LIGHT OF
CHRIST





Light Df Christ



'



Light Of Christ

Seven addresses delivered on The Catholic Hour from February 22,

1953 through April 5, 1953 by the Rev. Lawrence J. Riley. The program

is produced by the National Council of Catholic Men in cooperation

with the National Broadcasting Company.

BY

REV. LAWRENCE J. RILEY

First Edition

May 20, 1953

National Council of Catholic Men

1312 Massachusetts Avenue, N. W.

Washington 5, D. C.

Printed and distributed by Our Sunday Visitor

Huntington, Indiana



Nihil Obstat:

VERY REV. MSGR. T. E. DILLON

Censor Librorum

Imprimatur:

* JOHN FRANCIS NOLL, D.D.
Bishop of Fort Wayne



TABLE OF CONTENTS

Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit 7

Blessed Are The Meek: Blessed Are The Merciful 13

Blessed Are They Who Mourn 18

Blessed Are They Who Hunger And Thirst For Justice 23

Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart 29

Blessed Are The Peacemakers 35

Blessed Are They Who Suffer Persecution For Justice’ Sake 41





BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT

Address Delivered On February 22 , 1953

In the profoundly impressive

and traditionally beautiful
ceremony of Holy Saturday,

after the new fire has been sol-

emnly blessed by the priest at

the door of the Church, with

deacon and subdeacon and other

ministers he slowly enters the

Church and devoutly approach-

es the sanctuary. In the hushed

darkness three times the pro-

cession comes to a halt. And
then on each occasion, as he

lights one of the branches of

the triple candle the deacon

breaks the awesome silence

with the age-old chant: “Lu-

men Christi: Light of Christ.”

Because fire furnishes light

and heat, the liturgy of the

church utilizes it as a symbol of

Jesus Christ, the Light of the

world. For by His teaching the

minds of men and women and
children are enlightened, and

by His grace their hearts are

enkindled. That is why these
conferences during the holy

season of Lent are being group-

ed together under the title

“Lumen Christi.” For as no
other words ever spoken since

the dawn of history, the beati-
tudes, upon which we purpose
to meditate, can enlighten the

mind to know, and enkindle the

heart to love.

Early one morning amid the

golden splendor of Galilean

spring sunshine, almost at the

very commencement of His

public career, Our Divine Lord

descended half way down a

mountain, on the rugged sum-

mit of which He had spent the

night in fervent prayer. Gath-

ering about Him the multitude
who had hastened out from city

streets and country fields to

drink in avidly every precious

word of the Master, softly He

began to speak to them. Many
centuries before, amid the

rumbling of thunder and the

flashing of lightning, the awe-

inspiring Commandments had

been majestically proclaimed to

Moses on Mount Sinai. But now

on the mountainside in Galilee

the Son of God was speaking

softly. His theme was happi-

ness—a soul-stirring, heart-
thrilling, yet tantalizing, be-

witching theme that had cap-

tivated and absorbed the minds

of countless philosophers and

poets and orators from the

dawn of time. But with this

tremendous difference — they
could only inquire haltingly

into its nature; He could re-

veal authoritatively what it

really is. They could only sigh

for it; He could bestow it.

“Blessed are the poor in

spirit, for theirs is the kingdom

of heaven.” (Mt. 5, 3) Blessed,



8 LIGHT OF CHRIST

happy, fortunate are the poor

in spirit. The multitude was

fascinated and mystified. So

often they had heard the con-

cept of happiness misinterpret-

ed, twisted, warped, distorted.

But now the Son of God was

declaring to them that happi-

ness has its origin where others

had taught that only misery be-

gins.

“Blessed are the poor in

spirit.” It would be erroneous

to interpret this beatitude as a

panegyric of pauperism. Jesus

Christ never eulogized poverty

for poverty’s sake. St. Augus-

tine in commenting upon these

words of our Divine Lord pro-

vides us with the key to their

correct meaning and their pro-

found significance. “A rich

man,” says St. Augustine, “who

is able to despise in himself

whatever there is in him by

which pride can be puffed up, is

God’s poor man.” (Sentent

250) What Jesus Christ com-

mended and extolled on that

rocky mountainside in Galilee

nineteen hundred years ago was

detachment of the heart from

the material and the worldly

—

not merely from material and

worldly possessions, but more

especially from material and

worldly attitudes and values,

from arrogance and conceit and

ambition and pride. Basically

in the first beatitude are to be

found a castigation of pride and

a canonization of humility.

It is no exaggeration to state

that the root of all the vices

in man and in society is pride.

St. Thomas Aquinas does not

hesitate to call pride the first

and the beginning of all sins, a

vice which more than any other

turns man from God. (Cf. Sum .
Theol., II-II, q. 162, a. 7) It was

the sin of pride that cast the

fallen angels hurtling into the

fiery depths of the newly

created hell, there to suffer un-

ceasingly excruciating torment.

It was the sin of pride that

drove the rebellious Adam and
Eve in shame and ignominy and

terror from the delights of the

Garden of Eden into a bleak

and barren world. Yes, and it

is pride—pride and its ugly off-
springs: self-sufficiency, con-

ceit, ambition, haughtiness, ar-

rogance, hypocrisy—these are
the vices that lie at the root of

every deviation from God and

from God’s law, on the part of

men and of society.

Pride has been described as

“an inordinate love of self,

which causes us to consider

ourselves, explicitly or im-

plicitly, as our first beginning

and our last end.” (Tanquerey:

The Spiritual Life). It is not

pride to recognize truthfully

the gifts and abilities and

skills that God has bestowed

upon us. But it is pride to re-

fuse to acknowledge that “it is

God Who of His good pleasure
works in you both the will and

the performance.” (Phil. 2, 13)

It is pride to scoff at the press-

ing, insistent, momentous ques-

tion of St. Paul: “What has

thou that thou hast not receiv-

ed?” (1 Cor. 4, 7)



BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT 9

Men become so desirous to be

highly esteemed, so ready to

give themselves to pretense and

to posing, so ruthless to get

ahead at any cost, so hungry

for glory and greedy for popu-

larity, so irked at opposition,

so resentful of criticism, so sen-

sitive to neglect, so anxious to

win approbation, so eager to

wallow in applause.

The fundamental viciousness

of pride lies in the fact that the

proud man makes himself his

first beginning and his last end.

Refusing to acknowledge his

dependence upon God, attribu-

ting to himself his capacities

and his talents and his endow-

ments, in his self-sufficiency

and conceit he cries out: “I will

live my own life”—which is but
a discordant echoing of the

blasphemy of Lucifer: “I will

not serve.” The proud man ex-

alts himself. He denies God’s

supremacy. He enshrines him-

self as an idol to be venerated

and burns before himself the

incense of worship. He usurps

God’s honor. He appropriates

to himself the homage that be-

longs to God. In a sense, he robs

God of what is His alone. And

so God does not simply desert

the proud, or forsake the proud,

or abandon the proud. But in

the startling and terrifying

words of Holy Scripture: “God

resists the proud.” (James 4, 6)

For “I the Lord, this is My
name: I will not give My glory
to another.” (Is, 42).

“Blessed are the poor in

spirit.” Humility is not weak-

ness and falsehood, but power

and truth. It is, as St. Thomas

Aquinas teaches, “a virtue by

which the mind is strengthened

so as not to exalt itself above

what it really is.” (Sum. Theol.

II-II, q. 161, a.l). Humility is

not self-abasement, but rather

self-forgetfulness. It is not the

wish that others think little of

us, but rather the desire that

they think of us not at all. It is

not a prying into our souls to

analyze how mean we are, but
rather a gazing upon God to

discover how Divine-like we
can become.

I know that the modern
world considers humility to be

cowardice and timidity—the in-
stability of pallid and colorless

personalities. It glories in mak-

ing its own the aphorism of the
sage of Concord: “Self-trust is

the essence of heroism.” (Emer-

son, Essays ). But is it not sig-

nificant and even startling that

of all the virtues practiced for

our edification by Jesus Christ

the Son of God during His life
upon earth, it is humility in

particular that He Himself
singled out for our imitation:

“Learn from Me, for I am meek
and humble of heart.” (Mt. 11,

29).

It is our good fortune to live

in an age of unparalleled scien-

tific advancement. In every

branch of human learning, the
achievements of men and wo-
men have been conspicuous and
outstanding. Ours is a civiliza-



10 LIGHT OF CHRIST

tion with comforts more ex-

quisite than our ancestors in

the wildest wanderings of im-

agination had ever even

dreamed. Yet society in our day

is permeated and pervaded

with intellectual pride.

So many of the pseudo-intel-

lectuals of the modern world

glibly prattle that science has

done away with the need for

God—despite the fact that
oftentimes the very essence of

the things about which they

so confidently declaim (matter

and light and electricity, for

example) is shrouded in mys-

tery or utterly unknown. If only

they would understand that

every new discovery of science

emphasizes man’s greater de-

pendence upon God—both be-
cause it evidences the Omnipo-

tence of Him Who hid that se-
cret in nature’s bosom, and be-

cause it creates a necessity that

man discipline his newly found
power. For is it not the awful

tragedy of our age that modern

man has prostituted his know-
ledge to the shocking purpose

of ruthless blood-shedding and

ghastly mass slaughter? Glory-

ing in the conquest of his dis-

covery of a few of nature’s se-

crets, flushed with the heat of

success because he had subdued

a mere handful of the almost

infinite forces of nature, bloat-

ed with pride over his paltry

achievements, modern man
vaunts the defiance of Lucifer:

“I will not serve”—because he
has succumbed to Satan’s temp-

tation to Eve: “You shall be as

gods.” (Gen. 3, 5). Modern man

so often disregards God, and

doubts God, and denies God,

and rejects God—because he
dreams of substituting himself

for God. It is not so much that

science and knowledge are

adored as ends, but rather that

they are utilized as means to

bring about the worship of

mankind.

Do you think I exaggerate?

Then meditate upon the stark

antithesis between Christ’s doc-

trine of poverty of spirit and

the categorical definitiveness of

this dogmatic utterance of one

of our modern intellectuals.

“That man is the product of
causes that had no prevision of

the end they were achieving;

that his origin, his growth, his

hopes and his fears, his loves

and his beliefs are but the out-

come of accidental collocations

of atoms; that no fire, no hero-

ism, no intensity of thought and

feeling can preserve an indi-

vidual life beyond the grave

... all these things, if not quite

beyond dispute, are yet so near-

ly certain that no philosophy

which rejects them can hope to

stand.” (Bertrand Russell, “A

Free Man’s Worship,” Indep.

Rev., Dec. 1938).

Do you think I exaggerate?

Then ponder upon the trium-

phant affirmation of contented

self-sufficiency in these words

of the high priest of modern

progressive education. “We as-
sert that modern science makes

unacceptable any supernatural



BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT 11

or cosmic guarantees of human

values.” (John Dewey, in New
Humanist

,

May-June, 1933).

“Faith in the divine author and

authority in which Western

civilization confided, inherited

ideas of the soul and its destiny,

of fixed revelation . . . have

been made impossible for the

cultivated mind of the Western

World.” (What I Believe).

In point of fact, are the

achievements of our age so tre-

mendous, so magnificent, so

spectacular? May we not with
profit reflect upon the shrewd

observations of George San-

tayana, that “those who speak
most of progress, measure it by

quantity and not by quality
.”

(Winds of Doctrine ) Would it

not be rewarding to study the

indictment of our age by Robert

Hutchins: “The most charac-

teristic feature of the modern

world is bewilderment . . . We
do not know where we are go-
ing, or why; and we have al-
most given up the attempt to

find out.” (“Issue In the Higher

Learning,” Internat., Journal of

Ethics, Jan. 1934). Those who
bask in the sunshine of their

own glowing estimate of the
supposedly grandiose accom-

plishments of the twentieth

century—would they not be
shocked out of their smug com-
placency by meditating upon

the grim judgement of T. S.

Eliot: “We can assert with some
confidence that our own period
is one of decline, that the

standards of culture are lower

than they were fifty years ago,

and that the evidences of this

decline are visible in every de-

partment of human activity.”

(C. F. Reader's Digest

,

Aug.

1950).

And is not the decay of mod-

ern society which is the inevi-

table consequence of the intel-

lectual pride of our age, where-

by man has rejected God—is
not that the theme of many of

the writings of some of the pro-

foundest thinkers of the day:

Dawson and Maritain and

Mumford and Sorokin and

Toynbee? In fine, as Lord Hali-

fax so forcibly expressed it a

short time ago: “If our social

order today shows signs of dis-

integration, this is, I believe,

less through the destruction of

war than through the slow at-

trition of its religious and cul-

tural foundations, and through

the impact of intellectual forces

which have created a vacuum

without themselves having the

capacity to fill it.” (Cf. Cath.

