Our Lady Saint Mary Part 16

Hope is one of the great trilogy of Christian Virtues, the gift to Christians of G.o.d the Holy Ghost. As Christians we have the virtue of hope, the question is whether we will excercise it or no. It is one of the many fruits of our being in a state of grace. Many blunder when they think of hope in that they confound it with an optimistic feeling about the future. We hear of hopeful persons and we know that by the description is meant persons who are confident "that everything will be all right," when there seems no ground at all for thinking so. They have a "buoyant temperament," by which I suppose is meant a temperament which soars above facts. That not very intelligent att.i.tude has nothing to do with the Christian virtue of hope. Hope is born of our relation to G.o.d.

It is the conviction: "G.o.d is on my side; I will not fear what man can do unto me." It is the serene and untroubled trust of one who knows that he is safe in the hands of G.o.d, and that his life is really ordered by the will and Providence of G.o.d.

This virtue, had they possessed it, would have carried the disciples through the crisis of our Lord's death. They had had sufficient experience of Him to know that they might utterly rely on Him in all the circ.u.mstances of their lives. He had always sustained them and carried them through all crises. They had often been puzzled by Him, no doubt; they had felt helpless to fathom much of His teaching, but they had slowly arrived at certain conclusions about Him which He Himself had confirmed. On that day at Caesarea Phillipi they had reached the conclusion of His Messiahship, a slumbering conviction had broken into flame and light in the great confession of S. Peter. The meaning of Messiahship was a part of their national religious tradition; and although in some important respects mistaken, they yet, one would think, have been led to perfect trust in our Lord when they acknowledged His Messianic claims. But death? They could not get over the apparent finality of death. But, again, perhaps we are not very far beyond this in our understanding of it. To us still death seems very final.

But it was just that sense of its finality--of its const.i.tuting a hopeless break in the continuity of existence--that our Lord was engaged in removing during these days which to them were days of hopelessness and despair. When they came to know what in these days was taking place; and when the Church guided by the Holy Spirit came to meditate upon the meaning of our Lord's action it would see death in a changed light. The sense of a cataclysmic disaster in death would pa.s.s and be replaced by a sense of the continuity of life. Hitherto attention had been concentrated on this world, and death had been a disappearence from this world, the stopping of worldly loves and interests. Presently death would be seen to be the translation of the human being to a new sphere of activities, but involving no cessation of consciousness or failure of personal activities. Men had thought, naturally enough in their lack of knowledge, of the effect of death on the survivors, of the break in their relations with the dead. Now death would be viewed from the point of view of the interests of the person who is dead; and it would emerge that he continued under different conditions, and in the end it would come to be seen that even in the relations of the survivors with the dead there was no necessary and absolute break, but that the new conditions of life made possible renewed intercourse under altered circ.u.mstances.

Our Lord, the disciples learned not long after, during these days went to preach to the spirits in prison, which the thought of the Church has interpreted to mean that He carried the news of the Redemption He had wrought through His dying, to the place of the dead, to the region where the souls of the faithful were patiently waiting the time of their perfecting. The doors of the heavenly world could not be opened till the time when He by His Cross and Pa.s.sion, by His death and resurrection, opened them. The Heads of the Gates could not be lifted till they were lifted for the entrance of the King of Glory. But once lifted they were lifted forever; and when He ascended up on high He led His troop of captives redeemed from the bondage of death and h.e.l.l.

