Our Lady Saint Mary Part 10

PART TWO

CHAPTER XII

THE TEMPLE

And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Know ye not that I must be in my Father's house?

S. Luke II, 49.

We give thanks unto thee, O Lord, who lovest mankind, Thou benefactor of our souls and bodies, for that Thou hast this day vouchsafed to feed us with Thy Heavenly Mysteries; guide our path aright, establish us all in Thy fear, guard our lives, make sure our steps through the prayers and supplications of the glorious Mother of G.o.d and Ever Virgin Mary and of all Thy saints.

RUSSIAN.

The time was come when by the law of His people the Boy Jesus must a.s.sume the duties of an adult in the exercise of His religion. Therefore His parents took Him with them to Jerusalem that He might partic.i.p.ate in the celebration of the Pa.s.sover. It would be a wonderful moment in the life of any intelligent Hebrew boy when for the first time he came in contact with the places and scenes which were so familiar to him in the story of his nation's past; and we can imagine what would have been the special interest of the Child Jesus who would have been so thoroughly taught in the Old Testament Scriptures, and who would have felt an added interest in the places He was now seeing because of their a.s.sociation with His great ancestor, David. Still His chief interest was in the religion of His people, and it was the temple where the sacrificial worship of G.o.d was centred that would have for Him the greatest attraction. This was His "Father's House," and here He Himself felt utterly at home. We are not surprised to be told that He lingered in these courts.

"And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and His mother knew it not."

They had perfect confidence in Jesus; and yet it seems strange that they should have a.s.sumed that He was somewhere about and would appear at the proper time. When the night drew on and the camp was set up there was no Child to be found. Then we imagine the distress, the trouble of heart, with which Mary and Joseph hurry back to Jerusalem and spend the ensuing days in seeking through its streets. We share something of our Lord's surprise when we learn that the temple was the last place that they thought of in their search. Did they think that Jesus would be caught by the life of the Pa.s.sover crowds that filled the streets of Jerusalem?

Did they think that it would be a child's curiosity which would hold him fascinated with the glittering toys of the bazaars? Did they think that He had mistaken the caravan and been carried off in some other direction and was lost to them forever? We only know that it was not till three days had pa.s.sed that they thought of the temple and there found Him.

"And when they saw Him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto Him, Son, why has thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Know ye not that I must be in my Father's house?"

S. Mary and S. Joseph were proceeding on certain a.s.sumptions as to what Jesus would do which turned out to be untenable. It is one of the dangers of our religion--our personal religion--that we are apt to a.s.sume too much which in the testing turns out to be unfounded. We reach a certain stage of religious attainment, and then we a.s.sume that all is going well with us. When one asks a child how he is getting on he invariably answers: "I am all right." And the adult often has the same childish confidence in an untested and unverified state of soul. We are "all right"; which practically means that we do not care to be bothered with looking into our spiritual state at all. We have been going on for years now following the rules that we laid down when we first realised that the being a Christian was a more or less serious matter. Nothing has happened in these years to break the placidity of our routine. There has never been any relapse into grievous sin; we have never felt any real temptation to abandon the practice o our religion. We run along as easily and smoothly as a car on well-laid rails. We are "all right."

But in fact we are all wrong. We have lapsed into a state of which the ideal is purely static: an ideal of spiritual comfort as the goal of our spiritual experience here on earth. We have acquired what appears to be a state of equilibrium into which we wish nothing to intrude that would endanger the balance. We are, no doubt, quite unconsciously, excluding from life every emotion, every ambition, as well as every temptation, which appears to involve spiritual disturbance. But we need to be disturbed.

For the spiritual life is dynamic and not static; its ideal is motion and not rest. Rest is the quality of dead things, and particularly of dead souls. The weariness of the way, which is so obvious a phenomenon in the Christian life, is the infallible sign of lukewarmness. What we need therefore is to break with the a.s.sumption that we know all that it is necessary to know, and that we have done or are doing all that it is necessary to do. It is indeed the mark of an ineffective religion that the notion of necessity is adopted as its stimulus, rather than the notion of aspiration. The question, "Must I do this?" is a revelation of spiritual poverty and inept.i.tude. "I press on," is the motto of a living religion.

