mandment, and are taken up with a view of doing something more than
escaping perdition "quasi per ignem."

For human nature is rarely satisfied with what is rigorously
sufficient. It does not relish living perpetually on the ragged edge of
a scant, uncertain meagerness. People want enough and plenty, abundance
and variety. If there are many avenues that lead to God's throne, they
want to use them. If there are many outlets for their intense fervor
and abundant generosity, they will have them. Devotions answer these
purposes.

Impossible to enumerate all the different practices that are in vogue
in the Church and go under the name of devotions. Legion is the number
of saints that have their following of devotees. Some are universal,
are praised and invoked the world over; others have a local niche and
are all unknown beyond the confines of a province or nation. Some are
invoked in all needs and distresses; St. Blase, on the other hand is
credited with a special power for curing throats, St. Anthony, for
finding lost things, etc. Honor is paid them on account of their
proximity to God. To invoke them is as much an honor to them as an
advantage to us.

If certain individuals do not like this kind of a thing, they are under
no sort of an obligation to practise it. If they can get to heaven
without the assistance of the saints, then let them do so, by all
means; only let them be sure to get there. No one finds devotions
repugnant but those who are ignorant of their real character and
meaning. If they are fortunate enough to make this discovery, they
then, like nearly all converts, become enthusiastic devotees, finding
in their devotions new beauties, and new advantages every day.

And it is a poor Catholic that leaves devotions entirely alone, and a
rare one. He may not feel inclined to enlist the favor of this or that
particular saint, but he usually has a rosary hidden away somewhere in
his vest pocket and a scapular around his neck, or in his pocket, as a
last extreme. If he scorns even this, then the chances are that he is
Catholic only in name, for the tree of faith is such a fertile one that
it rarely fails to yield fruit and flowers of exquisite fragrance.

Oh! of course the lives of all the saints are not history in the
strictest sense of the word. But what has that to do with the Communion
of Saints? If simplicity and naivete have woven around some names an
unlikely tale, a fable or a myth, it requires some eff