Via Sacra

“ For a road can be travelled in either direction. Christ is the road by which we come to the Father, to participation in the life of the Blessed Trinity; but also we can think of Him as the road by which the Father comes to us. We can think of ourselves as drawing near to God in His Beloved Son: I love to think the other way of the road, of God drawing near to me, of God pouring of His riches into human life and elevating that life to His very Self. ”

“ Behind the cross of wood outside the gate of Jerusalem we catch sight of a vast, age-enduring cross in the heart of the Eternal, forced on Him generation after generation by His children's unlikeness to their Father—forced, but borne by Him, in conscientious devotion to them, as willingly as Jesus went to Golgotha. If at Calvary we find the rocky coast-line of human thought and feeling opposing the inflow of God, the incoming waters break into the silver spray of speech, and their one word is Love. ”

“ My meditation of him shall be sweet when I consider his cross and mine.
The cross is the emblem of our religion. To it the awakened sinner flies when conscience fills him with gloomy fears. There is no place of safety for him save in its blessed shadow. Looking up with faith, he sees Jesus, the suffering Saviour, and with the sight peace and joy fill his heart. As he starts upon his pilgrim course the cross is set before him, and these are his marching orders: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." ”

“ Go then to the Church, and bid thy vain thoughts and business of the world keep outside thereof: and at thine incoming, say to thy soul, "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord, and thou shalt hear His Voice, and behold His temple." Holy Church is the entrance and gate of Heaven. After, fall down before the Cross, and honour Him because He was slain on the Cross, and say "We adore Thee, O Christ, and bless Thee, because by Thy holy Cross Thou didst redeem the world." And then before thou uprisest, have in thy mind how hotly His love burned, That died for thee on the Cross. ”

“ Woe to the mountain that is so surrounded by mists and vapors, that the city on its top is lost to the sight of the expectant pilgrim!
If souls are committed to the priest's charge, and if he is to lead them to heaven, he must surely walk himself in the way of salvation. ”

“ The passions and pleasures of human life symbolized together and the mystery of its redemption; for the mass of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the Cross lifted and carved in every place and upon every stone, sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapped around it, with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet. But conspicuous most of all is the great road that crosses the church before the altar, raised in the bright blazonry against the shadow of the Apse. ”

“ It is because all our prayers and all the Sacraments draw from the Cross their power and their virtue. During the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the greatest, the most solemn and the most sublime of all those actions which can glorify God, the priest makes the Sign of the Cross over and over again. God desires that we may never lose the memory of it as the surest means of our salvation and the most formidable instrument for repelling the Devil. He has created us in the form of a cross so that every man might be the image of this cross upon which Jesus Christ died to save us. ”

“ Where else is God awarded the first place, and religion paramount? Where else is devotion to the blessed sacrament practised as it is in Rome? To say nothing of the countless masses, of the churches open from early dawn to dusk; the kneeling worshippers; no day in the year but what, in the beautiful devotion of the Forty Hours, the blessed sacrament is exposed to the adoration of the faithful—now here, now there—the Son of God upon his earthly throne; lights burning as they burn nowhere else ”

“ Then Christian fell down at his feet as dead, and said: Woe is me! Woe is me!
At the sight of which, Evangelist caught him by the right hand, and said: Faith hopes all things.
Then did Christian find some peace, and stood up.
Evangelist.—I pray thee give more heed to the things that I shall tell thee of. The Lord says, 'Strive to go in at the strait gate, the gate to which I send thee, for strait is the gate that leads to life, and few there be that find it.' Why didst thou set at nought the words of God, for the sake of Mr. Worldly Wiseman? ”

“ Yes, it is a divine world he has dreamed of, peopled by saints and martyrs, where the flowers are quickly woven into crowns and the light streams from the gates of Paradise, and every breeze whispers the sweet sibilant name of Jesus, and there, on the bare but beautiful roads, Christ meets His 209disciples, or at the convent gate welcomes a traveller, and if He be not there He has but just passed by, and if He has not just passed by He is to come. ”

“ HOLY WAY OF THE CROSS.
Those who are about to perform the Stations, should begin by placing themselves on their knees before the Blessed Sacrament, calling to mind, with a lively faith, the moment in which Jesus Christ, having been blasphemed at the house of Caiphas, and derided at the house of Herod, is expecting to receive the sentence of death in the Court of Pilate: then stationing themselves at his sacred feet, they should make an Act of Contrition for their sins, and an Offering of the devotion which they are going to begin. ”

“ And although in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes raised to heaven, and the inscription above her, "Mother of God," she is not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and always, burning in the centre of the temple; and every dome and hollow of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised in power, or returning in judgment. ”

“ Hard by the road is the perfect little Early English Roman Catholic church which Mr. Hope built in 1897, a miracle, in these hurried florid days, of honest work and simple modest beauty. The church being Roman Catholic one may with confidence turn aside to rest a little in its cool seclusion, relieved of the irritating search for the sexton of the national establishment, and freed from his haunting presence and suggestion that the labourer is worthy of more than his hire. ”

“ A letter had been addressed from Jerusalem by the Creator to his sinning creatures, and it was their mission to spread this through Europe. They preached, confessed, and forgave sins, declared that the blood shed in their flagellations had a share with the blood of Christ in atoning for sin, that their penances were a substitute for the sacraments of the church, and that the absolution granted by the clergy was of no avail. They taught that all men were brothers and equal in the sight of God, and upbraided the priests for their pride and luxury. ”

