Hastings

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 10, 18 March 1925, Page 31

Hastings

(From our own Correspondent.) ' March 13. The fortnight's mission preached by the Marist Fathers was brought to a brilliant close on Sunday night, the Bth inst. For the whole fortnight Fathers McCarthy and Vincent preached to a crowded church. The closing night showed a sky of rain, but the weather remained unbroken. It was quite impossible to accommodate the hundreds that kept crowding into the church. The porches and sacristies overflowed and people looked in from the church gates. The congregation had a fair sprinkling of our separated brethren—several prospective converts are a tribute to the missieners' clear and eloquent exposition of Catholic belief. The final night was a stirring one. Father McCarthy's sermon on the Divinity of the Church was a magnificent piece of oratory—a compelling and forceful discourse that quite thrilled his hearers and disposed them for the impressive renewal of baptismal vows. Eight hundred voices thundered out the hymn that has become the vocal expression of loyal Catholic sentiment—" Faith of Our Fathers." Men and women left with hearts brimming with pride in the grand old Church that has come down to us from the days of Christ, marching through the centuries with unfaltering step and clear purpose, and her footsteps still ring with a music like the tramp of armies. A divine power is hers that could only come from the God of Battles.