Sermons for Sundays and Festivals; The Blessed Virgin, Charity Sermons, Panegyrics of the Saints, &C

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 Excerpt: ... and merely attracts the attention of a few relatives and friends, who are very far from suspecting what a treasure has been bestowed upon the world. Ah! Cant. vi. 9. Mary is that daughter of the great King; and all her glory is concealed within. Omnis gloria ejus film regis ab intus Humility must he the characteristic of her birth, because it is the characteristic of her whole life. She will always appear in poverty and abjection, and bear a larger share than any other creature in the insults and ignominy of her Son. This will be her most remarkable privilege--a privilege which she shall ever most jealously maintain. I need not inform you, my sister, that she must be your model in this particular beyond all others. To be born to a religious life is to die to all human vanities, to devote one's self for ever to the most sincere and profound humility. Accordingly, the first step which is taken by a soul who has been called to this holy life, is to conceal and bury herself, to divest herself of worldly ornaments and dress, to clothe herself with dark veils, and to bury herself in the obscurity of the cloister, to be forgotten there by all mankind--1 say to be buried; is there a more expressive phrase? Shall we not see you in a few moments, prostrate upon the ground, covered with a funeral pall, and, as it were, laid on the funeral bier, while we around you celebrate the anticipated ceremony of your funeral? What is the meaning of this melancholy rite, my sister 1 Is it a sad amusement---a vain representation, like that of the theatre 1 or is it not rather a striking lesson and the living image of what ought to happen within your soul? When the Church thus invests you, with the robes of death, has she not the intention of telling you by an emblem more expressi...