THE PRIEST ON THE BATTLEFIELD

New Zealand Tablet, 10 June 1915, Page 43

THE PRIEST ON THE BATTLEFIELD

THE APOSTOLATE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. (Concluded.) Sister Julie. There is, or rather was, a town of Gerberviller. At the beginning of the war it had 463 houses; to-day it has only six. A Times "correspondent, describing the German attack and capture of this town when only half a dozen of the defenders remained, says: —• ' Before they retreated their commanding officer begged Sister Julie, a Sister of St. Joseph, to go with them, but she refused to leave her wounded soldiers. She stayed at her post to the end, and was still there when I visited the town this week. Twice she saw it burnt, and twice bombarded, and for part of the fortnight after it was taken helped to nurse the German wounded who were brought into it.' Here is a further incident in the life of this angel of charity and devotion : ' The English people have already been told of Sister Julie, upon whom the President of the Republic has conferred the Legion of Honor for devotion to the wounded, under shell-fire in a. burning town, but perhaps one little incident related with that honor has not yet been reported. I think, perhaps. Sister Julie liked it more than the Cross of the Legion of Honor. A squadron of Chasseurs passed the house where this lady lived amidst the ruins of her town, and the captain called for her. When she appeared, smiling upon him, he turned to his men. and reminded them how, when they had passed that way before, they had seen a woman—Sister Julieattending the wounded in spite of the shells which burst around her, and the flames which raged across the street. ' "My little ones," said the officer, ''here is this lady again. The President of the Republic has pinned the cross for her courage on her breast Let us salute her." And, drawing his sword from his scabbard, and kissing its hilt, with a sweeping salute the captain of the Chasseurs ordered his men to raise their sabres, and to parade before this lady, whose eyes were full of tears. It was a beautiful act of homage, not only to Sister Julie, but to the womanhood of France.' Our Nuns ! God Bless Them ! And there are thousands of Sister Julies among these glorious" daughters of our Mother the Church. Trained in the retirement of Nazareth Home, moulded after the example of Mary, the Mother of God, they move through their days with their eyes fixed on heaven. Brides of Christ, they are strong through the strength of Christ, facing horrors that have daunted the hearts of brave men. Nor let us forget that these sublime heights are gained by these heroines, not through lack of human nature, but. because of their control of human nature. They move among the lepers of Molokai and Japan : they face the fanatic hate of China ; they are equally at home on the tropic plains of India or amid the icy fastnesses of Alaska; in pestilence and famine, nursing the aged poor, succoring the dying, the whole world is their home, and all mankind their brother. CHAPTER V.—OUR CHURCH. What is the secret of this sublime heroism and selfsacrifice? What is the source from which this more than human power springs ? It is no secret to the Catholic. He knows that the cause of all is the Holy Catholic Apostolic Churchthe Church of Sacrifice and Sacraments. To the Catholic the personality of the priest is negligible; what are of importance are the Divine Forces that he guards and distributes. As a man he may even be careless, but that affects not the soul that kneels before him, and at his hands receives the Body and Blood of Christ, giving eternal life. . Above and around the priest towers our Mother the Church,