It is through these lifted Gates that the companies of the sanctified have been streaming ever since; and the difference that has been made in our view of death has been immense. If we have the faith of a Christian death has been transformed. There remains, of course, the natural grief which is ours when we part from those whom we love. This grief is natural and holy as it is in fact an expression of our love. It is not rebellion against the will of G.o.d, but is the expression of a feeling wherewith G.o.d has endowed us. But there is no longer in it the sting of hopelessness that we find, for instance, in the inscriptions on pagan tombs, nay, on tombs still, though created by Christians and found in Christian cemeteries. Rather it is the expression of a love which is learning to exercise itself under new conditions. We do not find it possible to reverse all our habits in a moment; and the new relation with the dead is one to which we have to learn to accustom ourselves. I remember a case where a mother and a son had never been separated for more than a day at a time, though he was far on in manhood. There came a time of indeterminate separation and the mother's grief was intense notwithstanding that there was no thought of a permanent separation. It took some time for her to accustom herself to the new mode of communication by letter. It is not far otherwise in death; it takes some time for us to accustom ourselves to the new mode of intercourse through prayer, but we succeed, and the new intercourse is very real and very precious. In a sense, too, it is a nearer, more intimate intercourse. It lacks the homely, daily touches, no doubt; but in compensation it reveals to us the spiritual values in life. We speedily learn, we learn almost by a spiritual instinct, what are the common grounds on which we can now meet. By our intercourse with our dead we get a new grasp on the truth of our common life in Christ: it is in and through Him that all our converse is now mediated. We have little difficulty in knowing what are the thoughts and interests which may be shared under the new conditions in which we find ourselves. Our perception of spiritual interests and spiritual values grows and deepens, and our communion with our dead becomes an indication of the extent of our own spiritual growth.

There come times in the spiritual experience of most of us when we seem to have got to the end. There is a deepening sense of failure which is not, when we a.n.a.lyse it, so much a failure in this or that detail, as a general sense of the futility of the life of the Church as expressed in our individual lives. It came to those primitive congregations, you remember, to which S. Peter was writing; "Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation." It is the weariness of continuous effort from which we conclude that we are getting quite insufficient results.

No doubt that is true. The results are never what we expect, possibly because the effort is never what we imagine it to be. We continually underestimate the opposing force of evil, the difficulty of dealing with a humanity which falls so easily under the slightest temptation. It is not that sinners decline to hear the Word of G.o.d, but that those who profess themselves to be the servants of G.o.d, and who in fact intend to be such, are so lamentably weak and ineffective. We think of the effort of G.o.d in the Incarnation; we have been following that effort in some detail through the Pa.s.sion. We are surprised, shocked, disheartened by the spectacle of the hatred that innocence stirs up, at the lengths men will go when they see their personal ends threatened. We are horrified by Caiphas, Pilate, Herod. But is that the really horrifying thing about the Pa.s.sion of our Lord? To me the supreme example of human incomprehension is that all the disciples forsook Him and fled, that He was left to die almost alone. There we get the most disheartening failure in the tragedy.

For we expect the antagonism of the world, especially that part of the world that has seen and rejected Christ. There we find Satanic activities. One of the outstanding features of the literature of to-day in the Western world, the world that had known from childhood the story of Jesus, is its utter hatred of Christianity; its revolt from all that Christianity stands for. This is markedly true in regard to the Christian teaching in the matter of purity. The contemporary English novel is perhaps the vilest thing that has yet appeared on this earth.

There have been plenty of unclean books written in the course of the world's history--we have only to recall the literature of the Renaissance--but for the most part they have been written in careless or boastful disregard of moral sanctions which they still regarded as existing; but the novel of the present is an immoral propaganda--it is deliberately and of malice immoral, not out of careless levity, but out of deliberate intention. You do not feel that the modern author is just describing immoral actions which grow out of his story, but that he is constructing his story for the purpose of propagating immoral theory. He hates the whole teaching of the Christian Religion in the matter of purity. He has thrown it overboard on the ground that it is an "unnatural" restraint. To those who have studied the development of thought since the Renaissance there is nothing surprising in this.

But what does still surprise those who are as yet capable of being surprised is the light way in which the ma.s.s of Christians take their religion. Occasionally, in moments of frankness, they admit that they are not getting anything out of it; but it is harder to get them to admit that the reason is that they are not putting anything into it. You do not expect to get returns from a business into which you are putting no capital, and you have no right to expect returns from a religion into which you are putting no energy. What is meant by that is that those Christians who are keeping the minimum routine of Christianity, who are going to High Ma.s.s on Sunday (or perhaps only to low Ma.s.s) and then making the rest of the day a time of self-indulgence and pleasure; who make their communions but rarely; who do not go to confession, or go only at Easter; who are giving no active support to the work of the Gospel as represented in parish and diocese have no right to be surprised if they find that they do not seem to get any results from their religion; that it is often rather a bore to do even so much as they do, and that they see no point in permitting it further to interfere with their customary amus.e.m.e.nts and avocations. I do not know what such persons expect from their religion, but I am sure that they will be disappointed if they are expecting any spiritual result.

