dren on earth, children whom I overwhelmed with the most tender caresses, whom I brought up at the cost of many a toilsome hour and bitter sweat, but I see that they no longer care to think of their father-hominem non habeo! Yet what I ask is very little: some prayers, some alms. This is all, and I ask it in vain. Slaves to pleasures and employments, all have forgotten their dead, their dearest ones! Hominem non habeo-I have no one to help me!" Oh, may this accusing voice, this heartrending complaint, touch our souls, and lead us to procure glory for God, peace for the dead, and for ourselves the reward of mercy: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall find mercy!

This is the place to say a word on Christian funerals. The Church, which consecrates our cradle, and which surrounds with so august a protection the little stranger that arrives in this valley of tears, neglects no means of procuring respect for man when, having reached his journey's end, he sinks into the grave, there to undergo that sentence which condemns him to return into dust.

I am very much struck by our funeral ceremonies. On one side, I see parents, or children, or friends in tears; I hear the solemn knell ; I find nought in the holy temple but signs of mourning. On the other, behold! the Church sings, always sings. What a contrast! Can a mother sing at the death of her child, and is not the Church the most tender of mothers? Ah, there is not a doubt but the Church loves us with a love so much the greater as she is more enlightened! Let us endeavour to understand her heart.

The guardian of the promises of immortality, she proclaims them loudly in presence of death. If there is some sadness in her voice, there is also joy. She weeps, but happier than Rachel, she is comforted, and she comforts us too, because she knows that her children will be restored to her. Hence, in the tears of friends I behold nature, and in the chants of the Church I behold faith. The former cries out sadly, I must die; the latter comforts it, saying, Thou shalt rise again!

When therefore the Christian soul has quitted the body, the bell warns the faithful to pray for their brother. To excite their fervour, the tolls are repeated at intervals up to the moment when that which belongs to the earth is returned to the earth. Before removing the body, the Priest, sprinkling holy water on the coffin, says, Requiem æternam, &c.,-Give him, O Lord, eternal rest, and let thy light never fade from his eyes! The De profundis is then recited in two choirs. In effect, there are two voices in this mournful canticle: the voice of the uneasy soul, afraid of the judgments of God, and the vcice of the soul that feels new hope springing up at the sight of the redemption of the Lord, which effaces all the iniquities of Israel,

The removal of the body takes place in processional form. The cross, which is the pledge of our hope and the sign of our resurrection, is borne in front. At length, the corpse reaches the church, the church where the Christian career begins and ends. What a resemblance between the cradle and the grave, between baptism and burial! In the midst of the mournful scene, we perceive candles burning. These are a sign of the faith and charity of the deceased; an emblem of his future return to a better life; a pledge that the sadness of the Christian shall be changed into joy. Thus the presert life and the future life, time and eternity, meet at the coffin: one with its tears and its deceitful hopes; the other with its consolations and its glorious promises.

The Mass begins, and in a little while the grave voices of the chanters make the sacred vaults resound with the prose, Dies ira. Nothing more proper to freeze one with awe than this poem on death and the last judgment! It is as much for the instruction of the living as for the relief of the departed that the Church causes it to be sung. Death, with its graves and its cold clay, and the judgment, with its dreadful signs and its severity, come forward in turns. Then, to cheer somewhat the alarmed soul, a last word, a word of hope breaks on the ear and sinks into the heart as the sentiment that ought to prevail. "To redeem me, Thou didst suffer on the cross. Ah, let not such great agony be fruitless! O just Judge, the Avenger of crime, forgive me before Thou dost summon me to Thy court! I groan as a wretched culprit. I am ashamed of all my offences. O God, spare a guilty suppliant! Merciful Jesus, grant rest to the departed!"

The author of this masterpiece was, as is generally believed, Cardinal Malabranca, of the family of the Ursins, who lived in the thirteenth century.

After Mass, the clergy range themselves, for the absolution, round the coffin, and the response, Libera me-Deliver me, O Lord, &c., is sung. In this mournful and touching prayer, it is the dead man that speaks. We imagine that we hear Jonas crying out to God from the depths of the sea, from the bowels of the monster that has swallowed him up alive: Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death on that dreadful day when Thou shalt come to judge the world by fire!

Moved by his cries, the Church, his mother, answers him by the mouth of the Celebrant: Lord, have mercy on us!

The Choir: Christ, have mercy on us!

The Priest: Lord, have mercy on us! He then intones the Pater, which is said in a low voice. He now walks round the coffin, and sprinkles it with holy water: this is the last purification for the departed soul He next incenses it, and this reminds us both of

the prayer of the Church for her deceased son, and of the good odour of the virtues which this Christian practised and which rose to Heaven like the smoke of perfumes. Will it be thus with you who read these lines? What answer does your life make?

The moment of departure for the cemetery is come. Farewell, holy church, in which I received baptism; farewell, sacred pulpit, from which the words of salvation fell on me like a precious dew; farewell, tribunal of mercy, at which I so often received, together with pardon for my faults, a fatherly advice and an ineffable consolation; farewell, blessed table, at which my God fed me with His immortal flesh; farewell, my relations, my friends, my children, farewell till the great day of the general resurrection! Behold what is said by this last departure from the church for the cemetery!

