Oh! let us think a little upon this virtue, this discipline worthy of all praise, and it will lead us to be more trusting and loyal to the Church, and also to obey her commands the more readily who, like her Divine Founder, "speaks as one having authority." A thought for the Holy Advent time: for at the bottom of it all lies the grand reason of the Church's existence and work. She prepares men for the coming of the Lord. She is looking for the establishment and triumph of the kingdom of our Lord on the earth. The principle of her actions, which she learned at the foot of her Master's cross and with which she inspires her children, is this: Sacrifice for love; suffering for justice's sake. She wins a blessing for it. It is the last: "Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice's sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." I have not brought the beatitudes to mind in connection with these Advent thoughts without reason. St. Paul has a promise of beatitude to those who think on these things--a comprehensive beatitude, the sum of all happiness: "And the God of peace shall be with you" [Footnote 117]--a blessing, my dear brethren, which I hope we may all enjoy when the coming Christmas shall bring the angelic salutation to our ears: "__Pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis!__" [Footnote 117: Phil. iv. 9.] -------------------- {322} Sermon XXII. Fraternal Charity. (For The Festival Of St. John The Evangelist.) I Epistle St. John ii. 10. "__He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is no scandal in him__." We celebrate to-day the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, the Apostle who is distinguished in Holy Scripture as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and who is represented as leaning on the bosom of the Lord at the Last Supper. Now, we may ask what is the reason the Lord showed this marked preference and especial affection for St. John above the other Apostles? It must have been because St. John was more like the Lord than any of the others, for God must always love us in proportion as we approach His divine image and likeness. The more we put on Christ--that is, the more we are clothed with the thoughts, ideas, feelings, and dispositions of Christ, the more is Christ attracted to us in love. {323} Now, what was the characteristic virtue of this great Apostle, which rendered him so like to Christ and so dear to Him? It was his tender and overflowing love to his neighbor--that is, to all his fellow-men. He is pre-eminently the Apostle of fraternal charity, or of the love of one's neighbor. Nothing, then, will please St. John better today than to speak of the excellence of this virtue, which was the continual subject of his discourse.