CHAPTER IX

EARLY CATHOLIC LIFE

Many anxieties and trials were to be endured by the new convert during the first three years of his Catholic life. Not the least of these was the comparative isolation to which every convert is more or less condemned. It must be confessed that Catholic lay people, at least in our country, are not in general sufficiently ready to make advances and to manifest kindness to those who enter the fold. In this particular they contrast perhaps rather unfavorably with the adherents of heresy. No doubt it is often through a certain timidity that those who have always been Catholics hold back from obtruding their acquaintance upon the newcomers; but the effect is as injurious as though it were due to indifference. The new convert must first fight, as it were, to get in; he must make, in many cases, heroic sacrifices; he incurs the displeasure of relatives, is cut off from old friends, and is apt to find himself for a long time without new ones, at least outside the ranks of the clergy. He sees around him multitudes of Catholics intent upon their own

duties and devotions, but apparently with little thought or sympathy for him.

In Mr. Richards' case, this isolation was increased and aggravated tenfold by the separation from his family. He was a devoted husband and loving father; and to be compelled to live away from wife and children for an indefinite period, inflicted upon him a suffering like death. Intensely desirous of the conversion of his family to the faith which he had embraced and which he loved more ardently every day as its beauties were revealed to him, he was in a position to do scarcely anything to hasten that conversion. The stings of poverty and anxieties as to success in business were aggravated by ill health, which soon began to assume at times an alarming aspect. But all such difficulties and sufferings were lightened by the tender devotion and intense happiness which he experienced in the practice of religion. His letters at this time give a vivid idea of the enthusiasm with which their writer, with intellect and heart now at rest in the Truth, entered upon the fields of Catholic devotion.

Scarcely had Mr. Richards become settled in his new surroundings, when he was summoned to Granville to the deathbed of his father. The old Doctor had fallen from the loft of the stable on a heap of stones below and suffered a con

cussion of the brain that led to his death after a few days. In the interval, he was in constant delirium, but as the end approached, full consciousness returned. Calling to his bedside those of his children and grandchildren who were present, he said: "My children, I die in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ," and so sank into unconsciousness and death. He had always been a very religious and most conscientious man. It was his custom to take his Bible every day and retire to his inner study, where no one was allowed to disturb him for half an hour or more. His son looked upon his dying declaration of faith as an indication that doubts as to his position had perhaps arisen in his mind, and that he desired to express an implicit belief of all that Christ taught, whatever that might be in detail. In spite of the ever increasing divergence in their religious convictions, Henry had always remained devotedly attached to his father, and the death of the latter at this time was an added weight in the burden of sorrow and trial that he was called upon in God's providence to bear.

As a business man, Mr. Richards proved to be successful, his early experiences in that field no doubt having afforded him a better preparation than falls to the lot of most clergymen. The cheery, sincere and hearty manner which was natural to him and was an index of his

character, and which, moreover, was strengthened daily by the religious influences to which he opened his whole soul, ensured him a favorable reception from all classes. His principals increased his salary and desired him to make a prolonged journey in the West during the autumn of 1852. Then occurred the first of a series of attacks of illness, of a painful and peculiar nature, which formed one of the most distressing trials of his life. Four times, at intervals of some ten years, did these attacks disable him for periods of some months from the ordinary duties of life and even of religion, wrapping his soul in the deepest gloom. Painful and terrible as the trial was, he himself recognized it as a powerful instrument in the hand of God to tear away his heart from all attachment to created and transient goods and to fix it upon God alone. Describing this attack, he says: "I remember very distinctly praying in heart with intense earnestness to St. Peter that my faith might never fail. I have sometimes thought that it may have been in answer to that petition of intense desire and impassioned earnestness that I am indebted for the happy exemption from doubt in regard to the truth of the Catholic religion with which I have been blessed. I have never, thank God, had any serious doubt in regard to any doctrine

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of the Church. I said my prayers regularly rather from a sense of duty than from inclination, crying for mercy and deprecating the judgments of God, but without hope or consolation. There was There was one exception to this. One day I experienced some relief, a momentary unction and freedom and pleasure in prayer. I afterwards found it was the anniversary of my reception into the Church, the festival of the Conversion of St. Paul, whom I had chosen, or rather who had been given to me, as my patron saint!"

It was Mr. Richards' conviction that God intended him to remain poor. He had absolutely no desire for riches. He worked only for a subsistence for himself and his family and aimed at nothing beyond, unless the power of doing good and giving to others. It is a fact worthy of notice that whenever by his ability and industry he began to get ahead and to be in a position to lay up resources for the future, one of these attacks of illness, or some other unexpected and unavoidable circumstance, came to throw him back into his favorite condition of absolute trust in God's providence. When, on the other hand, his resources were exhausted and poverty stared him in the face, some new opening of even more favorable character than before came to justify his confidence.