The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-05-03
DEVOTION TO MARY.
ARCHBIsH9f IRELAND TELLS WHY
THE MOTHER OF JESUS SHOULD
BE HONORED.
NAME WORTHY OF RESPECT.
REPEATING rBb WORDS OF THE
ARCHANGEIl (sNNFESSES
CHRIST,s DIVINITY.
HER REVERENCE EXALTs WOMEN.

HER REVERENCE EXALTs WOMEN.
The Learned Pre1ate Refers to the
Enlargement of Woman's Sphere
Queen of the Home.
Archbishop Ireland preached in the
cathedral yesterday morning to large
congregation on 1.-THE Memory of the
Virgin Mary" He spoke as follows:
Hail full of grace, the Lord is with thee;
Dressed art thou among women. duke l., 2o)
In those words an archangel from heaven
began, In honor of the mother of Jesus, the
hymn OF praise and reverence which has re-
echoed through the world nigh on to 1000
years Honor to the blessed virgin came
down from heaven. 1t was first spoken Dy
the lips Of archangel. They are not the
lovers of the Son of Mary they are not con-
tfnung the canticle Of praise taught us by
heaven, who have no honor for Mary, who
are silent in her regard, who hold not festi-
walls and commemorative exercises in rever-
ence for Mary.
Reverence to the saints of the church by
the children of the church is the dictate OF
reason. the dictate of the heart. The ma ton
has its heroes, in whose honor it builds
uiouulIleulS, whose name II Is pTOuu 10 TepSdt,
whose memories 1T would fain transmit to all
future generations. Why should not the
church. Gods nation on earth. have also Its
heroes? Why should reproach be spoken
against the church because she tells OF the
great ones among her children in the past
in order that her children of today and To-
morrow should have before their souls hlgn
Ideals to initiate, when the honor given Dy
civil society to its heroes is deemed leglti-
mate and noble? The nation that has not It's
heroes is a nation without pride, nation
whose history Is Of no benefit to humanity
The nation having heroes and not honoring
them proves itself to be devoid Of the divine
moral sense which always pays reverence to
the true, the good and the beautiful, and
which is the highest Inheritance of mems
souls. And So the: church, the religious so
siety, that has not its heroes it's saints, It's
martyrs, has fulfilled upon earth no high
divine mission. J And if the church, the re-
!igious society. were able to point out Its
heroes and its saints, and did not do them
homage. it is devoid of the divine moral sense,
which is nothing else but the deep appre-
citation of religion itself. Two Thousand
years mark the life of the Catholic church
upon earth. Throughout her whole history
she has had her heroes On every page OF
her. records their. names glisten, names OF
virgins, confessors, doctors. martyrs: names
of men and women whose virtues were Sd high
in the life of humanity that they lowered
above their fellows as the highest peak OF
the Alps above the small hills across the
nesghboring plain; names of men and women
the very Skies, whence came to them their
holiness and their spiritual grandeur. The
church -
HAS HAD HER HEROES,
her saints, and through them she proves her
divine fecundity; she proves that born OF. the
skies she Is capable of begetting children
worthy of the Skies And having had on her
scrolls innumerable names of heroes she has
always venerated them, because in venerat-
ing them she :yenerates Gods power and
holiness. whose creations they are: because
in generating them she constantly holds UP
before the minds of her living children i'll
every; generation, models of whom the very
remembrance spurs them to think of and to
do great things, and to be in some measure,
as thei saints and heroes Werea1ni great meas
ure, the disciples and the fmitators of the
'Inearnate God Jesus Christ This is, in
few words the doctrine of the church as to-
the reverence and Honor Catholics pay to the
saints. The honor to all the saints is based
on the same argument. Where some saints
are. held in deeper reverence, the measure
of the reverence is the measure of the nler-
it's. Above, other saints is Mary, the Mother
Of Jesus; child of Adam and Eve as other
saints, honored. as other saints because of
the great things done by the mighty hand
of God in her soul. my SOUL" said she,
"doth magnify the Lord because he that is
mighty hath done great things in me-" She
is honored because 1t Is well for the children
of the church to do honor to her that they
may drink into their souls something of the
sweetness and the blessedness of exalted vir-
tue which made Mary worthy to have been
saluted 1000 years ago by the archangel from
heaven. Hail full of grace. the Lord is
with thee blessed art thou among women"
There are reasons leading Catholics to
deeper reverence than we venerate other
saints. Two special reasons I beg leave
to present to your meditation this morning.
One is, that as Mary was the Mother Of the
Incarnate God and the guardian of this In
earnate God In His. infancy and youth, so
reverence for the Blessed Virgin is for our
souls the guardian of the cardinal doctrine
Of Christianity, the divinity Of Jesus. Chris
tianity is the recognition of the divinity Of
Jesus. All things that might be presumed to
make up Christianity but that set aside or
overlook the divinity Of Jesus, are deniais of
Christianity: all that is good and great and
saving in Christianity comes from this one
! vital doctrine that Jesus, Son of Man, Is also
Son Of God. true God and true Man; God
this is the cardinal doctrine Of Christianity,
as this is Christianity, so the preservation
Of faith in the divinity of Christ is prac-
tieal Christianity unfortunately for souls
Christ is weakening in the world.
Three hundred years ago took place the great
and lamentable divisions in the Christian
world; but those who went away from Gods
church, and those who continued this move
ment of secession with few and rare excep-
tons, protested the divinity of Christ. They
divine having once appeared on earth and
having spoken to men, could not but have
left a divine society to perpetuate and ex-
pain His life and His preaching. But at
least the doctrine was there. AS centuries.
however, went by, clouds gathered. around
that great fact of Christianity, and today,
while Christ is spoken of as divine, too often
there is no clear, explicit faith in the diyin-
ity of Christ; too often the divine Jesus is
apprehended as nothing more than q spe-
cally warm and bright ray from the face of
the Infinite descending upon the Son of
Mary. In other words, Jesus would be d.
vine because He
WAS THE BEST OF MEN
Brethren, the doctrine of the divinity of
Christ is this, and this alone, that the person
Of the Son Of Mary Is the person Of the Son
of the Eternal Father, the Second Person of
the Blessed Trinity, true God, together with
the Father and the Holy Ghost. The doctrine
of the divinity Of Christ Is this, that in Jesus
the two natures, the divine and the human, are
hypoststically united, and that He who was
born of Mary IN Bethlehem, He who preached
on the. streets Of Jerusalem and upon the
plains Of Galifee, He who died on the cross of
Calvary is Cod !s.
The misfortune for those who seeded from
the church Of Christ was that they kept be-
fore them the doctrine Of the divinity as some
thing abstract theoretical, they did not live
it out In practice; they took away from that
dogma the sacred approaches which God had
intended TO be guardians Of the dogma. They
fain would have, had that dogma to stand by
itself in the abstract; and gradually 1t became
fainter and fainter before their souls until
many are no longer able to grasp 1t in its
full reality The Catholic church understands
how important I'll is to keep that sacred dogma
living before uss and Shence our devotions and
practices, each. rome OF which may by itself
seem not so vitality Important, but the aggre-
the great truth that Jesus ia God. The church
WoIIe that u,heneyer the sacred name Of Jesus