Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom Part 13

But this food is the source of sanctification: as that by which man fell away from G.o.d was sin, so that which unites him to G.o.d is holiness. It is from the Incarnate Son in the act of sacrifice that this holiness emanates to His people; and the gift of His flesh, the banquet at the sacrifice, dispenses it. No teaching of words could so identify the Person of our Lord with the source of holiness as the bodily act of receiving His flesh. It is the command, "Be ye holy, for I am holy,"

expressed in action. This is the perennial fountain of holiness which wells forth in the midst of His Church; and beside it, as subordinate and preparatory, is the perpetual tribunal of penance: one and the other given to meet and efface the perpetual frailties of daily life, first to restore the fallen, and then to join them afresh with the source of holiness.

There is yet another gift consequent upon adoption, which completes as it were the two we have just mentioned. It is that the flesh of our Lord given in the Blessed Sacrament is the pledge and earnest of eternal life.

This He has Himself said in the words, "He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day." And St. Thomas, in the beautiful conclusion to the grandest of hymns, has summed up numberless comments of the Fathers on these divine words, where he sings-

"Bone Pastor, panis vere, Jesu nostri miserere, Tu nos pasce, nos tuere; Tu nos bona fac videre In terra viventium: Tu qui cuncta scis et vales, Qui nos pascis hic mortales, Tuos ibi commensales Cohaeredes et sodales Fac sanctorum civium."

The Fathers[106] with great zeal insist that the physical Body of Christ in the Eucharist, being one in all the receivers, is a principle of unity of Christ's mystical Body. St. Augustine especially dwells upon this effect in Christ's mystical Body, but the effect presupposes the cause, which is that physical Body of Christ received by each.

Take an instance of the first statement, that is, the presence of Christ's physical Body, in St. Chrysostom. Commenting on the words, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" he says, "Let us learn what is the marvel of the mysteries, what they are, why they were given, and what is their use. We become, He says, one body, members of His flesh and of His blood. Let those who are initiated follow my words. That we may be so, then, not only by charity but in actual fact, let us be fused with that Flesh. For it is done by that Food which He bestowed on us in the desire to show us the longing which He had for us. He mingled Himself with us, and made His Body one ma.s.s with us, that we may be one thing, as a body united with its head. This is what Christ did for us, to draw us to closer friendship and to show His own longing for us; He granted those who desired Him, not only to see Him but to touch Him, and to eat Him, and to fix their teeth in His Flesh, to be joined in His embrace, and to satisfy all their longing. Parents often give their children to be nourished by others; I not so, but I nourish you with My own Flesh; I set Myself before you. I wished to become your Brother, I have partaken of flesh and blood for you; again, I give to you that Flesh and Blood whereby I became your kinsman."[107]

Of the effect proceeding from this cause St. Augustine says, "The whole redeemed city, the a.s.sembly and society of the saints, is offered as an universal sacrifice to G.o.d by the Great Priest, who also offered Himself in His Pa.s.sion for us, according to the form of a servant, that we might be the Body of so great a Head. For this form He offered, in this He was offered, because according to this He is Mediator, in this Priest, in this Sacrifice. When, therefore, the Apostle exhorted us to present our bodies a living sacrifice: 'For as in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another:' this is the sacrifice of Christians, many one body in Christ. Which also the Church constantly performs in the sacrifice of the altar, as the faithful know, where it is shown to her that she is offered herself in that which she offers." As he says a little further on, "Of which thing (that is, Christ being, in the form of a servant, both Priest and Victim) He willed the daily sacrifice of the Church to be the Sacrament; for she being the Body, as He the Head, she learns to offer herself by Him. To this supreme and true sacrifice all false sacrifices have given way."[108]

Thus, then, the question has been answered how our Lord impressed for ever on the world the double act of His Priesthood, the a.s.sumption of human nature to His Divine Person, and the offering of that a.s.sumed nature in sacrifice. For whereas He made the b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifice once for all upon the altar of the cross, He ordered the daily sacrifice of His Church to represent it for ever in the name of His people to G.o.d the Father, wherein He immolates Himself without blood. "What then?" says St. Chrysostom; "do we not offer every day? We do offer, but making a commemoration of His death. And this is one sacrifice, and not many. How is it one and not many? Because that was once offered which entered into the Holy of holies. This is the figure of that. For we offer ever the same; not to-day one lamb and another to-morrow, but always the same. So that the sacrifice is one. Otherwise, according to the objection, 'Since it is offered many times,' are there many Christs? By no means, but there is one Christ everywhere, complete here and complete there, one Body. As then He, being offered in many places, is one Body and not many bodies, so there is one sacrifice. Our High-Priest is He who offered the sacrifice that cleanses us; that same we offer now which was then offered, which is inconsumable. This is done for a commemoration of that which was then done; for, 'Do this,' He says, 'in commemoration of Me.'

