To-day, brethren, is called Gaudete, or Rejoicing Sunday, and is intended by the church as a little letup, as the people say, on the solemn season of Advent. To-day flowers deck the altars; at the High Mass the dalmatic, the deacon's vestment of joy, which has not been used for two Sundays, is again assumed. Where possible, and where the church is rich enough to buy them, rose-colored vestments should be worn. The first words of the Mass are, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice." It is just as if the church said to you all: "Be glad and joyful; make yourselves as happy as you can." "Ah!" some of you will say, "that is just the doctrine for us; that is just what we like." Do not be too fast, my friends. Listen to what comes next. "Rejoice," says the church; but in that rejoicing, in that striving to live happily, "let your modesty be known to all men." So, then, the Christian is to be a happy man, but he is also to be a modest man—a man of simple or moderate habits. My friends, does not the shoe pinch you a little? Do you not see the cap gradually taking a form that will fit some of your heads? You men, when you are together on some festive occasion—when you have a gala-day of one kind or another—you rejoice then, it is true, but is your modesty known to all men? Have you not often aped the manners and swagger of the worldly-minded? Have you not listened to indecent stories? Have you not told some such? Oh! what scandal you give when you do these things. Then your immodesty is known to all men. You are going with the crowd. You are following the multitude to do evil. You are walking in the wide path that leadeth unto perdition. You unfortunate drunkards that totter as you walk, who fall in the gutter and by the wayside, is your modesty known to all men? No, your shame is known to all men, and the shame of all who belong to you. Again, what think you of the woman who, because it is the fashion, goes out to balls indecently and improperly dressed—who is not covered as becomes a Christian matron or maiden, but is so clad as to bring the blush of lust to the face of the brazen, and of shame to that of the pure in heart; or of those who go to all sort of plays and spectacles, who encourage the most questionable of dances and ballets, and bring up their children in the same spirit? Is their modesty known to all men? My friends, to find the modesty of such people would be like searching for a needle in a bundle of hay. You would never find it. You, too, who spend every cent you have upon your backs, who have almost all your hard earnings invested in dry goods and millinery, who come to church tricked out in finery which belongs neither to your state nor calling, offend also against Christian moderation and modesty. Once there was an old jackdaw who dressed himself up in peacock's feathers; then off he went among the peacocks and tried to pass for one of them. But these splendid birds soon found him out and pecked him almost to death. My friends, when you deck yourselves out in clothing, in fashions which are beyond your means, unsuited to your calling as a Christian, unfit for your state in life, and fit, indeed, for none but the vain people of the world, what are you? Nothing but jackdaws in peacock's feathers. Oh! then don't make yourself ridiculous. Follow the advice of St. Paul: "Let your modesty be known to all men." These are the days of immodesty, of wasteful extravagance, of extreme vanity. Oh! then set your faces against this running tide of worldliness. Be modest, speak modestly, dress modestly, enjoy yourselves modestly. Don't dress up your children luxuriously, instilling into their minds even in childhood the spirit of vanity. Don't put on too much style or too many airs. Be happy, rejoice always, but be modest, be simple. "Let your modesty be known to all men. The Lord is nigh. For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit."
Rev. Algernon A. Brown.
Sermon VIII.
There hath stood One in the midst of you,
whom you know not.
—St. John i. 26.
St. John spoke these words, as the Gospel tells us, not to his disciples, but to those who had been sent from Jerusalem to question him on his mission, to ask him what business he had to preach and to baptize. It may be that both those who were sent and those who sent them had no real desire to know if he were indeed a prophet, but were merely trying to make him say something which could be used against him—to set a trap for him, like those which they afterward tried to set for our Divine Lord—since his language to them certainly seems like a rebuke.
For who was this One who had stood in their midst, and whom they had not known? It was our Lord Jesus Christ. It was the Son of God, the Word made flesh. He had been living in their midst since his childhood, but they had not known him. Even those in his own town of Nazareth, who had often met him in their streets, who had often seen him and spoken to him, had passed him by as if he was no more than one of themselves, as if he were only a poor carpenter's boy.
Now, we, my dear brethren, are something like these Jews at that time. For during our lives there has stood One also in the midst of us, whom we have not known. And it is the same One whom the thoughtless and the sinful passed in the streets of Nazareth, and whom they afterward crucified in Jerusalem. The King of Glory is in our midst at this moment; he who dwells in the tabernacle of the altar is indeed God made man.
It is true for us as well as for them that we cannot see that it is he with our bodily eyes; but there is much more to point him out to us than there was to them. The church has taken care that we shall not pass him by unnoticed; all the worship of the sanctuary is directed to his throne—that poor throne in our midst which he has come down from heaven to occupy. It is because of him that the altar blazes with candles and is adorned with flowers, and that the clouds of incense rise; it is to him that we bend the knee; all the splendid ceremonial of the Catholic religion is only our poor effort to worthily honor Him who has condescended to dwell among us under the sacramental veils.