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Show ' I Life of Our -Savior I The extracts under the illustrations in 1li is form are from the new "Life of. t'hrifi" )iy Rev. Walter Klliott. C.S.P. This superb work has been goins through ihe press for the last year, and it ivill he Kumi' months still before it is issued. Besides Be-sides liie strong devotional tone which makes its narrative so attractive, the vurk is adorned by over SOO beautiful illustrations. il-lustrations. St. John the Baptist was the saint with whom it pleased God to dose the ,k!er dispensation and its long line of heroes a saint whose virtues should . bo a worthy type of the ancient priories f Israel. His origin was from the purest pur-est sources of Hebrew holiness, the venerable couple Zachary and Elizabeth, Eliza-beth, and was intimately joined to the conception and birth of the Messias, of whom he was appointed to be the pre- cursor. It was to Zachary that it pleased God to send the earliest announcement that the world's redemption was at hand. In the performance of his priestly duty in the Temple he had entered the Holy of Holies to offer incense. We may well Mippose that God opened this true priest's heart to the entire race of mankind man-kind in preparation for his marvelous vision, but especially that his holy soul, forgetting personal unworthiness. expanded ex-panded and embraced in its offering to God his own chosen race, upon whom Zachary well knew all other races depended de-pended for their redemption. As the fragrants incense ascended it bore his heartfelt petitions upward to the throne f f grace. Suddenly a flashing light dazzled and almost blinded him at the right side of ' the altar, just beside the bread of prop osition, stood an angel of the Lord. Zachary's humility overwhelms him; is this a visitatino for his sins? 'He was troubled and fear fell upon imni. the angel speaks and fear gives ' place to a thrill of ecstasy: "Fear not, Zachary, for thy prayer is heard: and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son." More, oh. wonderfully more: he is to be a prophet, another Elias, a leader of Israel, "to prepare unto the Lord a perfect people." The union of Joseph and Mary in uncarnal wedlock is the beginning of ; that marvel of our concupiscent man- ' hood, the celibate priesthood of the Church of Christ. Love for Jesus and. for his living tabernacle, his mother, was to Joseph the passion of passions. As he served Jesus and loved Mary in severe chastity, so do the members of the priesthood serve the ever-present Christ and his living tabernacle, which ; is his Church, in a spirit of joyful self- immolation, being so fascinated with 1 this holy TOVe that they forget the ; natural claims of flesh and blood. Un- ? cierstand the virginal spouseship of ; Nazareth and you have the key to clerical celibacy. Since Iter miraculous conception of the forerunner of God's anointed Elizabeth Eliz-abeth had known that he must soon appear, but she had not the faintest nation where or how. The sight of Mary revealed it all, for the Christ-bearer Christ-bearer was beaming in every loving i feature of Mary's face, and quivered t in the tones of her voice as she saluted ' herkinswoman. The dignity of Mary as the Mother of God-made man, the promises of the angel to her, and the relation of the two babes to each other, all was revealed. And not only to herself was this light given and this heavenly secret unfolded, but also to her unborn son. As Elizabeth was the f-. first woman to acclaim the Savior and his mother with the voice of divine i worship, so was the son in her womb the first man to proclaim him now, though yet unborn, and again upon the ': banks of the Jordan amid the eloquent tones of his penance-preaching. St. Matthew brielly describes the i hard trial of Joseph and its issue: - . "Now the generation of Christ was in this wise. When as his Mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they tame together, she was found with child, of the Holy Ghost. Whereupon 1 Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing publicly to expose her, ? was minded to put her away privately." Yet it is not too much to say that the '" heart of Joseph was tried more pain fully than Mary's, for the mystery was all revealed to her and was all hidden from him. To him the woe was over- .; whelming. God, therefore, chose to i-"; forth his will not to Mary but to Joseph., and that by means of a vision. 'nc night when he had fallen asleep, wearied with grief and doubt, the angel of the Lord was sent to him and spoke to him a? in a dream. The ange came to him and saluted him with tho great title of Son of David, c;-;ile, Mary his wife, and said, "that vhich ia conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." 'n arriving at Bethlehem the Holy Family found the little city swarming v. i;h people, like themselves come to i'.e place of enrollment. Here it was that Mary became a mother, first looked upon the face of i er Babe, offered him up to his "iavenly Father, pressed him to- her h-art, gave him to Joseph to embrace. :;ckiefi him most lovingly, "wrapped Hm up in swaddJing-clothes, and laid ! hi in in a manger:" then they both i ! !t down and adored him. It was a ' !'' humble cradle for the Son of God; hut this monarch of the world will yet choose to reign from a. throne eo i'"uuui as me cross. Mary, under Joseph's escort, went to Jerusalem and stood at the door of the Temple when her forty days were ac-enrnphsheil. ac-enrnphsheil. as if she too were unclean, hie of the Priests sprinkled her with the sacrificial blood and declared her purified. As she was too poor to offer 'lie yearling lamb, she presented the I'-eal substitute, a present of two turtle-doves. The visit of Jesus, his parents all ; unknowing, to the precincts of the T.'inple. and what happened there, is ' a connecting link between the Presen- tat