We offer not another sacrifice as the (Jewish) high-priest, but ever the same; or rather we make a commemoration of the sacrifice."[109]

The one perpetual sacrifice thus inst.i.tuted in His Church, to be offered from His first to His second coming, carrying in it indissolubly the great truths of His religion, the life and the unity of His people, this is the instrument which He used to impress His High-Priesthood on the world; and He set up the one episcopate as the bearer of the one priesthood. The government of His Church is not an external magistracy, but rests on the ma.s.s of worship and doctrine intimately blent together, so that the outward regimen and the inward belief form an indissoluble unity in the daily practice.

In this unity we must likewise comprehend the jurisdiction expressed in planting and maintaining belief and worship throughout the world. For our Lord is a King, and came to establish a kingdom; not several kingdoms, nor a confederation of states, but one kingdom, concerning which His people confesses for ever, in the words of the angel who announced His coming, "Of His kingdom there shall be no end." But without jurisdiction, that is, without the power which says to one man, "Go here," and to another, "Go there," the first foundation of a kingdom was as impossible as was its continuance and permanence.

All the records of that ancient Church which fought a victorious battle with the Roman Empire and received a civil enfranchis.e.m.e.nt from the Emperor Constantine tend to show that the principle of hierarchical order was very strong in it, and was most severely maintained. It could not be well stated in a more absolute form than in the letter of Pope St.

Clement above quoted. But the Church which met in representation at the great Nicene Council offers a perfect picture of what that order was, working itself out in absolute independence of the Civil Power through three centuries from the Day of Pentecost.

In the diocese the bishop's jurisdiction was complete. No priest was independent in the exercise of his functions. Thus jurisdiction in the interior forum entered into the daily dispensing of the sacraments. For a long time the Holy Eucharist was dispensed by the bishop from one altar, and sent from him to the sick. He was the imposer of penance, and when, as churches and priests multiplied, the system of parishes and parish priests arose, they executed all their functions in complete subordination to the bishop, whose t.i.tle in those early times was taken from the rite on which all his power rested, when he is called pre-eminently Sacerdos, _i.e._, the sacrificing priest. Within the limits of the diocese there can be no sort of doubt that the idea of jurisdiction was perfectly realised in practice.

But did it stop with the diocese? Was the bishop independent in the exercise of his powers? In the first place, he exercised them all within a certain district. He had no power to encroach upon the district of a neighbouring bishop, nor to execute therein functions which were perfectly lawful and usual in his own. It is plain that had he possessed any such power, the whole system established would not have made one kingdom of Christ, but would have been a congeries of similar governments, not tied together but agitated by perpetual rivalries.

Nothing could be more unlike the actual system of government as disclosed by the bearing of the Church of Rome to that of Corinth in the letter of St. Clement, or to that orderly division into provinces which is seen in its full development at the Nicene Council. We may conclude that the tie which held the bishops together was at least as strict and as defined as that which formed the unity of the particular diocese.

We now behold that marvellous spiritual fabric of which St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine, at the head of the Fathers of the fourth century, spoke with such affection, acknowledging that its existence was to them an absolute proof of the G.o.dhead of its Founder. It was not its material extension alone, but its inmost nature and character which moved them thus. It was the evolution of the one indivisible power in its threefold direction of Priesthood, Teaching, and Jurisdiction. It was that the one episcopate tied together in a hierarchy of several thousand bishops was but the outward regimen of an inward polity in which the One Sacrifice is offered, and the one Body of Christ communicated by the work of the one Priesthood, which lives upon and dispenses one doctrine, proclaiming it from age to age to the whole earth.

