THE LATE CARDINAL MORAN

New Zealand Tablet, 31 August 1911, Page 1675

THE LATE CARDINAL MORAN

The following sermon in connection with the death of Cardinal Moran was preached on Sunday, August 20.. by the Very Rev. Father Power, Hawera: 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.' Australia mourns today a great statesman whose personality has had more influence for good upon the national life than that of any other statesman of our day. The Universal Church .mourns a great prince, the greatest Churchman Australasia has seen. And the sea-divided children of Erin weep around the grave of one to whom universal acclaim has given the title of greatest Irishman of our generation. The late Sir Henry Parkes declared from his place in Parliament that Australian Federation was in great part due to the Cardinal's great oration at the Bathurst Convention of —an oration, which by its evidence of exalted patriotism and of wise statesmanship, and by its graceful expression, was the wonder and delight of the assembled delegates. At a gathering of Cardinals and other notabilities, held some seven years ago in the presence of Pius X.., the Archbishop of San Francisco declared that, after the Holy Father himself, Cardinal Moran was the best known man in the world. And we can very well believe it, for being master of so many languages and such an indefatigable worker, the fruits of his glowing pen were found in frequent and learned contributions to the leading reviews in many countries. But in Australasia, he was not only the best known but.the best loved. Everyone loves a princely Prince, and he was one of the noblest Princes of Holy Church. A fearless knight, upright and without reproach, becomes the darling of every heart, and such was he to all who followed his steps in the paths of the old faith, and to all who loved high aspirations and heroic achievements. Chivalry and Enthusiasm were the characteristics, he sought to imprint upon the hearts of those he influenced. - And the living embodiment of chivalry and . enthusiasm himself, and the darling knight of a knightly race, he bore the standards of Rome and of Erin to these Southern shores, and held them aloft to the free breezes, where they have floated in beauty and in grace during the onward march that has never known a halt for eight and twenty strenuous years. Thirty years ago Sir Henry Parkes, holding aloft his draft bill on public instruction, exclaimed at a public meeting: ' I hold in my hand what will be death" to the calling of the priesthood of the Church of Rome.' The Church saw her danger, but she has always had her man, and she found him then in Patrick Francis Moran, Bishop of the ancient See of Ossory, and she sent him out to oppose Parkes and all who would despoil the Christian child of its Christion heritage. He landed in 1884, and received such a welcome from the exiles from Erin as no Governor

had received or has since received at the hands of the general public. At once he took up the challenge of the enemies of the Christian school and of the Catholic priesthood. He declared that he would endow the field of his mission with abundant charity, with the blessings of piety, and with the joy and gladness that flow from the knowledge and love of Jesus. And a veritable march of triumph, such as no country in the wide world has seen, was the executing of his resolve. Every Sunday of the twenty-eight years found .him blessing the foundation or the superstructure of some charitable or education institute. And ' now that he and Parkes have gone to give their account to the great Lover of Souls and the dread Judge of Men, what do we find ? _ Are there proofs of that death to the calling of the priests of Rome which Parkes prophesied? Yea, rather there is the abiding and palpable testimony that the Church, over which the Cardinal presided in Australia is the only true and faithful Church of Christ; for while the schools of all the other Churches' went down one by one before the dread decree of Parkes, the schools of the Catholic Church, against which, it was primarily fulminated, have sprung up in number, in beauty, and in grace to bless and adorn what the beloved Cardinal ' loved to call ' the fair Australian land.' He came to the children of Erin, priests, and nuns and people who were spreading on the vast continent the heroic faith of their island s home, and shy and timid and shepherdless though-they had been, he vowed that he would lift their heads in pride for their dear old Motherland. And the whole world knows how loyally and faithfully and successfully that vow has been fulfilled, until we now find even a fourth generation of the Australian-born glorying in The Name of Irish-Australian, and refusing to recognise another. Everyone who spoke a word against Ireland or the Church went down before his flashing pen and his burning eloquence, as a tottering ruin before a line of cannon. There were some who thought him too forcible at times;-.but he had one method of dealing with scholarly men, and another, the only one they could understand, of crushing the blind brutality of the bigoted. But the beauty, grace, and surpassing charm of his eloquence are best seen when he follows and describes the radiant paths traced by his great countrymen, who, 'in centuries of stress and storm ,imparted- to England and the great countries of Europe, arid preserved therein, the teaching of Christianity and the sweets of civilisation. No man of his day loved Ireland better than he, for none knew her better. I have it from the lips of the leader of the Irish people, that he was the greatest Irishman of our day, and the cables tell us that the English press acknowledges his great influence on the Home Rule movement. Two years ago, when the Catholic and Irish leaders of Australasia were gathered round him to celebrate his eightieth birthday and the jubilee of his Cardinalate, he spoke . . "• ■";...'.-, These Beautiful Words: j 'I have ever deemed it a singular privilege that'the religious mission to labor in this youthful Australian Church was assigned to me; but I must confess that there was a wrench in quitting Ireland, my native land. With fondest affection I loved' her sanctuaries and lier shrines, every daisy of her wide-spreading valleys, every shamrock of her emerald hills; I loved her priests, and her people, her traditions of piety,-the unconquerable patriotism of her sons, the incomparable virtue of her children. . . . On my coming to" Australia you received me with a genuine " Cead mile failte." I had bidden farewell to Irish hearts and Irish affections, but I found the same hearts and the same affections here awaiting me. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, writes: "I bear you witness, that, if it could be done, you would have plucked out your eyes and would have given them to me." I would venture to say ijhat you took the Galatians for your model in welcoming me.. But the Galatians quickly fell away from their affections. In this my lot has been more. favoured than that of the Apostle. As years went on your devotedness did not cease, and your affection became more and more intensified. Affection can only be recompensed by affection ; and this is the sole .merit that I can claim, that with all earnestness. I have