Personal religion, therefore, needs constantly to be submitted to new tests, lest it lapse into an att.i.tude of finality. Fortunately for us, G.o.d does not leave the matter wholly in our hands, but Himself, through His Providence, applies a wide variety of tests to us. It is often a bitter and disturbing experience to have our comfortable routine broken up and to find that we have quite miserably failed under very simple temptations. And the sort of failure I am thinking of is not so much the failure of sin as the failure of ideal. It is the case of those who think that they have satisfactorily worked out the problems of the spiritual life, and have reached a satisfactory adjustment of duty and practice, and then find that if the adjustment changes their practice falls off. The outer circ.u.mstances of life change and the change is followed by a readjustment of the inner life on a distinctly lower plane. It is revealed to us that the outer circ.u.mstances were controlling the spiritual practice, and not the practice dominating the circ.u.mstances. The ruling ideal was that of comfort, and under the new circ.u.mstances the spiritual ideal is lowered until it fits in with a new possibility of comfort in the altered circ.u.mstances. It is well to examine ourselves on these matters and to find what is the actual ruling motive in our religious practice.

We may have a.s.sumed that we have Jesus, when all the a.s.sumption meant was that we thought that He was somewhere about. After all, it will not aid us very much if He is "in the company," if we go on our day's journey without Him. It is a poor a.s.sumption to build life upon, that Jesus exists, or that He is in the Church, or that He is the Saviour. It is nothing to us unless He is _our_ Saviour, unless He is personally present in us and with us. And it is not wise or safe to let this be a matter of a.s.sumption, even though the a.s.sumption rest on a perfectly valid experience in the past; we cannot live on history, not even on our own history. That Jesus is with us must be verified day by day, and we ought to go no day's journey without the certainty of His presence. We can best do that, when the circ.u.mstances of life permit, by a daily communion. There at the altar we meet Jesus and know that He is with us.

When the circ.u.mstances of life do not permit, (and often they do, when we lazily think they do not) there are other modes of arriving at spiritual certainty.

It is quite easy to lose Jesus. He does not force His companionship upon us, but rather when we meet Him. "He makes as though he would go farther." He offers Himself to us; He never compels us to receive Him as a guest. And when we have in fact received Him, and asked Him to abide with us, He does not stay any longer than we want Him. We have to constrain Him. In other words, we lose Jesus, we lose the vitality of our spiritual life (though we may retain the routine practice of our religion), if we are not from day to day making it the most vital issue of our lives. That does not necessarily mean that we are spending more time on it than on anything else, but that we are putting it first in the order of importance in our lives and are sacrificing, if occasion arise, other things to it, rather than it to them. That a man loves his wife and child does not necessarily mean that he actually spends more time on them than he does on his business, but it does mean that they are more important in his life than his business, and if need arise it will be the business that is sacrificed to them and not they to the business. Spirituality is much less a matter of time than of energy. A wise director can guide a man to sanct.i.ty who will probably consecrate his Sunday, and give the director one half hour on week days to dispose of.

To lose Jesus does not require the commission of great sin, as we count sin. The quite easiest way to lose Him is to forget Him and go about our business as though He did not exist. That is a frequent happening. For vast numbers Jesus does not exist except for an hour or so on Sunday.

They give Him the formal homage of attendance at church on Sunday morning and then they go out and forget Him, not only for the rest of the week but for the rest of the day. The religion which thus reduces itself to a minimum of attendance at Ma.s.s on Sunday morning is surely not a religion from which much can be expected in the way of spiritual accomplishment. If it be true that there is a minimum of religious requirement which will ensure that we "go to heaven," then that sort of religion may be useful; but I do not know that anywhere such a minimum _is_ required. The statement that I find is "Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." The outstanding characteristic of love is surely not n.i.g.g.ardliness, but pa.s.sionate self-giving. All things are forgiven, not to those who are careful to keep within the limits required, but to those who "love much."