Mind, Sept. 1952).

It is all so very logical

—

terrifyingly so. The philosophi-

cal basis was laid two centuries

ago by Immanuel Kant when he
taught that rational nature is

autonomous, an end unto it-

self, and hence obligated, only

by its own law. Given the
premise of Kant that man is his
own end, given the develop-
ment and intensification of that

premise in the perverted ego-

ism of the superman philosophy

of Nietzsche, ultimately and

inevitably one is driven to the



12 LIGHT OF CHRIST

twentieth century totalitarian-

ism of Hitler and Stalin. For

intellectual arrogance always

and inexorably eventuates in

lust for power.

Modern man would be like

God. But placing his trust sole-

ly in the things of time, feeding

upon material husks, he has

starved his spiritual nature.

And so in his very attempts,

bom as they are of intellectual
pride, he has become more and

more unlike God. For he has

stained and defiled the image

of God within himself. For the

individual and for society, there

is but one hope—a return to
God. And strangely enough,
what God promises is this: that

if man serves Him in humility
of heart and poverty of spirit,

he will become like God. For

in all the writings of the

world’s literature, there is no

pledge so sublime as that of

Holy Scripture: “He has grant-

ed us the very great and

precious promise so that

through them you may become
partakers of the divine nature.”

(2 Pet. 1, 4).



BLESSED ARE THE MEEK: BLESSED
ARE THE MERCIFUL

Address Delivered On March 1, 1953

Jesus Christ, the Son of God,

had the noblest, the sublimest,

and the most lovable character

of any man who ever lived. As

He tramped through the narrow

mountain paths of Galilee, or

trod the dusty road along the

banks of the Jordan, or made

His way through the crowded

shops of Jerusalem, everywhere

He drew irresistibly to Himself

countless men and women and
children throughout Palestine

—

not alone because of the won-

drous doctrine that He taught,

not alone because of the stu-

pendous miracles that He per-

formed, but above all else, be-

cause of His own personal,

overpowering magnetism, be-

cause He was meek and gentle

and mild, patient and forgiving

and compassionate.

Meekness and forgiveness

were the predominant charac-

teristics of the parables which

He related—the parable of the
prodigal son who was welcomed

home by a passionately loving

father whose tear-filled eyes

bespoke the pardon of a for-

giving heart; the parable of the

good shepherd who not only left

the ninety-nine to go out in

search of the lost sheep, but

even laid down his life for his

loved ones.

Meekness and forgiveness

were the keynotes of His doc-

trine, as He opened up to man-

kind’s view the vast ocean of

divine forgiveness—that the re-
pentant sinner must be par-

doned seventy times seven

times; that much had been for-

given the sorrow-stricken,

heart-broken Magdalen because

she had loved much.

Meekness shone forth in the

eyes of Jesus Christ as He

whispered a soft and gentle call

to the rich young man who
came to Him in his quest for
perfection; and forgiveness, as

those eyes addressed a silent

but eloquent plea to the im-

petuous and self-reliant Peter

who thrice had denied Him un-
der oath.

Meekness and forgiveness

characterized the reprimands

that infrequently fell from His

lips—to the unfortunate woman
guilty of adultery: “Has no one

condemned thee? . . . Neither

will I.” (John 8, 11) ; to the ter-

ror-stricken Apostles huddled

together at His feet in the

storm-tossed boat on the temp-

estuous Lake: “Why are you
fearful, O you of little faith?”
(Mt. 8, 26). He was ready to

forgive even the treacherous

Judas selling his God with a



14 LIGHT OF CHRIST

slimy kiss: “Friend, dost thou

betray the Son of Man with a
kiss?” (Cf. Mt. 26, 50; Luke 22,

48).

Meekness and forgiveness

were resplendent upon His

bruised and blackened and

blood-stained face, as He ac-

cepted without murmur the

angry blow of the menial in the

hall of Annas, as He submitted

to the scourging of His flesh in-

to tatters and the crowning of

His head with thorns, as He

pleaded on the gory, skull-cov-

ered Mount of Calvary: “Fa-

ther, forgive them for they

know not what they do.” (Luke

23, 34).

But the meekness of Jesus

Christ must not be interpreted

as faint-heartedness or softness

or weakness. For the Son of

God was terrifyingly capable of

wrathful indignation. He was

scathingly critical of self-

righteousness and insincerity

and hypocrisy. The money

changers who made of His Fa-

ther’s house a den of thieves,

the envy-blinded plotters with

bitter vengeance in their hearts

and death schemes in their

minds, who accused Him of per-
forming miracles by Satan’s

power, the Scribes and Phari-

sees who made clean the out-

side of the cup and of the dish

but within vrere full of rapine

and uncleanness—all of them
cringed tremblingly beneath

the withering censure of His

divine condemnation.

“Blessed are the meek.” (Mt.

5, 4). In the character of Jesus

Christ we have a living ex-

ample of true meekness. Meek-

ness is strength, force in re-

serve. He who is possessed of

it has the fortitude to control

his emotions, his feelings, his

very self. He has the courage to

bear opposition and oppression

and suffering without a cry of

complaint or a shout of rebel-

lion against God. He has the

fearlessness to stand uncom-

promisingly loyal to his prin-

ciples, and yet the selflessness

to be resolute without being

aggressive, to be firm without

being stubborn.

The man who is meek is not

always proclaiming his own

rights, but he is ever zealous

to uphold the rights of God.

He places his trust not in force,

but in kindness. On the secret

battlefield of his own heart he

has fought fierce and savage

wars, but they have ended in

smashing and glorious victory

—victory over self. It is the
victory of the saints—history’s
strongest characters — heroes
who subdued their bodies by

fasting and discipline, who

bridled their natural passions

by doing good to those who

hated them, and who, many of

them, because they were un-

yielding in their devotions to

Jesus Christ, valiantly and

dauntlessly endured the crud-

est torment and most ruthless

torture that diabolically hating

minds could contrive.

“Blessed are the meek.” In



BLESSED ARE THE MEEK: BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL 15

its nobler moments even the

world bestows its approbation

upon meekness and kindness.

“The drying up of a single

tear has more of honest fame,

than shedding seas of gore.”

(Byron: Don Juan )

The promise of the Son of

God to the man who is meek,

is not fame. He pledges nothing

spectacular, no fanfare, no

magnificence, no flourish of

trumpets. But to the meek He

holds out possession of the land,

participation in His kingdom

—

which is the enjoyment of

heavenly bliss forever and for-

ever.

In one of his writings (cf.

Character Formation)

,

Father

John O’Brien of Notre Dame

relates a gripping incident

which, it is said, occurred some

years ago during the height of

the Spanish Civil War, and

which exemplifies in vivid and

realistic fashion the fulfillment

of the divine command to par-

don one’s enemies. For indeed:

“Blessed are the merciful, for

they shall obtain mercy.” (Mt.

5, 7). When the diabolical hat-

red of the godless Communists

was seething at fever pitch and

their fury bursting forth into

frenzied violence and slaugh-

ter, early one morning at break

of dawn, a feeble, white-haired,

brow-wrinkled old priest with

shackled hands was roughly led

out from his dingy prison cell

to face a firing squad. The last-

minute preparations for the

execution were being made

amid disorder and excitement.

In a moment another stalwart

soul would grasp the palm of

martyrdom. Suddenly the con-

demned priest raised his voice

above the turbulent noise and

blustering shouts of the prison

yard. He had a final request to
make. One last act he wished to

perform—an act at once simple
and heroic. This he asked: that

the rope which tied his hands

be cut, in order that he might

raise them in blessing over his

torturers. It is hard—almost in-
human—to deny the request of
a dying man. And so this poor
priest’s plea did not go unheed-

ed. For one of the soldiers,

seizing an ax, savagely hacked

off not only the rope but also

the hands of the condemned

priest. There was a gasp of hor-

ror from those who stood by.
But the priest—slowly he lifted
his mangled arms, and over the

Communist’s head, with his

bleeding stubs he solemnly

traced the sign of the cross. “I

forgive you,” he said; “and may
God forgive you and bless you.”

It is hard to pardon those who

have injured us. It is difficult to

forget wounds that smart, to

forgive injustices that leave be-

hind an inheritance of rancor

and give birth to a progeny of

hate—to a scheming thirst for
a word of retaliation and a

lurking greed for an act of re-

venge. But blessed are the

merciful, for it is they who will

obtain mercy. Over and over

again this is the trenchant and

pointed lesson taught to man-



16 LIGHT OF CHRIST

kind by Jesus Christ. It is the

theme of the parable of the un-

forgiving servant. “And his

master being angry handed him

over to the torturers until he

should pay all that was due to

him. So also My heavenly Fa-
ther will do to you, if you do

not each forgive your brothers

from your hearts.
,,

(Mt. 18, 34-

35).

It is the epitome of the

Christian way of life. “If thou

art offering thy gift at the altar,

and there rememberest that thy

brother has anything against

thee, leave thy gift before the

altar and go first to be recon-

ciled to thy brother, and then

come and offer thy gift.” (Mt.

5, 23-25).

It is the pleading prayer

which Jesus Christ Himself

taught to those who would be

His followers: “Forgive us our

trespasses as we forgive those

who trespass against us.” (Mt.

6
,
12 ).

Only he who is willing to for-

give can enjoy true inward

peace. For the craving for re-

venge gnaws harrowingly at the

shrivelled soul, and the yearn-

ing to “pay back” hardens and

preverts the embittered heart.

Man must forgive—not be-
cause he is indifferent to right

and wrong, but because to for-

give is Christ-like; because to

forgive is prompted by super-

natural love of neighbor—and
that is based on love of God.

Love of God and love of neigh-

bor have one and the same mo-

tive—and that motive is God.
If we would practice the the-

ological virtue of charity, then

we must learn to realize our

oneness with our neighbor

—

even with our enemy—because
he has been made to God's im-

age and likeness, and because

for him Jesus Christ offered

His life on a blood-splashed

cross on the sun-eclipsed first

Good Friday.

If we would practice the the-

ological virtue of charity, then

we must try to understand

that our neighbor — even our
enemy—is actually or poten-
tially a temple of the Holy

Spirit, the dwelling-place of the

Triune God.

If we would practice the the-

ological virtue of charity, then

we must strive to see in our

neighbor—even in our enemy
—God Himself. “Amen I say to
you, as long as you did it for

one of these, the least of my
brethren, you did it for Me.”

(Mt. 25, 40).

If we would practice the the-

ological virtue of charity, then

we must never grow weary of

aiming to appreciate more pro-

foundly this tremendous truth:

that to those who like us par-

take of the Body and Blood of

Jesus Christ in the Holy Eu-

charist, we are bound in a union

that is unique. Seventeen hun-

dred years ago the realization

of this awesome thought so

stunned the mind of St. Cyprian

of Carthage that he must needs

shout it to all the world. “The



BLESSED ARE THE MEEK: BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL 17

Lord’s sacrifice,” he cried,

“symbolizes the oneness of

heart guaranteed by a persever-

ing and inviolable charity,

which should prevail among

Christians. For when our Lord

calls His Body bread, a sub-

stance which is kneaded to-

gether out of many grains, He

teaches that we His people

whom He sustains, are bound
together in a union of intimacy.

And when He speaks of His

Blood as wine, in which the

juice pressed from many clus-

ters of grapes is mingled in one

liquid, He likewise teaches that

by the commingling of a mul-

titude of persons, we His flock

are made one.” (Ep. 96).

This is no fanciful flight of

poetry. This is no extravagant

dream of an over-enthusiastic

imagination. This is no figment

of the mind. It is truth—God’s
truth. For has He not revealed

it to us in the inspired words

of St. Paul: “Because the bread

is one, we though many, are
one body, all of us who partake

of the one bread.” (1 Cor. 10,

IV).

O dearest Jesus our Brother,
Thou Who on a rugged moun-
tain slope nineteen hundred

years ago, didst enunciate the

principles for a Christian revo-

lution and outline the basis for

a Christian charter, Thou Who
didst preach: “Blessed are the

meek; blessed are the merci-

ful,” teach us to be like unto

Thee—compassionate and sym-
pathetic, gentle and forgiving.

Teach us to understand that

Thou art a lion of strength, St.

John the Baptist pointed to

Thee as the Lamb of God. Teach
us to fear the punishment that

will inevitably befall those who

are too hating to forgive and

too resentful to forget. Teach

us to realize that “he who says

that he is in the light, and hates

his brother is in the darkness”

(1 John 2, 9); that “everyone

who hates his brother is a

murderer” (1 John 3, 15); that

“if anyone says T love God’, and

hates his brother, he is a liar.”

