Page:O'Donnell - Hail Holy Queen 02 - Less of the Sun-Worship.djvu/6

 No doubt the sun-worshipper would think you were simple if you were to suggest that the beach wagon that he drives to the scene of his rituals could spring into being by itself, fully assembled, just by chance. Yet, when he considers himself, a far more perfect machine, and the ordered universe in which he moves, he naively brushes aside the basic truths that every effect must have a cause; that there can be no such thing as an endless series of secondary causes; that everything must be contingent upon a first cause, and that the First Cause is God.

What is the body without the Soul? Look at the body in death, so strangely meaner than in life, as it is consigned to its narrow grave. Is this the end of man? Is he as inconsiderable as this? If so, then we may say with Carlyle that the stars look down "as if with pity from their serene spaces, like eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man." But this is not the end, for after death comes life, life eternal. The soul leaves the body and returns to the God Who made it, there to hear the words. "Come, ye blessed of my father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world," or "Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:34, 41) As you live, so shall you die. "As you sow, so shall you reap," was not spoken of the body, but of the soul. Let us reflect, therefore on our brief sojourn "in this our exile." Let us see it in the light of our true home in heaven, and keep always "an alien ear, homesick for harpings of eternity." Let us look beyond this confused, distraught, and weary world to the heavenly kingdom where there are neither the uncertainties of life nor the certainty of death, but only bliss forever.

No modern writer has expressed so well the true philosophy of life and death as the late and beloved Father John W. Cavanaugh, distinguished ninth president of Notre Dame: "Come with me then to God's own, to the last resting place where the great ones of the earth are sleeping their dreamless sleep. Stand in spirit beside these moss-grown graves and remember that the clods beneath your feet were once a human heart disquieted by the wild thirst for wealth or power or pleasure. Standing in the silence and the loneliness of that place, reflect how trivial, how infinitely trivial and unimportant are the petty ambitions and jealousies and pains and