The Spirit of Christmas
“There is just one season in the year when men seem able to realise for a moment what the Incarnation means for us all; and never was this so strikingly seen as in the Flanders trenches at Christmas, 1914. “Just before Christmas there had been some attacks and counter-attacks here and there, and many casualties, but as the holy season drew closer the firing seemed to die down by a general instinct. On Christmas Eve in some sectors the German parapet was decorated with candles and the singing of carols was heard. In the morning from trench to trench were shouted greetings, and all...
Read More‘That’s why I don’t go to church!’
Poor human nature! It is a sad fact that religious people are often very unamiable, even to each other: even in connection with church work! A little girl prayed: ‘Please, God, make all the bad people good and all the good people nice.’ And some poet sang: ‘Living with the saints above, All is peace and glory. Living with the saints below, That’s another story.’ Let’s avoid that pitfall anyhow. Good Catholics ought to be a recommendation for their religion by their inward joy and outward kindness. - Rev. F.H. Drinkwater, Catechism Stories Part III: The...
Read MoreOur Guest
Holman Hunt was once showing some visitors round his studio; they stood before his well-known picture, ‘Light of the World.’ ‘Surely you forgot something there,’ said one visitor. ‘Look, there’s no handle on the door.’ ‘It was not a mistake,’ explained the artist. ‘This door represents the human heart, and it opens only from the inside.’ Our Lord stands outside and waits for us to say: ‘Come in.’ He will never force an entrance. It is for us to invite Him or not, as we choose. Some Catholics keep Him standing at the...
Read More‘I confirm thee with the chrism of salvation’
That is ‘I make you strong, dedicating you to God.’ A Chinese mission was being looted by a large party of bandits. The priest lay wounded and unconscious, and the bandits had got hold of a Chinese boy of twelve who usually served at Mass. For some time the bandit chieftain questioned and threatened the boy, trying in vain to make him say where the chalice and other sacred vessels were hidden. At last the chief lifted his hand with an angry oath, and with his open hand struck the boy a great blow across the face that sent him crashing against the wall. ‘Come back...
Read MoreReading bad books
In a factory a man was selling many copies of a penny paper consisting entirely of attacks on God and religion. One Catholic boy, Dan, refused it. ‘Afraid to read the other side?’ sneered the seller. ‘I’d rather not swallow poison either into my stomach or my mind’ was the answer. Jim, another Catholic boy, said: ‘Let’s have a penn’orth!’ Then during the dinner-hour, sitting around with some of his mates, he read bits out of the atheist paper with comments of his own, showing its arguments up and where its facts about the Church were all...
Read MoreBishops ought to defend God’s poor
St. Hugh, a monk of the Grande Chartreuse, was sent to England to be Prior of a monastery recently founded by King Henry II, at Witham in Somerset. When he got there he found that its land had been provided by driving poor peasants off their holdings; these now lived in the woods, troublesome and discontented, and had already made life miserable for two former Priors. Hugh had been sent for because he had the name of being tough and shrewd, and likely to succeed where others had failed. The first thing he did at Witham was to go to the King and tell him he had done an injustice to the...
Read MoreCruelty is always in men’s hearts
In spite of Christianity the cruel and bloody spectacle of the amphitheatres, especially the gladiatorial shows, still continued in the early fifth century. An old hermit named Telemachus lived in the mountains, and heard at prayer a voice telling him: ‘Go to Rome—I have work for you there !’ He was old and reluctant and tried to treat it as illusion, but the voice persisted and at last he took the toilsome road to Rome. Arriving there one morning, he was drawn along to the Coliseum with the crowds which were converging there. He took his seat, an incongruous figure, unmindful...
Read MoreWhat Our Lord said about His Church
When Our Lord was starting the Church, so to speak, at the Last Supper, He took care to give to it the Four Marks He wished it to have. In His discourse afterwards in the Upper Room, He told the apostles He was offering eternal life to all flesh (read John xvii, 1-3) ; that the apostles themselves were His appointed witnesses and workers (John xv, 16; xv, 27); and He prayed that His disciples should be all one (John xvii, ii ; Xvii, 20-21); and that they should be made holy in the truth (John xvii, 17-19), getting their holy life from His as the branches from the Vine (John xv, 4-5). If there...
Read MoreThe price by which we were ransomed
Two boys went to stay with their uncle, an auctioneer, and one day he let them come with him to a sale held at an old-fashioned country-house. All sorts of people crowded into a big room, farmers and shop-keepers and parsons’ wives, and dealers from London in fur-collared overcoats, smoking cigars.Various lots of furniture and odds and ends were bid for, and went for a few pounds or shillings. One grand-looking picture was put up of a military gentleman in a fine gilt frame, and the boys were sure it would fetch a lot, and were disappointed when the local inn-keeper got it for seven...
Read MoreOne Lord, one faith, one baptism
On April 26, 1642, an immense crowd was gathered round the triangular gallows at Tyburn, and an elderly Welshman, who had come to be hanged, stood up in the cart to make his speech. He was Edward Morgan, a Flint-shire man who had been to school at Douai and made priest at Salamanca. He had been imprisoned in the Fleet for fourteen years, and suffered great hardships, before being brought to trial under the Parliament. He waited till the crowd was quiet, and everybody was astonished at his cool and smiling demeanour. He began with the sign of the cross, and gave out a text : ‘The Good...
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