And he confessed, and did not deny.” — Gospel of the day

Brethren: It is too bad that Catholic laymen do not realize the important mission God has confided to them in the workings of his Church among men. How much they can and ought to do, not only for the salvation of their fellow-Catholics, but for those outside the Church, is a fact seldom considered. Yet this is a truth : Catholic laymen by • their good example, owing to the peculiar and daily opportunities thrown in their way, can bring back to the practice of faith not only negligent Catholics, but also many honest Protestants whom a priest could never reach.

Now, Catholic men, God has given you a great and precious gift when he blessed you with a divine faith, and it is a gift for which you will some day have to render an account. It is true you are not called upon to go out on the streets and proclaim before the public the faith that is in you, to boast of your Catholicity; but you are obliged to confess before all men, by your example, by the modesty of your conduct, by the purity of your speech, by your honesty in business, by your charity to the poor, by your respect and reverence for God and things holy, that you belong body and soul to a faith that teaches uprightness of life and abhors iniquity. This is the confession you are called upon to make, and this is the confession which many Catholic men in our day fail to make, and by their failure bring discredit upon the religion of Christ, disgrace upon the Church, and ruin upon their own souls.

You do not realize, brethren, your own power to influence others. See what advantages you possess. You have a faith that is unerring. You have a religion that is an infallible guide. You have principles founded on that faith which will always direct you in the right path. You have the examples of the heroic lives of the saints to encourage you, and the advice and counsel of earnest *bishops and priests to instruct and assist you. Where others are weak you are strong, strengthened with the sacramental grace, with a faith that is divine.

But the great folly with many Catholic men is this, that they fancy their only work on earth is to look out for themselves, enjoy life to the full, and then by some miracle of God’s mercy scramble into heaven as best they can. Let every man take care of himself, is a false and heathen maxim, and one unworthy of a Christian to whom God has freely given the faith.

Besides this, brethren, while there are many who do not confess the faith openly and honestly, who by their want of uprightness fail to make the influence of their faith affect those about them, there is still another class who may be said to actually deny their faith. That sounds strange to your Catholic hearts, but, brethren, thank God there are few who squarely and openly deny their faith, and such a denial is usually preceded by a total rejection of nearly all the commandments.

But there are many who practically deny it, many who turn a deaf ear to its moral teaching, many to whom the faith is a kind of problem, an hypothesis, true enough in theory but too exacting in practice. They are the Catholic men who rarely approach the Sacraments; they are the Catholic men who feel no remorse at missing Mass; they are the Catholic men who make light of religious observances. The men who, when they come together, aping the manners and the swagger of the worldly-minded, consider it a smart thing to boast of and joke about how careless and how indifferent they are to the practices of their faith. This is particularly a mean and cowardly fault in some young men who, while believing in their hearts, converse and act as if they did not believe. Brethren, your faith is too precious a treasure to be treated lightly, and the things connected with it are too sacred not to prize it highly. Your calling as Catholic laymen demands that you should first cherish it yourselves and then make its influence felt by others.

Five-minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year
By the Priests of the Congregation of St. Paul, 1893