1. Introd.—This, we know, is one of the most joyful weeks of the year. Our Lord’s Resurrection is, of course, pre-eminently [joyful] (and in like manner His Nativity), as He is above all. But this week is unlike most other feasts connected with Him, and rather stands at the head of the saints’ feasts, and this is its peculiarity. I will explain.
2. The one idea is congratulation. Congratulamini mihi, quia cum essem parvula. Congratulation is a special feeling. Not in Christmas, or [in] any act of His economy [or of] His Passion, not in Pentecost [nor] Corpus Christi, nor in the Sacred Heart, [do we congratulate]. We congratulate when some great good has come to another. We do not (strictly speaking) congratulate ourselves, though we may each other. We congratulate martyrs and saints, etc.
3. Now this life tells us what congratulation is. We congratulate persons on good fortune, which does not concern us [ourselves], on preferment, on a fortune, on escaping danger, on marriages and births, on honours, etc.
4. On Catholicity only [i.e. alone] realising unseen things and carrying human feelings into the supernatural world. Hence care of those who [have] departed—purgatory—heaven.
5. Now consider St. Paul’s words. Gaudere cum gaudentibus, flere cum flentibus—congratulation and compassion, or pity [opposed to] two bad states of mind, [epichairokakia] and envy. Congratulation and compassion both disinterested and unselfish, but congratulation the more. What is so beautiful as to see in the case of brothers and sisters, (e.g.) where a younger rejoices in the gain of an elder, etc.
6. Now we congratulate Mary at this time of year, after her long waiting—sixty years. What a purgatory! This very circumstance that all her life was God’s, made the trial longer. But now, as Christ ascended, so has she.
7. But again, even this congratulation has often something selfish in it; men hope to get something for themselves through their promoted friend. This is true also in the supernatural order, but with this difference, that the one desire is good, the other evil.
8. We cannot covet unseen good. Again, we do not deprive another of it.
9. Hence we may rejoice selfishly in Mary’s triumph.
10. We have a friend in court. She is the great work of God’s love.
11. Foolish objection, as if [we asserted] she were more loving than God—a ring, e.g. a pledge of favour to a person, any favours will be granted.
12. Conclusion.
September 3 (Thirteenth Pentecost) [Disease the Type of Sin]
1. Introd.—About the ten lepers in the Gospel.
2. Description of leprosy as a disease. What it was.
3. It made the person (1) deformed—(describe)—swollen and disgusting; (2) it was lasting, not like a fever; (3) incurable.
4. Lepers were driven out of society, they were so loathsome; and they became like beasts. Travellers describe them now as outside the cities in troops.
5. Now all this is sin. Go through the particulars, as the angels see it. Describe our souls.
6. Since we are one and all sinners, we do not understand it. But the angels must revolt from us, but for their love. We are an exception to the intellectual creation—except the devils.
7. Parallels: (1) a person with a bad temper; (2) a vulgar person—we shrink from them.
8. Yet our Saviour loved us, in spite of all this.
9. Enlarge on this. Take the cases of saints: (1) tending the leper; (2) sucking sores; (3) Father Claver with the Blacks; yet all this is nothing to Christ[‘s charity to us].
10. Here, to say nothing else, [is] difference from our Lady. She had never seen heaven.
But He came [from heaven] among us, and now gives Himself to us in the Holy Eucharist. You know how we shrink from dirt, etc.
11. Thus we have at once two thoughts—humility and thankfulness. How can we be proud of anything we are? How can we not love Christ?
December 25 [Christmas Joy]
1. On the special beauty of the narrations of the Gospel, especially as regards our Lord’s birth, and of these Luke ii. So much so, that unbelievers have called them myths.
2. Luke ii. Describe the scene. It sends us back to Paradise and to Adam and Eve, and to the Canticles.
3. We might fancy [there had been] no fall. [We see] Christ, as if He did not come to die, and His immaculate Mother; the angels; the animals, as in Paradise, obeying man.
4. We all seem caught and transformed in its beauty—‘from glory to glory’—as St. Joseph.
5. But, many Christmases as there have been, this has something peculiar. A crown given to Mary. The Feast of the Conception ever precedes Christmas, but this year something has been done.
6. This year, as you know, the Pope, in the midst of the bishops of the world, has defined the Immaculate Conception, viz. that Mary had nothing to do with sin.
7. We were sure that it was so. We could not believe it was not. We could not believe it had not been revealed. We thought it had, but the Church did not say it was, etc.
8. Not out of place here. As we sing to Mary when the Blessed Sacrament is exposed, so now on today.
9. And we of The Oratory have a special interest in it. For our Church is raised under the invocation of Mary Immaculate; and, as queens give largesses on their great days, so now that this crown is put on her head, she has, we think, shown us especial favour.
10. You recollect, some of you, three years ago, our trials: the world flourishing (Achilli matter) my going to Ireland; Lady Olivia Acheson’s illness and death; and the illness of three intimately connected with us. All this weighed us down. The Christmas midnight Mass three years ago.
11. The contrast now: benefactions to our house and Church.
12. Our state in the University through your prayers.
13. We may expect trouble again—joy as if sorrowing, sorrowing as rejoicing. But God is all-sufficient.