(1 John 4, 20). Teach us above

all else to love—to love Thee
and to love our fellow-man be-

cause of Thee. Teach us that

even if we should speak with

the tongues of men and of

angels, even if we should have

knowledge to know all things

and faith to move lofty moun-

tains—and yet have not love,
we are but sounding brass and
tinkling cymbal. (1 Cor. 13).

Teach us to love—and that is
enough; for love “is the ful-

fillment of the Law” (Rom. 13,

10), and “perfect love casts out

fear.” (1 John 4, 18).



BLESSED ARE THEY WHO MOURN

Address Delivered On March 8, 1953

As the first streaks of a bril-

liant dawn eagerly lighted up

the distant horizon to herald

the arrival of the twentieth

century, mankind keenly
looked forward to an auspicious

and promising era. And

throughout the early years of

our century, it was indeed a

confident and buoyant spirit of

unqualified optimism that per-

vaded the very atmosphere.

Expectantly men anticipated a

golden epoch of happiness and

good fortune, and unending

period in which dreams that

had obsessed and haunted the

human race from the dim be-

ginnings of history, age-old

dreams of peace and prosperity,

would at last be gloriously

realized. War would soon be an

obsolete instrument of the un-

enlightened policy of less civi-

lized times. Constantly evolv-

ing progress was irresistible

and inevitable. An unlimited
and unceasing freedom would

soon become the precious heri-

tage of the human race—or at
least of that portion of the hu-

man race whose manifest des-
tiny it was, by decree of a

benign Providence, to rule over

the backward and less ad-

vanced. Only an irresponsible

and foolhardy skeptic would be

rash enough to deny the obvi-

ous and inescapable fact that

Utopia was on the horizon.

And was it not obvious? In

politics—at least in American
politics—the partisans of pro-
gressivism were forging ahead

and within the foreseeable fu-

ture would soon dominate the

field of government. In econ-

omics rugged individualism and

unrestricted free enterprise

would unquestionably produce

so flourishing and so thriving

a prosperity as would speedily

relegate to dusty history books

such antiquated and out-of-

date terms as “economic de-

pression” and “financial panic.”

In education the devotees of the

school of uninhibited self-ex-

pression were unmistakably be-

coming more numerous and

more influential; and hopefully

they cherished the fond expec-

tation that soon they would

liberate the educational world

from the shackles of tradition-

alism that fettered it.

Even in the field of theologi-

cal thought—I mean in some
circles outside the Catholic

Church—the “new freedom”
with its jubilant spirit of un-

questioning optimism received

a warm and welcome embrace.
As its influence began to ex-

pand, the doctrine of original



BLESSED ARE THEY WHO MOURN 19

sin came to be minimized or

abandoned entirely. The stark

and grim fact that human be-

ings, tainted and defiled by

original sin, are capable of the

most sinister and vicious

crimes—that fact was over-
looked and disregarded. In

many writings the absolutely

essential distinction between

the Infinite nature of God and

the finite nature of man, and.

between the natural and the

supernatural became obscured.

Indeed one of the most distin-

guished non-Catholic theolo-

gians at the turn of the century

discoursed enthusiastically
about the “democracy of God”

and urgently exhorted his con-

freres to dissolve the dichotomy

that split existence into the na-

tural and the supernatural.

(Coe, A Social Theory of Re-
ligious Education )

.

It was all so engagingly

pleasant, so unsuspectingly

hopeful, so bewitchingly opti-

mistic. And indeed, apparently

so demonstrably certain. For

did it not have sound and

healthy philosophical roots in

the Leibnitzian doctrine of the

late seventeenth and early

eighteenth centuries—that this
is the best of all possible

worlds? What mattered it that

that doctrine was diametrically

opposed to the teaching of St.

Thomas Aquinas that “no crea-

tion can exhaust the power of

the Creator.” (De Veritate, q.

20, a. 4). What mattered it that
that philosophical tenet of

Leibnitz stood contrary to the

magnificent verse of the Psalm-

ist: “Whatever the Lord wills

He does in heaven and on

earth, in the sea and in all the

depths of the sea.” (Ps. 134, 6).

What mattered it that St. Paul

should sublimely proclaim to

the Christians of Ephesus that

the Lord “works all things ac-

cording to the counsel of His

will.” (Eph. 1, 11).

What mattered it for the

men of the new-born twentieth

century, as they tingled with

elation over the brilliant pros-

pect of an untroubled future?

From every side advancement,

progress, enlightenment, hope,

expectancy, optimism pressed

down upon them. In ringing

words of fiery enthusiasm be-

fore the happy graduates of a

great American university, a

distinguished speaker could re-

assuringly cry out his exultant

prophecy: “The despotisms

which hitherto harassed men
are gone forever.” (GREAT
SERMONS by Great Preachers,
p. 597). In the rhythmic caden-

ces of the Hymn of Man the
poetic genius Algernon Swin-

burne could triumphantly sing:

“Glory to Man in the highest!
for Man is the master of
things.” And with undaunted

self-reliance and unhesitating

self-assurance the confident

William Ernest Henly could

boast in the memorable lines of

his Invictus:

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to

pole,



LIGHT OF CHRIST20

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

It matters not how strait the

gate,

How charged with punishments
the scroll;

I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

And now, scarcely more than

half a century has passed away.

Today, how stark is the contrast

and how bleak the outlook. On

the first day of the second half

of this century, one of the lead-

ing articles in one of the most

widely read newspapers in the

English-speaking world — the
Manchester Guardian — com-
menced with this grimly con-

cise statement of well nigh ut-

ter hopelessness: “Few years in

our history can have opened

more gloomily.’’ Dismal, de-

pressing, cheerless were the

sombre words of the leading

editorial of The New York
Times on the last Sunday of last

year. “There used to be a time,”

it said, “when people sat down

comfortably at the end of the

year and measured progress.

Nobody, except a few skeptics,

doubted the fact of progress.

Just as the earth went round

the sun, and by a somewhat

similar law—so it appeared

—

humanity was growing wiser

and better. We are less ambi-
tious today in our year-end es-

timates. We are glad to break
even, to be able to say that . . .

no irrevocable catastrophe has

overwhelmed the human race.”

The mood of the hour is one

of despair. In actual fact, if not

in theory, the philosophical

Pessimism of Schopenhauer has

perhaps more disciples today

than ever before. “The denial of

the will to live is the way of re-

demption,” was his teaching.

And is it not along that weary

road of Stygian darkness and

gloomy dejection that millions

of our fellow-men are desolate-

ly plodding today? Theirs is an

apprehensive anxiety for what

tomorrow’s news may bring;

theirs is a lonely grief for what

the scars of yesterday’s wars

have caused. Two world-en-

veloping conflicts within the

span of a single generation.

Present and past inundated by

a towering wave of ruthless

war, of barbaric cruelty and

inhuman torture, of famine and

pestilence, of displaced millions

and dispossessed exiles, of

prisons and concentration

camps, of crime and immoral-

ity, of absolutism and tyranny

—so appalling and so horrify-
ing as would stagger the im-

aginations of those in past ages,

whom the early twentieth cen-
tury, with glib boastfulness

and tragic irony, used to call

less advanced, less progressive,

less civilized.

And the future? Over the

future hangs the ominous and

threatening and haunting ghost

of a bomb.

Why try to go on any more?
Human existence is futile. Life

is purposeless. Ours is an evil

fate that flows inexorably from



BLESSED ARE THEY WHO MOURN 21

the pre-determined workings of

malevolent forces over which

we have no control. As one of
our most widely-known writ-

ers, Bertrand Russell, has ex-

pressed his philosophy: “Brief

and powerless is man's life; on

him and all his race, the slow,

sure doom falls pitiless and

dark." (“A free Man’s Wor-

ship," Indep. Rev., Dec. 1938).

Down from a steep and rug-
ged mountain slope in Galilee

—

to console and to challenge our

age and every age until time

is no more—there rings out the
inspiring message of the Son of

God: “Blessed are they who
mourn for they shall be com-

forted." (Mt. 5, 5). The de-

voted follower of Jesus Christ

can be satisfied neither with the

extravagant optimism of Leib-

nitz and Swinburne, nor with

the despairing pessimism of

Schopenhauer and Russell. The

true Christian cannot overlook

the uncompromising fact of evil

in the world—of pain and suf-
fering and hardship and misery.

For if there were no sorrow or

grief in the world the Son of

God could never have cried out
to the multitude on that Gali-

lean mountainside: “Blessed

are they who mourn." But on
the other hand, if pessimism

and despair and hopelessness

were the answer to the problem

of evil, then He could never
have uttered that overwhelm-

ingly consoling divine promise:

“They shall be comforted."

The ardent disciple of our

Blessed Lord does not close his

eyes to the awful fact of suf-

fering; rather he opens them

to the profound fact that suf-

fering has a purpose. He is not

afraid to acknowledge that it

is the inescapable lot of every

man and every woman and
every child to mourn; but it is

his glory and his privilege to

proclaim to all the world the

glad tidings that in God’s di-

vine plan they shall be com-

forted. Looking upon her child-

ren—each with his own pain
and worry and anguish and dis-

tress and agony — the Catholic
Church does not sing: “Invic-

tus"; she does not chant “Glory

to man in the highest"; she does
not prophesy doom and annihi-

lation. But she pleadingly be-

seeches a merciful God: “Kyrie

eleison: Lord have mercy on

us."

The disciple of Jesus Christ

accepts the fact that there will

be mourning by all mankind

until the end of human history,

because of a sin in which all

mankind shared at the begin-

ning of human history. “As

through one man sin entered
into the world and through sin

death, and thus death has pas-

sed unto all men because all
have sinned." (Rom. 5, 12).

The disciple of Jesus Christ

accepts mourning as did Job of

old: “The Lord gave and the

Lord hath taken away. As it

hath pleased the Lord, so is it

done. Blessed be the name of

the Lord." (Job 1, 21).



22 LIGHT OF CHRIST

The disciple of Jesus Christ

accepts mourning as an indis-

pensable condition for the at-

tainment of eternal glory. “It is

the patience of the innocent

sufferer that wins credit in the

sight of God.” (1 Pet. 2, 20).

The disciple of Jesus Christ

accepts mourning because in

the depths of his soul he real-

izes that for him and for all

men, salvation is to be found

only in oneness with Christ.

And because the life of Christ

was a life of bitter and an-

guished suffering, we can be-
come like unto Christ and one

with Christ, only if we, with

the heavy cross on our wounded

shoulders, tread the long, hard,

blood-spattered road to Cal-

vary’s heights. “For unto you it

is given for Christ, not only to

believe in Him, but also to suf-

fer for Him.” (Phil. 1, 29).

The disciple of Jesus Christ

accepts mourning, for in His

mystical body “Christ is in

agony until the end of the

world, and we must not sleep
the while.” (Pascal, Pensees,

VII). The Son of God lives in
His Church which is His Mysti-

cal Body. The redemptive mer-

its of the physical Christ are

distributed to mankind through

the Mystical Christ. In God’s

Providence, the Mystical Christ

must suffer, even as did the

physical Christ. And it can suf-

fer only in its members. That is

why St. Paul cried out: “What
is lacking of the sufferings of

Christ, I fill up in my flesh for
His body, which is the Church.”

(Col. 1, 24).

The disciple of Jesus Christ

accepts mourning because in

the mysterious designs of the

all-merciful God, men’s souls

are saved by the sufferings of

others. For the members of the

Mystical Body of Christ, in

whom Christ lives, continue His
mission upon the earth—but
only in so far as they carry on

the work which He Himself

commenced and just as it was

by self-immolation that Jesus

Christ saved the world, so also

it is only by self-sacrifice, by

pain and suffering and agony

and mourning, that we His

members can save the world.

(Cf. Plus, Christ in Our Breth-

ren). For “without the shedding

of blood, there is no redemp-

tion.” (Heb. 9, 22).

“Blessed are they who mourn

for they shall be comforted.”

In the heaven of eternal bliss

the Lord God Himself will wipe

away every tear from their

eyes, and death shall be no

more, nor cries of distress, nor

sorrow, nor mourning. For all

these old things will have

passed into the newness of

eternal rapture. (Cf. Apoc. 21,

4).



BLESSED ARE THEY WHO HUNGER
AND THIRST FOR JUSTICE

Address Delivered On March 15, 1953

Gazing out in sadness and

grief upon the brutal and sav-

age tyranny which is crushing

so many millions of innocent

people throughout the world,

our Holy Father three years

ago, in sorrowful and touching

words gave utterance to the

distress and anxiety that over-

whelmed his paternal heart.

