THE CARDINAL
said: I am not going to make a long address to you, my dear boys, or
say anything that you have not often heard before from your superiors,
for I know well in what good hands you are, and I know that their
instructions come to you with greater force than any you can have from
a stranger. If I speak to you at all, it is because I have lately come
from the Holy Father, and am, in some sort, his representative, and so
in the years to come you may remember that you saw me today and heard
me speak in his name, and remember it to your profit. You know that
today we keep the Feast of the Holy Rosary, and I propose to say to
you what occurs to me on this great subject. You know how that
devotion came about; how, at a time when heresy was very widespread,
and had called in the aid of sophistry, that can so powerfully aid
infidelity against religion, God inspired St. Dominic to institute and
spread this devotion. It seems so simple and easy, but you know God
chooses the small things of the world to humble the great. Of course
it was first of all for the poor and simple, but not for them only,
for everyone who has practised the devotion knows that there is in it
a soothing sweetness that there is in nothing else. It is difficult to
know God by our own power, because He is incomprehensible. He is
invisible to begin with, and therefore incomprehensible. We can in
some way know him, for even among the heathens there were some who had
learned many truths about Him; but even they found it hard to conform
their lives to their knowledge of Him. And so in His mercy He has
given us a revelation of Himself by coming amongst us, to be one of
ourselves, with all the relations and qualities of humanity, to gain
us over. He came down from Heaven and dwelt amongst us, and died for
us. All these things are in the Creed, which contains the chief things
that He has revealed to us about Himself. Now the great power of the
Rosary lies in this, that it makes the Creed into a prayer; of course,
the Creed is in some sense a prayer and a great act of homage to God;
but the Rosary gives us the great truths of His life and death to
meditate upon, and brings them nearer to our hearts. And so we
contemplate all the great mysteries of His life and His birth in the
{45} manger; and so too the mysteries of His suffering and His
glorified life. But even Christians, with all their knowledge of God,
have usually more awe than love of Him, and the special virtue of the
Rosary lies in the special way in which it looks at these mysteries;
for with all our thoughts of Him are mingled thoughts of His Mother,
and in the relations between Mother and Son we have set before us the
Holy Family, the home in which God lived. Now the family is, even
humanly considered, a sacred thing; how much more the family bound
together by supernatural ties, and, above all, that in which God dwelt
with His Blessed Mother. This is what I should most wish you to
remember in future years. For you will all of you have to go out into
the world, and going out into the world means leaving home; and, my
dear boys, you don't know what the world is now. You look forward to
the time when you will go out into the world, and it seems to you very
bright and full of promise. It is not wrong for you to look forward to
that time; but most men who know the world find it a world of great
trouble, and disappointments, and even misery. If it turns out so to
you, seek a home in the Holy Family that you think about in the
mysteries of the Rosary. Schoolboys know the difference between school
and home. You often hear grown-up people say that the happiest time of
their life was that passed at school; but when they were at school you
know they had a happier time, which was when they went home; that
shows there is a good in home which cannot be found elsewhere. So that
even if the world should actually prove to be all that you now fancy
it, if it should bring you all that you could wish, yet you ought to
have in the Holy Family a home with a holiness and sweetness about it
that cannot be found elsewhere. This is, my dear boys, what I most
earnestly ask you. I ask you when you go out into the world, as you
soon must, to make the Holy Family your home, to which you may turn
from all the sorrow and care of the world and find a solace, a
compensation, and a refuge. And this I say to you, not as if I should
speak to you again, not as if I had of myself any claim upon you, but
with the claims of the Holy Father, whose representative I am, and in
the hope that in the days to come you will remember that I came
amongst you and said it to you. And when I speak of the Holy Family I
do not mean Our Lord and Our Lady only, but St. Joseph too; for as we
cannot separate Our Lord from His Mother, so we cannot separate St.
Joseph from them both; for who but he was their protector in all the
scenes of Our Lord's early life? And with Joseph {46} must be included
St. Elizabeth and St. John, whom we naturally think of as part of the
Holy Family; we read of them together and see them in pictures
together. May you, my dear boys, throughout your life find a home in
the Holy Family; the home of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother, St.
Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and St. John.
