Albuquerque daily citizen. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1895-1903, 1903-02-26
FATHER BARRY.
Holding Mission Services at Imma-
cuIate Conception Church.
FINE PULPIT ORATOR.

The Catholic mission was opened
yesterday 10y Father Barry at the I'm
maculate Conception church. The in
clement weather, to which our Albu-
querque people seem to be so sensi-
tive, did not keep them from attending
the first exercises held yesterday.
At 0 o'clock after the holy sacrifice
of the mass offered by the pastor and
the distribution of ashes, the reverend
missionary preached to large congre-
CATION, explaining the nature, purpose
and meaning of a Catholic mission.
In the afternoon at $3.50 o'clock, he
conducted the station of the cross,
after which he preached short dis
course to the children.
Last night at 7:30 o'clock, after the
citation of the rosary. Rev. Father
Barry preached his first lecture on the
Immortality of the soul the destiny of
man, the object of life. Father Barry
proved himself an orator of uncom-
mon ability. He mastered his subject
He can reason, convince and move as
very few men can do. He kept his
audience spellbound for at least one
hour and half. He said in part:
There are certain great questions
which in our best moments sound
forth from the depths of our nature
and demand an answer. What am /?
Whence have | come? Whittier am |
going? What is before me? What is
expected of me? What have | to eX-
pect? What is the way? What the
means TO attain it?" These. the
preacher said, are the questions which
in a thousand tones sing out in the
minds and hearts Of men. And once
they have been heard they keep echo
ing on through all life, baunting us
With their whisper or their shout,
whenever a lull in the busy hum
around us permits us to listen; and
they will not be still until they are an
swered and reason is satisfied.
Thus it is with u.s." he said. Thus
il has been, as history shows. with all
the generations before us. These ques-
tions and the attempts to answer them
constitute the meaning of all the sys-
TENS of philosophy that ever existed
Back at the very dawn of history
we hold our Ayran ancestors, pre-
eminently the thinkers of their day,
wrestling with these great problems of
the soul, seeking their solution with
an earnestness perhaps never equalled
in later times. Their intellect recog-
nized the infinite-the eternal, as the
beginning and end OF all things, and
their hearts yearned for nearness to
Him, union with Him, absorption in
Him. To Him their philosophic
thought, and their poetic fancy, were
entirely consecrated.
Ages later on we behold the Greeks
occupying without dispute the domain
of intellectual supremacy, Sage after
sage discourses TO multitudes of en-
thusiastic disciples on the nature, the
origin, the destiny of all things. They
are aided in their efforts to fathom
these depths by the wisdom that pre-
ceded them, in Chaldea, in Persia, in
India, in China, in Egypt.
"All through the course of modern
history we find the same stream of
anxious thought running almost un-
interruptedly.
From these facts it follows with in
exorable logic, that since the human
mind so universally and so imperious-
ly demands an answer to these prob
lens, an answer there must be within
its reach. The universally OF law,
the general harmony and fitness OF
things, forbids us to suppose that man
is the one exception whose being is
a contradiction His whole nature
cries out that il is not self-suficing,
and that the things around it are pow