“ There are many good people, in all communions, who are longing for the time when all the old walls of separation between true Christians will have as many gates in them, at least, as heaven has,—on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. ”

“ The sacrament of Baptism met us at our entrance into this world; the sacrament of Extreme Unction will be our guide at our departure to the other world. Religion, which rocked us in the cradle of life, will lull us to sleep in the cradle of death.
Go to the bedside of the dying Catholic and you will see the reasonableness of the practice of calling the priest to administer the last sacraments. After the sacraments have been administered, peace and joy and contentment are visible on the countenance of the sick person. He clings no more to the things of earth. ”

“ The object, therefore, of our vocation is the one Faith of Christ; the body of Christ, and the kingdom of Christ, which is His Church. Hence the same holy Apostle says in another place, "But ye are come to Mount Sion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the company of many thousands of Angels, and to the Church of the first-born who are written in Heaven." ”

“ Thus one who cannot read the account of Our Lord's passion may learn it from the Stations of the Cross, and one who kneels before a crucifix and looks on the bleeding head, pierced hands and wounded side, is better able to understand Christ's sufferings than one without a crucifix before him.
Q. 1057. What are the Stations or Way of the Cross? A. The Stations or Way of the Cross is a devotion instituted by the Church to aid us in meditating on Christ's passion and death. Fourteen crosses or stations, each with a picture of some scene in the passion, are arranged at distances apart. ”

“ She caused to be set up, upon every one of the soft rounded hills which made the beautiful rolling sides of that part of the valley, a large wooden cross; not a hill in sight of her house left without the sacred emblem of her faith. “That the heretics may know, when they go by, that they are on the estate of a good Catholic,” she said, “and that the faithful may be reminded to pray. There have been miracles of conversion wrought on the most hardened by a sudden sight of the Blessed Cross.” ”

“ The Church is called God’s holy Mountain—typified by Mount Sion, firmly settled in the eternal love, and everlasting purposes of Grace. Conspicuous and useful in the world, and which, as a great Mountain, shall fill the whole earth in the latter day. They are called a holy people; the Lord Jesus Christ is their holiness before God, Ye are compleat in him, who of God is made unto us Sanctification. Secondly, All their holiness is received from him, as the High Priest of their profession ”

“ With the sign of the cross temples and altars are consecrated, ministers ordained, and the sacraments administered. We place it on our spires to point us heavenward, on our foreheads to guide us as a lamp through this dark world, and we mark with it the resting-place of our dead. ”

“ Every Catholic church is, also, a gate of heaven, because in it the one true faith is taught, and the Sacraments of Baptism, Penance and the Holy Eucharist are continually administered, through which we receive the remission of our sins, and obtain grace and life everlasting. Those words of the God-fearing Jacob might well be written over the entrance of every one of our churches. ”

“ But the twelve gates we believe to be the number of the apostles, who, shining in the four virtues as precious stones, manifesting the light of their doctrine among the saints, cause it to enter the celestial city, that by intercourse with them the choir of angels may be gladdened. ”

“ With the first faint light of dawn the prayers cease, the supplicants arise, and the Bishop puts on his vestments, one by one [57] and with a special prayer for each, because he thus figures the Son of God putting on the garment of our humanity. And because Christ, as man, prayed to His Father and ours, the Bishop comes forth from the tent and prostrates himself before the steps of the Church in fervent prayer, with all his clergy kneeling around him.
Now the natural soul is cold and blind, and closed to Grace; so the Church stands, unlighted and with fast closed doors. ”

“ The Romanist hangs the cross on his bosom; the true Christian carries the cross in his heart; and a cross inside the heart is one of the sweetest cures for a cross on the back. If you have a cross in your heart—Christ crucified in you, the hope of glory—the cross of this world's troubles will seem to you light enough, and you will easily be able to sustain it. [93] Christ in the heart, means Christ believed in, Christ beloved, Christ trusted, Christ espoused, Christ communed with, Christ as our daily food, and ourselves as the temple and palace wherein Jesus Christ daily walks. ”

“ Nor without embracing the cross at least in heart and affection, can any one belong to the religion of Christ. Upon entering life we are marked with the cross; through the various vicissitudes thereof our every step is encountered by it—go whithersoever thou wilt and thou shalt find it impossible to escape the cross—and it accompanies us even unto death and the grave. For a Christian dieth pressing the cross to his lips; and the cross is engraven upon his tomb that it may bear witness of his faith and hope. ”

“ I beheld with terror that many priests, some of whom even fancied themselves full of faith and piety, also outraged Jesus in the Adorable Sacrament. I saw many who believed and taught the doctrine of the Real Presence, but did not sufficiently take it to heart, for they forgot and neglected the palace, throne, and seat of the Living God, that is to say, the church, the altar, the tabernacle, the chalice, the monstrance, the vases and ornaments ”

“ To walk in Christ implies a recognition of Him in all things.—In everything that constitutes our daily life—business, domestic relations, social engagements, friendships, pleasures, cares, and trials—we may trace the presence of Christ and recognise His rule. Everywhere, on road, or rail, or sea—in all seasons of distress or joy, of poverty or wealth, of disturbance or rest—we may be conscious of the encompassing and regulating presence of Christ Jesus the Lord. ”

“ We thought in coming among you we would bring our own carriages as we used to in former years, and go by the highway and visit the folks at their own homes, go into the highways and byways and try to meet with all the Saints, for we are all one, all having been baptized into the one baptism and ought to partake of the same spirit and be governed by those glorious principles which God has revealed for the teaching and exaltation of the human family. ”