guarding our faith, our precious and most cherished possession. % Love of her has filled heaven with martyrs, and love ■ of her causes Catholics to-day to fight so strenuously to hand on this glorious heritage of faith to their children. £ This is ; the reason of ' the unceasing fight against those who advocate education that is divorced from religion, and why the Catholic Church thinks no sacrifice too great to preserve this faith in the heart of the child. Belgium fought for this for forty years, and won, and the name of Belgium is synonymous with honor in the world to-day. Twin Rails of Faith and Charity. Our Church holds out certainty to her children, and, like a mighty engine, moves surely forward on the twin rails, of Faith and Charity, firm-spiked by eternal dogma. Her power is recognised even by those of another mind. Dr. Inge, the Anglican Dean of St. 1 aul s, London, speaking last month of the Church thus eulogised her —■ ' Pious Roman Catholics have the consciousness of belonging to a great institution, to a mighty world power with a remarkable history. It pointed the highway of saintlmess trodden by thousands, and had answers ready for all difficulties. Another characteristic of Catholic sanctity is its genuine unworldliness ; the man who tried to make the best of both worlds, combining unctuous religiosity with grasping covetousness, can hardly exist in the Roman Catholic Church. ' No institution ever has had such a. magnificent body of devoted servants as this Church. She is still able to produce saints worthy of her oldest and best traditions.' She is still able to produce saints worthy of her oldest and best traditions!' How true this is to-day even the most unobservant must notice, and it- will be true through all time into eternity. Universality of the Church. Her divine power is shown, not only in these manifestations of charity by her children, but also in a higher aspect still of this divine virtue. Her charity embraces all men, and is above nationality. This is the outcome of the universality of the Chinch. This power that is hers is transmitted to her children, and some of the manifestations of it in the present war are touching in the extreme. Here is one. 'I Put His Rosary in His Hands.' Five French soldiers charged a Uhlan officer and two men, killing The men and fatally wounding the officer. The officer was a Pole and a "Catholic. * This is how the French officer describes what happened: ' Lying in a pool of his own blood, he tried to pull from his pocket his Rosary and an image of our Lady and Child. At this sight all my fury died clown, and, having placed my men at their posts, I went back to him and told him that I, too, was a Catholic, and my greatest desire was to comfort his last moments. He seemed to understand, and lifted up his Rosary. Seeing what he wanted, I recited a. decade, and he answered, feebly and more feebly, in German, after which he raised his beads to his lips and kissed them several times. Then he handed them to me, and I also kissed them. This seemed to please him. Then I had to go back to my men, so 1 put his Rosary and image in his hands and left him. Next morning, on my way back to the trenches, I found him lying dead just as I had left him.' How close to Heaven does this charity of Christ lift man ! Over and above all the seeming confusion, the Church sees One who will as surely curb and still the waves of human passion as He stilled the raging waves of Galilee. What the Bishops Say. This is the spirit that breathes through the Pastoral issued by the Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops of Germany. - The war,' they tell their people, is a stern Advent school; it has brought us and our people nearer the Saviour. Like a hurricane the war broke on the cold clouds and the evil vapors .of infidelity and seep-

ticism, and on the unwholesome atmosphere of an unchristian over-culture. Our soldiers, before their march, renewed with -Him in Holy Communion their covenant for life and death. The war is a judgment for all nations afflicted by it, and therefore a loud call to penance, and expiation.' The Pastoral issued by the Hierarchy of Austria makes no reflections on the nations engaged in the-war, and strives solely to turn all thoughts to the Sacred Heart: ' The Angel of Death is reaping a gruesome harvest; the flower of manhood is falling beneath the bloody stroke of his scythe. The tears of widows and orphans are flowing. The ancient miseries, too, of earth are abroad—poverty, want, sickness, and wasting away of lives. In such extremes wo cast our eyes upon the Heart of Jesus, with His Cross and Crown of Thorns.He has not only fathomed the depths of human woe, but has descended into them Himself. That He Who alone was without sin bore all our sufferings before us, gives courage and strength to us in turn. May there henceforth be but one rivalry between —that which consists in love of the Sacred Heart and of Holy Church.' They trace the love of God for man through the centuries, and conclude by exhorting the people to consecrate themselves to Christ, and pray for a victory whose glory shall belong to God alone, to whom all the blessings of peace must be attributed. Cardinal Mercier. Cardinal Mercier's Pastoral is in the same lofty strain. It is inspired by the ardent patriotism of a great citizen and the fervent piety of a great priest. He holds up Christ, stricken and dying, as the model for stricken Belgium : 'The disciple is not greater than the Master. To rebel against pain, to revolt against Providence because it permits grief and bereavement, is to forget whence we came, the school in which we have been taught, the example that each of us carries graven in the name of a Christian. The truth is, that no disaster on earth, striking creatures only, is comparable with that which our sins provoked, and whereof God Himself chose to be the blameless victim.' With this faith as a foundation, he speaks of patriotism and the wounds of our Belgian, French, and English soldiers. For, in truth, our soldiers are our saviours; pray • daily for them for victory.' lie shows how, in the hour of trial, all have risen nobly to heights of heroism, and continues:—Patriotism a Sacred Thing. ' Patriotism is a sacred thing, and a violation of national dignity is in a manner a profanation and a sacrilege. If lam asked what I think of the eternal salvation of a brave man who has consciously given his life in defence of his country's honor, and in vindication of violated justice, I shall not hesitate to reply that, without any doubt whatever, Christ crowns his military valor, and that death accepted in this Christian spirit assures the safety of that man's soul. 'Greater love than this no man hath," said our Saviour, "that a man lay down his life for his friends." And the soldier who dies to save his brothers and the hearths and altars of his country reaches this highest of all the degrees of charity. This is the virtue of a single act of perfect charity; it cancels a whole lifetime of sins, and transforms a sinful man into a saint.' Mothers of Belgium. After calling on the mothers of Belgium to stand erect by the side of the Mother of Sorrows at the foot of the Cross, the Cardinal proclaims, with the assurance of ' one having power,' that ' affliction in the hands of the Omnipotent is a two-edged sword. It wounds the rebellious, it sanctifies him who is willing to endure.' He points out our absolute dependence on God, and, after enumerating the appalling horrors of Belgium's martyrdom, he goes on to speak of her past faults in prosperity, and asks: ' Have we not something to expiate ? What have we made of Sunday Mass, of the restraints of modesty,

