As I continue to look around me, I observe the statues and the stainedglass windows. It may be that they are works of art or but poor specimens. What concerns me at the moment is the truth they convey to the mind of the Catholic who looks on them with the eye of faith. They remind him at once of the Communion of Saints. He looks at the image of Mary and rejoices to remember that she has for him all the love and anxiety of a mother. She is Mother of Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body of which he is part. To her he turns with confidence when temptation harasses him, when sin ruins God's work in his soul. To her he confides the world as it is today, with its hatred of God, with its gigantic problems. The world needs the wise guidance of a mother; and the Catholic knows her, her power with God as proved heretofore in periods of crisis.
The saints too speak to me, as I kneel, their message of encouragement. Like me they had to fight their way through life sword in hand. Through many tribulations they came to the kingdom of God, and their example helps me to begin with new energy even though the climb may be a stiff one. They help not only with their example but with their prayers. Jeremias the prophet was seen in vision as a man "that prayeth much for the people and for all the holy city." The Catholic believes that the saints of God, far from forgetting his needs, are all the more eager to help him now that they see so much more clearly the beauty of God and the immense possibilities for the soul's growth in holiness.
The very bench on which I am kneeling tells me of the need and the power of prayer. Not all can be writers, or preachers, or organizers; not all can go to the missions, not all are privileged to live behind the Iron Curtain, not all may endure the horrors of the concentration camp. But there is no one of us but can be an apostle by his life of prayer. There is none but can grow in holiness through contact with God in prayer. There is none but has the power of making reparation by prayer to the Sacred Heart. Like Peter he can say: "Even though all should abandon Thee, I will never abandon Thee." The very fact that so many walk no more with Him is all the more challenging invitation to those who love, to cling to Him all the closer. And the link that binds the soul to Him and Him to the soul is unremitting prayer.
My genuflection, as I enter and leave, is an act of faith — and an act of reverence. It is worth while recalling that it can also be a most effective sermon. The practice of taking Holy Water, coming as it does from the earliest times, links me up with the ages that are past, reminding me again of the unbroken tradition handed from generation to generation in the Catholic Church.
"Credo." Every object in this church speaks of the truth and the peace and the supernatural life to be found in the Catholic Church. It is an easy way to pray, and a very useful way, to look at each such object and, so to say, let it speak its message to my soul. It is a deeply consoling message; it is beautiful to have such an outlook on life. But what transports the Catholic's heart most of all with joy is, not the beauty, not the consolation, although these too he values highly. But as he kneels in prayer, like Mary pondering over in his heart these things, he is conscious that whatever his Church teaches him is based on reason. He does not believe in the Real Presence, in Confession, or the Communion of Saints — or in any other dogma — merely because the Church says so. He is well persuaded that the Church is Christ's infallible mouthpiece. He knows in whom he places his trust. He knows that the Spirit of Truth guides his Church in her every decision, and he knows she holds arguments for every dogma, calculated to show to every reasonable man that her position is logical.
Summary:
1. The tabernacle and the Real Presence.
2. The confessional and the forgiveness of sins; the pulpit and the truth of Catholic teaching.
3. The statues and the Communion of Saints; the benches and their lesson of unremitting prayer.
Thought:
Wherever we sit at the feet of a priest in a Catholic pulpit we learn the same identical doctrine; the Catholic is equally at home in New York or Pekin or Dublin or Sydney.