Hence, the tears and even the cries of kindred are redoubled at this solemn moment. What does Religion do now? With a sweet, and we were going to say a joyful, voice, she gives the signal to start, singing these beautiful words, Deducant te Angeli-May the Angels lead thee into Paradise; may the Martyrs meet thee, and introduce thee into the Holy Jerusalem; may the Choirs of Angels receive thee, and make thee a sharer with Lazarus, formerly poor, in eternal rest and bliss!'

Thus, while weeping nature regards a cemetery as merely the end of a journey—a cemetery with its sad mysteries of decomposition and putrefaction-Religion, radiant with immortality, shows us Paradise with its boundless joys and endless glories, and a new word of consolation will be spoken over the grave. The Priest, throwing a little clay on the coffin, says, Let dust return into the clay from which it was taken, and let the spirit return to God who gave it! May he rest in peace! Amen!

2

After a last sprinkling of holy water, the grave is closed, and the cross which surmounts it tells the passer-by that here lies the body of a Christian who lived full of hope, and who awaits with confidence the day of the general resurrection. Consoling thoughts! A blessing be upon thee, O holy Religion! In this grave, surmounted by a cross, the Christian resembles a weary traveller, who rests himself sweetly under a shady tree till the hour comes when he shall rise again.

Prayer.

my God! who art all love, I thank Thee for the tenderness with which Thou hast inspired Thy Church for the departed.

1 Roman Ritual.

2 See M. Thirat, Esprit des Cérém., p. 125.

Grant us the grace to do for them all that we would wish to be one day done for ourselves.

I am resolved to love God above all things, and my neighbour as myself for the love of God; and, in testimony of this love, I will consecrate every Monday to prayer for the dead.

LESSON LIII.

CHRISTIANITY BROUGHT BEFORE THE SENSES (continued).

Festival of Dedication. Ceremonies before and after the Opening of a Church. Reasons that urge us often to visit the Church.

IF, as we have proved, Religion has reason to bless the least things used in its worship, it could not fail to consecrate places intended for the offering of its sacrifice and the accomplishment of its august mysteries. Hence, we see that the consecration of temples was practised under the Old Law. We know with what pomp and circumstance the royal Solomon made the dedication of the first temple raised in the world to the glory of the Most High. And this temple contained nothing but vain shadows: the tables of the law, some of the manna of the desert, and Aaron's miraculous rod! Within its cedar walls only a carnal people should kneel; on its brazen altars, only the blood of animals should flow; and through its golden vaults, only the voice of prophets should resound.

In a Catholic temple dwells the God who dictated the law. A people of adorers in spirit and in truth fills its sacred precincts; its altar is wet with the blood of the Redeemer of the world; its vaults re-echo with the voice of the Master of the Prophets. Would the Catholic Church not consecrate her temples by ceremonies whose holiness should correspond to the holiness of the edifice itself? She could not fail to do so.

And behold! this Divine Spouse of the Man-God no sooner comes forth from the Catacombs, where during three centuries she has hidden her august mysteries, than she hastens to build and to consecrate temples to God, the Conqueror of the Cæsars. "The persecutions of preceding emperors," says Eusebius, "had destroyed all our churches; but under Constantine we repaired this loss with advantage. It was delightful, it was the fulness of joy, for the Church to see a countless number of temples being built and rebuilt on all sides. All the power and wealth of the new emperor were displayed on this occasion. Hardly anything was thought of in all the cities of the empire but the superb temples that were

rising, and that Bishops were dedicating to the glory of Jesus Christ,"

But whence do you think the joy came that the solemnity of dedications caused to the Church? Was it from the material temples that were offered to her Divine Spouse? No: what enraptured her soul was the concord, respect, and charity that, uniting all men, as they then united our ancestors in the faith, made them a living and eternal temple within those material and perishable temples. Visible temples, says the Spouse of Jesus to us, are only an image; the real temple is the union of emperors, bishops, peoples, provinces, and kingdoms, all Christians among themselves, offering themselves together to the Lord with the Divine and Immortal Victim, who is my Divine Spouse. It is with a view to render this truth plain that many bishops assemble for the dedication of material temples. A figure of my spiritual temple, a building is consecrated by them, in which the saints of the earth, imitating the saints of Heaven, shall meet to sing psalms, to praise God, to hear the divine word, to sacrifice, and to admire what is most august in my ceremonies.

Let us follow in detail these august ceremonies, and we shall see whether the Church of Earth could better represent the Temple of Heaven, that true Temple in which angels and men are the living stones, and whether she could better teach her children that they ought to make in Jesus Christ but one body, one soul, one heart, one temple, one altar, one living and undying host, by charity. As there is no virtue more social or indispensable than charity, with its great spirit of sacrifice, we must admit that our ceremonies, which levity ridicules, are admirably proper to preach it to the world.

How magnificent is the language that the Church addresses to us in the dedication of her temples! "The Eternal Word," she says, "uniting Himself hypostatically with a human body, which is a portion of the earth, engaged Himself, as it were, to consecrate all the rest of the earth, and to make it one immense temple. The Word alone could attempt such a masterpiece, and He did so only by becoming man, building up for Himself a temple on earth, and changing all the earth into this same temple. It is on this account that I employ so many ceremonies and so much magnificence in the dedication of my temples, which are only an image of this divine and miraculous temple."2

Docile children of the Church, let us study in a spirit of faith and piety the consecration of our sanctuaries. This ceremony, one

'Eusebius, 1. X, c. iii.

Eusebius, 1, X, c. iv.