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Show PROVIDENTIAL RACE. UFrom the dawn of time, even down to our own days, at certain epochs in the world's history men have appeared upon the stage of life whose trancen-dent trancen-dent greatness; cruelty or sanctity separated them from the men of their age and engraved their names on the tablets of the memory of the human race. These are known in sacred literature as providential providen-tial men, that is, men destined from their mother's wombs, as was Aaron, for a divine purpose and endowed en-dowed by God with special atributes, iutellectual gifts, physical qualities or spiritual graces to accomplish ac-complish the particular work for which God created creat-ed and chose them. "I have chosen you, said our Divine Lord to his apostles, not you me.' Behold,' from the womb of thy mother I have called thee, and again, "Before the day star was I have begotten begot-ten thee.v Cyrus was mentioned by name in the prophecies, long before he was born, as one chosen by God to punish the apostate and idolotratious people of. the Assyrian 'empire.! Of these men were Henoch, Noah, Moses, Elias, Alexander the Great and in modern times, the Apostles, of whom St. Paul was once called to be an apostle and chosen out of due time." Of these also were Genseric, the Goth, Attila, "the scourge of God," Columbus and Bonaparte and many of the great popes and saints of history. Tomorrow the Catholic church will celebrate cel-ebrate the memory a man blessed of God and beloved be-loved of his people, whose name is-held in benediction bene-diction for all time by the Imperishable church and in an especial manner by the people of the Irish race at home and abroad. -Where was he bornwho were his father and mother, what race he sprang from does not concern us, for it is enough forus to know that, like Melchisedech the King of Salem, he was a priest of the. most high God or as John the Baptist, he was a man sent of God. There is a singular sin-gular analogy between the call of St. Paul to Macedonia Mac-edonia and that of St. Patrick to Ireland. "And a vision .was shown to Paul in the night: A man of Macedonia standing, and heseeching' him, and saying: say-ing: Pass over into Macedona and heln us." We have before us a copy of the confession of St. Patrick Pat-rick wherein he records his remarkable experience touching his call to Ireland. When this occurred Patrick was in France. "I saw a vision," he savs, "during the night,, a man coming from, the west.' Ho gave me a" letter to read, and in the beginning of. it was a voice from Ireland, I thought itto be the voice of those of Foclut, adjoining the western sea. They appared.to cry put with one voice and to stretch out their hands to me, and to say, 'Come to us, O holy youth, and walk among us" The young man went to Iiome for his ordination and consecration as bishop ' and Vt " once returned . . to France and crossed over the sea to Ireland. The conversion of the four Kings of Ireland and the Irish people to Christianity is one of these silent but extraordinary facts of history which .contra diets the experience, of the human race.- There is no other example in the annals of the world of an entire nation accepting at .once the doctrines and yoke of. a foreign faith unless they were whipped into obedience by the strong arm of an overwhelming overwhelm-ing military force. There is no other nistance on I .. . -. .: .HK.'ii! il!"'"' JI'-'V..li!(ii!l)iilji;ffi ur-1 irti."NM'i-Lh-. iffTl jih. , . . - j record where a' tribe, class or nation abandoned its gods and the worship of idols, and accepted a religion, the very antithesis of their , own, until they had slaughtered many of the prophets sent to them and opened graves for their early converts. Not only do we accept St. Patrick as a providential provi-dential man but we maintain that the history of the Irish people proves them to be a providential race. Except the Hebrew there is no other race' on the face of the earth that bears so clearly and unmistakably un-mistakably on its national face the marks of the influence of the Divine mind. Freeman in his "History of the Norman Conquest" calls the Irish Celts an "unconquerable race." The Irish. Celt has more than the indomitable courage of resistance to recommend him to the admiration of an impartial people. He is himself a conqueror. He has.niet and fought to silence and almost to submission an army of slanderers, liars, vilifiers of his race and creed, and the most foul and meanest combination of hypocrits and contemptible bigots- that ever disgraced a country or a people. The brutality of military and political persecution, extending, over a period of 600 years, and rising at times to a war of extermination would have destroyed de-stroyed a less heroic race; but the social-intolerance toward the Irishman and his religion, the vile caricatures, the Satanic malice, the ribald jokes on Paddy and Biddy from pulpit, stage, platform and newspaper; the silent, secret and malicious hostility hostil-ity and determination to shut him, out from every avenue that led to social, professional, commercial and political success would long ago have crushed him 'into -the mud of obscurity or -.the. .slime of heretical absorption were he not fashioned fash-ioned of superior clay to those around him. A race that for six centuries has survived the ferocity of the greatest naval and military mili-tary power of modern times, that, has fought an unexampled, social and ' religious bigotry to a standstill, has nothing to fear from anything or any one outside of God and itself. The secret of the iudistructablc vitality of the Irish race is its identification with avid -fidelity to an indistructable religion. The Irish Catholic is the spirtual son of a divine and imperishable mother and so long as he is true to her his posterity will live and increase when others around him are disappearing. But of this another time. When Moses was about to ascend as-cend the Mount of Nebo to his unknown grave he called about him the people and the ancients of the people, and said to them: "I call heaven and earth to witness this day that I havt set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose therefore life that both thou and thy seed may live." When the Irishman loses his faith he loses his religious and natioual life and with it his personality as a member of a providential race. A divorce between him and his church means death" to ' him racially and spiritually. . . |