Faith of Our Fathers

New Zealand Tablet, 27 April 1922, Page 33

Faith of Our Fathers

[A Weekly Instruction for Young and Old.]

Charity.—(Continued.)

Moreover charity makes the soul resemble God, as the heat which penetrates iron renders it by degrees incandescent and like fire itself. Charity is the essential disposition of the Heart of God, of the Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ; so that this sublime virtue communicates to men's hearts the disposition and all the sentiments of God Himself and of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the property of love (says St. Augustine) to transform us in some measure into the object of our affection. He who loves earth becomes earthly ; he who loves the flesh becomes carnal; he who loves heaven becomes heavenly; and he who loves God becomes all divine and almost God Himself. Charity may be called a beginning of the life of paradise. Once lighted in the soul, this divine fire never dies if sin comes not to extinguish it. When on departing this life, and being ushered into the presence of its Beloved, the loving soul shall find herself face to face with her allamiable God, her love will be inflamed to the highest degree, will transport her into the arms of God, and transform her into Himself by an ineffable union. She will be, as the Apostle says, one spirit with the Lord: "Qui adhaeret Domino, wins spiritus est" (1 Cor. vi. 17). 46. The precept of charity is the first and principal of all the precepts. Our Lord says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole •soul, and with all thy strength: this is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependcth the whole Law and the prophets. The perfect model and source of all charity is the Sacred Heart of the only Son of God, Our Saviour Jesus Christ, whose Heart is inflamed with the-purest charity which communicates its ardor to all who approach Him. The Four Last Things. 1. We have seen, according to Christian doctrine, how God, after having first created and then redeemed humanity, conducts it by means of grace to the term of glory. It remains for us to consider how He leads man to his last end, and . establishes him there for ever; and this is the object of this chapter on the last things. 2. We understand by last things the last events which must come to pass to each man in particular, as well as all in general and to the whole world. The doctrine concerning them may be divided into three articles— (l) the passage from this life to" the next; (2) the relations between the living and the dead; (3) the end of time. First Article: The Passage from this Life to the Next. 3. Man, having arrived at the term of his existence, passes from this world to the next; this passage is made at the time of our death. Death is the separation of the soul from the body. The soul, being immortal, passes to a new life, which is assigned to it by the Creator according to its merit. The body remains here and decomposes. It becomes corrupted and changes at last into dust, which is assimilated and becomes confounded with earth. Faith teaches us—(l) that all men must die once; (2) that the hour of death is uncertain; (3) that death terminates the period given to men for the acquiring of merit, and fixes irrevocably their eternal lot according to the merit of their works; (4) that death is the punishment of original sin; (5) that Jesus Christ, by His death, has vanquished death and has merited for us our resurrection. 4. All men, we have said, must die once; so that before the day of judgment all will have suffered death. This doctrine, according to the word of St. Paul "It is appointed for all men once to die," is in no way opposed to the Apostles' Creed, where we say that Christ will come to judge the living and the dead ; for by the living is understood the elect, or rather those who will be alive at the end the world, and who will die only to rise again immediately and be present at the judgment. 5. Faith' presents death to us as the punishment of sin. It is true that the 'nature of man is mortal, inde-

pendently of sin; but God, by His grace, bad rendered it immortal in the person of Adam, who was to transmit immortality and justice to all his descendants. Adam, by his sin, lost the privilege of immortality; and God punished him, together with all his descendants, with death. Hence, in dying, we suffer the penalty of sin. 6. There are two judgments, the particular and the universal. The latter will take place at the end of the 1 world, after the general resurrection ;• the particular judgment immediately after the death of each one of us. When man comes to die, his soul, freed from his body, and subsisting with all its faculties in its spiritual nature, will appear before the tribunal of Jesus Christ, to bo judged according to the words of the Apostle, "After death, the judgment." The sentence pronounced is immediately put into execution, and the soul is placed according to its merits. 7. There are four different abodes or dwelling-places for souls that have left this life: limbo, purgatory, hell, and heaven or paradise. Limbo was deserted when heaven was opened by Jesus Christ; purgatory will last only till the end of the world ; so that, after the general judgment, only hell and heaven will remain. 8. Limbo is the place where the souls of the just were detained before the coming of Jesus Christ. It was a place of rest, of peace, and consolation, where the souls of the patriarchs and the other saints awaited the coming of the Redeemer In Scripture limbo is sometimes called Abraham's bosom, more, frequently hell; it was there that the soul of Our Lord went after His death, as we say in the Creed, "He descended into hell Our Lord descended there to announce to His captive saints the deliverance they were expecting. His presence and the manifestation of His divinity changed it into a. paradise, as He gave the good thief to understand: "This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise." Revelation has not made known to us the situation of limbo, any more than that of purgatory and hell. According to an opinion commonly received by the Doctors, these different places of sojourn occupy the vast regions of the interior of the earth. Seine also are of opinion that limbo, since the Ascension of Our Saviour, has become the abode of those who have died with the single stain" of original sin upon their souls. 9. Faith teaches us en the subject of bell—(1) that there is a hell— that is, a, place of suffering prepared for sinners; (2) that the souls of those who die in mortal sin are sent there immediately after death ; (3) that the pains of hell are. eternal. These, Our Lord said, in speaking of the reprobate, shall go into eternal punishment, and the just into eternal life. Again He said that the rich man died and was buried in hell; and elsewhere He calls hell the fire that is never extinguished, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and where the gnawing worm shall not die. Jesus Christ repeats in the Gospel as often as 15 times that there is a hell. <xx> . For Influenza, take Woods' Great Peppermint Cure.