The Season of Peace and Mercy

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 50, 20 December 1923, Page 45

The Season of Peace and Mercy

An event occurred about Christmas time which Upset Father Leary terribly. He had been confined to his room unable to move for some days, when one evening a messenger came from the next parish asking if a priest could go to a sick call. The curate was from home, as was the dying man’s own priest. Father Leary was helpless, and could only advise hurrying on to the monastery six miles off. The messenger rode away, but next day Father Leary heard that he had rung at the monastery door in vain. It was midnight. The house was plunged in darkness, and he rang and knocked, and finally heard a window open above his head. “Go away,” said a most peremptory voice. “No one can leave this house to-night.” The casement closed with so decisive a snap that the rider had perforce to turn homewards—to find the man who so sorely needed a priest dead! Father Leary’s amazement was perhaps touched with indignation, until a visit from the Prior of the monastery explained all and upheld what Father Leary had often said to his own parishioners. “God is a merciful God, but He is also a just God, and He will not be mocked.” “So you thought we had refused a sick call,” said the Prior, as he sat by Father Leary’s bedside. “Let me assure you that no one in the house heard a sound or spoke a word that night.” “But who opened the window?” asked Father Leary. “I sent for the messenger next day,” replied the Prior, “and made him show me the window. It was the window of no cell, but of the Oratory where the Blessed Sacrament is kept. I inquired about the dead man. He was the despair of Father Malone and his predecessors. He had not been to the Sacraments for years, but always maintained he’d send for the priest at the last. So he did, and it was no human voice that gave him his answer; £ No one can leave this house to-night.’ ” The man had sinned by presuming too far on. God’s mercy. He had put off and put off repenting of his sins. Possibly those around him had put off sending for the priest until the end was at hand, and then no human voice had decreed that it was too late. The two priests spoke of the terrible foolishness, to call it nothing worse, of those who put off making their peace with God, counting on a death-bed repentance, and Father Leary ended by saying this was the most wonderful case of spiritual intervention he had ever come across. “I know of one as wonderful,” said the Prior, “and more comforting. It happened to one of our Fathers. He was wakened one night by sand being thrown at his window and looking out saw a man with two horses. “ ‘ Quick, Father,’ he said, ‘ a sick call bring everything.’ It was a winter’s night, and before many minutes had passed the Father was, as he expressed it, flying through the air on the back of the fleetest horse he ever rode. The horse went too fast for him to know where they were going, and the name flung at him by his guide was unfamiliar, but at last they slackened speed, and his companion spoke. “‘ Be quick and quiet,’ he said. ‘ There’s been a murder here and the man is only waiting for you.’ They stole up to a loft and there found the victim. “‘I knew you’d come, Father,’ he gasped. All my life I’ve lived with the thought of this hour before me, and I’ve always prayed not to die without the Sacraments, and I forgive them that had done for me.’ “There in the dimness of the hayloft the man received the Divine Food for his last journey, and before the priest left he died. “They went back as they came. The guide was taciturn, and gave no information, so that the Father reentered the monastery, knowing nothing more than when he went out. “But next day he heard that the body of the murdered man, whose assailant had escaped, had been found in a hayloft at a place forty miles away. It had been midnight as they were leaving and ' just two o’clock when they returned, for he looked at the clock in the hall in passing.”

“The mercy of God won’t ever stop at miracles,” said lather Leary softly. “And those who pray for a happy death and live, as the murdered man said with the thought of death before them, God will never abandon in the end.” Then turning to his companion: “It’s so little I can do, lying here,” he said. “But it s the Mill of God for me; but I can pray, and from my heart I pray that no one in Ireland may let the Christmas pass the season of peace and mercy— making their peace with God, if it’s only for the thought that death may come before next Christmas. Doesn’t He offer peace and mercy even to the greatest sinners if only they will repent at the Crib of His Infant Son?”—Alice Dease, Irish Messenger.