Naturally, they will be disappointed if they look in themselves for any evidence of the virtue of hope. The most that can be looked for under the circ.u.mstances is that mockery of hope, presumption.

We are not to be discouraged in our estimate of the Christian Religion by this which seems to be the failure of G.o.d. We are not to echo the cry: "Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." S. Peter pointed out to those pessimists that all things do not continue the same, that there are times of crisis which are the judgments of G.o.d. Such a judgment was that of old which swept the wickedness of the world away, "whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." He goes on to state that the present order likewise will issue in judgment: "The heavens and the earth which are now ... are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of unG.o.dly men." What renders men hopeless is the feeling of G.o.d's inactivity; but this declaration of impending judgment certifies the active interest of G.o.d.

G.o.d's dealing with the world is a perpetual judgment of which we are apt to decline the evidence until the cataclysm reveals the final scene. But every society, every individual life, is being judged through the whole course of its existence, and there is no need that either society or individual should be blind to the fact that such a judgment is taking place. There is no failure of G.o.d. There is a failure on our part to understand the works of G.o.d.

We may very well consider the problem an individual one and ask ourselves what ground of hope we have. On the basis of our present effort can we, ought we, to have more than we have? The spiritual life is not an accident that befalls certain people; it is an art that is acquired by such persons as are interested in it. It is attained through the careful training and exercise of the faculties wherewith we have been endowed. The answer to our question is itself a perfectly simple one, as simple as would be the answer to the question: "Do you speak French?" We speak French if we have taken the trouble to learn French; and we have gained results in the way of spiritual development and culture if we have taken the trouble to do so. I do not know why we should expect results on any other ground than that.

But certain persons say: "I have tried, and have not attained any results." Well, I should want to know what the trying means in that case. It is well for a person who aspires to spiritual culture to think of his past history. What sort of character-development has so far been going on? Commonly it happens that there has been no spiritual effort that is worth thinking about; but that does not mean that nothing spiritual has been happening. It means on the contrary that there has been going on a spiritual atrophy, the spiritual powers have been without exercise and will be difficult to arouse to activity. In such a case as that spiritual awakening will be followed by a long period of spiritual struggle against habits of thought and action which we have already formed, a period in which unused and immature spiritual powers must be roused to action and disciplined to use. The simplest ill.u.s.tration of this is the difficulty experienced by the enthusiastic beginner in holding the attention fixed on spiritual acts such as the various forms of prayer. In all such attempts at spiritual activity there will be the constant drag of old habits, the recurrence of states of mind and imagination that had become habitual. These hindrances can be overcome, but only by steady and rather tedious labour. They call for the display of the virtue of patience which is not one of the virtues characteristic of spiritual immaturity. Hence reaction and the feeling that one is not getting on, the feeling that we have quite possibly made a mistake about the whole matter.

This is the place for the exercise of hope; and hope will come if we look away from our not very encouraging acquirement to the ground that we have for expecting any acquirement at all. If we ask: "Why hope?" we shall see that our basis of hope is not in ourselves at all but in G.o.d.

We hope because of the promises of G.o.d, because of His will for us as revealed in His Son. "He loved us and gave Himself for us"; and that giving will not be in vain. "He gave Himself for me," I tell myself, "and therefore I am justified in my expectation of spiritual success."

So one tries to learn from the present failure as it seems; so one repents and pushes on; so one learns that it is through tenacity of purpose that one attains results.

And again: I am sustained by hope because I see that the results that I covet are not imaginary. They exist. I see them in operation all about me. I learn of them as I study the lives of other Christians past and present. They are reality not theory, fact not dream. And what has been so richly and abundantly the outcome of spiritual living in others must be within my own reach. The results they attained were not miraculous gifts, but they were the working of G.o.d the Holy Spirit in lives yielded to Him and co-operating with Him.

Once more: is it not true that after a period of honest labour I do find results? Perhaps not all that I would like but all that I am justified in expecting from the energy I have spent? I do not believe that any one can look back over a year's honest labour and not see that the labour has born fruit.

