Paradoxes of Catholicism Part 8

I. The one and only thing in human life that G.o.d desires to end is Sin.

There is not a pure joy or a sweet human relationship or a selfless ambition or a divine hope which He does not desire to continue and to be crowned and transfigured beyond all ambition and all hope. On the contrary, He desires only to end that one single thing which ruins relationships and spoils joy and poisons aspirations. For up to the present there is not one page of history which has not this blot upon it.

G.o.d has had to tolerate, for lack of better, such miserable specimens of humanity! _Jacob have I loved!_ ... _David a man after my heart;_ the one a poor, mean, calculating man, who had, however, that single glimmer of the supernatural which Esau, for all his genial st.u.r.diness, was without; the other an adulterous murderer, who yet had grace enough for real contrition. Hitherto He has been content with so little. He has accepted vinegar for want of wine.

Next, G.o.d has had to tolerate, and indeed to sanction--such an unworthy worship of Himself--all the blood of the temple and the spilled entrails and the nameless horrors. And yet this was all to which men could rise; for without it, they never could have learned the more nameless horror of sin.

Last, for His worshippers He has had to content Himself with but one People instead of _all peoples and nations and languages._ And what a People,--whom even Moses could not bear for their treachery and instability! And all this wretched record ends in the Crime of Calvary, at which the very earth revolts and the sun grows dark with shame. Is it any wonder that Christ cried, Thank G.o.d that is all done with at last!

II. Instead of this miserable past, then, what is to come? What is that _New Wine He would drink with us in His Father's Kingdom?_ First; real and complete saints of G.o.d are to take the place of the fragmentary saints of the Old Dispensation, saints with heads of gold and feet of clay. Souls are to be born again in Baptism, not merely sealed by circ.u.mcision, and to be purified before they can contract any actual guilt of their own. And, of these, many shall keep their baptismal innocence and shall go, wearing that white robe, before G.o.d Who gave it them. Others again shall lose it, but regain it once more, and, through the power of the Precious Blood, shall rise to heights of which Jacob and David never even dreamed. To _awake in His likeness_ was the highest ambition of _the man after G.o.d's Heart;_ but to be not merely like Christ, but one with Him, is the hope of the Christian. _I live_, the new saints shall say with truth, _yet now not I, but Christ liveth in me._

Next, instead of the old worship of blood and pain there shall be an Unb.l.o.o.d.y Sacrifice and a _Pure Offering_ in which shall be all the power and propitiation of Calvary without its pain, all the glory without the degradation. And last, in place of the old enclosed Race of Israel shall be a Church of all nations and tongues, one vast Society, with all walls thrown down and all divisions done away, one Jerusalem from above, that shall be the Mother of us all.

III. That, then, is what Christ intended as He cried, _It is consummated._ Behold _the old things are pa.s.sed away!_ Behold, _I make all things new!_

And now let us see how far that is fulfilled. Where is there, in me, the New Wine of the Gospel?

I have all that G.o.d can give me from His Throne on Calvary. I have the truth that He proclaimed and the grace that He released. Yet is there in me, up to the present, even one glimmer of what is meant by Sanct.i.ty? Am I even within an appreciable distance of the saints who knew not Christ?

Have I ever wrestled like Jacob or wept like David? Has my religion, that is to say, ever inspired me beyond the low elevation of joy into the august alt.i.tudes of pain? Is it possible that with me the old is not put away, the _old man_ is not yet dead, and the _new man_ not yet _put on_? Is that New Sacrifice the light of my daily life? Have I done anything except hinder the growth of Christ's Church, anything except drag down her standards, so far as I am able, to my own low level? Is there a single soul now in the world who owes, under G.o.d, her conversion to my efforts?

Why, as I watch my life and review it in His Presence it would seem as if I had done nothing but disappoint Him all my days! He cried, like the deacon of His own Sacrifice, Go! it is done! _Ite; missa est!_ The Sacrifice is finished here; go out in its strength to live the life which it makes possible!

