The Catholic priesthood, as it were, joining hands with each other, run back in an unbroken line to the first fathers and founders of their glorious order, who saw the risen Saviour, and clasped the hands nailed to the cross. {59} Down this line has passed the uninterrupted, unbroken testimony to the resurrection. This day itself, the festival, Easter, is a grand monument of the resurrection. Every year, from this day back to the day on which Christ rose from the dead, the whole Christian Church has celebrated the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday. Thus we all join hands with our predecessors in past ages, until the long chain terminates in the little church of the disciples, gathered together in the coenaculum, to whom Christ appeared and said--"Peace be to you." And as we celebrate these joyous festivities, which carry us back to the very days of our Lord and his apostles, an electric shock of faith startles and reanimates our souls. Yes; this is the day of faith. It is the special festival of faith. The resurrection confirmed and renewed the wavering, sinking faith of the disciples. "_The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared unto Simon._" These words show how those fainting and almost despairing hearts revived on that day. Oh! wretched and miserable men, such as Pilate and Caiphas, and the besotted multitude, who did not, would not believe--or at least would not act on their convictions, and confess the truth! {60} Equally unhappy are those now, who have no faith; who do not believe in the Son of God; who do not await the resurrection of the dead; who believe in nothing, but pass their lives in miserable and endless doubting and unbelief. Equally unhappy are those who, though enlightened once in baptism, and brought up from childhood in the Catholic faith, are weak, wavering and hesitating in their faith; who neither believe or disbelieve; who dare not renounce their religion, and yet will not adhere to it firmly and profess it openly; but hang, as it were, in the outskirts of faith, and around the courts of the temple of Divine Truth. Equally unhappy are those who, believing firmly, deny their faith by their acts, and disobey the Lord whom they acknowledge to be their true God and their final Judge; who, on the day when Christ is risen from the dead, lie buried in the grave of mortal sin; who have no part in his life and grace, and have not received his Paschal sacraments. {61}