In any case the fact that we do not see just what we are looking for does not mean that no spiritual work is going on. It may seem that our Lord is silent and that to our cries there is no voice nor any that answers; but that may mean that we are looking in the wrong place or listening for the wrong word. The disciples looked that the outcome of our Lord's life should be that the Kingdom should be restored to Israel; and when they turned away from the tomb in Joseph's Garden they felt that what they had looked for and prayed for was hopeless of accomplishment. But the important point was not their vision of the Kingdom at all, but that they had yielded themselves to our Lord and become His disciples and lovers. This is not what they intended to do, but it is what actually had happened: and when the grave yielded up the dead Whom they thought that they had lost forever, Jesus came back with a mission for them that was infinitely wider than their dream: the mission of founding not the old Kingdom of David, but the Kingdom of David's Son. All their aspirations and prayers were fulfilled by being transcended, and they found themselves in a position vastly more important than had been reached even in their dreams.

Something like that not infrequently happens in our experience. We conceive a spiritual ambition and work for a spiritual end, and seem always to miss it; and then the day comes when G.o.d reveals to us what He has been doing, and we find that through the very discipline of our failure we have been being prepared for a success of which we had not thought: and when we raise our eyes from the path we thought so toilsome and uninteresting, it is to find ourselves at the very gate of the City of G.o.d. It will be with us as with the Apostles who in the darkest hour of their imagined failure, when they were gathered together in hiding from the Jews were startled by the appearence among them of the risen Jesus, and were filled with the unutterable joy of His message of peace.

"His body is wrapped all in woe, Hand and foot He may not go.

Thy Son, Lady, that thou lovest so Naked is nailed upon a tree.

"The Blessed Body that thou hast born, To save mankind that was forlorn, His body, Lady, the Jews have torn, And hurt His Head, as ye may see."

When John his tale began to tell Mary would not longer dwell But hied her fast unto that hill Where she might her own Son see.

"My sweete Son, Thou art me dear, Oh why have men hanged thee here?

Thy head is closed with a brier, O why have men so done to Thee?"

"John, this woman I thee betake; Keep My Mother for My sake.

On Rood I hang for mannes sake For sinful men as thou may see.

"This game alone I have to play, For sinful souls that are to die.

Not one man goeth by the way That on my pains will look and see.

"Father, my soul I thee betake, My body dieth for mannes sake; To h.e.l.l I go withouten wake, Mannes soul to maken free."

Pray we all that Blessed Son That He help us when may no man And bring to bliss each everyone Amen, amen, amen for Charity.

Early English Lyrics, p. 146. From an MS. in the Sloane collection.

PART TWO

CHAPTER XX

THE RESURRECTION

And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted; ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here.

S. Mark XVI, 6.

O G.o.d, who wast pleased that thy Word, when the angel delivered his message, should take flesh in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, give ear to our humble pet.i.tions, and grant that we who believe her truly to be the Mother of G.o.d, may be helped by her prayers. Through.

O Almighty and merciful G.o.d, who hast wonderfully provided perpetual succour for the defence of Christian people in the most blessed Virgin Mary; mercifully grant that, contending during life under the protection of such patronage, we may be enabled to gain the victory, over the malignant enemy in death. Through.

OLD CATHOLIC.

Whatever may be our grief, however life may seem to have been emptied of all interest for us, nevertheless the routine of life rea.s.serts itself and forces us back to the daily tasks no matter how savourless they may now seem. We speedily find that we are not isolated but units in a social order which claims us and calls on us to fulfil the duties of our place. Blessed Mary was led away from the tomb of her Son in the prostration of grief; but her very duty to Him would have forced her thought away from herself and led her to join in the preparations which were being made for the proper care of the Sacred Body. And in that sad duty she would find solace of a kind; there is an expression of love in the care we give our dead. This body now so helpless and unresponsive, has been the medium through which the soul expressed itself to us; it has been the instrument of love and the sacrament of our union. How well we know it! How well the mother knows every feature of her child, how she now lingers over the preparations for the burial feeling that the separation is not quite accomplished so long as her hands can touch and her eyes see the familiar features. In the pause that the Sabbath forced on the friends of Jesus we may be sure that they were making what preparations might be made under the restrictions of their religion, and that they looked eagerly for the pa.s.sing of the Sabbath as giving them one more opportunity of service to the Master. There was the group of women who had followed Him and "ministered of their substance" who were faithful still. The Mother had no "substance"; she shared the poverty of her Son. Her support during the Sabbath would be the expectancy of looking once more upon His Face.

