[Footnote 4: Isaias 1, 13.]
[Transcriber's note: The USCCB reference is Isaias i., 18.]
Confess your sacrilegious communions. Go and repair the scandal you have given. Restore the goods you have stolen. Abandon the companions of your guilt. Do this, and there will be joy before the Angels of God, and with the Priests to whom you may confide your conscience. If, in spite of all I have said, you live on with the guilt of an unworthy communion, eternal woe will be your portion; from which may God in His mercy deliver you, and all of us. AMEN.
Sermon III.
Christ's Resurrection The Foundation Of Our Faith.
"And when the Sabbath was past,
Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome,
brought sweet spices."
—Mark xvi., 1.
(From the Gospel for Easter Sunday.)
On this day, the bosom of the whole Church swells with exultation. After the penance of Lent, after the mourning of Holy Week, the countless disciples of the crucified and risen Saviour, take up and echo through the whole earth the joyful cry—Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. For this is the day on which Jesus Christ, bursting the bonds of the sepulchre, triumphed over death. This is the day which, more than any other, enlivens our faith, strengthens our hope of eternal salvation, and causes our hearts to bound with spiritual joy. Even the coldest and most indifferent Christian feels his bosom warm with some faint sentiment, at least, of devotion on this day, and remembers with pride that he bears the name and professes the faith of Jesus Christ. This is right and proper. For all the doctrines of our religion are centred in the resurrection. All our hopes are based upon it. The Resurrection is the grand Fact of Christianity. It is the proof of the Divinity of Jesus Christ; it is the seal of God which makes the documents of our faith authentic; it is the cause and the pledge of our final resurrection and eternal happiness. This accounts for the joy which swells every true Christian bosom, on this day. For, my dear brethren and I beg you to note it well—the source of our hope and of our joy is in our faith. It is the certainty of faith which banishes all doubt, wavering, hesitation and gloom from the heart of a sincere and fervent Catholic. The faith of the Resurrection must be firmly planted in our minds, if we would have the hope of the Resurrection, and the joy which springs from this hope, bright and glowing in our hearts. Let me therefore ask your attention this morning, while I endeavor to show you what a firm and and immovable foundation we have for our faith, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And in doing so, I will endeavor to establish these three points:
First.—That Jesus Christ appealed to his future resurrection, while he was yet alive, as the proof of his Divinity.
Second.—That He actually raised himself from the dead, as he had predicted, and,
Third.—That the Resurrection of Christ proves his Deity, and with it, the entire Catholic faith.