Let me at least begin to-day, have done with my old compromises and shifts and evasions. _Ite; missa est!_

THE SEVENTH WORD

_Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit._

He has cried with a loud voice, and the rocks have rent to its echo, and the earth is shaken, and the Veil of the Old Testament is torn from top to bottom as the Old Covenant pa.s.ses into the New and the enclosed sanct.i.ty of the Most Holy Place breaks out into the world. And now, as the level sun shines out again beneath the pall of clouds, He whispers, as at Mary's knee in Nazareth, the old childish prayer and yields up His spirit into His Father's hands.

The last Paradox, then, is uttered. He Who saves others cannot save Himself! The Shepherd of souls relinquishes His own. For, as we cannot save our lives unless we lose them for His sake, so He too cannot save them unless He loses His for our sake.

I. This, then, is merely the summary of all that has gone before; it is the word _Finis_ written at the end of this new Book of Life which He has written in His Blood. It is the silence of the white s.p.a.ce at the close of the last page. Yet it is, too, the final act that gives value to all that have preceded it. If Christ had not died, our faith would be vain.

Oh! these New Theologies that see in Christ's Death merely the end of His Life! Why, it is the very point and climax of His Life that He should lay it down! Like Samson himself, that strange prototype of the Strong Man armed, he slew more of the enemies of our souls by His Death than by all His gracious Life. _For this cause He came into the world_.

For Sacrifice, which is the very heart of man's instinctive worship of G.o.d, was set there, imperishably, in order to witness to and be ratified by His One Offering which alone could truly take away sins; and to deny it or to obscure it is to deny or to obscure the whole history of the human race, from the Death of Abel to the Death of Christ, to deny or obscure the significance of every lamb that bled in the Temple and of every wine-offering poured out before the Holy Place, to deny or to obscure (if we will but penetrate to the roots of things) the free will of Man and the Love of G.o.d. If Christ had not died, our faith would be vain.

II. Once again, then, let us turn to the event in our own lives that closes them; that death which, united to Christ's, is our entrance into liberty and, disunited, the supreme horror of existence.

(1) For without Christ death is a violent interruption to life, introducing us to a new existence of which we know nothing, or to no existence at all. Without Christ, however great our hopes, it is abrupt, appalling, stunning, and shattering. It is this at the best, and, at the worst, it is peaceful only as the death of a beast is peaceful.

(2) Yet, with Christ, it is harmonious and continuous with all that has gone before, since it is the final movement of a life that is already _dead with Christ_, the last stage of a process of mortality, and the stage that ends its pain. It is just one more pa.s.sing phase, by which is changed the key of that music that every holy life makes always before G.o.d.

There is, then, the choice. We may, if we will, die fighting to the end a force that must conquer us however we may fight, resisting the irresistible. Or we may die, in lethargic resignation, as dogs die, without hopes or regrets, since the past, without Christ, is as meaningless as the future. Or we may die, like Christ, and with Him, yielding up a spirit that came from the Father back again into His Fatherly hands, content that He Who brought us into the world should receive us when we go out again, confident that, as the thread of His purpose is plain in earthly life, it shall shine yet more plainly in the life beyond.

One last look, then, at Jesus shows us the lines smoothed from His face and the agony washed from His eyes. May our souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through His Mercy, rest in Him!

XI

LIFE AND DEATH

_As dying, and behold we live_.--II COR. VI. 9.

