292 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



Every Catholic is obliged under pain of serious sin to be 

 present at Mass every Sunday unless prevented by a good 

 reason. So it is that, rain or shine, in heat or in cold, our 

 churches are crowded every Sunday. To Catholics, the Mass, 

 whether celebrated amid all the imposing solemnity of cathe- 

 dral appurtenances, or whether offered in an unadorned 

 chapel of a backwoods village, is the supremest act of wor- 

 ship. We believe that Christ Himself becomes present on the 

 altar and blesses us and all we hold dear. There before the 

 aUar we are the equals of the multitude that daily saw Jesus 

 when He walked and taught. He Himself said the sacrament 

 was His body and He was God, the Creator of all things. No 

 man, sincerely believing this doctrine, can go back to his home 

 and the duties of the week without comfort, courage and 

 high resolve. 



Every Sunday there is at the low Masses — so called because 

 they are said in a low tone, without music, usually — a short 

 familiar instruction, and at the high Masses the set sermon. 

 I need not tell you that the Mass is the celebration of the 

 Lord's Supper, with all the ceremonies and usages that have 

 come down to us from the earliest times. In large parishes 

 there are from six to eight Masses on a Sunday, so that all 

 the members of the families may be accommodated. Many 

 times is the church filled, and at each Mass the Gospel is read 

 and expounded and applied to the daily life of the people. 

 Thus throughout the year the Church keeps up her mission 

 of preaching the Gospel, now calmly explaining homely duties, 

 now warning, now encouraging, now reproving, now pleading, 

 now thundering against abuses, now explaining her doctrine 

 — always conscious of her responsibility and yearning that 

 Christ may be in the hearts of her people. 



Besides the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the ministry of 

 preaching, the Church has the powerful aids of confession 

 and Holy Communion. The Church teaches that the sins we 

 commit after baptism are forgiven through the Sacrament of 

 Penance ; and the necessary conditions on the part of the peni- 

 tent for receiving absolution are contrition and confession. 

 Now, before a man can confess his sins, he must examine his 

 conscience carefully. The soul is forced to look at itself in 

 the mirror of God's law. Words, deeds, conversations, omis- 

 sions and that interior life of thought and will which is hid- 