of reverence : for marriage, of the spirit of penance, of respect for authority ?' .'•"■-. " Mercier and -the ;Mass. -.-'' And this magnificent father of his people ends his Pastoral with a Catholic confidence that recalls the Prophets of the Old Law. " ; '; - ...'["■■ .' Let us,' he cries, continue to pray, to do penance, to attend Holy Mass,-arid to receive Holy Communion for the sacred intention of our dear country. I recommend our parish priests to hold a funeral service on behalf of our fallen soldiers every Saturday. As soon, in God's own time, as.the sun of peace shall shine upon our country, we shall redress our ruins, shall restore shelter to those who have none; we shall rebuild our churches, and we shall hope to crown this work of reconciliation by raising upon the heights of the capital of Belgium, free and Catholic, a national Basilica of the Sacred Heart, where annually we shall solemnly celebrate the Feast of the Sacred Heart. And in every region of the diocese the clergy will organise an annual pilgrimage of thanksgiving to one of the privileged Sanctuaries of the Blessed Virgin in order to pay special honor to the protectrix of our national independence and the Universal Mediatrix of the Christian Commonwealth.' How our hearts thrill as we look upon this splendid figure, towering, a veritable Colossus, above stricken Belgium, and rousing the world by his words of fire! Oh, the strength of the faith that makes such a pronouncement possible ! While his country still quivers beneath a hell-burst, a wilderness of smoking rooftrees, of hearths ensanguined by the blood of her murdered children, with the roar of battle in his ears, he stands, calm and confident, and looks for redress to Jesus and Mary. The Pope Speaks. And from him who sits on the throne of Christ on earth comes the same twofold cry —a cry of anguish because of the sufferings of his loved ones, and a cry of warning to those who look not beyond the narrow limits of Time. Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XV., addresses the following touching words of more than fatherly tenderness to his flock. And as we read, let us remember that it is the wish of God that every soul on earth should know and acknowledge that voice as the voice of him of whom Christ has declared, ' He that heareth you, heareth Me':—■ ' But when We look from the heights of this Apostolic See towards the Lord's flock committed to Our care. We are filled with horror and inexpressible grief by the sight of this war. From the Good Shepherd Jesus Christ, whose place We hold in the government of the Church, We have this very duty, that We embrace with the bowels of paternal love all the lambs and sheep of His flock.' Penanco and Prayer. His Holiness exhorts all Bishops to implore God ' that He may put away this scourge of His wrath which He exacts of the people, penance for their sins; to pray to the Virgin Mother of Him in Whom the Eternal Father willed to reconcile all things, making peace through the Blood of the Cross, both as to the things on earth and the things that are in heaven.' (Coloss. i. 20.) ' The Mountain of the Neutrality of Christ. With a broadness of vision that comes only to those who understand the greatness of the destiny of man, our Holy Father and the great Princes of the Church, while their hearts are wracked with anguish at the sight of the sufferings of their flocks, do not hesitate to point to the rough road over Calvary that must be trodden by the sinner. Standing on the Mountain of Neutrality that belongs to Christ, they fearlessly denounce the downward path along' which so many were moving, and tell the erring that this war is a scourge in the hand of an Insulted God. How close to heaven this all-embracing charity of Christ lifts man! It is the charity of Him. Whose delight is to be with the children of men, of Him Who ever hungers for the return of sinners, and ever preached

of the innate nobility, of the human heart-—that heart of man capable of . attaining the , sublimest heights of sacrifice.- How He loves man. His creature, and how He is hurt by .'the slightest neglect ! a ; V : . Let us pray that"this Spirit of-the Catholic Church, the Spirit- of perfect Justice and perfect Truth, the Spirit making for perfect Manhood and Nationhood; may move all hearts and draw them irresistibly to the Sacred Heart of the Creator and Redeemer of the world — Christ Jesus.