The Mass, Juan Carreño de Miranda

"The grace of God, life everlasting." -Rom. vi. 23.

1. The value of a promise.
2. What is this promise ?

3. It has been made to us by God.

4. Can we not promise in return to merit its fulfilment ?

A PROMISE made to us is an attraction that enkindles hope and leads us to make endeavour. But how often have we been promised and have been disappointed! Or again, promises have been made, but the conditions have not been fulfilled, and there is no result. So a promise on which we can build our hopes, and which may urge us on to do our utmost, must be made by one whom we can trust, by one who has power to fulfil it; and it must be a promise of something well worth gaining. The greater the good that is offered, the more the promise is to be prized. And finally, the condition or the conditions imposed must be within our power of fulfilment.

Then what is the promise that the text alludes to ? Life everlasting! We have it plain and unequivocal in Holy Writ: "And this is the promise which God hath promised us--life everlasting" (I John ii. 25). Test this promise, and see how wholeheartedly we can trust to it. First, it is the promise of one in whom we may confide--the God of Truth. Again, it is the promise of one who has the power to fulfil it--the Almighty. And it is a promise of infinite value, that will last for all eternity, without fail or change-life everlasting, which is the blessed vision of God and the participation in His glory and beatitude.

And how is this promise to be fulfilled? By our divine Saviour, Jesus Christ. Witness the inspired words of God in the Scriptures: "According to the promise of life, which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. i. 1); and again, "God according to His promise hath raised up to Israel a Saviour, Jesus" (Acts xiii. 23). For all the promises of God are in Him" (2 Cor. i. 20).

The Son of God, Jesus Christ, became Man and lived amongst us, showed us by example and taught us the way of salvation; He redeemed us by His sacred Passion and Death; He instituted His Church to be our guide and our safeguard, and made it infallible and imperishable by the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. He instituted the Sacraments, and specially the Holy Eucharist, through which we might receive grace and nourishment and strength. All this to prove to us that the promise was efficacious and alive with power. Moreover, that the promise might always be before our minds, illuminating, filling them with hope, inflaming our souls to venture all, to do their utmost, His divine Presence dwells amongst us. In every church He has made His abode to dwell amidst the children of men.

All this is held out to us, and given to us by the promise of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Can it be that this gracious and glorious promise has really been made to us? Look around: does mankind seem to believe it and understand it? That life everlasting is promised, is guaranteed to them? Is it their one thought, engrossing all their attention, inspiring their actions, their zeal? If life everlasting is promised us, can it be possible that the desire of money, position, comfort, or anything in this fleeting world can occupy our attention, can preoccupy our thoughts so entirely that we utterly disregard and forget this promise of Almighty God?

Perhaps the condition to be fulfilled to gain the reward of the promise is entirely beyond our powers and our hopes. Can we believe for a moment that the just and faithful God would treat us so? No; according to His promise He has raised up a Saviour; so it is through Him, our Saviour Himself, that we can surely fulfil the conditions to make the promise effective. He is ready and longing to give us both the will and the power to do His blessed Will; for that is the condition--we must obey Him and do His holy Will, then there is eternal life for our reward. The Church prays: " O Almighty and eternal God, grant us an increase of faith, hope, and charity, and that we may deserve to obtain what Thou promisest, make us love what Thou commandest." It is because we have not the faith or hope in our hearts to cling to His promise that we have not the love to venture all in striving to gain "life everlasting."

God has promised us so much; cannot we find in our hearts to promise Him in return our obedience, our loyalty, our love? Let us not be smitten by the glamour of the vain promises of the world, so as to give our time, our activity, our souls to seek to gain them. Rather with the faith of St. Peter, let us cry out: "Lord, Thou hast the words of life to whom shall we go?" Aye, indeed, to whom shall we go, when we feel that this short life is drawing to a close, when death is drawing nigh? What promises will avail us then, except the one divine promise of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord ?

Everything will slip from our grasp then; we shall have to leave and part from all. What consolation will it then be, that we have trusted in the promise of God -the faithful God- Who will give us life everlasting through His Son, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ! ( Short Sermons on the Epistles & Gospels of the Sundays of the Year By Fr. Francis Paulinus Hickey O.S.B. 7th Sunday after Pentecost)

In this world there is no food which can fill the desire of men's souls. There is, then, not only the danger of their fainting by the way, but there are in reality vast numbers of them who have fallen, who at every moment are falling, by the wayside, and away from true life. We then discover this fact, even more deplorable than the first, because having nothing to eat in the spiritual sense, so many fall away from all belief in God. In the truer and deeper, the mystical sense of the text, we see that there are millions to-day who have nothing to eat, who go about fasting, faint, and who even die in the way. The experience of past ages bears me out when I say that God alone can satisfy the necessities of the human heart and the aspirations of man's soul."

