The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-03-09
Gloom Of Life
 Shadow Of Cross
 Says Fr. O'Leary

The Rev. William OLeary, s. J.. scientist and inventor of Dublin, Ire Iand, and discovered of a principle which is expected to revolutionize the clock industry, delivered the sermon
 .t ser. lees at St. Angus tines church last night, taking for his subject the place of sorrow and pain fin the world. "Whenever violence is done in one direction. the balance of nature is restored by violence in the other direction" said Fr. O'Leary in opening. Come down to ourselves g he continued, and let us suppose my hand is injured Immediately I would be in pain. What is pain? Pain is the sign that injury has been done to that it is set right. Pain is the voice of nature crying out that injury has been done, violence In one direction overcome by violence in another. Go to nations.
 Violence is done again the social or der, against a community, murder has been committed. Immediately we take the life of the murderer, in or der that the balance of nature may be restored. Without that violence in the opposite direction nature can not be restored. It is always the same. backward and forward of all nature, whether it be the stars, the winds, the ebb and flow of human life, the ebb and flow of joy and sor- TOW is as ceaseless as the waves of thes sea
 When God sent our first parents into the world. in order to mitigate the violence of nature he gave them preternatural gifts, but these were given on condition tha tour first par ents obeyed the law. Our first par ents fell and these gifts fell away from them, and nature with all its violence was restored God removed violence from the world and our first parents by their sin brought it back.
 God was not pleased with the sin and sorrow and turmoil that followed. TO destroy the work of His hands
 would be unworthy of God. God took these awful things, pain and sorrow which were the brand of sin, took this base metal and forged that sorrow and pain into a glorious crown for His Own Divine Son. By that act Christ Our Lord took upon Himself OH sorrow and all pain. He made them His livery and took to Himself as brethren all in pain and sorrow. That which had been the curse of sin became the badge or Christ There was not then the Christian compassion for pain and sorrow that there is now. That was the result of the Gospel of Our Lord. Men before that were very much like the wolf pack, rending the weak as they fell. Those that were down were outcasts.
 among the poor and preached the gospel of poverty, humiliation and suf- fering. Christ was the greatest social TefOrmer the world had ever SeeH- Communism, socialism and all these other isms are loaded down with self ishness. Unless we go back to Christ and found our doctrine on the charity of Christ. the helping of others, there is no such thing as helping the mass Of mankind.
 Christ Our Lord is the only one who can overcome the terrible sorrow in the world. Christ was the great est social reformer- The people who gathered round Him at the Sermon on the Mount were the outcasts, the 10 poor. the maimed, the blind, and He preached d to them the Gospel of hu- anifity. poverty, meekneSs, sorrow, pain, all these things for the glory of God. From the time of that Sermon on the Mount the outcasts of the world have been drawn to Christ. It is only by following the spirit of Christ, the Gospel of Christ, and talk ing sorrows and pain and treating 1t with Christian charity and Christian justice that life may be made worth living Sorrow will come to all at some time. Let us try to think that the gloom is only the shadow of the Cross that Is falling athwart our lives. Remember, if you are in sor- row, you are, in the shadow of the Cross and you are very near to, C nd ''