Is not this great result worth all the sufferings which Ireland has endured? The ways of God appear often circuitous. But in their circuitous course they are everywhere fraught with blessings. The children of Ireland suffered; yet, even in their sufferings they were blessed. He himself pronounced “blessed those who suffer persecution for justice's sake”; for in their trials they redeemed their own souls. But they were doubly blessed, because they were preserving the ark of God, and carrying it through the waters of tribulation to bless more amply unborn and numerous generations. The ways of God are circuitous, and though, like the course of the planets, they sometimes seem to us to retrograde, they are always onward. The sufferings of Ireland at a time seemed without a purpose, or even the very contrary to what we might have expected for so faithful a people. But, who knows what might have been the result, if justice and humanity had marked the course of the English nation towards Ireland? Who knows but the temptation to the latter to be drawn into apostacy would have been too powerful? Had Apostate England dealt generously or justly with Catholic Ireland, who knows if, in the alliances that would have been formed, she would have been equally steadfast in her faith? And though for a long time confiscations, and plunder, and persecution, and slaughter, and even now, harsh treatment condemning her sons to famine and banishment, have been the effects of the English connection; if these have been the means of creating a barrier that prevented the spread of heresy amongst her sons, has too great a price been paid for the “pearl” that has been bought? When, particularly, the cross borne by the children of Ireland shall have been erected in the Western and Southern [pg 087] Hemispheres, and flourishing Churches in Catholic unity established under its shade, where, but for the fidelity of our fathers, heterodoxy alone would have had sway, shall we not say that little indeed were their sufferings compared to the value of such an Apostolate of Empires?
What is any Earthly mission compared to this? What is even the spreading of civilization with its highest privileges, compared to the spreading of the saving institutions of the Gospel? Even in this world virtue is a thing infinitely superior to mere physical power. The man who does God's will, whose soul is adorned with grace, is an object of complacency with his Maker, and enjoys his esteem infinitely more, than he who can control the hidden powers of nature, and make them subservient to his will, but does not make his own will conform to the great law that should govern it—subjection to the will of God. When Earth, and all that is of Earth, shall have passed away, the proudest human achievements will be seen to have been as nothing, while those who shall have caused God's name to be glorified, shall shine as bright stars “unto perpetual eternities”.
This mission, however, has its duties as well as its dignity. What will it avail us to be the sons of martyred sires who sacrificed all for God, if we barter the faith for which they died, for some paltry bauble, or fail to transmit it to those under our charge? Will not the constancy and sufferings of our fathers be a reproach to us before God and man? Will they not pronounce judgment upon us if, while we honour their heroic deeds, we ourselves display nothing but pusillanimity? And even though we preserve our faith, will not this be rather to our shame, if we do not endeavour to practise the virtues which it teaches? When the salt has lost its savour, it is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men. The higher the vocation of God, the lower will be the degradation of those who fail to correspond. They will be despised, and justly despised, by God and by men.
We can see in the fate of other nations the consequences of infidelity to a noble mission. Spain and Portugal were once great powers. They achieved great things at home and abroad. The sails of their commerce whitened every sea. The most distant lands acknowledged their might. They, too, were missionary nations. They carried the faith to the East and to the West, and in both hemispheres planted the cross on continents and islands where Christ was before unknown. God may be said to have given them power for this purpose. It was mainly through their agency that the missionary work, which repaired the losses of the Church in Europe, was carried on for two hundred years.
But the rulers of these countries listened to wicked counsels. On one and the same dark day did Spain, on another did Portugal, command the most strenuous heralds of the cross to be seized and bound in chains. The galleons that were wont to bear over the deep the treasures of Asia and America, and pour them into the laps of the mother countries, or to carry their commands and the means of enforcing them to the most distant lands, were now spreading their sails over every ocean and sea, in the inglorious work of conveying to home prisons, or into exile, the truest missionaries of the cross. On that day these nations renounced their noble mission, and the power that was given to enable them to carry it out soon departed.
The immediate agencies producing their downfall, as well as those that gave rise to their power, may, indeed, be seen in operation before the existence of the causes to which I have attributed them, but not before these were known to God. Now, he frequently prepares, by a long process, the instruments both of his rewards and his punishments, and holds them ready to be conferred on the virtuous, or poured forth on the head of the criminal, long before the fidelity of the one be tested, or the guilt of the other be consummated. Spain and Portugal thus fell, if you will, by immediate agencies long in operation, but by agencies over which God ruled, and which He directed according to his own wise counsels. They fell, and in their humbled condition, mocked by the remains of ancient greatness, they teach all the important lesson, that the greater the high calling given by God, the greater the punishment of those who prove untrue.
Were we also to prove faithless to the mission which God has assigned us, we know not what punishment may await us, even in this world. The trials through which our race has passed, and is passing, may seem severe; but, they are trials permitted by a loving father. May we never deserve that he should scourge us in his great anger. We might then find, like the Jewish people, that to suffer for righteousness' sake from the hands of men, is sweet, compared to the gall and wormwood mixed in the cup of those who fall into the hands of an avenging God.
On this day, when the Church calls on us to commemorate the heroic virtues and the glorious deeds of our great Apostle, I would fain say to every son of Ireland—to every one in whose veins Irish blood flows, no matter where he himself was born: Let us live worthy of our ancestry, of an ancestry which is the same for all, and is a noble one, noble in that which is the noblest thing man can rejoice in—virtue and fidelity to God. We ourselves are called in a special manner to do honour to our faith by spreading it amongst nations that are destined to [pg 089] occupy the highest position in the social scale. Let us be faithful to our calling. Let us show ourselves worthy sons of the martyred dead. Let us make sure, like them, whatever else we fail in, not to fail in transmitting the faith to those entrusted to our charge, never exposing it to danger for any advantage, much less for the trifling things that may be gained here by want of fidelity. Transmit, carefully, the faith, first of all, but with faith spare no effort that you yourselves, and those committed to your care, grow also in every other virtue. Nay, endeavour so to live that all men may learn to love the faith which is the spring of your actions, and thus glorify and love that God who is the “Author and Finisher” of that Faith.