In vain has mankind attempted to live without its Creator. "Of old," says the venerable Father Lallemant, "the devil disguised himself as God, presenting himself to the heathen in idols, as the author and the end of everything in the world." Later on, in modern, in our times, men have tried to fill the void within by creatures which they substituted for God. But nobody has succeeded, nobody can succeed without God. The oft-repeated attempt of man to deceive his own heart and soul into the belief that anything but God will still his hunger, has caused only wretchedness and supreme misery.

The truth then is: Today, as of old, multitudes are without God, without Christ, by their own fault. They will not follow Him out to the desert, will not listen to His words, ponder upon them; will not ask for grace to believe and be filled with truth. No; in pride, in deluded self-satisfaction, in the bustle of life, in the entanglements of passion or business, they suffer life to run on in some faint, half-hearted way, desiring the truth but never, as the Apostle says, coming to the knowledge of it. But we, by God's mercy, have the truth, we have eaten and been filled; oh! let us prize it, let us above all be faithful to it—for our Lord says: Blessed are you, not because you know the truth, not solely because you possess it, but blessed are you if, knowing it, you live up to it."  The Five minute Sermons by the Paulist Fathers, 6th Sunday after Pentecost

It has been made to pander to the grossest vices of men. It has been made to lie, to steal, to be impure. It has been made to teach false religion, false politics, and false morality. At times it has been the very worst enemy of mankind; filling men's minds with theories entirely impracticable, or such as, put into effect, would destroy their happiness.

Nor have men hesitated to prostitute its high calling for the sake of furthering personal gain and ambition, or even revenge. The trust and confidence of the public have not unfrequently been abused, and error commingled with truth so subtly, and right with wrong, that the public sentiment has been arrayed against truth and justice; for there is an almost unaccountable impression given many people that what they find printed is of necessity true unless it is absolutely proved to be false.

Our care must be, in the light of the facts before us, to distinguish between the good and the bad press. We must beware of the evil sent flying, as it were, upon the air, and hold ourselves aloof from the crowd, when it is being hurried along to its ruin by bad advice and by bad principles. Good books and good papers are doing God's work in the world-as apostles in their way; but those that are bad are working in the interest of the "prince of darkness."

A good press sheds a bright light over the earth -the light of truth; a bad press is like a heavy cloud obscuring the sun. We can have nothing to do with evil; we should hate evil. Let us have nothing to do with bad books and bad papers. Let us neither read them ourselves, nor permit others to read them, when we have authority to prevent them. Let us banish them from our houses; that at least we can do, for there we are supreme. Let us strive also to have them banished from the shops where we deal and from the land wherein we live."  Five-minute Sermons by the Paulist Fathers 5th Sunday after Pentecost

The Catholic Mass Fyodor Bronnikov 1869

Yet Mass on Sunday is something we should set apart as of the gravest obligation all the year round. Of course there are reasons which excuse, but they must be serious ones. For the Sacrifice of the Mass is not only to be assisted at by a strict law of the Church, but it is the greatest act of our religion. It is Christ on Calvary, and nothing less. What if Calvary be so many thousands of miles distant from your church-does that make any difference to God? God is equally present in every part of the world. Does it even make any difference to you? Is your love for some dear relation or friend any different whether you are in the same quarter of the world with him or not? Some places are more sacred to you than others, to be sure, and so are they to God; but distance, although it divides loving hearts, does not divide their love. So our Lord is present, really and personally, in His humanity and in His divinity, on this altar, just as truly as He was on Calvary. Nor does the lapse of time alter the case. Christ our Lord died for you just as well as for any of the Jews or Gentiles of His own day. A thousand years are to God but as a day that is passed, yea or even a million of years passed or yet to come; for to the eternal God there is no passage of time, but only an everlasting present.

The difference of time and place, therefore, has little to do with the identity of the act, for the spirit of man is superior to both, and the power and love of God are supremely so. It is the identity of the great Act of Redemption and its perpetuity and its universality which bring us to our Lord's cross in Holy Mass. Here, upon our altars, that atonement for our sins is continually renewed, that divine merit is continually made our own.

It was first done with pain and in sorrow; it is now perpetuated with joy. It was for once and for all the literal shedding of blood in mortal agony; it is now the mystical pouring forth of all the treasures of grace purchased by that loving sacrifice. The man-God who died on Calvary is the same who comes down upon our altars; He comes with the very same intention; He appeases the very same divine justice for the very same culprits as on the first Good Friday.

In wishing you, therefore, all the relaxation of the pleasant summer weather, I also insist that you shall enjoy it in union with our Lord, and if Sunday shall be the chief day of rest for your body, I sincerely trust that it shall not the less be your soul's day of purification. There is no tree in all the woods whose shade is so grateful as that of the cross, under which your soul rests at Holy Mass. Of all the cool streams in which you may bathe and cleanse your body there is none to compare, for the welfare of either soul or body, with those copious floods of happiness which flow into the four quarters of the world from Calvary. There is no true joy with a bad conscience, and the Sunday on which you hurry off to your pleasure without attending at Mass cannot be really happy. ( Five-minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year, 4th Sunday after Pentecost,  1893)