The study of many cases, the experience of over thirty years in the confessional, convinces me that the chief cause of spiritual failure among Christians is not the irresistible impact of temptation but the lack of spiritual vision. The average man or woman is not consciously going anywhere; but they are just keeping a rule which is the arbitrary exactment of G.o.d. It might just as well be some other rule. That is, in their minds, the practice of the spiritual life has no immediate ends; it is not productive of spiritual expansion; it is not a ladder set up on earth to reach heaven on which they are climbing ever nearer G.o.d, and on the way are catching ever broader visions of spiritual reality as they ascend. The knowledge and the love of G.o.d are to them phrases, not practical goals, invitations to paths of spiritual adventure. Hence, having no immediate ends to accomplish, they find the whole spiritual routine dull and unattractive and naturally tend to reduce it to a minimum. It is not at all surprising that in the end they drop religion altogether, as why should one keep on travelling a road that leads nowhere? How can one love and serve a Jesus whom one has lost?

The problem of personal religion is the problem of finding Jesus, of bringing life into a right relation to Him. The plain path is to follow the example of His parents who sought Him "sorrowing." Sorrow for having lost Jesus is the true repentance. Repentance which springs from fear of consequences, or from disgust with our own incompetence and stupidity when we realise that we have made a spiritual failure of life, is an imperfect thing. True repentance has its origin in love and is therefore directed toward a person. It is the conviction that we have violated the love of our Father, our Saviour, our Sanctifier. Sorrow springing from love is sorrow "after a G.o.dly sort." It is easy for us to drift into ways of carelessness and indifference which seem not to involve sin, to be no more than a decline from some preceding standard of practice which we conclude to have been unnecessarily strict; but the result is an increasing disregard of spiritual values, a growing obscuration of the divine presence in life. Then the day comes when some quite marked and positive spiritual failure, a failure of which we cannot imagine ourselves to have been guilty, when we were living in constant communion with our Lord, arouses us to the fact that for months our spiritual vitality has been declining and that we have ended in losing Jesus. It is a tremendous shock to find how fast and how far we have been travelling when we thought that we were only slightly relaxing an unnecessarily strict routine: that when we thought that we were but acting "in a common sense way," we were in reality effecting a compromise with the world. Well is it then if the surprise of our disaster shocks us back to the recovery of what we have lost, if it send us into the streets of the city, sorrowing and seeking for Jesus.

Mere spiritual laziness is at the bottom of much failure in religion.

There is no success anywhere in life save through the constant pressure of the will driving a reluctant and protesting set of nerves and muscles to their daily tasks. The day labourer comes home from his work with his muscular strength exhausted, but he has to go back to the same monotonous task on the morrow: his family has to be fed and clothed and he cannot permit himself to say, "I am tired and will stay away from work to-day." The business or professional man comes back from his office with a wearied brain that makes any thought an effort, but he must take up the routine to-morrow; the pressure of compet.i.tive business does not permit him to work when and as much as he chooses. But the Christian who is engaged in the most important work that is carried on in this world, the work of preparing an immortal soul for an unending future, is constantly under the temptation "to take a day off"--to let down the standard of accomplishment till it ceases to interfere with the business or the pleasure of life; is constantly too tired or too busy to do this or that. In short, religion is apt to be treated in a manner that would ensure the bankruptcy of any material occupation in life. Why then should it not ensure spiritual bankruptcy?

Surely, to retain Jesus with us, to live in the intimacy of G.o.d, is the most pressingly important of our duties; it is worth any sort of expenditure of energy to accomplish it. And it cannot be accomplished without expenditure of energy. The view of religion which conceives it as a facile a.s.sent to certain propositions, the occasional and formal partic.i.p.ation in certain actions, the more or less strict observance of certain rules of conduct, is so far from the fact that it is not worth discussing. Religion is the realised friendship of G.o.d; it is a personal relation of the deepest and purest sort; and, like all personal relations, is kept alive by the mutual activities of those concerned.