But when the first day of the week dawned it proved to be a day of stupendous wonder. They, the Disciples and these faithful women, seemed to themselves, no doubt, to have pa.s.sed into a new world where the presuppositions of the old world were upset and reversed. There were visions of angels, reported appearances of Jesus, an empty tomb. Through the incredible reports that came to them from various sources the light gradually broke for them. It was true then, that saying of Jesus, that He would rise again from the dead! It was not some mysterious bit of teaching, the exact bearing of which they did not catch, but a literal fact! And then while they still hesitated and doubted, while they still hid behind the closed doors, Jesus Himself came and stood in the midst with His message of peace. It is often so, is it not? While we are in perplexity and fear, while we think the next sound will be the knock of armed hands on the door, it is not the Jews that come, but Jesus with a message of peace. Our fears are so pathetic, so pitiful; we meet life and death with so little of the understanding and the courage that our Lord's promises ought to inspire in us! We stand so shudderingly before the vision of death, are so much appalled by the thought of the grave!

We shudder and tremble as the hand of death is stretched out toward us and ours. One is often tempted to ask as one hears people talking of death: "Are these Christians? Do they believe in immortality? Have they heard the message of the first Easter morning, the angelic announcement of the resurrection of Christ? Have they never found the peace of believing, the utter quiet of the spirit in the confidence of a certain hope which belongs to those who have grasped the meaning of the resurrection of the dead?" Here in Jerusalem in a few days the whole point of view is changed. The frightened group of disciples is transformed by the resurrection experience into the group of glad and triumphant missionaries who will be ready when they are endowed with power from on high to go out and preach Jesus and the resurrection to the ends of the earth.

What in these first days the resurrection meant to them was no doubt just the return of Jesus. He was with them once more, and they were going to take hope again in the old life, to resume the old mission which had been interrupted by the disaster of Calvary. All other feeling would have been swallowed up in the mere joy of the recovery. But it could not be many hours before it would be plain that if Jesus was restored to them He was restored with a difference. A new element had entered their intercourse which was due to some subtle change that had pa.s.sed upon Him. We get the first note of it in that wonderful scene in Joseph's Garden when the Lord appears to the Magdalen. There is all the love and sympathy there had ever been; but when in response to her name uttered in the familiar voice the Magdalen throws herself at His Feet, there is a new word that marks a new phase in their relation: "Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended."

This new thing in our Lord which held them back with a new word that they had never experienced before must have become plainer each day. S.

Mary feels no less love in her Son restored to her from; the grave, but she does not find just the same freedom of approach. S. John could no longer think of leaning on His Heart at supper as before. Jesus was the same as before. There was the same thoughtful sympathy; the same tender love; but it is now mediated through a nature that has undergone some profound change in the days between death and resurrection. The humanity has acquired new powers, the spirit is obviously more in control of the body. Our Lord appeared and disappeared abruptly. His control over matter was absolute. And in His intercourse with the disciples there was a difference. He did not linger with them but appeared briefly from time to time as though He were but a pa.s.sing visitor to the world. There were no longer the confidential talks in the fading light after the day's work and teaching was over. There was no longer the common meal with its intimacy and friendliness. There was, and this was a striking change, no longer any attempt to approach those outside the apostolic circle, no demonstration of His resurrection to the world that had, as it thought, safely disposed of Him. He came for brief times and with brief messages, short, pregnant instructions, filled with meaning for the future into which they are soon to enter.

What did it mean, this resurrection of Jesus? It meant the demonstration of the continuity of our nature in our Lord. The Son of G.o.d took upon Him our nature and lived and died in that nature. Our pressing question is, what difference has that made to us? How are _we_ affected? Has humanity been permanently affected by the resumption of it by G.o.d in the resurrection? If the a.s.sumption of humanity by our Lord was but a pa.s.sing a.s.sumption; if He took flesh for a certain purpose, and that purpose fulfilled, laid it aside, and once more a.s.sumed His pre-incarnate state, we should have difficulty in seeing that our humanity was deeply affected by the Incarnation. There would have been exhibited a perfect human life, but what would have been left at the end of that life would have been just the story of it, a thing wholly of the past. It is not much better if it is a.s.sumed that the meaning of the resurrection is the revelation of the immortality of the human spirit, that in fact the resurrection means that the soul of Jesus is now in the world of the spirit, but that His Body returned to the dust. We are not very much interested in the bare fact of survival. What interests us is the mode of survival, the conditions under which we survive. We are interested, that is to say, in our survival as human beings and not in our survival as something else--souls.