Thus the words of our Lord, spoken immediately after He had inst.i.tuted the priesthood according to the order of Melchisedec, committing to it the sacrifice of His Body and Blood, were marvellously accomplished. "I am the true Vine, and My Father is the husbandman.-Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine, you the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." The human nature which He had taken had sent forth, in virtue of the Person who took it, the triple power bestowed upon it: His priesthood, His teaching, and His rule had occupied the earth. All the nations composing the Roman Empire had brought in their first-fruits to form cl.u.s.ters of the mystical Vine. They had made the triple offering of the Eastern kings from the peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa to the Royal Infant; to the King they had given their gold, for His sake and after His likeness becoming poor; to the G.o.d their frankincense, worshipping Him at the altar of His love; to the Victim their myrrh, presenting to Him their bodies as a sacrifice, in repet.i.tion of His martyrdom. It was the very scoff of the heathen philosopher and magistrate that any one could think to reduce to one worship the various rites of the Empire, a conglomeration of European, Asiatic, and African superst.i.tions. Out of that seemingly hopeless diversity, that endless antagonism, He had constructed a divine unity, a table at which the children of Scipio knelt side by side with the vilest slave, at which many an Aspasia became a penitent, and a Boniface sent back as holy relics to his mistress, Aglae, the body in which he had sinned with her. The vine of the synagogue, planted of old with the choicest care, and protected from the inroads of wild beasts in the security of a single nation of brethren, had brought forth but wild grapes, and therefore it had been plucked up; its hedge had been broken down and its tower ruined. Instead of it, the Vine of His Body had grown abundantly, and from its single root, to use Tertullian's application of the parable, suckers had been carried everywhere, and the harvest of its vintage rendered the earth fruitful; the hills and the valleys of many vast regions were covered with its grapes. But this itself was but the beginning of a vaster growth in the future, the first realisation of an ever-expanding kingdom. Only it was a complete specimen of all that should be. This generation of the Christian people from the person of Christ was the one miracle which St. Chrysostom thought no heathen could deny.

The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the centre and instrument of all this work; the other Sacraments lead up to it or attend upon it. That which is most intimate in man, the forming his soul after a divine type, and the sanctifying it with all its affections; that which is most intellectual, the doctrine of G.o.d made man, surpa.s.sing all knowledge in its development as in its conception; that government which is necessary to the well-being of every kingdom; that worship which is most exalting, the worship of the Infinite One, the source, example, and giver of personality, which is the last and highest gift of the Creator to the rational creature,-all these were here joined together by the simple act of G.o.d when He perpetuated in a visible rite the double power of His High-priesthood, the a.s.sumption of our nature, and the dying for our sins, and brought out of it the generation of His people, wherein the resurrection of one Man to bodily life became the resurrection of a countless host to spiritual brotherhood, and created the Family of the Incarnate G.o.d.

I have been exhibiting the inst.i.tution of the most blessed Eucharist, and the planting of it throughout the Church in the three centuries which ended with the Nicene Council. Throughout these it was the life of the Church; all the marvels of faith, endurance, zeal, and charity spring from it; the works of the Saviour were hidden in it. But since then fifteen centuries and a half have elapsed, and the Church which filled the Roman Empire has dilated itself over the whole earth. In all the countries which it has thus occupied, in all the races of which it has converted the first-fruits, the same blessed Eucharist-that divine banquet of the Flesh and Blood of the Word made man-has continued to be the life of the Church. Upon it the race of martyrs, saints, doctors, and virgins have been nurtured, and the power which in each one of them was supernatural has to be also estimated in its aggregate. Among all the proofs of the G.o.dhead of the Son of Man, that Divine Food which He foretold to the mult.i.tude satisfied with the miraculous multiplication of the natural food on the sh.o.r.es of the Lake of Galilee, and which He first gave to His Apostles in the upper chamber on the eve of His Pa.s.sion, is in its results the most transcendent. It is enough by itself to quench all the doubts of unbelief, to kindle all the fires of an endless charity. It is the Church's unparalleled possession, of which no false religion possesses even a shadow; her testimony, which grows not old; her youth, which never fails. Unnumbered myriads of people of all times and countries have been supported by it through the desert of this world, and been led in its strength to the Paradise in which the Son of G.o.d in the glory of His humanity communicates Himself face to face to those whom He has redeemed, and imparts to them the vision of G.o.d in His Unity and His Trinity.