“Juridical positivism and state

absolutism,” he said, “have

transformed and disfigured the

noble countenance of justice.”

(Address to the S. R. Rota,

1949)

There can be no true justice

apart from a recognition of and

a respect for the natural law.

For ultimately it is the natural

law which gives birth to nat-

ural and inalienable rights.

With those rights man is en-

dowed, precisely because they

are required in order that he

fulfill his obligation to live in

accordance with God’s law.

Moreover, it is the natural law

which demands that to every

individual must be accorded

what is his due. And that is

justice—justice which has been
so fittingly described by one of

our American poets as

“The hope of all who suffer,

The dread of all who wrong.”
(Whittier: Mantle of St. John

de Matha)

The natural law is a rule of

action, which reason itself re-

veals has been established by

the Author of man’s nature, and

promulgated and imposed by

being imbedded in that very

nature. The natural law, as St.

Thomas Aquinas has pointed

out, is “the participation of the

eternal law in a rational crea-

ture.” (Sum. Theol., I-II, q. 91,

a. 2). And the eternal law is

simply “the divine reason and

will commanding that the nat-

ural order of things be pre-

served, and forbidding that it

be disturbed.” (St. Augustine,

Contra Paustum). Or to ex-

press the thought in a slightly

different way—by the natural
law there is revealed to every

human being through his rea-
son, the obligation to observe

God’s eternal plan for the uni-

verse, in so far as it pertains

to him as an individual and as

a member of society. In God’s

providence every creature has

a destiny. Every creature is

held bound to act in accordance

with the exigencies of its na-

ture in order to achieve that

destiny. Man, being endowed

with intellect and will, must act

freely. This obligation to guide

his footsteps in the light of

the requirements of his ra-

tional nature and thus attain



24 LIGHT OF CHRIST

his destiny according to God’s

divine plan—this is the natural
law. It is obvious therefore

that the natural law is not a set

of capricious and unreasonable

precepts arbitrarily enacted by

men or by governments or even

by God, Rather, it is the law

of one’s very being, imposed

by God the Author of nature

and revealed to man through

his reason.

St. Paul makes pointed ref-

erence to the natural law in his

Epistle to the Romans. “As for

the Gentiles,” he writes,

“though they have no law to

guide them” (that is, they had

not been given the Mosaic law

supernaturally revealed to the

Chosen People by God)
—

“as

for the Gentiles, though they

have no law to guide them,

there are times when they

carry out the precepts of the

law unbidden, finding in their

own nature a rule to guide

them, in default of any other

rule; and this shows that the

obligations of the law are

written in their hearts.” (Rom.

2
,
14- 15 )

Belief in the existence of the

natural law was frequently ex-

pressed by the pagans of old.

Thus, for example, in Sopho-

cles’ magnificent drama Anti-

gone, in answer to the thunder-

ing demand of Creon, tyrant of

Thebes, as to whether she dared

transgress the imperial edict,

the young girl, standing alone

and defenseless before the des-

pot, fearlessly defies his decree

by dramatically invoking the

natural law: “I deemed not that

thine edict had such force, that

thou who art but mortal couldst

over-ride the unwritten and

unswerving laws of heaven

—

not of today and yesterday are

they, but from everlasting.”

Perhaps the clearest and most

forceful explanation of the na-

tural law from pagan antiquity,

is found in the De Republica of

Cicero, the illustrious Roman
Statesman: “Right reason is

indeed a true law, in accord

with nature, diffused among all

men, unchangeable, eternal. By
its commands it calls men to
duty; by its prohibitions it de-

ters them from evil ... To pass

laws contrary to this law is im-

pious; to derogate from it is un-

lawful; to do away with it is

wholly impossible. Neither the

Senate nor the people can dis-

pense from it . . . Nor is there

one law at Rome and another

at Athens, one thing today and

another tomorrow; but one and

the same law eternal and im-

mutable binds all nations and

all times. There is one common

Lord and Supreme Ruler of all

—God the author, promulgator
and mover of this law. And

whosoever will refuse obedi-

ence to Him shall be filled with

confusion, as this very act will

be a virtual denial of his human

nature; and should he escape a

present punishment, he must

endure heavy chastisement

hereafter.”

It is entirely erroneous to



BLESSED ARE THEY WHO HUNGER 25

consider the natural law as a

series of specific and detailed

precepts, a highly elaborate and

previously determined solution

for every difficult and compli-

cated situation in life. As Jac-

ques Maritain has so well point-

ed out, it is not “a ready-made

code rolled up in the conscience

of each one of us.” (The Rights

Df Man and Natural Law). Ra-
ther, the natural law has refer-

ence to the first principles of

the ethical order, to the funda-

mental canons of morality

—

what is right and what is wrong

of its very nature. And in the
normal development of a man's

intellect he will arrive at a

more complete understanding

of the specific applications of

that most basic of all the pre-

cepts of the natural law: “That

which is good must be done,

and that which is evil must be

avoided.” This does not, of

course, indicate any change in

the moral principles them-

selves, but rather a growth in

the individual's knowledge of

them. In the vivid phrases of

one author, the natural law is

“like the notion of beauty for

an artist—it provides a criter-
ion for evaluation; it does not

furnish a recipe for manufac-

turing masterpieces.” (O'Ra-

hilly, Moral Principles).

Precisely because the natural

law is concerned only with the

underlying principles of mor-

ality, with what is intrinsically

good or intrinsically evil, to

provide a practical norm for
concrete day-to-day living it

must needs be supplemented,

not only by divine positive law,

but also by human positive law

—by the legislation of the
state in matters temporal.

This fact of momentous im-

portance cannot be over-em-

phasized—that human law is
totally dependent upon the na-

tural law, not only because it

is an implementation of it, but

also because from it it derives

its very binding force. Human
law can impose obligation, only

because the natural law com-

mands that the just precepts of

a legitimate authority are to be

obeyed. And it follows as a cor-
ollary that human laws which

transgress the natural law, be-

ing contrary to justice, are

possessed of no power to obli-

gate. The natural law has its

origin in God the Author of

nature. Its purpose is to lead

men to God. It exists as a ne-
cessary consequence of God's

nature and of man's nature.

Hence no other law may vio-
late it and still justly demand

obedience.

Such has been the universal

persuasion of Catholic phil-

osophers and theologians
throughout the ages. The clear

and concise statements of St.

Thomas Aquinas are typical of

Catholic teaching on this point.

“Every positive human law is

valid,” he wrote, “only in so

far as it is derived from the na-

tural law.” (Sum. Theol. I-II,

q. 95, a. 2). “Man is bound to

obey secular rulers, only in so

far as the order of justice re-



26 LIGHT OF CHRIST

quires.” (Sum. Theol. II-II, q.

104, a. 6, ad3). This philosophy

of law so forcefully and so un-

compromisingly enunciated and

explained by Catholic phil-

osophers and theologians cen-

tury after century—oftentimes
in the face of bitter opposition

and ruthless persecution—how
profoundly has it influenced

our own Anglo-Saxon legal

thought. It was Sir William

Blackstone, for example, the

great English jurist, who wrote

in his Commentaries :
4The law

of nature, being co-eval with

mankind, and dictated by God

Himself, is of course superior

in obligation to any other. It is

binding over all the globe, in

all countries and at all times.

No human laws are of any val-

idity if contrary to this. And

such of them as are valid de-

rive all their force and all their

authority, mediately or im-

mediately, from this original.
,,

There are millions and mill-

ions of unfortunate and ill-fated

men and women and children
all over the world today who

are being pitilessly ground by

the heel of despotism, because

of the totalitarian philosophy

of the rulers of a Soviet-dom-

inated world that there is no

higher law than man-made

edict. Tyranny is the inexor-

able consequence of the aban-

donment of God and the rejec-

tion of the natural law. For if

God does not exist, if there are

no limitations circumscribing

arbitrary power, then the only

norm of right and wrong is

man-made precept backed up

by force. Bound by no higher

law, and being a law unto it-

self, it alone creates rights and

hence can suppress them. This

is the basis of totalitarianism

and State absolutism in all its

forms. For regardless of what

differences may lie between

Nazism and Communism, fun-

damentally the philosophy on

which both are founded is the

same—that there exists no
higher law limiting in justice

the enactments of the govern-

ment, indeed that there exists

no such thing as natural rights

at all. Truly, “juridical positiv-

ism and state absolutism have

transformed and disfigured the

noble countenance of justice.”

If we of the Anglo-Saxon

world are inclined complacently

and smugly to condemn as ut-

terly foreign the concept of to-

talitarianism, surely we would

be well-advised to consider

carefully that the basic prin-

ciple of its philosophy is un-

mistakably to be found in the

writings of one of the most

prominent of our English-

speaking philosophers, Thomas

Hobbes. This seventeenth cen-

tury thinker whose theories are

today enjoying an ever increas-

ing authority in our colleges

and universities, tenaciously

held to the belief that the state

is omnipotent, that morality

originates only in positive law,

and that the natural law is

merely a primitive code of an

aboriginal society. Govern-

ments, he maintained, “make



BLESSED ARE THEY WHO HUNGER 27

the things they command just

by commanding them, and

those they forbid unjust by for-

bidding them.” (Philosophical

Rudiments ).

The frightful and horrifying

practical consequences of this

perversion of the nature of jus-

tice, and of the meaning of the

natural law are evident today

in the chaos and tyranny of the

modern world. The ivory-

towered speculative philosophi-

cal errors of three centuries ago

have been all too minutely

translated into the Red tyranny

of today that enslaves more than

a quarter of the inhabitants of

the globe, and into the lavish

shedding of the red blood of

our fighting men that is crim-
soning the ivory snows of Ko-

rean mountains and valleys in

this tragic hour.

We in America must never
cease to exercise constant vig-

ilance. For despite the fact that

our entire American tradition

is saturated with the Catholic

philosophical teaching on the

nature of justice, of human

rights, and of the natural law,

nevertheless it cannot be denied

that today there is a rapidly

growing and extremely dan-

gerous tendency among some

political philosophers in our

midst. Unquestionably it is

traceable, at least in large mea-

sure, to an American jurist of

a few decades ago—a man of
the highest personal integrity

and intellectual capacity, yet a

thinker whose philosophy was

essentially relativistic and to-

talitarian, holding as it did, that

truth is merely what the ma-

jority thinks if it has the power

to enforce it, and that the hu-

man person has no significance
—as he expressed it—“different
in kind from that which belongs

to a baboon or to a grain of

sand.” (O. W. Holmes in

Holmes-Pollock Letters ).

“Blessed are they who hung-

er and thirst for justice, for

they shall be satisfied.” (Mt. 5,

6). Without justice there can

exist neither in the individual

nor in society, that holiness and

righteousness for which the

followers of Jesus Christ must

hunger and thirst. And there
can be no true justice apart

from a recognition of and a

respect for the natural law.

O God, the Source of all
rights, the Author of all laws,

Thou Who art Justice itself,
create in us a ravening hunger

and a burning thirst for Thy

justice. Help us to be just in our

dealings with one another. In-

spire our leaders and our think-

ers with a realization that to be

just, all law must be founded

on Thy law. Instill into their

souls a holy fear of that dis-

astrous secularism which would

make man-made precept the

ultimate norm of what is right

and what is wrong. In this hour

when our country is exercising
a world influence unknown in
her previous history, raise up

in our land men and women
who will stand before mankind



28 LIGHT OF CHRIST

as just and virtuous, endowed

with a profound recognition

that human rights are based

upon Thy law, and inspired

with the fearless courage un-

ceasingly to do battle for their

principles and if needs be

valiantly to die for them. Help

us all to understand that in this

hour of crisis it is only by a re-

turn to morality based on the

natural law that our civiliza-

tion can survive. Infuse now

into our souls so avid a hunger

and thirst for justice, that one

day in Thy kingdom of justice

there will be gloriously fulfilled

in us that heaven-born pro-

phecy of Thy servant of old:

“They shall not hunger nor

thirst, neither shall the heat

nor the sun strike them: for he

that is merciful to them shall

be their shepherd, and at the

fountains of waters he shall

give them drink. (Is. 49, 10).



BLESSED ARE THE PURE OF HEART

Address Delivered On March 22, 1953

For those who were His con-

temporaries and for every hu-

man being who would tread the
path of life until the end of

time, Jesus Christ the Son of

God expounded the sublimest

moral code within the capacity

of the human mind to conceive.
The destiny which He held

aloft for attainment was eter-

nal union with the Infinite God.

