9781644135945

The Time After Pentecost
was the law written in their hearts, and consequently the dawn of eternity beckoned to them
like the warm sun on a serene spring day. The supernatural world was almost as familiar to
them as this world.
Today, however, the whole world fights against our faith. Sometimes Christ is dismissed
as a myth; sometimes God is looked upon as a fiction of human whims and desires. In some
places the Church is considered a natural development growing out of the combination of
Greek culture, Roman imperialism, oriental mysticism, and medieval piety; in other places
divine providence is confused with chance and fate. A “new faith” is promulgated, calling into
doubt the immortality of the soul and many other doctrines fundamental to Christianity. This
“new faith” has so dominated modern thinking and modern education that he who accepts the
creed of the apostles and the Church is opposed by the world. Our Catholic faith demands of
us character, sacrifice, and heroism. If we seek the approval of the multitude, if we wish to be
considered liberal, educated, and modern, we must renounce our faith, for it is out of fashion.
Whoever wishes to keep his faith in our day must be a hero ready to withstand the secularism
and atheism which pervades the modern world. The Christian of our time has become a martyr;
he is a victim of prejudice, persecution, and contempt. Not without reason the Apostle
admonishes us in the Epistle to stand in “the gospel which I preached to you.”
“I make known unto you the gospel which I preached to you, . . . and wherein you stand” (Epistle).
These words implore us to stand firm in our faith and to live according to it. For “what shall
it profit, my brethren, if man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith be able to save
him?” ( Jas 2:14.) “Every one therefore that shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him
before My Father who is in heaven. But he that shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him
before My Father who is in heaven” (Mt 10:32 f.).
We are men of one mind and of one faith in our devotion to the Church. It is her office to teach
us the faith. The more faithfully we stand by her, the deeper and more fruitful our faith will become.
Though the Church conveys the faith to us in various ways, she does so especially by means of the
liturgy. Let us pray with her, thus making use of the surest means of preserving our faith.
Prayer
We beseech Thee, O Lord, that we may feel supported in soul and body, that being saved in
both, we may glory in the fullness of the heavenly remedy. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Wednesday
“And taking him from the multitude apart, He put His fingers into his ears . . . and said to him:
Ephpheta, which is, Be thou opened. And immediately his ears were opened” (Gospel). The
Church recalls gratefully that moment when the Lord, approaching her children, endowed
them, as it were, with a new and spiritual ear, that they may perform acts of supernatural faith.
Without this mysterious Ephpheta we never would be able to truly say, “I believe”; nor could
we ever reach Christ, our salvation.
“I make known unto you the gospel which I preached to you, . . . by which also you are
saved, if you hold fast after what manner I preached unto you” (Epistle). With these words
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