Are we all going this way? Is each one of us now here present moving daily and hourly on this path? It is almost useless to ask this question, for I know many, very many indeed, will answer. No! It is indeed a sad truth that most people, most even of our Catholic people, are not going this way.
But why is this? One reason is because they do not try, sincerely and earnestly, to fix in the mind that this is the only condition upon which any soul can be saved. For our Lord himself declares that unless a man take up his cross daily and follow him he cannot be his disciple. They do not realize that there is an absolute necessity, an unchangeable law in this assertion. God has said it, and will not unsay it. Yet how quickly will men stop a business or a transaction that will surely cause them to lose their money! How quickly will they turn from a road that is sure to lead to death! They realize the necessity when property and life are to be lost; but they will not see or feel the same necessity when their souls and eternal life are most certainly to be forever lost.
Again, they are discouraged because the way is hard and difficult. Show me any way in life not hard and difficult. Ask the father, the mother, the single man, the married man. Ask the rich and the poor, the old and the young, the active business man, the idle and slothful man, as well as the common tramp. All have the same answer—that life is a hard road any way you may take it.
Man, then, is reduced to the necessity of suffering and mortification. The secret of this is that all men are under sin, all poisoned by it. The only remedy is to cure ourselves, to get rid of this poison. The way of the Lord is the way given us to go in order to find this cure. All along this way we find the remedy at every turn. It is found in a good confession, in true penance and mortification, in the sacrament of the altar, the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is intended to nourish our souls and to act against this terrible poison.
Make straight, then, the way of the Lord. Do not be terrified by trouble, pain, and difficulties of any kind. Do not permit the devil to make you think it will always last, always be the same. These difficulties become less and less by degrees. They wear away, as it were, or God so fills the soul with strength and patience that it is the same in the end. We then bear easily by the grace of God that which was so troublesome at first.
Set to work, then, at once. Let your souls be ready for the holy Feast of Christmas. Remember that we must celebrate that as Christians ought to do. Gratitude, love, Christian manliness, and honor require that all shall celebrate the birthday of a suffering God in such a manner as to make him feel he is truly remembered and honored. The least one can do, then, is to begin to make straight the way of the Lord by cleansing the soul of all mortal sin and by making a good Christmas communion. That feast, you know, is a time when great graces are given to the sincere soul. Do not, then, for the sake of your own soul, fail to keep Christmas day as a true Catholic should keep it.