The Model Whom He proposed
for emulation was Himself, God

incarnate. Noble and exalted

were the precepts which He
imposed upon men to obey;
lofty and sacred were the coun-

sels which He exhorted men to
follow. To the toil-worn and

the disheartened and the suf-

fering, to those for whom life
was “a galling load along a

rough and weary road”

(Burns), He offered a consol-
ing haven of everlasting refuge

which is Himself. “Come to
Me, all you who labor and are
heavily burdened and I will re-

fresh you.” (Mt. 11, 28) To all

mankind He extended a glow-
ing invitation to the very sum-

mit of sanctity: “You therefore

are to be perfect, even as your

heavenly Father is perfect”

(Mt. 5, 48).

There are none who can deny
the sublimity of the moral code

of Jesus Christ, and there are

few who have made the at-

tempt. Even those who have

fallen into error by miscon-

struing His message and misin-

terpreting His revelation, have

been compelled to admit the

nobility and the beauty of His

moral doctrine. It was the ra-

tionalist critic of the last cen-

tury, Ernest Renan, for exam-

ple, who openly proclaimed:

“The moral teaching of Jesus

is the most beautiful doctrine

that mankind ever received . . .

Each one of us owes to Him
what is best in himself.” (The

Life of Jesus )

This was His code—faith and
hope and love of God and

neighbor; meekness and sym-

pathy and understanding, yet

firmness and fortitude and reso-

luteness; hunger for justice and

hatred for sin, yet charitable-

ness of spirit and forgiveness

of the sinner; humility and

prayerfulness and denial of

self, patience and resignation

and zeal for the things of God.

Vengeance He severely and
rigorously forbade: “You do

not know of what manner of
spirit you are; for the Son of

Man did not come to destroy
men’s lives, but to save them.”

(Luke 9, 55) Yet He hesitated
not to sting with a burning re-

buke, even His own Apostle,
and anyone who would know-
ingly tempt another to omit



30 LIGHT OF CHRIST

what was good or to do what

was evil: “Get behind Me,

Satan, thou art a scandal to Me;

for thou dost not mind the

things of God, but those of

men” (Mt. 16, 23)

To the practice of this sub-

lime moral code of Jesus

Christ, every human being is

called. “Blessed are the pure

of heart, for they shall see

God” (Mt. 5, 8) Purity of

heart comprises more than the

observance of the demands of

the virtue of chastity. It sig-

nifies singleness of purpose. It

imposes the obligation to root

out motives that are ignoble. It

calls for the eradication of

every ambition that is un-

worthy. It requires the sup-

pression of every propensity to

pride and envy and jealousy and

deceit and doubl e-dealing.
“Who can ascend the mountain

of the Lord: or who may stand
in His holy place? He whose

hands are sinless, whose heart is

clean, who desires not what is

vain, nor swears deceitfully to

his neighbor.” (Ps. 23, 3-4)

No one can study profoundly

the moral precepts of Jesus

Christ without realizing with

abundant clarity that they are

founded upon doctrinal truths.

Over and over again He indi-

cated unmistakingly that ac-

tion must be based upon belief,

that conduct is the consequence

of conviction, that there can

exist no adherence to a code

without acceptance of a creed.

If He taught us that it is part

of His moral code to practice

the virtue of faith, then there

must be a creed to form the ob-

ject of faith. “Go into the whole

world and preach the Gospel to

every creature.” (Mark 16,

16 )

If He taught us that it is part

of His moral code to practice

the virtue of hope, then there

must be certain truths in a

creed which will provide a

secure and unshakeable basis

for our hope. Only those who

have a firm and unwavering

belief in the Providence of God

—it is only they who can hope;
it is only they who can live

from day to day without fear

and anxiety and solicitude, al-

ways seeking first the kingdom

of God and His justice, and un-

derstanding deep in then-

hearts that all other things will

be added unto them. (Cf. Mt.

6, 25-33)

If He taught us that it is part

of His moral code—yes, the
very essence of it—to practice
the virtue of love of God, then

there must be a creed revealing

the Infinite attributes of God

by which He is deserving of our

love without restriction, with-

out limit, without reservation.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy

God with thy whole heart, and

with thy whole soul, and with

thy whole mind, and with thy

whole strength.” (Mark 12,

30)

If He taught us that it is

part of His moral code to prac-

tice the virtue of love of neigh-



BLESSED ARE THE PURE OF HEART 31

bor, then it is because of the

doctrine in His creed that our

neighbor actually or potential-

ly is a sharer in the Divine

nature and tabernacles within

himself the Triune God. “As

long as you did it for one of

these, the least of My brethren,
you did it for Me.” (Mt. 25,

40)

If He taught us that it is part

of His moral code to practice the

virtue of humility, then it is be-

cause we must believe that

truth in His creed that the In-

finite God of power and ma-

jesty stooped low to assume a

human nature like unto ours in

all things save sin, that the Sec-

ond Person of the Blessed Trin-

ity emptied Himself taking the

form of a servant. (Cf. Phil.

2, 7)

If He taught us that it is part

of His moral code to practice

the virtue of self-denial, then

it is because of His creed in

which He has revealed the im-

mortality of the soul, the ex-

istence of a hereafter, and the

futility of gaining the whole

world while suffering the loss

of one’s own soul. (Cf. Mark

8, 36)

If He taught us that it is part

of His moral code to practice

the virtue of repentance, then it

is because there is a creed re-

vealing that sin is a terrifying

and awful reality, and that un-

til the last farthing is paid

reparation must be made by

those who have been steeped in

its guilt. “Unless you repent,

you will all perish in the same

manner.” (Luke 13, 3)

If He taught us that it is part

of His moral code to practice

the virtue of patience in suf-

fering, then it is because of the

doctrine in His creed that as

God incarnate, in order to save

mankind, bore the overwhelm-

ing burden of a cross of re-

demption on His scourge-torn

and crimson-crusted shoulders,

so we also must take up our

cross daily and follow Him

along the blood-slippery road

to the altar of Calvary. (Cf.

Luke 9, 23)

In a word, if it is of His moral

code that only the pure of heart

shall see God, then there must

be a creed wherein He has re-

vealed that there is a God, and

that upon those who love Him
ardently and serve Him faith-
fully there will be bestowed the

heavenly reward of seeing Him

forever and forever.

One of the most insidiously

dangerous tendencies of the

modern world is the attempt

to divorce code from creed.

Such an endeavor is fraught

with peril; it is subversive of

religion and destructive of

morality. Oftentimes with the

deepest sincerity, men and wo-

men of our age loudly proclaim

such sophisms as: “There are

many roads to heaven, and an

honest man may follow any one

of them.” “Of what importance

is it whether a man believe or

disbelieve, provided he act in

accordance with the demands of



32 LIGHT OF CHRIST

the golden rule?” “Is not

Christianity a code to be lived,

and not a creed to be believed?”

In the world of our day, so

many ask us to fulfill the obli-

gations of the moral precepts

which were imposed by Jesus

Christ; but they sweepingly cast

aside the doctrinal truths which

were taught by Jesus Christ.

Forgetting that His creed is di-

vine in origin no less than His

code, they expect us to keep

the Commandments of God, but

they demand of us no belief

that there is a God.

Theologically this position

seems to have arisen as an ex-

treme reaction to the sixteenth

century error that men can be

saved by faith without good

works. Outside the Catholic

Church today the prevalent

teaching is that men can be
saved by good works without

faith. The revelation of Al-

mighty God is clear—both are
necessary. “He who does not

believe shall be condemned.”

(Mark 16, 6) “Be doers of the

word, and not hearers only.”

(James 1, 22)

Philosophically the dicho-

tomy between code and creed is

traceable to the Kantian doc-

trine of the autonomy of rea-

son—that man’s reason formu-
lates the categorical imperative

and imposes it with all the

binding force of law; that the

norm of right and wrong and

the obligation to obedience are

wholly independent of any Su-

preme external Lawgiver; that

in the final analysis, the power

to enact a law and to demand

its observance lies deep within

the human breast.

Pushing the Kantian thesis to

its ultimate conclusion, count-

less men and women of the

modern world expound the doc-

trine that man is responsible

for his conduct, not before the

throne of God’s justice, but only

before the tribunal of his own

law-enacting and law-imposing

self. Only in a sense of personal

satisfaction consequent upon

duty fulfilled, only in a feeling

of uneasy remorse resulting

from evil perpetrated, only in

the esteem or contempt of one’s

fellow-men following upon fi-

delity to or deviation from the

social mores—therein alone is
to be found the sanction for

morality.

There can be no adherence to

a code without belief in a creed.

For the ultimate norm of the

morality of conduct is its con-

formity with the Divine nature.

Hence if all consideration of

God be discarded, if religion

—

which is the bond between God

and man—be swept aside, then
with the destruction of its foun-

dation morality must inevitably

collapse.

God is the end or goal of all

human activity. Destroy the

concept of God, reject the truths

of religion consequent thereup-

on, and human existence is

rendered purposeless. Morality

can never flourish in an atmo-

sphere in which life is deemed



BLESSED ARE THE PURE OF HEART 33

to be aimless, driftless, design-

less.

If there be no acceptance of

the truth that God is the source

of all authority, then no gov-

ernment can logically demand

obedience to its precepts. And

thus adherence to a moral code

is reduced to a matter of mere

expediency.

Without a religious creed, a

moral code has no effective

sanction. Human experience has

taught that the most powerful

motivation for good conduct is

the deep-seated conviction that

from a life of virtue there will

accrue inevitably and unques-

tionably an eternity of happi-

ness with God, and from a life

of vice an eternity of misery

without God. To check the wild

upsurgings of the fiery passions

that are lodged within the hu-

man breast, considerations of

conventional propriety are woe-

fully insufficient. In the vivid

imagery of Cardinal Newman,

one might as well endeavor to

carve granite with a razor or

to moor a vessel with a thread

of silk.

It is perfectly true, of course,

that all of us know some in-

dividuals whose morality is ex-

emplary but whose faith is non-

existent. Let us beware of hasty

and illogical conclusions, how-

ever. Surely it is the part of

sound reasoning to realize that

in most cases such persons are

vitally influenced, unconscious-

ly at least, by those traditions

of morality that are the out-

growth of laws and customs

which our age has inherited

from generations that knew no

chasm between code and creed.

Let us never forget that a

branch cut from a tree, though

alive no longer, does not im-

mediately lose its freshness and

its greenness.

There can be no adherence

to a code without belief in a

creed. This fundamental and

overruling truth has been loud-

ly professed throughout the

ages. Centuries ago it was the

Greek philosopher Plato who

cried out: “He who destroys re-

ligion overthrows the founda-

tions of human society.” (The

Republic ). No American is un-

familiar with the stern warn-

ing of George Washington that

“reason and experience both

forbid us to expect that national

morality can prevail in exclu-

sion of religious principles.”

(Farewell Address
)
And in our

own day, perhaps we may turn
to the salient observation of T.

S. Eliot, that “for any man who
thinks clearly, as his Faith is,

so will his morals be.”

(Thoughts after Lambeth )

What are all of these human

expressions of deep personal

conviction, save a re-echoing

of the inspired word of the In-

finite God Himself: “Unless the

Lord build the house, they labor

in vain who build it. Unless the

Lord guard the city, in vain

does the guard keep vigil.” (Ps.

126
,

1 ).

Blessed are the pure of heart



34 LIGHT OF CHRIST

—those who fulfill the precepts
of the moral code preached by

Jesus Christ, because they be-

lieve the truths of the doctrinal

creed taught by Jesus Christ.

Because action is the conse-

quence of conviction, the soil

of this earth has been drenched

with rivers of blood that

streamed from the mutilated

bodies of God-loving and

tyrant-defying martyrs—hun-
dreds of thousands all over the

world in our own generation

—

men and women and children
for whom faith was more im-
portant than life. Had they

deemed it a matter of indiffer-

ence, for example, whether the

Crucified was a God-Man dying

for their sins, or a huge impos-

ter paying the price of His own
crime, then likewise would they

have deemed it a matter of in-

difference whether to bow in

devout veneration before His

image, or to cast aside the Cru-

cifix as history’s most fraudu-

lent—though most persistent

—

hoax. Ultimately it was their

faith that the Son of God of-

fered His life in sacrifice for

them, that prompted their love

that they should lay down their

lives in martyrdom for Him.

“Blessed are the pure of

heart, for they shall see God.”

When time will have been ab-
sorbed into eternity, their ever-

lasting reward will be the

Beatific Vision. But ever here,

Almighty God bestows upon the

pure of heart an extraordinary

insight into things spiritual.

They see God’s beauty in the

flower, and God’s omnipotence

in the firmament. They see

God’s eternity in the incessant

recurrence of the seasons, and

God’s unchangeableness in the

ever flowing sameness of the

ocean’s waters. It is the man
who is pure of heart who, from

the depths of that heart, can cry

out in the strikingly beautiful

words of the poet Joseph Mary

Plunkett:

“I see His blood upon the rose

And in the stars the glory of
His eyes;

His body gleams amid eternal

snows,

His tears fall from the skies.

