Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/561



REVIEW OF HIS PONTIFICATE. 555

of Jesus Christ, share thereby wdth Us in the struggle and triumph, the sorrows and joys, of the ministry of pastors. No, they shall never fade from Our memory, those fre- quent and striking testimonials of rehgious veneration which you have lavished upon Us during the course of Our Pontificate, and which you still multiply with emula- tion full of tenderness in the present circumstances. In- timately united with you already by Our duty and Our paternal love. We are more closely drawn by those proofs of your devotedness, so dear to Our hearts, less for what was personal in them in Our regard than for the inviolable attachment w^hich they denote to this Apostolic See, centre and mainstay of all the Sees of CathoUcity. If it has always been necessary that, according to the different grades of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, all the children of the Church should be sedulously united by the bonds of mutual charity and by the pursuit of the same objects, so as to form but one heart and one soul, this union is become in our day more indispensable than ever. For who can ignore the vast conspiracy of hostile forces which aims to-day at destroying and making disappear the great work of Jesus Christ, by endeavoring, with a fury which knows no limits, to rob man, in the intellectual order, of the treasure of heavenly truths, and, in the social order, to obUterate the most holy, the most salutarj'" Christian institutions. But by all this you yourselves are impressed every day. You who, more than once, have poured out to Us your anxieties and anguish, deploring the multitude of prejudices, the false systems and errors which are dis- seminated with impunity amongst the masses of the people. What snares are set on every side for the souls of those who believe! What obstacles are multiplied to weaken, and if possible to destroy the beneficent action of the Church! And, meanwhile, as if to add derision to injustice, the Church herself is charged with having lost her pristine vigor, and with being powerless to stem the tide of over- flowing passions which threaten to carry everything away.