Short Instructions for Low Masses

The following instructions on the Seven Sacraments, given in the Church of St. Thomas Aquinas, Brooklyn, N.Y., during the year I888, were not originally intended for publication. The editor of the NEW YORK FREEMAN'S JOURNAL, who for the greater part of that year was a regular attendant at the services in our Church, requested permission to pub1ish them weekly in the columns of that paper, and kindly offered to have them electrotyped. These Instructions were prepared at a time when other activities incidental to the management of a new parish, and the direction of the Archconfraternity of the Guard of Honor, left but little time for literary work of any kind. It was only at the urgent request of priests in different parts of the country that we consented to have them published in book form. In our own estimation, they have but little merit. If they meet the approval of the clergy, they will soon find their way into Catholic families, and will, we trust, be of some assistance to the priest in his great mission as the Teacher of Mankind. We commence this morning a course of brief instructions on the Sacraments. As the Sacraments are the channels through which grace is conveyed to our souls, it win be of great advantage, before entering on the subject in view, to say something on grace, its nature, its divisions, its necessity, its source, and the means of obtaining it. What is grace? This is a difficult question to answer in a brief and popular way. If you are to understand the answer at all, you must listen with all the attention of which you are capable. What is grace? What is blood? It is a liquid which, circulating in our veins and arteries, maintains in us the life of the body. If by any accident-for instance, by a wound-all our blood were to flow out, our thoughts would be congealed in our brain, our hearts would cease to beat, and our limbs would refuse to move. This, you know, would be death. Now, the grace of God is to the life of our soul what blood is to the life of our body. Let grace depart, let it flow out from a poor soul, and that moment that soul is dead before God.