I see His face in every flower;

The thunder and the singing of

the birds

Are but His voice—and carven
by His power

Rocks are His written words.

All pathways by His feet are

worn,

His strong heart stirs the ever-

beating sea,

His crown of thorns is twined

with every thorn

His cross is every tree.”



BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS

Address Delivered On March 29, 1953

Several months after the out-

break of the first World War,

one of the most poignant and

touching prayers ever uttered,

overflowed from the heart of

Pope Benedict XV. “Dismayed

by the horrors of a war which

is bringing ruin to peoples and

to nations, we turn, O Jesus, to
Thy most loving heart as to our

last hope. O God of Mercy,
with tears we invoke Thee to

end this fearful scourge ... In

this hour, made terrible with

burning hate, with bloodshed,

and with slaughter, once more

may Thy Divine Heart be
moved to pity. Pity the count-

less mothers in anguish for the

fate of their sons; pity the

numberless families bereaved of

their fathers; pity Europe over

which brood such havoc and

disaster . .

For four frightful harrowing

years, endless streams of the

blood of the youth of the world

flowed on, to crimson the fields

of Europe. The lives of eight

and one half million combat-

ants were sacrificed in that

awful holocaust; twenty-one

million human bodies were
shattered by wounds, and

fifty-seven out of every mo-
bilized hundred, were listed as

“casualties.” “That flesh and

blood should be so cheap!”

But when the rumbling of the

cannons and the roaring of the

guns and the clashing of arms

had finally ceased, men truly

believed that such an appall-

ing blight would never again

destroy the flower of manhood.

For would not the memory of
sacrificed lives, of blasted

hopes, of broken homes, of de-

vastated lands, of disease-rid-

den peoples—would not the
memory ever remain green,

ruthlessly to deter any future

power-thirsty fanatic who
might once again seek to plunge

the world into the hell of war?

But if perchance the memory

of the grim past would fade

with the passage of time, would

not the presence in our midst

of a father or brother or friend

who escaped from the slaughter
of the Marne, or Chateau Thier-

ry, or Belleau Wood, destined

never to enjoy again the sight

of a glorious sunset, or never to

hear again the melodious song

of the nightingale, or never to

ramble again through God’s

green fields, or never to be able

to use again God’s highest gift

to man, his reason—would not
the very presence of such a man
cry out to the world: “Civili-

zation must never allow a re-

currence of that inferno of hor-

rors.” Yes, men hoped and men



36 LIGHT OF CHRIST

prayed that it would never

happen again.

The cost in human life and

human suffering had been

prodigious. But were not they

victorious who had sworn to all

mankind that that was the war

to end all wars? Had not those

who fought to make the world

safe for democracy—had not
they vanquished the foe? The

self-determination of nations,

the rights of all peoples to

choose their own governments,

to live in happiness and con-

cord and equity and peace and

justice—were not these the
lofty goals that had been sol-

emnly pledged by the victors?

And so, as the golden sunset

looked down upon the final

blood-drenched battlefield, men
shuddered at the awful price;

but men were convinced that
the ideals for which they had

done battle were finally to be

realized.

Yet, scarcely had the clamor

of clashing steel died away,

when the Christian aims so
glibly voiced during the height

of the conflict were suddenly

forgotten. The principles un-

derlying the famous peace pro-

posals of Pope Benedict XV
were ruthlessly cast aside. The

idealistic designs of sincere,

God-fearing, peace-loving peo-

ples were absorbed in the

harder and more cruel realities

of the moment. The same old

power politics, the same cun-

ning diplomatic intrigue, the

same crafty maneuvering for a

balance of power, the same in-

human playing of one nation
against the other; and on the

other side, the rancor, vindic-

tiveness, hatred, and craving for

revenge, born of a defiant and

sullen defeat—they all hover-
ed menacingly over Europe and

the world, until finally mankind

was enveloped in another global

conflict.

In the midst of the pursuit of

selfish and secularistic aims,

Christ was forgotten. For two

post-war decades the scrapping

of treaties, the refusal to abide

by one’s plighted word, lust for

power and greed for aggran-

dizement, chicanery, deceit,

propaganda, overweening na-

tionalism—why these were ac-
cepted as the commonplace

occurrences of an enlightened

age.

And so, war came again.

Mankind which on bended knee

had pledged devoted adherence

to Almighty God, once again

found itself in the tentacles of

a struggle more cruel, more

cold-blooded and more inhu-

man than any which history
had ever before recorded. And
all, basically because for

twenty years the world raced

along a path absolutely at vari-

ance with the principles of

morality, a path that plunged

inevitably to war. For is it not

true, as someone has expressed

it, that “there will always be a

Hitler where there is no

Christ”?

I need not rehearse for you



BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS 37

the terrifying consequences of

the second World War. You

know them well—more than
twenty two million military

personnel and civilians buried

beneath blood-muddy battle-

fields and crimson-dyed waters

and bomb-devastated cities, as

history’s first all-out war ob-

literated the line of demarca-

tion between combatant and

non-combatant. I need not de-

scribe for you the grim and

shocking picture of millions and

millions who have come back,

living wrecks. I need not tell

you of the countless widows and

orphans and mothers and fath-

ers with grief-seared souls and

—too often— discouragement-
blinded hearts. I need not re-

cite for you the heart-rending

sufferings of the numberless

displaced persons and dispos-

sessed exiles — refugees from
tyranny and torture. I need not

recount for you the ghastly

horrors of Siberian concentra-

tion camps and Buchenwald

death chambers. Over vast

areas of the earth destruction

and ruin, and in the souls of

countless men and women and
children frustration and dis-

illusionment, disheartenment

and despair. And everywhere,
fear. May it not all be summed
up in one word: Hiroshima

—

the awful symbol of what a

God-repudiating mankind can

wreak upon humanity, and the

terrifying portent of what a

Christ-rejecting future holds in

store for the human race.
And now we are embroiled in

a new war—the third within
the lives of most of us. Whether

or not it is a prelude to an-

other World War, who knows?

But in its train have come ap-

palling pain and suffering and

misery, and bitter anguish and

grief and loneliness. It is a

war that has aptly been de-

scribed as “the worst in our his-

tory—not in scale, but in its
almost unbelievable primitive

intensity.” (Cf. Reader's Di-

gest, June 1951, p. 9)

“Blessed are the peacemak-

ers, for they shall be called

children of God.” (Mt. 5, 9)

Only they can make peace

—

peace in their own souls, peace

in the home, peace in the com-

munity, peace in the nation,

peace in the world—only they
who fully understand that

there can be no true peace

apart from the acknowledge-

ment of God’s sovereignty, the

observance of God’s law, and

the love of God Himself.

Jesus Christ the Son of God

was a Peacemaker. He came

upon earth to reconcile man

with God. And because the

Church is the prolongation of

Christ in time and space, her

mission is a mission of peace.

She begins at the very heart of

the problem. She recognizes

that the problem of peace is

above all else a spiritual prob-

lem. And to awaken that con-

viction in the minds and in the

hearts of all mankind—that, in
the unequivocal words of Pope

Pius XII, “is in the first place



38 LIGHT OF CHRIST

the duty of the Church and her

primary contribution to peace

today.” (Christmas Message,

1951)

Insistently does she expound

the doctrine of her Founder

—

that peace is not something

static, it is dynamic; that peace

is not merely the absence of

conflict among individuals or

nations, it is the presence of

charity in action and the

flowering of justice in day-to-

day life. The reduction of ar-

maments, the curbing of weap-

ons that threaten to destroy the

human race, the functioning of

intricate and highly organized

processes for the settlement of

international disputes — these
and countless other efforts of

sincere men to achieve peace,

are noble and commendable.

But at best they are only sec-

ondary. Failure to realize the

primacy of the spiritual in the

establishment of peace is one

of the most lamentable trag-

edies of our age. How terrify-
ing is the indictment recently

uttered by the Vicar of Christ:

“God has answered this rejec-

tion of Christ by the plague of

a permanent menace to peace

and the frightening specter of

war.” (Christmas Message,

1951)

Peace in the individual soul?

Is it not futile to expect that

peace can thrive when God is

subordinated to a creature, and

His precepts are deemed sec-

ondary in importance to the

whims of His subject?

Peace in the community? Is

it not illogical to cry out in

horror at the perpetration of

violence and crime and mur-

der, and at the same time to

condone—or even to foster

—

the killing of the unborn be-

cause it is “therapeutic” or

“eugenic” and the killing of the

aged and the supposedly incur-

able because it is “merciful”?

Peace among nations? Is it

not inconsistent to demand that

nations remain unwaveringly

faithful to their plighted word,

and at the same time to allow

the severing of a divinely sanc-

tioned and indissoluble mar-

riage bond between two souls

who solemnly pledged them-

selves to each other until death

should them part?

Have you ever paused to con-

sider that even before the

birth of Christ, the priest

Zachary foretold of our Savior

that He would “guide our feet

into the way of peace” (Luke 1,

79), just as hundreds of years

before, the prophet Isaias had

proclaimed that the long-

awaited Messias would be the

Prince of Peace (Is. 9, 6).

The very first announcement

that was made of Christ’s na-

tivity was phrased in words of

peace: “Glory to God in the

highest, and peace on earth

among men of good will.”

(Luke 2, 14).

For three long years our Di-

vine Lord trudged up and down

the length and breadth of Pal-

estine, announcing “the good



BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS 39

tidings of peace.” (Eph. 2, 17)

When the Samaritans refused

Him hospitality, and when

James and John with burning

indignation cried out: “Lord,

wilt Thou that we bid fire come

down from heaven and consume

them” they were silenced with

this stern rebuke: “The Son of

Man did not come to destroy

men's lives, but to save them.”

(Luke 9, 54-56)

The last legacy of Jesus

Christ, as He took leave of the

closest friends He had upon

earth, on the very night of His

Passion, was a legacy of peace:

“Peace I leave with you, My
peace I give to you; not as the

world gives, do I give to you.”

(John 14, 27)

And on that same night, as

the impulsive Peter, with char-

acteristic impetuosity, angrily

drew forth his sword and cut

off the ear of the high priest's

servant, severely was He rep-

rimanded by his Master: “Put

back thy sword into its place;

for all those who take the

sword will perish by the

sword.” (Mt. 26, 51)

And finally when the igno-

miny of Good Friday had be-

come glorified in the triumph of

Easter Sunday, the very first

greeting of the Risen Christ to

His assembled Apostles was one

of peace: “Peace be to you.”

(Mt. 20, 6)

Yes, our God is a God of

peace. His Son is the Prince

of Peace. And to those who love

peace and work for peace, He

has promised His sublimest re-

ward: “Blessed are the peace-

makers, for they shall be called

children of God.” (Mt. 5, 9)

True to her mission, the

Catholic Church throughout the

ages has inculcated the prin-

ciples of peace into the minds

and the hearts of men. Philo-

sophically she expounded the

concept of peace as the tran-

quility of order, in the volumes

of Augustine. Theologically

she explained peace as an effect

caused by the virtue of charity,

in the tomes of Aquinas. De-

voutly has she prayed for

peace, and bitterly has she de-

nounced war. It was the martyr

pontiff Clement in the first cen-

tury who pleadingly begged of

God “to give to us and to all

the inhabitants of the earth,

peace and concord.” It was

Pope Nicholas I in the ninth

century who thundered aloud:

“War is always satanic in ori-

gin.” It was the theologian

Suarez in the sixteenth century

who moralized: “The right of

war is odious.” It was our pres-

ent Holy Father who cried out

to the peoples of the world just

a week before the outbreak of

World War II: “Armed only
with the word of truth, we . . .
speak to you in the Name of
God ... in the Name of Jesus
Christ our Lord ... in the name

of the Holy Ghost ... The

danger is imminent, but there

is yet time. Nothing is lost with

peace; all may be lost with
war.”



40 LIGHT OF CHRIST

The Church does not teach, of

course, that resort to arms is

always wrong. Concisely has

her doctrine been summarized

by Pope Pius XII: “A people

threatened with unjust aggres-

sion, or already its victim, may

not remain passively indiffer-

ent, if it would think and act

as befits a Christian . The

commandment of peace is a

matter of divine law. Its pur-

pose is the protection of the

goods of humanity, inasmuch

as they are the gifts of the

Creator. Among these goods

some are of such importance

for society, that it is perfectly

lawful to defend them against

unjust aggression. This de-

fense is even an obligation for

the nations as a whole, who

have a duty not to abandon a

nation that is attacke d.”
(Christmas Message, 1948)

It is precisely to prevent un-

just aggression that the Catho-

lic Church has never ceased to

preach peace, and never desist-

ed from striving to make peace.

