Saint for the Day

• October 17—St. Hedwige—St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

  

  ST. HEDWIGE, the wife of Henry, Duke of Silesia, and the mother of his six children, led a humble, austere, and most holy life amidst all the pomp of royal state. Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was the key-note of her life. Her valued privilege was to supply the bread and wine for the Sacred Mysteries, and she would attend each morning as many Masses as were celebrated. After the death of her husband she retired to the Cistercian convent of Trebnitz, where she lived under obedience to her daughter Gertrude, who was abbess of the monastery, growing day by day in holiness, till God called her to Himself, in 1242. Margaret Mary was born at Terreau in Burgundy, on the 22d July, 1647. During her infancy she showed a wonderfully sensitive horror of the very idea of sin. In 1671 she entered the Order of the Visitation, at Paray-le-Monial, and was professed the following year. After purifying her by many trials, Jesus appeared to her in numerous visions, displaying to her His Sacred Heart, sometimes burning as a furnace, and sometimes torn and bleeding on account of the coldness and sins of men. In. 1675 the great revelation was made to her that she, in union with Father de la Colombière, of the Society of Jesus, was to be the chief instrument for instituting the feast of the Sacred Heart, and for spreading that devotion throughout the world. She died on the 17th October, 1690. Reflection.—Love for the Sacred Heart especially honors the Incarnation, and makes the soul grow rapidly in humility, generosity, patience, and union with its Beloved.

Sunday Sermon

• The Great Cause of Crime ~ Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

  

  Every year, on the tenth day of October, Catholic temperance advocates have been accustomed to celebrate the birthday of Father Mathew, and to renew their zeal for the great work to which he was devoted. The New Testament clearly teaches that drunkards are excluded from the kingdom of heaven. It was no new doctrine, therefore, that Father Mathew proclaimed when he appealed to all Christians to join with him in opposition to the degrading vice of intemperance. He decided that it was a Christian duty to organize a new crusade against an evil that has become more dangerous than ever before under the changed conditions of modern society.

  That intemperance prevails to an alarming extent is unquestionably true ; that it is a prolific source of crime and poverty cannot be denied, even by those who are enriched by the sale of intoxicating drinks. Apart from other channels of information, the records of the courts sufficiently prove that the habit of excessive drinking is wide spread, and that every State in this free country is obliged to spend thousands of dollars annually be cause a large number of citizens become drunk and disorderly.

  Our own experience shows us that homes are made desolate, families are brought to destitution, children suffer hunger because the money that should be spent in providing the necessaries of life is squandered for drink. Long observation has convinced those who are devoted to the relief of the poor that the most hopeless cases of misery are found in the sections of this large city where women are addicted to intemperance.

  In the presence of an evil destructive of the Christian home, and dangerous to the moral welfare of the community, it is the duty of earnest Christians to speak out their convictions. Some there are who need to be urged to give a little more attention to what may be called out-door Christianity. The sound principles of the temperance question are misrepresented frequently, and intelligent Catholics act in public as though tongue-tied, unable or unwilling to make known the teaching of the Church.

  When silence seems to give consent to evil- doing, it becomes necessary to proclaim aloud the truth, not only in the church but in the market place. We owe a duty of edification to our brethren which requires us to do many things for the common good. Indifference is culpable, silence is culpable, when such a course of action retards the progress of virtue and strengthens the power of the wicked. The cowardice of good people has often served to make vice bold and defiant.

  Let us resolve, my brethren, to do something positive in the Christian warfare against the vice of intemperance. By word and example we can make it known to all men that the drunkard is a disgrace to human nature. While he remains intoxicated, his conscience cannot guide him ; his tongue gives forth idiotic utterances ; his duty to God, to his neighbor and himself are shamefully neglected. In fulfilling her divine mission as the custodian and teacher of the doctrines which Christ promulgated, the Catholic Church must everywhere oppose the sensual vices that debase human beings. The willing slaves of intemperance cannot be honored as exemplary Christians.