OCR Text |
Show I ALMOST, A LOST ART. We have hoard offjost arts; of arts practiced !' long ago. 1ml now unknown to us, and baffling: all ': ; ' mtempts of recovery. Cardinal Wiseman's re markable essav en : :Tlic Lost Arts,'' and Wcndal Philips' popular lectures on the same subject, tell us what these arts of long-, long- ago were. There arc terms, words pud ideas that are passing- out of our material civilization, and were it not for the Catholic church, would now be almost lost. There ' arc ideas which may be lost forever to those outside j ' the Church, and indeed to those" within the Church ' unless some means be found to 'reinstate them in 1 v the conscience and heart of the world. ' One of these ideas, now all but obsolete in large ' districts of this land. is the idea of worship of Almighty (iod. Worship in its strict sense is an i act of the creature directed toward the Creator, ' purely for the sake of the Creator and for His sole i- .-.-bailor and glory. The confession of our sins U imt worship: angels who have no sins offer -worship perpetually before the throne. Xor is it worship to ak Cod's help when tempted and in trouble. Worship is something higher and greater. To worship wor-ship Almighty Cod is to set Him before you, to fix ' on Him solemnly and era nest ly the eyes of the soul, and if need be the eyes of the body when a Crucifix is present ; to forget yourself, "to direct ihe entire being toward Him; to adore Him for . Himself and Himself alone, for what He is eter- , , nnlly: not for what He is to us or to His crealion; not for what He has done for us; not for any event in time or for His relation to this world alone. Xor et with the idea of making reparation to Him ' ' '( 'for our evil deeds, or a request for anything or help that we may need should we adore God, but 'imply with this intention, to praise, glorify and adore Hiiii in His eternal state for being the great "! am."' without Spinning and without end; for this and ibis only, and -nothing less, and nothing more. This is the strict, severe and. apart from the Adorable Sacrifice -of the Mass.-the pure idea of worship. ;' , Tn this sense worship is fast becoming a lost .' art, an art unpracliced by the American people and almost unknown. Worship must lc done that men may see and ! - recognize it: worship must be so impressively done . ; that men may be deeply moved and affected by the ' sight, the believer strengthened and as in the Montreal Kucharistic Mass in the open the un-' un-' , believer awed if not convinced. One thing more. Worship in its essential elements is. and has been, and must ever be in this fallen world the same; sin and its inherited consequences give it a cast which it must ever retain until the disease has been completely en red and done away. Worship as we, . who are imprisoned in this "lwidy of sin" render i " it, is and must be in its general character propitiatory propitia-tory ami sacrificial; it has had this cast from the lime of the fall; it will retain it until the work of : ? '. "Redemption in its fullness is accomplished and is ; ' complete. i 1 lie worship now offered in heaven, to judge" , ', from the teachings of the theologians and ihe jjimpscs permitted us in the Apooalpso is a sac-, sac-, 1 ' riticial worship, like unto that of the Eucharist, offered by Jesus Christ, the Croat High Priest, at ;i golden altar where He satnds to glorify the ., . : iriune (iod and to make intercession for us. i Worship, humanly speaking, is a sacred science; ; :, ii has its principals, canons, and laws to which hu man invention and ihe ideas of the age must yield respect. In the Christian Church worship lias ever , . been liturgical in character. All existing liturgies t. ' may be traced to one fountian head and the inference infer-ence is ihat (iod must have indicated in general ' '' , ' outline 1 he worship which lie approves and accept . ,t has always been sacrificial in character, and, ' since Christ left us, Kucharistic. Therefore, there can be no new liturgy. Worship, to be done aright, must done as the Lord commanded Mose, as . Chii uimatxled His apostles in the way ap- I - : tro i v the Church founded by our Lord Jesus ' . .- Christ, to give glory to God and carry salvation to men. The worship of God's ancient people, as we all know, was sacrificial in its form. It so continued I until the "Lamb of God' Jesus Christ, the true ! Paschal Lamb, was slain to take away the sin of the world. From ihat day to this in every Chris-i Chris-i lian land, wherever the undivided truth of God j maintains, divine worship has worn the same cast. ; Still is it sacrificial, though no longer bloody; un- like those sacrifices offered by the Jewish priest for ! sin year by year continually, yet like them in the fact that it is a holy oblatio", offered by our High Priest. Jesus Christ, to the eternal God. This is the grand and solemn sacrifice, the Eu-j Eu-j charistic sacrifice of ihe Mass, the "Holy Adoration" Adora-tion" taught us by'the Son of God which has been abandoned by millions, .bartered for hymns and tlio exercises of pulpit oratory, for the curiosities of criticism, for the .gratification of individualism, for ihe spiritual comfort of the quietest, until the idea of worship has almost disappeared from their souls and dwellings of nfen. |