Yet century after century she

has seen the nations rise up

against one another in savage

and blood-thirsty conflict. Cen-

tury after century, she has

urged, exhorted, entreated, beg-

ged that mankind be mindful of

its fraternity in Christ. And

though her efforts to preserve

peace have oftentimes failed,

though her endeavors to re-

store peace have oftentimes

been derided, still today as for

centuries past, from one end of

the day to the other in every

section of the globe, “from the

rising of the sun even to its

going down,” with pleading

prayer she storms the very

heights of heaven: “Agnus

Dei, dona nobis pacem: “Lamb

of God, grant us peace.”

O Lord Jesus Christ, Thou
Who art Thyself our peace (Cf.
Eph. 11, 14), Omnipotent and

all-merciful God from Whom
proceed all holy yearnings all

right counsels and all just

works, grant to Thy servants

that peace which the world

cannot bestow. May our hearts
be dedicated to the observance

of Thy precepts; may they be

freed from fear of the foe; and

may our times by Thy protec-

tion and under Thy guidance,

be times of peace.

(Cf. Votive Mass for Peace)



BLESSED ARE THEY WHO SUFFER
PERSECUTION FOR JUSTICE' SAKE

Address Delivered On April 5, 1953

It would be no exaggeration

to describe the twentieth cen-

tury as the Age of Blood. Only

the Omniscient God knows how

vast is the number of innocent

and heroic victims of the ruth-

less oppression and brutal per-

secution and inhuman martyr-

dom that have soaked our age

with tears of grief and drench-

ed it with rivers of blood.

Some few decades ago, for

example, it was the misery-

steeped peoples of Mexico and

Spain who quaffed the bitter

chalice of their Gethsemane

and bore the crushing cross to

their Calvary, as the Churches

which they loved were dyna-

mited and fired, the altars

where they worshipped dese-

crated and profaned, their

priests hunted out like desper-

ate criminals and shot down in

cold blood, their nuns dragged

out from prayer-laden cloisters

to fall victims to a degrading

fate far worse than death. And

among the laity, countless

courageous men and valiant
women to whom serving their
God was incalculably more im-

portant than saving their lives

—they were mowed down in
savage slaughter, in order that

their death might satiate the

ravening hunger of a burning

hatred that blazed within the

hearts of their fanatical perse-

cutors.

From North to South, from

East to West, the same fright-

ful history is being written to-

day in letters of blood. The

direful consequences of the

Black Death in medieval Eur-

ope almost fade into insignifi-

cance when compared with the
ghastly terrors of the Red

Death in the modern world.

Truly, as the Catholic Bishops

of the United States grimly de-

clared at their annual meeting

a few years ago, never before in

history have so many men and
women and children fallen
prey to religious persecution.

The appalling torture and

torment and blood-shedding

that have cut deep and agoni-

zing wounds in the Catholic

Church of our day, have caused

bitter suffering and grief and

woe in the hearts of her chil-

dren everywhere—but no sur-
prise or wonderment. Such

has been the fate of the Church

of Jesus Christ from her very

beginning, and such it will

ever be. This did the Son of

God, her Founder, predict. “If

they have persecuted Me, they

will persecute you also.” (John

15, 20) “If the world hates



42 LIGHT OF CHRIST

you, know that it has hated Me
before you.” (John 15, 18)

“You will be hated by all for

My name’s sake.” (Mt. 10,
22) “You will be brought be-

fore governors and kings.”

(Mt. 10, 18) “They will de-

liver you up to tribulation and

will put you to death.” (Mt.

24, 9) “Yes, the hour is coming

for everyone who kills you to

think that he is offering wor-

ship to God.” (John 16, 2)

The Church had scarcely

been born when there was un-

leashed a series of fearful and

harrowing persecutions that

pressed upon one another in al-

most uninterrupted succession

from the reign of the ferocious

Nero to that of the apostate

Julian. Men and women and
children of every rank and con-

dition of society were pitilessly

subjected to the cruelest tor-

ments that diabolically inspired

men could contrive. They were
thrown to the wild beasts of the

arena; they were cast into the

raging waters of the sea; they

were starved; they were
strangled; they were beheaded;

they were burned; they were

scourged; they were crucified.

And, in the horror-inspiring

words of the pagan historian

Tacitus: “Mockery was added

to death. Clad in the skins of

beasts, they were torn to pieces

by dogs. They were nailed up

to crosses. They were prepared

for burning, so that when day

waned, they might serve as

torches.” (Annals, XV, 44)

Since that first Good Friday

when the sun hid its face in a

blackened sky lest it gaze upon

the awful crime of men perse-
cuting and murdering their

God, never has it risen and set

without its being fated to look

down upon some gaping wound

in the Mystical Christ. Every

age has had its heroes who

lived for Christ and died for

Christ. Typical of their un-

wavering and indomitable
loyalty to their Master is the

martyr-saint Thomas a Becket

of the twelfth century. To

those who endeavored to induce
him to yield, this was his un-

compromising answer: “F a r

from me be this folly. May God
keep me from the madness of
ever being persuaded by any

argument to negotiate the bar-

tering of the body of Christ.

For thus I would be like unto

Judas who sold Christ.” (Ep.

130)

And so too today. All over
the world, those who have

dauntlessly refused to yield or

to compromise have been mis-

treated and oppressed and

abused; they have been beaten

and whipped and tortured; they

have been mocked and ridi-

culed and derided. Their words

have been distorted; their repu-

tations have been blackened;

even their minds, with diaboli-

cal cleverness and cunning,

have been tampered with, and

their mental faculties rendered

incoherent. “It is one of the

common characteristics of the

persecutors of all time,” sadly

declared our Holy Father a



BLESSED ARE THEY WHO SUFFER PERSECUTION 43

few years ago, “that, not satis-

fied with shattering their vic-

tims physically, they aim also

to render them despicable and

hateful to their fatherland and

society. Who does not remem-
ber the first Roman martyrs, of

whom Tacitus speaks, sacrificed
under Nero and represented as

incendiaries, abominable evil-

doers, enemies of mankind? The

modern persecutors show that

they are docile disciples of that

inglorious school.
,,

(Address

to the Roman people, April 3,
1949)

On this very afternoon, some-

where in far-off Hungary, as a

symbol of persecuted peoples

everywhere, there lies lan-

guishing behind prison bars,

weak and faint, garbed in the

rags of a criminal, an intrepid

successor of the Apostles of old.

His name? Cardinal Minds-

zenty. His crime? He dared to

defy the tyranny of the Com-

munist state. He dared to de-

fend the God-given rights of

the individual. He dared to

profess his faith uncompromis-

ingly as a Catholic. He dared to

love the Lord his God with his

whole heart and with his whole

soul and with all his strength

and with all his mind. “I stand

for God and country/ * he fear-

lessly proclaimed, as he read

clearly the unmistakable omens

of his own tragic destiny at the
hands of his persecutors. “For

this is the historic duty imposed

upon me by the tradition of my
country, the most orphaned na-

tion in this world. Compared to

my nation’s bitter anguish, my
own fate is of no importance. I

do not accuse my accusers. If
at times I must explain the sit-

uation, my explanations are but
a pouring out of the tears, a

bursting forth of the pains, a

trembling sense of the right-

eousness of my people. I pray
for a world of justice and char-

ity; I pray for those who, in

the words of my Master, know
not what they do. I forgive

them from the bottom of my
heart.” (Cf. Catholic Mind,

March 1949, p. 187)

Let us turn our gaze to the

other side of the world for still

another heroic symbol of the

persecuted Catholicism of our

age. Amid the stench and

horror of a Communist prison

in China, into which he had

been thrown after having been

paraded in scorn and ridicule

through the villages of South

China, in February of last year

the martyred American Catho-

lic Bishop Francis Ford offered

up his life as a missionary vic-

tim for Jesus Christ. “O Lord,”

he had fervently prayed more

than thirty years before when

first he set foot in China, “grant

us to be the doorstep by which

the multitudes may come to
worship Thee. And if in the

saving of their souls, we are
ground underfoot and spat

upon and worn out, at least we

. . . shall have become the

King’s Highway in pathless

China.”

The ultimate reason why the
Catholic Church is being perse-



44 LIGHT OF CHRIST

cuted today, why the Catholic

Church has been persecuted

for nineteen hundred years, and

why the Catholic Church will

be persecuted until time is no

more, is simply this. Because of

her very nature as the Mysti-

cal Christ, it is her mission to

suffer even as did the physical

Christ. The Catholic Church,

In the striking words of Bos-

suet, “is Jesus Christ prolonged

in space and time and com-

municated to men” (Cf. Gru-
den, The Mystical Christ

,

p. 2)

It is God’s divine plan that in

the distribution of the merits

of the Redemption won by the

physical Christ, the Mystical

Christ must reproduce the life

and sufferings of the Son of

God which transpired nineteen

hundred years ago in Judea.

And just as Jesus Christ was at

war with the spirit of the world,

so too His Church must be at

war with the spirit of the

world. For Him that war
brought pain and suffering and

agony. It can be no different for

His Church. Her members can

glory only in a thorn-crowned

Head. In her history, far more

frequently is it the Christ of

Calvary than the Christ of

Thabor Who cries out to man-
kind. Thus it has ever been.

And that is why St. Paul could
write that “the sufferings of

Christ abound in us.” (2 Cor.

1, 5)

The Mystical Christ must be

at war with the spirit of the

world. Upon her the Son of

God solemnly imposed the tre-

mendous obligation to teach, to

rule, and to sanctify, to preach

the message of Jesus Christ to

all peoples in all places and at

all times—without omissions or
deletions or additions or altera-

tions. And because she has
never ceased to preach the di-

vine revelation in its entirety

to all mankind, she has con-

stantly been at war with the

spirit of the world. For the

spirit of the world is directly

antithetical to the teaching of

Jesus Christ. In the disquiet-

ing and disturbing and terror-

laden words of Holy Scripture:

“The mystery of iniquity is al-

ready at work.” (2 Thess. 2,

7) And so in St. Paul’s instant
and solemn admonition, the dis-

ciples of Jesus Christ must not

be conformed to this world, but

must be transformed in the

newness of their minds. (Cf.

Rom. 12, 2) They must come

out from among the children of

the world and be separated.

(Cf. 2 Cor. 6, 17; .Is. 52, 11)

Indeed so bitter, so relentless,

and so persevering a war must

the Church wage against the

spirit of the world that the Son

of God Himself has spoken this

dread-inspiring warning: “Woe

to you when men shall bless
you: for according to these

things did their fathers to the

false prophets.” (Luke 6, 26)

The antithesis between the

Church and the spirit of the

world is not something super-

ficial or transient. It touches

the very roots of reality. It

impinges upon the most basic



BLESSED ARE THEY WHO SUFFER PERSECUTION 45

truth of all human existence

—

the relation of man the crea-
ture to God his Creator, a rela-

tion that necessarily involves

the obligation to know God, to

love God, and to serve God.

“Worthy art Thou, O Lord our
God, to receive glory and honor

and power. For Thou hast

created all things, and because

of Thy will they were and were

created.” (Apoc. 4, 11) “Bless-

ing and glory and wisdom and

thanksgiving and honor and

power and strength to our God

forever and forever.” (Apoc.

7, 12)

And the spirit of the world?

Why to countless moderns the
idea of God is a myth. Even

among many in so-called Chris-
tian nations, to profess atheism

or at least agnosticism is smart

and fashionable. The idea that

God has a place in our lives and

that His law must influence our

conduct—that concept is ridi-
culed and scoffed at as a pre-

posterous anthropomorphism

deriving from the superstition-

steeped Old Testament or from

the priest-ridden Middle Ages.

Religion, they tell you, is emo-

tional trash, sentimental non-

sense. And if perchance there
be some pallid and timorous

and faint-hearted personalities

who must lean upon the crutch
of religion to be shored up

emotionally, then above all else

they must be broad-minded,

they must not be dogmatic,

they must take scrupulous care

lest they offend the feelings of

their religion-scoffing friends

by enunciating what are erron-

eously termed religious truths.

