The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1915-04-17
ELOQUENT SERMON
OF BISHOP o'GoRMAN
CONTINUED from Page IL

mons in its stones, inside and outside
it tells the chief fundamental truth
of Christianity; monumental witness
to the word of God, loud as the thun-
ders of Sinai, awakening as the
trumpet of the Archangel.
But / have not exhausted the truth
l am dealing with. st. Paul goes
step further. The Church, he says. is
the body of Christ, of which we are
members, Christ the head, the Holy
Ghost the soul. In the living man the
soul is the source of life. 1t is the
soul that lights up the countenance,
flashes through the eye, speaks
through the lips. The soul is mistress
and queen within her realm. The soul
gone, there is no power to hold the
body together which then loses all
it's qualities and dissolves into the
primal elements that compose it;
death and dissolution are the absence
of the soul. Do you wonder now that
we claim for the Church Unity, since
her soul dominates all antagonistic
elements of the body and make it one;
that we claim for the Church Holiness,
since her soul is the spirit of sancti-
fication; that we claim for the Church
Apostalicity, since her soul seized the
Apostolic body on Pentecost; that we
claim for the Church Infallibility,
since her soul speaks through the
head, the visible and audible head the
Pope representing the invisible head
Christ; that we claim for the Church
indefectibility, since her soul is the i'm
mutable God dwelling within her I'M
til the consummation of time? Hold
this truth firmly, and you will under
stand the Church, her notes, her pre-
negatives, her wonderful position in
history, her prosecutions, her trials,
her life throughout the ages. Reject
or forget this truth, and like the
Sphinx she will stare you into hopeless
wonder. Aye she has her riddle, her
children know the answer, and those
who will not accept the answer cannot
silence her or drown her in the sands
of the desert. She is a stubborn and
everlasting fact, she haunts you, you
cannot shake her off, you must stand
up to her and account for her. AS we'll
bury from sight this Cathedral as
put an extinguisher on the Church of
Christ. Know you not that you are
the temple of God and that the spirit
of God dwelleth in you"
On the steps outside ascending to
the front doors of this building are two
pedestals awaiting their statues. One
Father Galtier the first priest who
three-quarters of century ago built
on the river bank log chapel and
called it st. Paul whence the name of
the city. The other, Bishop Cretin,
whose appointment placed Saint Paul
on the glorious roll of the fifteen hun
dred episcopal sees in the world. From
the very beginning the name marked
this city to be a Catholic city, its
growth continued and confirmed that
character. Today the twenty parochial
churches and fifteen private chapels,
a cluster of fair daughters around this
queenly Cathedral, the Catholic insti-
tutions of education and charity, the
eight suffragan dioceses represented
this morning by their Bishops in the
Sanctuary, are proof beyond all pos
sible mistake and bubble that the
name has made good, that the City of
st. Paul is, in this country and in the
world, center of Catholic life and &C.
tivity. Yonder graceful dome at the
head of Wabasha Street proclaims this
city to be the capital of a great state,
the head and heart political, COM
mercial, industrial, financial of an en-
pire to the West of us. This greater
dome on st. Anthony hill proclaims
that the city is the chief seat of re-
ligion in the Northwest This dome,
lifted up above the marts of COM
merce and the smoking chimneys of
industry, the one picture in the sky
line that attracts and holds the eye,
the imagination and the heart, stands
for religion, for the elevation of man
to ideals higher than commerce and
industry. If this building shall ever
fall, If its dome shall collapse and it's
walls crumble and its shrines be
turned into deserted ruin, it shall
not be, safe as it is in the heart of
this continent, because engines of
war shall breathe their fire and hurl
their shots upon it, but because we
and our children shall have forgotten
and rejected the lessons that it teaches
and have gone over to the untruths
against which it protests. May God
avert the disaster Este perpetua. Let
no dark foreboding cloud the glory of
this day. Rather let us be glad and
sing with the psalmist, II rejoiced at
the things that were said to me, we
shall go into the house Of the Lord.
Our feet were standing in thy courts,
o Jerusalem, Jerusalem which is
built as city, which Is compact to.
gether. Thither did the tribes 60 up,
the tribes of the Lord to praise the