We have considered, so far, a number of paradoxical phenomena exhibited in the life of Catholicism and have attempted to find their reconciliation in the fact that the Catholic Church is at once Human and Divine. In her striving, for example, after a Divine and supernatural Peace, of which she alone possesses the secret, she _resists even unto blood_ all human attempts to supplant this by another. As a human society, again, she avails herself freely of human opportunities and aids, of earthly and created beauty, for the setting forth of her message; yet she can survive, as can no human society, when she is deprived of her human rights and her acquired wealth. As human she numbers the great mult.i.tude of the world's sinners among her children, yet as Divine she has produced the saints. As Divine she bases all her gospel on a Revelation which can be apprehended only by Faith, yet as human she employs the keenest and most profound intellects for its a.n.a.lysis and its propagation. In these and in many other similar points it has been attempted to show why she offers now one aspect and now another to human criticism, and how it is that the very charges made against her become, when viewed in the light of her double claim, actual credentials and arguments on behalf of that claim. Finally, in the meditations upon the _Seven Words_ of Christ, we considered very briefly how, in the hours of the deepest humiliation of His Humanity, He revealed again and again the characteristics of His Divinity.

It now remains to consider that point in which she most manifests that double nature of hers and, simultaneously therefore, presents, as in a kind of climax, her ident.i.ty, under human terms, with Him Who, Himself the Lord of Life, conquered death by submitting to it and, by His Resurrection from the dead, showed Himself _the Son of G.o.d with power_.

I. Death, the world tells us, is the final end of all things, and is the one universal law of which evasion is impossible; and this is true, not of the individual only, but of society, of nations, of civilization, and even, it would seem, ultimately of physical life itself. Every vital energy therefore that we possess can be directed not to the abolition, but only to the postponement of this final full close to which the most ecstatic created harmony must come at last.

Our physicians cannot heal us, they can merely ward off death for a little. Our statesmen cannot establish an eternal federation, they can but help to hold a crumbling society together for a little longer. Our civilization cannot really evolve an immortal superman, it can but render ordinary humanity a little less mortal, temporarily and in outward appearance. Death, then, in the world's opinion, is the duellist who is bound to win. We may parry, evade, leap aside for a little; we may even advance upon him and seem to threaten his very existence; our energies, in fact, must be concentrated upon this conflict if we are to survive at all. But it is only in seeming, at the best. The moment must come when, driven back to the last barrier, our last defence falters ...

and Death has only to wipe his sword.

Now the att.i.tude of the Catholic Church towards Death is not only the most violent reversal of the world's policy, but the most paradoxical, too, of all her methods. For, while the world attempts to keep Death at arm's length, the Church strives to embrace him. Where the world draws his sword to meet Death's a.s.sault, the Church spreads her heart only to receive it. She is in love with Death, she pursues him, honours him, extols Him. She places over her altars not a Risen Christ, but a dying One.

_If thou wilt be perfect_, she cries to the individual soul, _give up all that thou hast and follow me_. "Give up all that makes life worth living, strip thyself of every advantage that sustains thy life, of all that makes thee effective." It is this that is her supreme appeal, not indeed uttered, with all its corollaries, to all her children, but to those only that desire perfection. Yet to all, in a sense, the appeal is there. _Die daily_, die to self, mortify, yield, give in. If _any man will save his life, he must lose it_.

So too, in her dealings with society, is her policy judged suicidal by a world that is in love with its own kind of life. It is suicidal, cries that world, to relinquish in France all on which the temporal life of the Church depends; for how can that society survive which renounces the very means of existence? It is suicidal to demand the virgin life of the n.o.blest of her children, suicidal to desert the monarchical cause of one country, and to set herself in opposition to the Republican ideals of another. For even she, after all, is human and must conform to human conditions. Even she, however august her claims, must make terms with the world if she desires to live in it.

And this comment has been made upon her actions in every age. She condemned Arius, when a little compromise might surely have been found; and lost half her children. She condemned Luther and lost Germany; Elizabeth, and lost England. At every crisis she has made the wrong choice, she has yielded when she should have resisted, resisted when she should have yielded. The wonder is that she survives at all.

Yes, that is the wonder. _As dying, behold she lives_!

II. The answer of course is easy. It is that she simply does not desire the kind of life which the world reckons alone to be life. To her that is not life at all. She desires of course to survive as a human society, and she is a.s.sured that she always shall so survive. Yet it is not on the ordinary terms of ordinary society that she desires survival. It is not a _natural_ life of which she is ambitious, a life that draws its strength from human conditions and human environment, a life, therefore, that waxes and wanes with those human conditions and ultimately meets their fate, but a _supernatural_ life that draws its strength from G.o.d.

