Book Description

For a great many of the laity, Catholic life consists simply in the Sunday Mass, the occasional sacraments, and daily prayers; and this narrow practice they would defend as though it were all that they were, in virtue of their state, called upon to show. Now, it is surely to be regretted that the whole treasury of the Church, which is most needed just by those whose busy lives are crammed with material interests, should be left to the hands of so small a proportion of her children. Is it any wonder that prayers become listless and uninteresting, that Mass itself develops into routine, that the sacraments become badges of respectability, or, at the most, professions of faith? The real inner life, which Christ came to endow with fuller life, shrivels up.