Images de page
PDF
ePub

an excellent and efficacious mode (f satisfying for sin: you should receive those which F rovidence sends you, not only with patience, but ever with gratitude, such as you would feel towards any person who furnished you with money to pay a debt which you could not otherwise discharge. If the pains and afflictions of this life were viewed in that true light, how many would escape the intolerable pains of purgatory, where they will find, that an hour's suffering there is more intolerable than years of penance here; and also, that years of suffe ing there are less meritorious than an hour's voluntary penance in this world.

You should likewise be particularly fervent in your endeavours to gain all the Indulgences held forth by the Church to her children, and comply faithfully with the conditions under which they are granted.

OF INDULGENCES.

AN Indulgence, as your Catechism explains it, is releasing from the temporal punishment due to sir after the guilt is remitted in the Sacrament of Pe

nance.

In the primitive ages, when the penitential canons were in force, that is, when canonical penances were imposed on sinners, those penances, in cases of persecution, or extraordinary fervour on the part of the penitent, were remitted or changed for some less painful work, and that remission or exchange was called an Indulgence.

An Indulgence, therefore, is not a pardon for sin, because sin must be remitted before an Indulgence can be gained.-It is not leave to commit sin, as is said by some who know nothing of its nature, for no power on earth could give that permission-but it is a releasing of the temporal punishments which remain due to sin already pardoned. Those temporal

punishments God inflicts on sinners, whose crimes he has forgiven, in the same manner as a good parent punishes a child to give him a horror of his fault, and prevent his relapsing again into the same. This punishment, which remains due to sinners whose crimes have been forgiven, is suffered either in this world by sickness, pains of mind or body, loss of goods, or voluntary penances; or else in the next world by the fire of purgatory; and it is from the necessity of that atonement that an Indulgence dispenses.

There are two kinds of Indulgences, viz. a Plenary Indulgence, and a partial, or limited Indulgence.

A Plenary Indulgence, duly gained, is a full and entire remission of all the temporal punishment due to sin. The most celebrated Plenary Indulgence is a Jubilee, so called from the Old Law, which decreed a general release from debts, bondage, and other grievances. This Plenary Indulgence was in early times granted every hundredth year; it was afterwards confined to every fiftieth, and is now granted every twenty-fifth year, and also on any other important occasion, such as the accession of a new Pope to St. Peter's Chair.

[ocr errors]

A partial Indulgence, such as of ten years, or a hundred days, or forty days, dispenses from as much of he temporal punishment due to sin, as would be remitted by ten years, a hundred days, or forty days of the canonical penances formerly imposed on sinners. So that a person who, for example, gains an Indulgence of seven years, is released from as much punishment due to his transgressions, as he would be if he had performed a course of seven years' canonical penance.

There are certain dispositions and particular condi tions required for the gaining of every Indulgence whether it be plenary or partial.-The essential dis position is, being in the state of grace; and the con ditions usually prescribed by the Church are, a good confession and co nmunion, with a certain number of

pravers for the following intentions:-1st, The exaltation and prosperity of the holy Catholic Church. 2dly, The extirpation of heresy, and the conversion of sinners. 3dly, Union among Christian Kings and Princes.

You have in this book a method of offering your communion for the gaining of an Indulgence; and as to the prayers to be said for that purpose, five Paters and Aves, with the Creed, the Psalm Miserere, or the Acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity, are those which are usually said, if there be no particular prayers specified. A Method of offering the Penance enjoined in Confession.

ACCUSTOM yourself to direct your intention before you recite your sacramental Penance, fervently uniting it to the sufferings and merits of Christ. This may be done by the following or any other short

Prayer.

O MY God and my Creator! I offer thee the penance I am about to perform; it was thou who im posed it on me by the ministry of my confessor, and I desire to perform it with the utmost contrition, devotion, and humility. But, Lord! since thou well knowest it is inadequate to my sins, and that any thing I could do would be incapable of blotting out the least of my offences, permit me to unite this penance, as well as all the actions, pains, and sufferings of my life, which I now offer in the spirit of penance, to the bitter sufferings of my Redeemer; to the great sacrifice of expiation which Jesus offered on Mount Cale vary for my sins; also to the merits of the Blessed Virgin, to the penance and sufferings of all the saints and all the just, that thereby the deficiencies of my imperfect satisfaction may be abundantly supplied for.

When you have finished your Thanksgiving after Confession, and said your penance, call to min1 for a moment, before you leave the chapel, those words

which Jesus Christ addressed to the infirm man to the Probatica, whom he had miraculously cured: Behold, thou art made whole-sin no more, lest some worse thing happen to thee, St. John, v. 14. Consider these words as addressed to yourself, now that, through the mercy of God, you have reason to hope you are healed; take care that you sin no more, lest you may never again receive so many graces; or that the worst of all misfortunes befall you, in the privation of the opportunity, or even of the desire of returning to God anew then, indeed, as the Gospel says, would your latter state be worse than the former.-If your communion has been deferred by your director, let it be your first and principal care to comply with any conditions required from you for absolution; such as amendment of life, correction of any bad habit, reconciliation with your neighbour, &c. But if you have been permitted to communicate, endeavour most earnestly to prepare for worthily receiving that adorable sacrament which will fortify you in your good resolutions, infuse abundant grace into your soul, and best insure your perseverance in virtue.

OF FIRST COMMUNION.

FROM the moment you were old enough to understand what is meant by the adorable Eucharist, you should look forward with a holy impatience to you: first Communion, and never pass a day without hum bly and fervently begging the Almighty to prepare you for that happiness. Each time that you see your elder companions communicate, you should make a spiritual communion, by an act of Faith in the adorable Eucharist, an act of hope, of love, and ardent desire to communicate yourself; looking on those who enjoy such a happiness as objects of that holy envy which is very allowable and innocent, since the angels themselves would envy a Christian the felicity and

honour of receiving the Almighty, if it were possible for them to desire any thing they do not possess.

If these were your dispositions with regard to the holy Communion, so long as your extreme youth, ignorance of the Christian Doctrine, or any other cause, deferred your first Communion, you need not be told to rejoice from your heart, now that you have been chosen to prepare for that most solemn duty; you will naturally feel delighted at the prospect of soon enjoying the happiness you so much desired Your first care should be to make your most humble and grateful thanksgivings to God. There is reason to hope that it is He who has selected you for his temple, since that choice was not made without consulting his Divine Majesty, and imploring the light of his Holy Spirit by prayer. But that sentiment which should predominate over all others on this occasion, is a holy fear of the awful duty for which you are now going to prepare, and a deep sense of its great responsibility. This disposition is of the utmost importance, so much so, that the first Communion is always deferred until children are old enough to discern the body of the Lord; that is, as your Catechism says, until they are of an age to understand what the blessed Eucharist is; how they snould prepare to receive it worthily; the terrible misfortune of an unworthy Communion, and the risk those run who prepare negligently for an action of such importance, that thereby they may learn to tremble at their own weakness, to trust unreservedly in God's grace, and at the same time to leave nothing in their own power undone for rendering themselves less unworthy of the happiness of communicating. You have now attained that age, and you do not, it is hoped, resemble many children, who are more delighted at the thoughts of making their first Communion, than impressed with the necessity of sparing no exertion to make it well. But as so much depends on this sentiment a holy fear, which should

[ocr errors]
« PrécédentContinuer »