The action of one party will not suffice to keep the relation in healthy state. The love of G.o.d itself will not suffice to maintain a being in holiness and carry him on to happiness who is himself quite indifferent to the entire spiritual transaction--whose att.i.tude is that of one willing to be saved if he be not asked to take much trouble about it.

That lackadaisical att.i.tude can never produce any result in the spiritual order; it can only ensure the spiritual decline and death of one who has not thought it worth while to make an effort to live.

Jesus can be found; but the finding depends upon the method of the seeking. There are many men who claim, and quite honestly, to be in pursuit of truth: to find the truth is the end of all their efforts. Yet they do not succeed in finding it. Why is this? I think that the princ.i.p.al reason is that they are const.i.tuting themselves the judges of the truth; they first of all lay down certain rules which G.o.d must obey if He wishes them to believe in Him! They insist on having, before they will believe, a kind of evidence that is impossible of attainment. They a.s.sert that this or that is impossible, and the other thing incredible.

They partially ascertain the laws that govern the material universe, and they deny to the Maker of the universe the power to act otherwise than in accord with so much of the order of nature as they have discovered!

They deny to G.o.d the sort of personal action in this world that they themselves constantly exercise.

The method is not a method that can be hopeful of success. And it is worth noting that it is not a method that these same men followed in their investigations of the natural world. They have not acc.u.mulated information about natural law by first laying down rules as to how natural law must act, and refusing to listen to any evidence which does not fall in with these rules: rather, they have set themselves to observe how nature does act, and then deduced rules from their observation. Why not pursue the same method in religion? Why not in an humble spirit observe how G.o.d does act? Why start by saying, "Miracles do not happen?" Why reject as incredible the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection? Why not get a bigger notion of G.o.d than that of a mechanician running a machine, and think of Him as a Person dealing with persons? The relation of persons cannot be mechanical or predetermined; they are and must be free and spontaneous: they have their origin, not in the pressure of invariable law but in the impulse of love.

Nor is the search for Jesus that is inspired by mere curiosity likely to be a success. There are many people who are curious about religion, and they want to know why we believe thus and so; and particularly why we act as we do. Why do you keep this day? What do you mean by this ceremony? Do you think that it is wrong to do this or that? Such people wander about observing; but their observation we understand is the observation of an idler who does not expect to be influenced by what he observes, but only to be amused. These are they who run after the latest thing in heresy, the newest thing in thought. What is observable about them is that they never seriously contemplate doing anything themselves.

They are like those mult.i.tudes who followed our Lord about for awhile but were dispersed by the test of hard sayings.

But Jesus can be found. He is found of all those who seek Him humbly and sincerely, putting away self and desiring simply to be led: who do not challenge Him with Pilate's scornful, "What is truth?" but rather say, "Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief." He is easily found of those who know where to look for Him. There is no mystery about that,--He will certainly be in His Father's House. The surprise of Joseph and Mary that He had thus dealt with them is answered by Jesus' surprise that they did not certainly know where He would be: "Wist ye not that I must be in My Father's House?"

In the House of G.o.d, the Church of G.o.d, is the ready approach to Jesus.

It is in the last degree foolish to waive aside the Church in which are stored the treasures of more than nineteen centuries of Christian experience as though it did and could have nothing to say in the matter.

A seeker after information as to the meaning of the const.i.tution of the United States would be considered a madman if he impatiently turned from those of whom he made enquiry when they suggested the decrees of the Supreme Court as the proper place to seek information. Surely, from any point of view, the Church will know more about Jesus than any one else: if in all the centuries it has not discovered the meaning of Him Whom it ceaselessly worships there is small likelihood that that meaning will be discovered by an unbeliever studying an ancient book! If the Church cannot lead us to Jesus, and if it cannot interpret to us His will, there is small likelihood that any one else will be able to do so. And if during all these centuries His will has been unknown it can hardly be of much importance to discover it now. If His Church has failed, then His Mission is discredited.

