The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1955-05-13
Just Among Ourselves
Passing Comment eonsidsr.d or Insonsid.rst.

s asking" days They are days of especially urgent
prayers of petition that God will spare us the rigors
Of His justice, and will bless in His mercy be.
slowing upon US abundance of spiritual and material
benefits. Among the good things ask for
the fruits Of the earth by which bodily life
is sustained
The observance Of Rogation Days began in the
fifth century in diocese Of what is now France.
Terrible calamities had afflicted the place and to
prevent their recurrence solemn service Of petition
and penance, including processians and rectations
OF litanes was instituted, and set for the three days
preceding the Ascension. Within few years, the
local practice had spread through all France; in
three and one-haf centuries the Rogation Days
observed throughout the Church.
II is suitable indeed that the faithful should
so to speak gather around Our Lord during the last
hours Of His soiourn earth before His glorious
Ascension into heaven and beg Him for necessary
gifts and blessings. True, Our Lord is always with
us; according to His word, He has not left us or
phans; He dwells among us, God and Man, in the
Holy Eucharist. But His Uistble bodily presence
among men was to end when he from the
Mount of Olives forty days after His Resurrection
from the dead and the Apostles saw the bright
cloud which received Him out of their sight.
II was al noon in the light Of midday, that our
Lord ascended into heaven. Two angels appeared
to the watching Apostles to tell them that Christ
"
visibly He had then departed from them. The
Apostles returned TO the city of Jerusalem to wait
IN obedience TO the Lords command the coming Of
the Holy Ghost on Pentecost Day, ten days later
Our Lord was the first to enter the gates Of
heaven which sin had closed against the human
race, and which His work Of Redemption had re-
opened The souls Of the just that waited in Limbo
for this hour followed their Redeemer into the eter-
nal happiness and glory Of the Beatific Vision.
We remember always that the saints who lived
before Christ and during His days on earth were
all enabled to their souls by The grace and mer
IFS He won for them. With Our Lord when he ascend
ed into heaven the souls Of our first parents;
Of Abraham Isaac Jacob OF the holy job of the pen
itentla David Of all the great and small of the hui
man family who had help to the hope of the Re
deemer, and who had kept pure, or made pure by
penance, the souls touched in anticipation by the
grace and merits of Christ and Him crucified
For Christ is the center of all history. His com
ing and His work, eliminating in Death and Resur-
recion, make Him the Sun OF Justice whose rays
penetrate in all directions. back As we'll AS forward
into the past we'll as into the present and the
future. The one true religion is the religion Of
Christ; this religion is exercised in the one
Church which He established Yet his true religion
was exercised in hope and in expectation among all
those who lived before the Church was actually in
stuted, and who believed in the Redeemer to come
No grace comes from God but through Christ
God made Man. Even the grace which enabled the
faithful angels 20 obey God grace won by the
Redeemer and applied as we should say in antic
patton. The fallen angels rejected the same grace
Of Christ The Blessed Mother of God was conceived
immaculate and filled with grace through the fore
seen merits Of Her Divine Son, Our Lord Jesus
Christ The fidelity of the patrarchs the fruitful
repentance Of sinners like David the enduring vir
Tue Of steadfast souls like Tobias and Job we're all
made possible and actual by the grace and merits
of the Saviour who yet TO come but whose
infinitely merorous work is always present to the
eternal God
Mistaken people have found difficulty in be-
lieVing that the holy persons of Old Testament times
could enter heaven, since they had not been hap
tlZed This notion involves two errors first ii fails
10 notice that Baptism was made necessary by Our
Lord who instituted ii as a sacrament and from
that moment on il is necessary to salvation In the
second place, the mistaken notion fails to realize
that there is such thing as implicit baptism
OF desire and, allowing that baptism is always
sary. We Justly maintain that tho Old Testament
saints we're baptized by such desire.
For person who does not know the obligation
OF baptism, even a person who has never heard the
name of Christ, may have the strong good will to
serve God as he ought And such will implies the
persons wish to do whatever God would have him
~ lnHS lH1uuCS, dlDell unCOnSClOuSlN the desire
for baptism The requirement for tho sacrament OF
baptism 10 he conferred by the Of the water
and tho name of the Three Divine Persons OF God
was not imposed upon mankind until Our Lord
declared il necessary.
simple desire for baptism, expressed or inn
Piled is sufficient to product the main effects Of
the misunderstanding from all sin in guilt and
penalty, and giving the soul birth into the family
and heirship of God-only when the desire cannot,
in fact, be realized II is folly for person to
say, i desire baptism; therefore | am baptized;
there is need for TO receive the sacrament
by way of water" person who could say that
would have the lie TO his claim TO have desire For
desire looks to lulfillment il rejects full
tillment Desire is itself of value only when ful,
iillment is not possible and while fulfillment
mains possible.
Besides baptism does not imprint upon the soul
the indeble character of the first and most
sary sacrament. A person who has baptism of desire
and then is enabled to receive baptism of water is
not twice baptized The baptism of water fulfills
the desire and impresses the baptismaI character
for the first and only time.
Well We seem to have wandered far afield. But
o0r wanderngs have not been unpleasant, nor, one