This is no exaggeration; this

is no hyperbole; this is no

flight of fancy. The spirit of

the world? This is the spirit

of the world. In his volume en-

titled Is There a God? a pro-

fessor from one of the best

known Divinity Schools in this

country defines God as “that

interaction between individ-

uals, groups, and ages which

generates and promotes the

greatest possible mutuality of

good.” (H. N. Wieman of

Divinity School of University

of Chicago) Writing in a

theological review some few

years earlier, a professor from

one of our Eastern colleges

uttered this categorical and

definitive assertion: “No one

except the uncritical adherents

of traditional dogma believes

today in such a God as the an-

cient Jews worshipped; and it

is doubtful if many really be-
lieve in the grim potter-God of

St. Paul. Mature thought . . .

must put away childish things.”

“The question has become, not

can we believe in this cut-and-
dried conception of medieval

and modern orthodoxy, but

rather is there any conception

of God that we can accept.”
(D. Drake, “Seekers after God,”

Harvard Theological Review
9

Jan. 1919, pp. 81, 68)

The spirit of the world? This

is the spirit of the world. It is

the calm and confident proph-

ecy of the eighteenth century



46 LIGHT OF CHRIST

philosopher Voltaire that with-

in one hundred years the Bible

would become obsolete and

would disappear entirely from

circulation. It is the definitive

and doctrinaire pronouncement

of the nineteenth century phil-

osopher Feuerbach: “It is as

clear as the sun and as evident

as the day that there is no God

and that there can be none.”

(Cf. Lonergan, The Menace of

Atheism, p. 9)

The spirit of the world? This

is the spirit of the world. The

essayist and historian Thomas

Carlyle chancing upon a way-

side crucifix as he roamed

through the woods— perhaps
pityingly, perhaps cynically,

thus addressed the Son of God

as he gazed upon this represen-

tation of His human form nailed

to the cross: “Poor fellow,

your day is over.” (Cf. Shus-

ter, The World’s Great Catholic

Literature, p. x)

The spirit of the world? This

is the spirit of the world. Two
years ago the Soviet newspaper

Pravda allowed one of the most

highly placed leaders of one of

our Western democracies (Brit-

ish Foreign Secretary Herbert

Morrison) to contribute an ar-

ticle for publication, setting

forth the views of the West.

And, incredible though it may
seem, his message to the Rus-

sian people failed even to ad-

vert to religion.

The spirit of the world? This

is the spirit of the world. At

the United Nations headquar-

ters in New York, in the little
chamber set aside for medita-

tion—set aside finally in con-
sequence of the determined and

tenacious insistence of those

who are profoundly convinced
that there can be no peace

without God the Author of

peace — scrupulous care has
been taken that this “Medita-

tion Room” contain no single

article of any kind to remind

one of religion. And so it is
furnished with a flag, a pedes-

tal, and a bowl of flowers. (Cf.

Time, Nov. 10, 1952, p. 98)

The spirit of the world? This

is the spirit of the world. In a

recently published book, a

number of prominent American

personalities give expression to

the fundamental beliefs that

guide their lives. What a tragic

and telling index it is to the

frightening decline of the in-

fluence of religion in our day

that scarcely half of the con-

tributors even mention God.

(This I Believe)

The spirit of the world? This

is the spirit of the world. It is

the shocking and outrageous re-

mark of one of the nation’s most
renowned scientists that if

“Thou shalt not kill” is a law

of God which convicts a eutha-
nasian of murder, then “let us

have done with such a savage

and subhuman deity.” (E. A.

Hooten, in Boston Traveler
,

Jan. 6, 1950)

The spirit of the world?

“You need not be told who is
the enemy, nor what garb he



BLESSED ARE THEY WHO SUFFER PERSECUTION 47

wears. He is among us all and

everywhere, subtle and danger-

ous ... At first he says: ‘Christ,

yes; but the whole Church, no.*

Then: ‘God, yes; but Christ,

no.* Then finally the cry goes

up: ‘God is dead; in fact, there

never was any God.’
”

This is not my description of
the spirit of the world. These

startling words are not mine.

This is the calm and deliberate

utterance of His Holiness, our

present Pope. (Address to

Italian Catholic Actionists, Oct.

12, 1952)

“Blessed are they who suffer

persecution for justice’ sake,

for theirs is the kingdom of

heaven.” (Mt. 5, 10) Over and

over again this theme is re-

iterated in the Gospel pages.

“Amen, amen I say to you, that

you shall weep and lament . . .

you shall be sorrowful, but your

sorrow shall be turned into

joy.” (John 16, 20) Is not this

the tremendously consoling
lesson of Easter Sunday: that

just as for the physical Christ

there would have been no glory

had there been no shame, no

Easter Sunday had there been

no Good Friday—so too for the
Mystical Christ which is the

Church, and for every soul who
has trod the path of suffering,

this is the magnificent benedic-

tion of Jesus Christ: “Blessed

are they who suffer persecution
for justice’ sake, for theirs is the

kingdom of heaven.”

Like the physical Christ, so

the Mystical Christ has cease-

lessly been at war with the

spirit of the world. She is

bathed in the sweat and blood

of Gethsemane; she is crowned

with the thorns of Pilate’s sol-

diers; she is pierced with the

spear of the Roman centurion
on Calvary’s hill. But the Cru-

cifixion was only a prelude to

the Resurrection. So too for the

Mystical Christ. For this tre-

mendous and overwhelming
pledge of Jesus Christ the Son

of God, the Neros and the Eli-

zabeths and the Stalins of all

ages have been utterly helpless

to eradicate from the hearts of

their blood-drenched victims:

“Your sorrow shall be turned

into joy.”

“Blessed are the poor in

spirit, for theirs is the kingdom

of heaven. Blessed are the

meek, for they shall possess the

earth. Blessed are they who
mourn, for they shall be com-

forted. Blessed are they who
hunger and thirst for justice,

for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for

they shall obtain mercy. Bless-

ed are the pure of heart, for

they shall see God. Blessed are

the peacemakers, for they shall

be called children of God.

Blessed are they who suffer
persecution for justice’s sake,

for theirs is the kingdom of

heaven.” (Mt. 5, 3-10)

This is the lesson of Easter

Sunday, the paradox of Chris-

tianity—that the kingdom is to
be purchased by poverty, as St.

Augustine so strikingly ex-



48 LIGHT OF CHRIST

presses it; “joy by sorrow, rest life by death.” (Ennaratio

by labor, glory by disgrace, and Ps. 93)



THE PURPOSE OF THE CATHOLIC HOUR

(Extract from the address of the late Patrick Cardinal Hayes at the in-

augural program of the Catholic Hour in the studio of the National

Broadcasting Company, New York City, March 2, 1930.)

Our congratulations and our gratitude are extended to the National

Council of Catholic Men and its officials, and to all who, by their financial

support, have made it possible to use this offer of the National Broad-

casting Company. The heavy expense of managing and financing a

weekly program, its musical numbers, its speakers, the subsequent an-

swering of inquiries, must be met . . .

This radio hour is for all the people of the United States. To our

fellow-citizens, in this word of dedication, we wish to express a cordial

greeting and, indeed, congratulations. For this radio hour is one of

service to America, which certainly will listen in interestedly, and even

sympathetically, I am sure, to the voice of the ancient Church with its

historic background of all the centuries of the Christian era, and with

its own notable contribution to the discovery, exploration, foundation

and growth of our glorious country . . .

Thus to voice before a vast public the Catholic Church is no light

task. Our prayers will be with those who have that task in hand. We
feel certain that it will have both the good will and the good wishes of

the great majority of our countrymen. Surely, there is no true lover

of our Country who does not eagerly hope for a less worldly, a less

material, and a more spiritual standard among our people.

With good will, with kindness and with Christ-like sympathy for

all, this work is inaugurated. So may it continue. So may it be ful-

filled. This word of dedication voices, therefore, the hope that this radio

hour may serve to make known, to explain with the charity of Christ,

our faith, which we love even as we love Christ Himself. May it serve

to make better understood that faith as it really is—a light revealing
the pathway to heaven; a strength, and a power divine through Christ;

pardoning our sins, elevating, consecrating our common every-day duties

and joys, bringing not only justice but gladness and peace to our search-

ing and questioning hearts.



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“Hope and the Voyager,” by the Rev. Edmund, 32 pages and cover. Single copy,
20c postpaid ; 5 or more, 15c each. In quantities, $8.00 per 100 plus postage.

“Faith and the Heart of Man,” by the Rev. John J. Dougherty, 40 pages and cover.
Single copy, 20c postpaid; 5 or more, 15c each. In quantities, $9.50 per 100 plus postage.

“Charity Begins At Home,” by the Rev. John M. McCarthy and guests, 64 pages
and cover. Single copy, 25c postpaid ; 5 or more, 20c each. In quantities, $10.00 per

100 plus postage.

“The Woman,” by Bishop ITulton J. Sheen, Ph.D., LL.D., 96 pages and
cover. Single copy, 35c postpaid: 5 or more, 30c each. In quantities, $17.00 per 100.

“Spring Fervor,” by the Rev. James E. Manton, C. SS.R., 40 pages and cover. Single
copy, 2®c postpaid; 5 or more, 15c each. In quantities, $9.50 per 100 plus postage.

“Your Son in the Service,” by Commander Donald F. Kelly, chaplain, U. S. Navy

;

Lieutenant Patrick A. Killeen, chaplain, U. S. Navy; Brigadier General James EL O’Neill,
chaplain, U. S. Army, and Colonel William J. Clasby, chaplain, U. S. Air Force, 41 pages
and cover. Single copy, 25c postpaid ; 5 or more, 20c each. In quantities, $10.00 per 110.

“Careers In Christianity,” a series of addresses by Prof. James M. O’Neill, Rev.
John S. Kennedy, Neil Mac Neil, James B. Carey, George W. Starke, Dr. Vincent Edward
Smith, Michael Di Salle, Clarence Manion, Maj. Gen. John M. Devine and Martin



Quigley. 96 pages and cover. Single copy, 36c postpaid; 5 or more, 30c each. In

quantities, $17.00 per 100.

“Mercy—Eternity—Truth,” by the Rev. Wilford J. Diamond. 32 pages and cover.
Single copy, 35c postpaid ; 6 or more, 30c each. In quantities, $17.00 per 100 plus postage.

“A New Commandment,” by the Rev. Edmond D. Benard. 36 pages and cover.
Single copy, 30c postpaid ; 6 or more, 25c each. In quantities, $12.00 per 100, plus postage.

“Christ Our King,” by the Very Rev. Msgr. Henry A. Carlin. 48 pages and cover.
Single copy, 35c postpaid; 5 or more, 30c each. In quantities, $14.75 per 100 plus postage.

“Under Northern Lights,” by Colonel William J. Clasby, Chaplain, U. S. Air Force.

48 pages and cover. Single copy 25c postpaid ; 5 or more, 20c each ; in quantities, $12.50

per 100 plus postage.

“The Life of Christ,” by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. 120 pages and cover. Single copy,

60c postpaid ; 6 or more, 40c each ; in quantities, $23.00 per 100 plus postage.

“Education And Society,” by the Very Rev. Robert J. Slavin, O.P., Ph.D., S.T.M.
56 pages and cover. Single copy, 60c postpaid; 5 or more, 50c each. In quantities,

$25.00 per 100 plus postage.

“Shrines Across The Sea,” by the Rev. Joseph E. Manton. 40 pages and cover. Single

$25.00 per 100 plus postage.

“The Call to Sanctity,” by the Rev. Lawrence J. Reily, S.T.D. 40 pages and cover.

Single copy, 40c postpaid ; 5 or more, 35c each. In quantities, $22.00 per 100 plus postage

“Convent, Monastery and Home,” by the Rev. Francis Connell, C.Ss.R., S.T.D., LL.D.

48 pages and cover. Single copy, 50c postpaid ; 5 or more, 45c each. In quantities,

$23.00 per 100 plus postage.

“The Natural Law—A Return To God,” by Dr. Charles A. Hart; Mr. Harold Mc-
Kinnon ; Mr. Vernon Bourke, and the Rev. Robert H. Sweeney, C.S.C. 44 pages and
cover. Single copy, 50c postpaid ; 5 or more, 45c each. In quantities, $23.50 per 100

plus postage.

“Patriot Churchmen,” by Rev. John Tracy Ellis. 48 pages and cover. Single copy
60c postpaid ; 5 or more, 50c each. In quantities, $26.00 per 100 plus postage.

“The People and the Steeple,” by Rev. Joseph Manton. 48 pages and cover. Single
copy, 35c postpaid

; 5 or more, 30c each. In quantities, $16.25 per 100 plus postage.
“Light Of Christ,” by Rev. Lawrence J. Riley. 56 pages and cover. Single copy

50c postpaid ; 5 or more, 40c each. In quantities, 20c per 100 plus postage.

(Complete list of 148 pamphlets to one address in U. S., $24.50 postpaid. Price to
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Address: OUR SUNDAY VISITOR, Huntington, Indiana



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