An Analysis or Familiar Explanation of the Gospels As Read at the Holy Sacrifice

ThE following pages were the production of the pen of the late Rev. JAMES APPLETON, known to the Catholic Public by his Discourses, and his Theophilus, or Pupil Instructed. The design of this Analysis or familiar Explication of the Gospels, read in the Mass on Sundays and Festivals, is declared by the Author himself in his Introduction. Although, as he there observes, we have several Books of Instruction which derive their lessons from the Gospel of each Sunday and Feast, yet in general they confine themselves to one single verse, selected for that purpose. In the present Analysis, a familiar, and, so far as was practicable, a connected explanation of the WHOLE GOSPEL for each Sunday and Festival is delivered. Thus in each Instruction several important truths will be found collected, and presented to the reader in a plain, familiar style, which, though it cannot boast either the depth of reasoning of Gother, or the affecting simplicity of Baker, will, it is presumed, be deemed well adapted to promote the end which the truly pious Author had in view-the improvement of the Catholic Reader in the knowledge and practice of Christian Virtue. HAVING long ardently desired that the Word of God, the foundation of Christianity, a portion of which is regularly introduced into the order of each Mass, should be perfectly understood by those, to whom the favour of Heaven has deigned to impart it; and observing, moreover, that in the general method, the instructions delivered from it, whether upon Sundays or Holidays, were deduced from one single text of the lesson of the day, I conceived the idea of supplying the deficiency, which this method must obviously and naturally cause as to the knowledge of the remaining parts, by a circumstantial explication of the whole of each Gospel that occurs in our public service. In doing this, I have endeavoured, in as few words as possible, to elucidate the genuine meaning, of whatever kind it be, whether historical or moral, of each verse, as we proceed: subjoining, at the same time, such further remarks, which, as being founded on God's word, will, if for that reason alone, claim the reader's most serious attention. To this I have but to add, in order to obviate the imputation of self-conceit or presumption, which I might otherwise incur, that the following expositions of the most sublime and sacred text, rest not on my private judgment, nor the conceptions of my own feeble mind, but on the veracity of· the Scriptures, as explained by themselves; and on the authority of the Holy Fathers, those luminaries of the church, whom Providence, at different periods, raised up for the edification not only of the times in which they lived, but also for that of succeeding ages, till the conclusion of days.