of prayer, of purity, in a word, of the violence which seizes on heaven, is not con- 14 St. Patrick. genial to fallen man. His pride, his passions, his blindness of intellect and hardness of heart, all oppose the spread of the Gospel ; so that the very fact that mankind has so universally accepted it, is adduced as a proof that it must be from God. The work of the Catholic missionary has, therefore, ever been, and must continue to be, a work of great labor with apparently small results. Such has it ever been amongst all the nations ; and yet Ireland seems a grand exception. She is, perhaps, the only country in the world that entirely owes her conversion to the work of one man. He found her universally Pagan. He left her universally Christian. She is, again, the only nation that never cost her apostle an hour of sorrow, a single tear, a drop of blood. She welcomed him like a friend, took the Word from his lips, made it at once the leading feature of her life, put it into the blood of her children and into the language of her most familiar thoughts, and repaid her benefactor with her utmost veneration and love. And much, truly, had young Christian Ireland to love and venerate in her great Apostle. All sanctity, coming as it does from God, is an imitation of God in man. This is the meaning of the word of the Apostle. " those whom he foreknew and predestined to be made con- formable to the image of His Son, the same He called, aad justified, and glorified." Conformity to the image of God is therefore Christian perfection or sanctity, " the mystery which was hidden from eternity with Christ in God." But as our Lord Jesus Christ, " In whom dwelt the fullness of the God- head corporally," is an abyss of all perfections, so do we find the saints differing one from another in their varied participa- tions of His graces and resemblance to His divine gifts, for so " star differeth from star in glory." Then, amongst the apostles, we are accustomed to think and speak of the impulsive zeal of Peter, the virginal purity of John, etc., not as if Peter were not pure, or John wanting in zeal, but that where all was the work of the Spirit of God, one virtue shone forth more prominently, and seemed to mark the specific character of sanctity in the saint. Now, amongst the many great virtues which adorned the soul of Ireland's Apostle, and made him so dear to the people, I find three which he made especially his own, and these were, a spirit of penance, deepest humility, and a devour- ing zeal for the salvation of souls. A spirit of penance. It is St. Patrick. 15 remarkable, and worthy of special notice in these days of self- indulgence and fanciful religions, how practical the gospel is. It is pre-eminently not only the science of religious knowledge, but also of religious life, it tells us not only what we are to believe, but also what we are to do. And now, what is the first great precept of the gospel ? It is penance. My brethren, "do penance, for the kingdom of God is at hand." And when, on the day of Pentecost, the Prince of the apostles first raised up the standard of Christianity upon the earth, the people " when they heard these things had compunction in their hearts, and said to Peter, and to the rest of the Apostles, What shall we do, men and brethren ? and Peter said to them, do penance, and be baptized, every one of you." This spirit of penance was essentially Patrick's. His youth had been holy ; prevented from earliest childhood by " the blessings of sweetness," he had grown up like a lily, in purity, in holy fear and love. Yet for the carelessness and slight indiscretions of his first years, he was filled with compunction, and with a life-long sorrow. His sin, as he called it, was always before him, and with the prophet he cried out, " Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to mine eyes, and I will weep day and night." In his journeyings he was wont to spend the night in prayer, and tears, and bitter self-reproach, as if he was the greatest of sinners ; and when he hastened from " Royal Meath," into the far west of the island, we read that when Lent approached, he suspended his labors for a time, and went up the steep, rugged side of Croagh Patrick, and there, like his Divine Master, he spent the holy time in fasting and prayer ; and his " tears were his food night and day." Whithersoever he went he left traces of his penitential spirit behind him ; and Patrick's penance and Pat- rick's purgatory are still familiar traditions in the land. Thus, my brethren, did he " sow in tears," who was destined to reap in so much joy; for so it is ever with God's saints, who do his work on this earth ; " going, they went and wept, scattering the seed, but coming, they shall come with joy." His next great personal virtue was a wonderful humility. Now, this virtue springs from a twofold knowledge, namely, the knowledge ot God and of ourselves. This was the double knowledge for which the great St. Augustine prayed : " Lord, let me know thee, and know myself, that I may love thee and despise my- 1 5 St. Patrick. self;" and this did our saint possess in an eminent degree This knowledge of God convinced him of the utter worthless- ness of all things besides God, and even of God's gifts, except when used for Himself; and therefore he did all things for God and nothing for self, and of " his own he gave Him back again ;" he lost sight of himself in advancing the interests and the cause of God ; he hid himself behind his work in which he labored foi God ; and strangely enough, his very name and history come down to us by reason of his great humility, for he would write himself a sinner, and calls himself " Patrick, an unworthy, and ignorant, and sinful man," for so he saw himself, judging himself by the standard of infinite holiness in Jesus Christ, by which we also shall all be one day judged. Looking into himself he found only misery and weakness, wonderfully strengthened, not by himself, but by God ; poverty and nakedness, clothed and en- riched, not by himself, but by God ; and, fearful of losing the Giver in the gifts, he put away from him the contemplation of what God had made him, and only considered