And she recognizes, as one of the most fundamental paradoxes of all, that such a life can be gained and held only through what the world calls "death."

She does not, then, want merely the life of a prosperous human state, whether monarchy or republic. There are times indeed in her history when such an accompaniment to her real existence is useful to her effectiveness; and she has, of course, the right, as have other societies, to earthly dominions that may have been won and presented to her by her children. Or through her ministers, as in Paraguay, she may administer for a while the ordinary civil affairs of men who choose to be loyal to her government. Yet if, for one instant, such a responsibility were really to threaten her spiritual effectiveness--if, that is, the choice were really presented to her between spiritual and temporal dominion--she would let all the kingdoms of the world go in an instant, to retain her kingdom from G.o.d; she would gladly _suffer the loss of all things_ to retain Christ.

And how is it possible to deny for one instant that her success has been startling and overwhelming--this fructification of Life by Death.

Are there any human beings, for example, who have been more effective and influential than her saints--men and women, that is to say, who have _died daily_, in order to live indeed? They have not, it is true, prospered, let us say, as business men, directors of companies, or government officials, but such a success is simply not her ideal for them, not their own ideal for themselves. That is precisely the kind of life to which they have, as a rule, determinedly and perseveringly died.

Yet their effectiveness in this world has been none the less. Are any kings remembered as is the beggar Labre who gnawed cabbage stalks in the gutters of Rome? Are the names of any statesmen of, let us say, even a hundred years ago, reverenced and repeated as is the name of the woman of Spain called Teresa of Jesus who, four hundred years ago, ruled a few nuns within the enclosure of a convent? Are any musicians or artists loved to-day with such rapture as is G.o.d's little troubadour, called Francis, who made music for himself and the angels by rubbing one stick across another?

Or, again, is any empire that the world has ever seen so great, so loyally united in itself, so universal and yet so rigorous as is that spiritual empire whose capital is Rome? Is there any nation with so fierce a patriotism as she who is Supernational? Earthly kings speak from their thrones and what happens? And an old man in Rome who wears three crowns on his head speaks from his prison in the Vatican and all the earth rings with it.

Has her policy, then, been so suicidal after all? From the world's point of view it has never been anything else. Her history is but one long example of the sacrifice of human activities and earthly opportunities; she has expelled from her pulpits the most brilliant of her children, she has silenced or alienated the most eloquent of her defenders. She has cut off from herself all that she should have kept, and hugged to her arms all that she should have relinquished! She has never done anything but die! She never does anything but live!

III. Turn, then, to the life of her Lord for the solution of this riddle. Last week[1] He was going to His Death. He was losing, little by little, all that bound Him to Life. The mult.i.tudes that had followed Him hitherto were leaving Him by units and groups, they who might have formed His armies to seat Him on the throne of His father David.

Disloyalty had made its way even among His chosen body-guard, and already Judas is bargaining for the price of His Master's blood. Even the most loyal of all are dismayed, and presently will _forsake Him and flee_ when the swords flash out in the garden of Gethsemane. A few weeks ago in Galilee thousands were leaving Him for the last time; and when, once again, a company seemed to rally, He wept! And so at last the sacrifice was complete and, one by one, He laid down of His own will every tie that kept Him in life. And then on Good Friday itself He suffered that beauty of His _Face to be marred_ so that no man would ever _desire Him_ any more, silenced the melody of the Voice that had broken so many hearts and made them whole again; He stretched out His Shepherd's Hands with which alone He could gather His sheep to His Breast, and the Feet that alone could bear Him into the wilderness to _seek after that which was lost_. Was there ever a Suicide such as this, such a despair of high hopes, such a ruin of all ambition, a dying so complete and irremediable as the Dying of Jesus Christ?

[Footnote 1: This Sermon was preached on Easter Day.]