But if this Church, possessing this Divine Sacrifice and Sacrament, was a wonder to minds such as St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine in their day of the fifth century, what ought it to be to us at the end of the nineteenth? The Roman Empire broke up, and the tribes of the North dashed into fragments its unrivalled organisation, and destroyed that peace under which the fairest regions of the earth, washed by the inland sea, dwelt for centuries, rich in all the arts of commerce, in all the security of civilisation. The Blessed Eucharist survived this convulsion; far more, it restored this ruin. By founding religious houses through the whole extent of the countries occupied by the German tribes, whose indwellers, in virtue of it, lived _the common life_ under the safeguard of the three great vows of poverty, chast.i.ty, and obedience, it produced a Christian France, Spain, Italy, Germany, England, and Poland out of the torn and bleeding members of the Empire. This was its work in the Western half of the Roman broken statue.

In the Eastern the savage power of the Mahometan Califate arose, denying at once the redemption of Christ, and the sacrifice in which He had enshrined that redemption, and the divine banquet which ensued upon it.

Thousands of Christian Sees fell not before its persuasive power, but its ruthless sword of conquest. The Mahometan Califate has for hundreds of years trampled on the fairest regions of the earth, and turned the Roman peace into a desolation. At length it trembles for its existence; the divine Eucharist remains unimpaired in strength, and is ready to enter into the desolated territory and repeat its work of restoration, to turn the foulness of the Mahometan harem into the sanct.i.ty of the Christian home.

Again, when iniquity abounded and the love of many had waxed cold, there arose a defection in the West as terrible as that of the East 900 years before, and it was marked by special enmity to the Blessed Eucharist. It cast down and trampled under the feet of those who approached the desecrated churches the very altars at which for a thousand years the generations of a Christian people had worshipped. It denied the great mystery which was the heart of the doctrine; it enrolled the denial in the coronation oath of its sovereigns; it abolished the belief which had soothed all sorrows as it had made all saints. But that defection has broken into innumerable wavelets against the Rock of the Christian Church, upon which rises, as of old, the impregnable citadel of the faith-the faith which dispenses, as in the first ages, to the children of all the races of the earth that sacred Body and Blood, in virtue of which now, as in the upper chamber, the Word of G.o.d declares, "I am the Vine; ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me and I in him, the same beareth much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."

Can there be any proof of the G.o.dhead of the Word made flesh to compare with that which has been the life of the living and the hope of the dying to sixty generations of men for eighteen centuries and a half? "For this is the chalice in My Blood of the new and everlasting testament, the mystery of faith, which shall be shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins."

FOOTNOTES:

[82] "A quibus traducem fidei et semina doctrinae caeterae exinde ecclesiae mutuatae sunt." _Tradux_, the vine branch carried along above the ground from the parent stem, so that there is but one tree. Tertullian, De Praescrip. Haeret. 20.

[83] Franzelin, De Verbo Incarnato, p. 520.

[84] Plato, Euthyphron, 14.

[85] Nagelsbach, Homerische Theologie, 207; Id., Nachhomerische Theologie, 193.

[86] The Banquet, p. 188 _e_.

[87] Lasaulx, Die Suhnopfer (extracts from), pp. 234-270.

[88] p?????s?a.

[89] p???a??st???a.

[90] 3, 12.

[91] Ruinart, Acta Martyrum, pp. 350 and 527.

[92] Contr. Faustum, l. 22, s. 17, tom. viii. 370.

[93] S. Tho. contr. Gentilis, 3, 120.

[94] Agamemnon, 1520.

[95] The above account of human sacrifices is drawn from Lasaulx's treatise, pp. 237-255. He gives a profusion of examples, with their references in ancient authors.

[96] Luke xxii. 20; John vi. 52.

[97] See Council of Trent, sess. 22, cap. i.

[98] 1 Cor. xi. 26.

[99] Acts ii. 46.

[100] John iii. 16.

[101] Council of Trent, sess. 22, cap. ii.

[102] Justin. Apol. i. 66.

[103] Franzelin, De SS. Eucharistiae Sacramento et Sacrificio, p. 81.

[104] Eusebius Caes.: pe?? t?? t?? ??s?a ???t??, cap. 7.

[105] Heb. ii. 12.

[106] Franzelin, De SS. Eucharistiae Sacramento, p. 111.

[107] S. Chrys. Hom. in Joan, 46, c. 3, tom. viii. 272.