A Word to Roman Catholics
VERY many years ago, in the days of the East India Company, a young man in its employ went home to England on leave. During his holiday he was engaged to be married, and, very shortly after, he became a Christian, and learned what it was to have the Lord Jesus Christ for his Saviour. He was then much troubled at the thought of his future wife being a Roman Catholic, whilst he was a Protestant; and, moreover, a Protestant who cared to pray and read his Bible. The girl did not see her way to giving up the religion in which she had been brought up, and her mother was an extremely bigoted Roman Catholic.
The day came when the young man had to return to India.
At his farewell interview with his intended he said, “M―, do you ever pray to the Lord Jesus Christ, or do you only address the Virgin Mary?”
“Oh, how could I be so presumptuous as to address Him, when the Holy Mother of God would present my petition with so much more efficacy; He is inaccessible to me.” She spoke also of having been taught from her childhood to worship Him hanging on the cross and in the Host, but that to pray to Him and tell Him her needs would be impossible to her. Nevertheless, she could not refuse her future husband’s parting request, that she would that very night kneel down and, instead of praying to the Virgin Mary, make the same requests to her Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
When evening came, she knelt down and, with a sinking heart, began to pray. Almost at once the thought of a dead Christ in suffering on the cross vanished from her mind, and instead she realized that He was alive, living at God’s right hand—that He loved a poor sinner like her and that His ear was attentive unto her cry. She knew, too, that she needed Him for her Saviour. It seemed such a wonderful thing to her to think that she might speak in all simplicity to the One whom she had thought inaccessible; and most of the night was passed in thanking Him for loving a poor sinner and allowing her to know that He ever liveth to make intercession for us (Heb. 7:25).
She came down late to breakfast, and her mother said, “M—, you will not be in time for Mass.”
“I am not going, mother! Christ is alive in heaven, and He loved me and died for me; I can pray direct to Him, and I don’t need the intercession of the Virgin, nor these constant masses said.”
From this moment poor M― had to pass through much trial and persecution. When neither mother, nor priests, nor threats could shake her faith or her determination to go no longer to Mass or to confession, she was turned out of her home forever. But God’s hand was over her, and He enabled her to go out to India, where she was shortly married to the man whose request had brought her into so much blessing. For many years they served the Lord in India, being used to many. Their daughter, who related these incidents, remembered how earnest her mother always was in prayer, and how the thought of a living Christ in heaven who loved her seemed to color her whole life.
The worst sinner, be he Protestant or Roman Catholic, who turns to Christ in his misery and need, may have this joy. His prayers will not save him, but the Christ to whom he prays will show him that He loved him well enough to die for him on the cross to bear the punishment of his many sins instead of him, and that now in the glory He ever lives as the proof that the sins are put away. Peter had to say, “Lord, save me! And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him” (Matt. 14:30-31). The dying thief said, “Lord, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom”; and directly came the answer, “Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:42-43).
Do we who know the Lord realize when we pray that every word reaches His ear, that every cry and groan is heard and understood, and that though we may not hear or see the answer at once, yet the answer is there; in the knowledge that we have access to Christ, to whom all power has been given, and that nothing is too great for Him to do for us if He sees good. Receiving an answer is not everything, but having to do personally with the Christ who cares to hear whatever we say to Him is worth more, and imparts a comfort and stay to the heart that nothing else can.
L. W. K.