First Sunday after Epiphany
Christian Education.
"He grew in age and wisdom and grace with God and men." — Luke ii. 52.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : I. Gospel silence. II. Reason. III. Church's liturgy.
1. Christ's knowledge : 1. Pupil's question. 2. Christ's development and ours. 3. Knowledge acquired, infused; possessed, applied. II. Imperfect system : 1. Age without wisdom. 2. Wisdom without grace. 3. Crime against individual and society.
III. Remedy : 1. Church's enemies. 2. God and Caesar. 3. Religious instruction and Holy Eucharist.
Per. : Result will be real Christians.
SERMON.
Brethren, in meditating on the mysteries of this holy season, nothing strikes one more forcibly or engenders greater surprise than the silence of the Evangelists concerning the earlier years of our divine Redeemer. After His return from Egypt to Nazareth in His seventh or eighth year, we lose all trace of Him until the beginning of His miracles in Cana of Galilee, in the thirtieth year of His age. True, we find Him momentarily appearing, at the age of twelve, in the Temple at Jerusalem, but with that solitary exception the Evangelists give us no information concerning His whole hidden life, other than that He went down to Nazareth with His parents and was subject to them. Now, this silence of the Gospels, it seems to me, was not merely accidental — it
