Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/315

us to gain merits. Through it we received two graces, that of accepting tribulation, and that other, which renders tribulation meritorious, when freely accepted in our Lord and through our Lord. In this consists the substance of the Catholic religion, to believe with a firm faith that we have no strength in ourselves, but that we can do all things in Him and through Him who fortifies us. If this is rejected, all other dogmas are pure abstractions divested of all virtue and efficacy. The Catholic God is not an abstract nor a lifeless God, but he is a personal and living God, who acts perpetually out of us and within us. He surrounds us and contains us, at the same time that he is contained in us. The mystery which has merited for us grace, and without which we are as lost and in darkness, is the mystery of mysteries. All others are adorable, elevated, and sublime, but this is the culmination of all, the highest, the most adorable, beyond which there can be no greater height nor elevation attained, nor anything above it worthy of adoration.

On that day, forever mournful but joyful, when the Son of God made man was crucified, all things were restored to order, and in this divine order the cross was elevated above all things created. Some things manifested the goodness of God, others his mercy, and others again his justice. The cross alone was the symbol of his love and the pledge of his grace. It is through the cross that confessors have suffered for the faith; through it that virgins have remained chaste; that the Fathers of the Desert have lived angelic lives; that the martyrs, those faithful witnesses, have courageously and cheerfully sacrificed their lives. From the sacrifice of the cross proceeded that wonderful energy