what he was him- self. Thus was he always the most humble of men. Even when seated in glory and surrounded by the love and admiring vene- ration of an entire people, never was his soul moved from the solid foundation of humility, the twofold knowledge; and so he went down to his grave a simple and an humble man. And yet in this lowly heart there burned a mighty fire of love, a devour- ing zeal for the souls of his brethren. Oh ! here indeed does he shine forth " likened unto the Son of God ; " for like our Divine Lord and Master, Patrick was a " zealous lover of souls." He well knew how dear these souls were to the sacred heart of Jesus Christ — how willingly the Lord of glory had spent Himself, and given His most sacred and precious blood for them : how it was the thought of their salvation that sustained Him during the horror of His passion ; in the agony of His prayer ; when His sacred flesh was torn at the pillar ; when the cruel thorns were driven into His most holy brows ; when, with drooping head and wearied eyes, and body streaming blood from every open wound, He was raised up on the cross to die heart-broken and aban- doned, with the anger of God and the insults of men poured upon him. Patrick knew all this, and it filled him with transports of zeal for souls, so that, like the great apostle, he wished to be as accursed for them ; and to die a thousand times rather than St. Patrick. 17 that one soul purchased so dearly, and the offspring of so much love and sorrow, should perish. Therefore did he make himself the slave and the servant of all, that he might gain all to God. And in his mission of salvation no difficulties retarded him, no danger frightened him, no labor or sacrifice held him back, no sickness subdued him, no infirmity of body or mind overcame him. Old age came upon him, yet he spared not himself, nor did he for a moment sit down to count his years, or to number his triumphs, or to consider his increasing wants ; but his voice was clear and strong and his arm untiring, though he had reaped a harvest of many years and had borne " the burthen of the day and the heat ; " and his heart was young, for it was still growing, in the faith of those around him. Even to the last day of his life " his youth was renewed like the eagle." He repeatedly journeyed throughout the length and breadth of the land, car- ing and tending with prayer, and blessing, and tears, the plants which he had planted in this new vineyard of God : and grace was poured abroad from his lips, and " virtue went forth from him," until the world was astonished at the sight of a whole nation converted by one man, and the promise made of old was fulfilled in Patrick, " I will deliver to you every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, and no man shall be able to resist thee all the days of thy life." And now we come to the question, What did St. Patrick teach, and in what form of Christianity did he expend himself for God ? For fifteen hun- dred years, my brethren, Christianity meant one thing, one doc- trine, one faith, one authority, one baptism ; now, however, in our day, this same Christianity, though as undivided, as true, as exclusive, as definite as ever, is made to signify many things ; and men, fondly imagining that our ancestors had no greater unity than ourselves, ask what form of doctrine did St. Patrick preach to the Irish people? I answer: He preached the whole cycle of Catholic truth as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be to the end of time. He taught them that Christ's most sacred body and blood are really and truly present in the Blessed Eucharist, so that we find an Irish writer of the same century (Sedulius) using the words "we are fed on the body and the members of Christ, and so we are made the temples of God ; " again, the language used by the Irish Church at the time, as even the Protestant Bishop Usher acknowledges, concerning 2 1 8 St. Patrick. the Mass, was " the making of the body of the Lord." In sup. port of the same truth we have the beautiful legend of St. Brid- gid — which, even if its truth be disputed, still points to the popu- lar faith and love whence it sprang — how, when a certain child, named Nennius, was brought to her, she blessed him, and prophesied that his hand should one day give her the Holy Communion*; whereupon the boy covered his right hand and never again let it touch any profane thing, nor be even uncov- ered, so that he was called " Nennius na laumh glas" or, Nen- nius of the clean hand, out of devotion and love to the most Holy Sacrament. St. Patrick taught the doctrine of penance and confession of sins and priestly absolution; for we find, amongst the other proofs, an old penitential canon of a synod held under the saint himself in 450, in which it is decreed that " if a Christian kill a man, or commit fornication, or go in to a soothsayer after the manner of the Gentiles, he shall do a year of penance ; when his year of penance is over, he shall come with witnesses, and afterwards he shall be absolved by the priest." He taught the invocation of saints, as is evident from nu- merous records of the time. Thus, in a most ancient life of St. Bridgid we find the words, "There are two holy virgins in heaven who may undertake my protection — Mary and Bridgid — on whose patronage let each of us depend." In like manner, we find in the synods of the time laws concerning the "obla- tions for -the dead ;" in the most ancient Irish missals Masses for the dead are found with such prayers as " Grant, O Lord, that this holy oblation may work pardon for the dead and salvation for the living;" and in a most ancient life of St. Brendan it is stated that "the prayer of the living doth much profit the dead." But, my brethren, as in the personal character of the saint there were some amongst his virtues that shone out more con- spicuously than the others, so in his teaching there were certain points which appear more prominently, which seemed to be im- pressed upon the people more forcibly, and to have taken pecu- liar hold of the national mind. Let us consider what these peculiar features of St. Patrick's teaching were, and we shall sec how they