For us who have accepted His revelation as made to the Church and by it unfailingly preserved, who have learned to find Him there where He has promised to be until the end of time, there is another sense in which we think of His words as words of encouragement and consolation. There are hours in life which press hard upon us; there are other hours when the sense of G.o.d's love and goodness fills us with thankfulness and joy. In such hours we crave the intimacy of personal communion: we want to tell our grief or our joy. And then we take our way to the temple, and know that we shall find Him there in His Incarnate Presence in His Father's House. We go in and kneel before the Tabernacle and know that Jesus is here. Here in the silence He waits for us. Here in the long hours He watches; here is the ever-open door leading to the Father where any man at any time may enter. He who humbled Himself to the hidden life of Nazareth now humbles Himself to the hidden life of the Tabernacle: and we who believe His Word, have no need to envy Joseph and Mary the intimacy of their life with Jesus, because here for us, if we will, is a greater intimacy--the intimacy of those of whom it can be said: They evermore dwell in Him and He in them.

Lady of Heaven, Regent of the Earth, Empress of all the infernal marshes fell, Receive me, thy poor Christian, 'spite my, dearth, In the fair midst of thine elect to dwell: Albeit my lack of grace I know full well; For that thy grace, my Lady and my Queen, Aboundeth more than all my misdemean, Withouten which no soul of all that sigh May merit heaven. 'Tis sooth I say, for e'en In this belief I will to live and die.

Say to thy Son, I am his--that by his birth And death my sins be all redeemable-- As Mary of Egypt's dole he changed to mirth, And eke Theophilus', to whom befell Quittance of thee, albeit (so men tell) To the foul fiend he had contracted been.

a.s.soilzie me, that I may have no teen, Maid, that without breach of virginity Didst bear our Lord that in the Host is seen: In this belief I will to live and die.

A poor old wife I am, and little worth: Nothing I know, nor letter aye could spell: Where in the church to worship I fare forth, I see heaven limned with harps and lutes, and h.e.l.l Where d.a.m.ned folk seethe in fire unquenchable: One doth me fear, the other joy serene; Grant I may have the joy, O Virgin clean, To whom all sinners lift their hands on high, Made whole in faith through thee, their go-between: In this belief I will to live and die.

ENVOY

Thou didst conceive, Princess most bright of sheen, Jesus the Lord, that hath no end nor mean, Almighty that, departing heaven's demesne To succour us, put on our frailty, Offering to death his sweet of youth and green: Such as he is, our Lord he is, I ween: In this belief I will to live and die.

PART TWO

CHAPTER XIII

CANA I

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

S. John II, 1.

Grant, O Lord, we beseech thee, that we thy servants may enjoy constant health of body and mind, and by the glorious intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be delivered from all temporal afflictions, and come to those joys that are eternal. Through.

Having received, O Lord, what is to advance our salvation; grant we may always be protected by the patronage of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, in whose honor we have offered this sacrifice to thy majesty. Through.

Old Catholic.

"There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there." To S. John Blessed Mary is ever the "mother of Jesus." He never calls her by her name in any mention of her. Jesus who loved him and whom he loved and loves always with consuming pa.s.sion, held the foreground of his consciousness; all other persons are known through their relation to Him. As he is writing his Gospel-story toward the end of his life, the Blessed Virgin has long been gone to join her Son in the place of perfect love. We cannot conceive of her living long on earth after His Ascension. Her "conversation" would in a special way be "in heaven." Whatever the time she remained here awaiting the will of G.o.d for her, we may be sure that the days she spent under the protection of S. John were wonderful days for him, wherein their communing would have been the continual lifting of their hearts and souls to Him, Child and Friend, who is also G.o.d enthroned at the Right Hand of the Father.

It is not unlikely that the marvellous spiritual maturity of which we are conscious in the writings of S. John was aided in its unfolding by the intimacy of his relations with S. Mary. But always she remained to him what she was because of what Jesus was; she remained to the end "the mother of Jesus."