endeavoured ‘to correspond in some way to your generous sympathy j and, with whole-hearted devotedness, to serve you faithfully and perseveringly. That is the mission given me by the Divine Master, and to my last breath it must be my fervent prayer to Him that grace and light and strength be given me to fulfil that sacred mission. . . . Having reached the eightieth stage in my path of pilgrimage, only a few more stages can remain till the allotted journey of .life here below shall be accomplished. With the fullest confidence that divine hope inspires, and with all earnestness of heart, I day by day repeat the loving disciple’s words: “ Veni, Domine Jesu, Veni ” (Come, O Divine Master, Come). Hitherto, in my days of pilgrimage, you, my friends, have by your prayers aided me with more than filial affection; Following in the footsteps of St. Patrick of old, I would wish with my last breath, in recompense of such affection, to impart a final blessing to one and all, and to our fair Australian land ; but from one and all I would ask a crowning memorial of your love— that when I am summoned to give an account of my stewardship, you by your fervent prayers would accompany me to the judgment throne, your pleading of Charity on my behalf will not fail to obtain for me that my shortcomings shall be forgotten, and thus, through the abounding mercy of the Most High, the Blessed Virgin shall take me by the hand and lead me to her Divine Son, to hear the blessed words which are the eternal heritage : ‘ ‘ Faithful servant, enter into the joys of the Lord.” ’ Now, mark the coincidence. It was the 15th of August, the Lady Day of the Irish. It was the feast of our Lady’s glorious Assumption, and she did not forget him who had written so beautifully of Ireland’s devotion to her, and coming to him in the dark night, she took him by the hand and led him to the feet of her Divine Son. He has now met

The Early Irish Saints,

whose footprints through Europe he loved to trace. He has caught up with them at last ; he has met Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Primate of Ireland, the cause of whose canonisation he had been expediting ; and he has. met Patrick, his great chief, who first brought the blessings of Christianity to the land he loved so well. They have interred his sacred remains beneath the roof of his own St. Mary’s, the most graceful monument in Australasia. The cross in whose cause he labored will overshadow his grave, and grateful hands, no doubt, will continue to pluck the daisies and the shamrocks from some sweet Irish hillside and weave them into a wreath and send them with love across the waters to lay down at his evcr-faithful feet. And we will join fervent prayer with those across the Tasman Sea, and with the children of Erin scattered by every shore, that if he is not already enjoying the Beatific Vision he may -soon attain that full completion of his great heart’s desire. And we ourselves, standing by that tomb that now holds all that was mortal of so great a man, so renowned a Prince of Holy Church, so faithful a lover of the dear old land of saints and scholars, and so enthusiastic a lover of the new young land of his great missionary labors, we shall treasure in our hearts the fragrance that will ever spring from that tomb, and under its sweet influence reproduce the virtues that made him so dear to God and so beloved by men.

It is not the tear at this "moment shed, When the cold turf has just been laid o’er him, That can tell how belov’d was the soul that’s fled, Or how deep in our hearts we deplore him. ’Tis the tear thro’ many a long day wept, Thro’ a life,, by his loss all shaded ; ’Tis the sad remembrance, fondly kept, When all lighter griefs have faded.

Oh! thus shall we mourn, and his memory’s light, While it shines thro’ our hearts, will improve them. For worth shall look fairer, and truth more bright, When we think how he lived but to love them ! And, as buried saints the _grave perfume Where fadeless they’ve long been lying, So our hearts shall borrow a sweet bloom From the image he left there in dying.