reveal to us what I proposed as the third point of this sermon, namely, the merciful providence of God over the Irish Church and people. They were the following: Fidelity to St. Peter's ch?.ir and to Peter's successor, the Pope of Rome St. Patrick. ig devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary; prayer and remembrance for the dead ; and confiding obedience and love for their bishops and priests. These were the four great prominent features of Patrick's teaching: by the first, namely, fidelity to the Pope, he secured the unity of the Irish Church as a living member of the Church Catholic; by the second, devotion to the Blessed Virgin, he secured the purity and morality of the people; by the third, care of the dead, he enlisted on the side of Catholic truth the natural love and strong feelings of the Irish character; and by the last, attachment and obedience to the priesthood, he secured to the Irish Church the principle of internal union, which is the secret of her strength. He preached fidelity and unswerving devotion to the Pope — the head of the Catholic Church. Coming direct from Rome, and filled with ecclesiasti- cal knowledge, he opened up before the eyes of his new children and revealed to them the grand design of Almighty God in His Church. He showed them in the world around them the wonderful harmony which speaks of God"; then rising into the higher world of grace, he preached to them the still more wonderful harmony of redemption and of the Church, — the Church, so vast as to fill the whole earth, yet as united in doc- trine and practice as if she embraced only the members of one small family or the inhabitants of one little village ; the Church, embracing all races of men, and leaving to all their full individual freedom of thought and action ; yet animating all with one soul, quickening all as with one life and one heart ; guiding all with the dictates of one immutable conscience, and keeping every, even the least, member, under the dominion of one head. Such was the Church on which Patrick engrafted Ireland — "A glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle ;" a per- fect body, the very mystical body of Jesus Christ, through which "we, being wild olives, are engrafted on Him, the true olive-tree," so that "we are made the flesh of His flesh, and bone of His bones." Now, Patrick taught our fathers, with truth, that the soul, the life, the heart, the conscience, and the head of the Church is Jesus Christ, and that His representative on earth, to whom He has communicated all His graces and powers, is the Pope of Rome, the visible head of God's Church, the Bishop of Bishops, the centre of unity and of doctrine, the rock and the corner-stone on which the whole edifice of the 20 St. Patrick. Church is founded and built up. All this he pointed out in the Scriptures, from the words of our Lord to Peter. Petef was the shepherd of the fold, whose duty it was to " feed both lambs and sheep " with " every word that cometh from the mouth of God." Peter was the rock to sustain and uphold the Church : " thou, art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church " (words which are the very touchstone of faith in these days of sorrow). Peter's was the strong, unerring voice which was ever to be heard in the Church, defining her doctrines, warning off enemies, denouncing errors, rebuking sinners, guid- ing the doubtful, strengthening the weak, confirming the strong; and Jesus said, " Thou, O Peter, confirm thy brethren." Patrick taught the Irish people not to be scandalized if they saw the cross upon Peter's shoulders, and the crown of thorns upon his head, for so Christ lives in His Church and in her supreme pastor ; but he also taught them that he who strikes Peter strikes the Lord ; he taught them what history has taught us, that "whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be bruised; and upon whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder." He taugTit them that in the day when they separated from Peter they separated from Christ, as did the foolish men in the Gos- pel : " After this many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him. Then Jesus said to the twelve, Will you also go away? And Simon Peter answered Him: Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." Thus it was, my brethren, that He bound them to " the rock of ages," to Peter's chair, with firmest bounds of obedience and love, and infused into their souls that supernatural instinct, which, for fifteen hundred years, has kept them, through good report and evil report, through persecution and sorrow, faithful and loyal to the Holy See of Rome. It was a bond of obedience and love that bound Ireland to Rome. Thus, in the beginning of the seventh cen- tury, when the Irish bishops assembled to consider the question of celebrating Easter, we find the Fathers selecting some " wise and humble men," and sending them to Rome for instruction, " as children to their mother ;" and this in obedience to a primi- tive law of the Irish Church, which enacted that, in every diffi- culty that might arise, " the question should be referred to the Head of Cities," as Rome was called. This devotion to the Holy See saved Ireland in the day of trial. St. Patrick. 21 The next great feature in Patrick's preaching was devotion to the Mother of God. Of this we have abundant proof in the i umerous churches built and dedicated to God under her name. Cef>oiU 2buirie {Tcampoill M/na'rc), or Mary's Church, became a familiar name in the land. In the far west of Ireland, where the traditions of our holy faith are still preserved, enshrined in the purest form of our grand old Celtic language, the sweet name of the Mother of God is heard in the prayers and songs of the people, in their daily familiar converse, in the supplications of the poor, not under the title of " our Lady," or of " the Blessed Virgin," but by the still more endearing name of 2buirie QOacaiti (Muire Mathair), " Mary Mother." And so it was that Patrick sent his Catholic doctrines home to the hearts of the people. He preached Jesus Christ under the name by which He is still known and adored in that far western land : 2tK\c n