A soul is not a human being; a human being is a composite of soul and body. It is interesting to note that people who do not believe in the resurrection of our Lord, do not believe in our survival as human beings, consequently do not believe in a heaven that is of any human interest. But we feel, do we not? a certain lack of interest in a future in which we shall be something quite different in const.i.tution from what we are now. We can think of a time between death and the resurrection in which we shall be incomplete, but that is tolerable because it is disciplinary and temporary and looks on to our rest.i.tution to full humanity in the resurrection at the Last Day. And we feel that the promise, the certainty of this is sealed by our Lord's resurrection from the dead. We are certain that that took place because it is needful to the completion of His Work.

The Creed is one: and if one denies one article one speedily finds that there is an effect on others. The denial of the resurrection is part and parcel of the attempt to reduce Christianity to a history of something that once took place which is important to us to-day because it affords us a standard of life, a pattern after which we are to shape ourselves.

Else should we be very much in the dark. We gain from the Christian Revelation a conception of G.o.d as a kindly Father Who desires His children to follow the example of His Son. That example, no doubt, must not be pressed too literally, must be adapted to modern conditions; but we can get some light and guidance from the study of it. Still, if you do not care to follow it nothing will happen to you. It is merely a pleasing occupation for those who are interested in such things. The affirmation of the resurrection, on the other hand, is the affirmation of the continuity of the work of G.o.d Incarnate; it is an a.s.sertion that Christianity is a supernatural action of G.o.d going on all the time, the essence of which is, not that it invites the believer to imitation of the life of Christ, so far as seems practical under modern conditions, but that it calls him to union with Christ; it makes it his life's meaning to recreate the Christ-experience, to be born and live and die through the experience of Incarnate G.o.d. It fixes his attention not on what Jesus did but on what Jesus is. It insists on a present vital organic relation to G.o.d, mediated by the humanity of Jesus; and if there be no humanity of Jesus, if at His death He ceased to be completely human, then there is no possibility of such a relation to G.o.d in Christ as the Catholic Religion has from the beginning postulated; and unless we are to continue human there seems no continuing basis for such a relation to one another in the future as would make the future of any interest to us. For us, as for S. Paul, all our hope hangs on the resurrection of Christ from the dead; and if Christ be not risen from the dead then is our faith vain.

For us then, as for the men who wrote the Gospel, and for the men who planted the Church and watered it with their blood, the resurrection of Jesus means the return of His Spirit from the place whither it had gone to preach to the spirits in prison and its reunion with the Body which had been laid in the tomb in Joseph's Garden, and the issuing of perfect G.o.d and perfect man from that tomb on the first Easter morning.

That humanity had, no doubt, undergone profound changes to fit it to be the perfect instrument of the spirit of Christ Jesus henceforward. It is now the resurrection body, the spiritual body of the new man. We understand that it is now a body fitted for the new conditions of the resurrection life, and we also understand that it is the exemplar of what our risen bodies will be. They will be endowed with new powers and capacities, but they will be human bodies, the medium of the spirit's expression and a recognisable means of intercourse with our friends. We lie down in the grave with a certainty of preserving our ident.i.ty and of maintaining the capacity of intercourse with those we know and love.

That is what really interests us in the future which would be uninteresting on other terms; and that is what our Lord's appearances after the resurrection seem to guarantee. He resumed a human intercourse with those whom He had gathered about Him. He continued His work of instruction and preparation for the future. And when at length He left them they were prepared to understand that His departure was but the beginning of a new relation. But also they would feel much less that there was an absolute break with the past than if He had not appeared to them after the Crucifixion, and they had been left with but a belief in His immortality. They would, too, now be able to look on to the future as containing a renewal of the relations now changed, to read a definite meaning into His promises that where He is there shall His servants be.