ion and his anpearanee as Messias on the banks of the Jordan. The divine li ze;: ,,f jesus was not visible in early t childhood, but the heart of the Boy fc was ablaze with it. and he allowed it suddenly to burst forth eighteen years I. before his public manifestation. i Perhaps Mary and Joseph were for a time sei.arated from each other, and when Jesus went back to the Temple the mother may have thought him. with Joseph, and he have fancied the Boy to be with his mother; and so the first day passed without anxiety. But when the evening halt was reached at Sichem or Shiloh. and the scattered , members of families came together to 1 arrange for the night, the distress of Mary and Joseph was extreme; the i ' i i - I 1 Boy Jesus did not appear, he was not j to be found. After an anxious night i the holy couple started back to i Jerusalem, arriving there only at i nightfall, and darkness and the confusion con-fusion of departing caravans hindered further search till the morning; and that was the third day. Finally they found him "in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them and asking them questions." And he worked at his trade with Joseph, being over his bench, his ! chisel in hand, or his saw or hammer, I and thus his neighbors knew him until, . eighteen years afterwards, he resumed I the life-work he had claimed from his 1 parents in the Temple at that raeraor-I raeraor-I able Passover. How all nature prayed when Jesus prayed on the green hill-top! The ,' earth and the sun and the heavenly bodies all spoke a language to him but vaguely guessed at by the poets. How the whispering wind and the genial sunshine, and the musical notes of the birds, the happy voices of the little children, the murmur of the brooks, the bright tints of the flowers, the welcome wel-come rain how all were eloquent of God to the heart of Jesus Christ at Nazareth! "Now there is at Jerusalem a pond called Probatica, which in Hebrew is called Bethsaida, having five proches. In these lay a great multitude of sick, of blind, of lame, of whithered, waiting for the moving of the vater." It was a place of miracles, one of those Holy Wells which God's loving providence provi-dence had scattered over all parts of the world. "And an angel of the Lord descended at certain times into the "pond, and the water was moved. And he that went down first into the pond after the motion of the water, was made whole of whatsoever infirmity he lay under. As Jesus passed there, he saw among the anxious watchers of the water's motion a sufferer whose air of despondency despon-dency aroused his compassions he had been infirm for thirty-eight years, and our Savior knew that he had been long and vainly waiting for his cure. "Wilt thou be made whole?" he asked him. The man supposed he meant the healing heal-ing given by the pool. His pitiful and even reproachful answer deepened the sympathy of the Savior, whose heart is a very ocean of healing. "I have no man to put me into the pond"; as if to say, other invalids are rich and have their servants to lift them up and hurry them in before me, a miserable miser-able pauper; by the time that I have dragged myself to the bottom of the steps the angel is gone. But Jesus lifted him up quickly and by a mere-word: mere-word: "Arise, take up thy bed and ' walk." Instantly the blood flowed new and fresh into his withered legs, the dead -nerves began to tingle with the warmth of life. He stood up immediately, immedi-ately, leaped and jumped, took up his bed and walked." When the first man, the Old Adam, was created, it was by infinite power' breathing spirit life into dead clay. "He, breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.".-When soul.".-When it pleased the Blessed Trinity to renew the race of man through the Word made flesh, the New Adam was not brought into existence by a new act of creation; but God breathes the breath of life into the heart of Mary of Nazareth, unites the divine life to her pure blood, and thus forms Jesus Christ for the renewal of the fallen race. The New Atiam is conceived and born of the old race, but generated by an exclusive act of infinite power and love without the co-operation of human hu-man paternity. God's living condescension went even further than taking the same human nature that Adam had tainted by sin; Jesus is not merely Adam's descendant, and that of saintly men -and chaste women, with the greatest of saints for his mother; but his blood is also that of apostate and idolatrous kings and shameless harlots. By his mother, however, how-ever, that blocd was passed to him as if through a divine alembic, and cleansed till it was the immaculate blood of a perfect humanity w'orthy, if such a thing were possible, to be the humanity which should be made instinct with the divinity. This is the full meaning of the words of Isaias: "A virgin shall conceive and shall bring forth a Son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel God with us." Jesus was, however, a perfect type of the Hebrew people. The renowned race of Israel made Jesus of Nazareth iU heir. The fulness of David's mighty courage was his; Abraham's, peaceful contemplation of God and faith in the promises were his; every noble human quality of kindness or loyalty or bravery brav-ery or patient inherent in the Jewish nature flowed down into the heart of Jesus. In the supernatural order, all the predestination of God for this favored fa-vored people was concentrated upon Jesus, together with the completeness of all possible spiritual endowments of ' faith and hope and love. The glorious memories of the heroic past shall be ' radiant upon the brow of the Hebrew ! Messias. Lowly as may .seem his lot. the Man Christ shall outshine all his ancestors in majesty, a majesty only the more inspiring because it adorns the gracious quality of universal love, which is the paramount prerogative of his royalty. |