The Ancient Saints of God [pp. 19-23]

The Ancient Saints of God.
her saintly spouse, toward St. John,
St. Peter, and the other Apostles, I
rejoice; knowing that devotion toward
our divine Lord, his infancy, his passion, his sacred heart, his adorable
eucharist, has not suffered loss or
diminution, but has much increased.
It need not be, and it is not, as John
the Baptist said, "He must increase,
and I diminish." Both here increase
together; the Lord, and those who
best loved him.
But this is more than a subject of
joy: it is one of admiration and consolation. For it is the natural course
of things that sympathies and affections should grow less by time. We
care and feel much less about the conquests of William I., or the prowess
of the Black Prince, than we do about
the victories of Nelson or Wellington; even Alfred is a mythical person, and Boadicea fabulous; and so it
is with all nations. A steadily in3reasing affection and intensifying devotion (as in this case we call it) for
those remote from us, in proportion as
we recede from them, is as marvellous
-nay, as miraculous-as would be
the flowing of a stream from its source
up a steep hill, deepening and widening as it rose. And such I consider
this growth, through succeeding ages,
of devout feeling toward those who
were the root, and seem to become
the crown, or flower, of the Church.
It is as if a beam from the sun, or a
ray from a lamp, grew brighter and
warmer in proportion as it darted
further from its source.
I cannot but see in this supernatural disposition evidence of a power
ruling from a higher sphere than that
of ordinary providence, the laws of
which, uniform elsewhere, are modified or even reversed when the dispensations of the gospel require it;
or rather, these have their own proper
and ordinary providence, the laws of
which are uniform within its system.
And this is one illustration, that what
by every ordinary and natural course
should go on diminishing, goes on increasing. But I read in this fact an
evidence also of the stability and perpetuity of our faith; for a line that is
ever growing thinner and thinner
tends, through its extenuation, to inanition and total evanescence; whereas
one that widens and extends as it advances and becomes more solid, thereby
gives earnest and proof of increasing
duration.
When we are attacked about practices, devotions, or corollaries of faith
-" developments," in other wordsdo we not sometimes labor needlessly
to prove that we go no further than
the Fathers did, and that what we do
may be justified from ancient authorities? Should we not confine ourselves
to showing, even with the help of antiquity, that what is attacked is good,
is sound, and is holy; and then thank
God that we have so much more of it
than others formerly possessed? If
it was right to say "Ora pro nobis "
once in the day, is it not better to say
it seven times a day; and if so, why
not seventy times seven? The rule
of forgiveness may well be the rule
of seeking intercession for it. But
whither am I leading you, gentle
reader? I promised you a story, and
I am giving you a Jecture, and I fear
a dry one. I must retrace my steps.
I wished, therefore, merely to say that,
while the saints of the Church are
very naturally divided by us into
three classes-holy patrons of the
Church, of particular portions of it,
and of its individual members-there
is one raised above all others, which
passes through all, composed of protectors, patrons, and nomenclators, of
saints themselves. For how many
Marys, how many Josephs, Peters,
Johns, and Pauls, are there not in the
calendar of the saints, called by those
names without law of country or age!
But beyond this general recognition
of the claims of our greatest saints,
one cannot but sometimes feel that
the classification which I have described is carried by us too far; that
a certain human dross enters into the
composition of our devotion; we perhaps nationalize, or even individualize,
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