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Inner Life of a Catholic

The Profession of Faith 

CHAPTER THREE

Life In The Church

3. The Response Of Man

In these ways, and in many others, we are taught how the Spirit of God worketh in us. It remains for us to do what we are able that we may possess the indwelling of that Spirit, and knowing He is there, may give Him the honor that is His due. This, precisely, is what we mean by the interior practice of religion, religion of the heart. The first of the Christian's duties must be to bear in mind the God who has done so much for him, who "has brought him out of darkness into the supernatural light," who is so near to him, who has done him the honor to make Himself a guest in his house. For a royal visitor we would do much, for the visit of the Blessed Trinity can we do less? The realization of that alone has made saints, witness St. Theresa, in more places than one.

And the method is simple. The believer in the Blessed Trinity and in His abiding presence in the faithful soul, will make it his endeavor, wherever he may be, and whatever he may have to do, to live and to act as becomes one who is in that august company. That is why the Catholic, throughout many centuries, has grown accustomed to the Sign of the Cross. In that sign he would conquer, by its means he would face any foe; he would begin every action that comes within his day, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen." In each single want of his life he would give to the Father all the glory that event can give Him; such is the duty of an adopted son. He would give like glory to the Son, mindful that He has bought him at the price of His blood, has made him His lasting friend. He would give the same to the Holy Ghost, who has given so much to him, even the power to perform the very act which he is at that moment performing.

The interior man will go further. He will do more than dedicate to God the ordinary actions which make up his day. He will turn to Him often in his thoughts, "raising his mind and heart to God" not only in times of actual prayer but at all times; he will follow the teaching of St. Paul, that he should "pray always." When times are dark he will recall the Father of lights and will appeal to Him.

"How long O Lord dost thou turn thy face from me? . . . Consider and hear me, O Lord my God, enlighten my eyes" (Ps. xii, 1-4).

When he discovers his own weakness, as he will do many times, he will find courage even against himself in the presence of Him who is Almighty: "In thee, O Lord, I have hoped, let me never be confounded.... Be thou unto me a God, a protector, and a house of refuge to save me. For thou art my strength and my refuge, and for thy name's sake thou wilt lead me and nourish me" (Ps. xxx, 2-4)

In desolation and dryness, when the skies are as brass and prayer becomes a weary burdened, he will remember Him who could pray: "Father, if it be possible, suffer this chalice to pass from me.... If this chalice cannot pass from me, but I must drink it, thy will be done" (Matt. xxvi, 42).

When, on the other hand, prayer becomes more easy and familiar, then he will take the counsel of Him who is the model of all prayer: "Thou, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret: and thy Father who seeth in secret, will repay thee" (Matt. vi, 6).

This obviously is the first reaction of the believing Christian to the truth of the divine indwelling; it is the practical recollection of his Lord ever present with him. The second is akin to the first, and naturally flows from it; it is that of adoration.

"My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.... Because he that is mighty hath done great things to me and holy is his name" (Luke i, 46-49).

So does the Queen of all the faithful teach it to us with a spontaneity that tells us volumes about her inner soul. And the Church responds with her constantly repeated song: "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost."

Thirdly, there is love, that glorious possession of man, which is his perfection as a man, as well as a son of God. Without love all else is of little worth, with it all else may be made to have value. And because love is essentially generous, essentially active, so, nay much more, does the love of God refuse to be confined to mere words or to mere sentiment and feeling; it must prove itself by action and sacrifice. What can it give? What can it do? "What return can I make to the Lord for all He has given to me?" The repentant sinner will prove his love by making what atonement he may; he will be encouraged the more by the memory of Him to whose lips the words came spontaneously: "Many sins are forgiven her because she hath loved much" (Luke vii, 47). Grateful love, the love of the clean of heart that sees its God and all that He means, will not cease to thank its Benefactor and to strive to make Him some return, not, indeed, a return that is worthy of Him, or in any way adequate to what it has received, but yet according to the measure of its own feeble nature. And beyond these still further reaches the love of friendship; which will accept with joy, humble joy, the equality that God has bestowed upon it, will speak with Him familiarly as a friend with a friend, will break forth into love of generosity, giving and ever giving, will forget itself and its own petty interests for the sake of the good pleasure of its Beloved, will rejoice, should occasion offer, to be accounted worthy to suffer reproach for His sake, will welcome death itself as the happiest of fortunes should the Beloved ask for its life.

And this will lead to the fourth duty, which is that of imitation and likeness. "Love makes like," and he who loves God cannot but rejoice in every shade of likeness to God that there is in him. Clearly then, since he is the temple of God, he will strive to preserve the cleanness of that temple, cleanness of both body and soul. We have seen how St. Paul makes use of this incentive to restrain and purify his convert Gentiles.

"Know you not that you are the temples of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? But if any man violate the temple of God, him will God destroy. For the temple of God is holy which you are" (1 Cor. iii, 16, 17; and I Cor. vi, 19; 2 Cor. vi, 16, quoted above).

But furthermore, given its cleanness, there is no ornament too precious, none too transcendent, for the beautifying of the temple in which God abides. This is the meaning and motive of perfection; a saint seeks it, less for his own sake, more for the sake of Him who lives within him. Jesus Christ our Lord Himself puts it before us: "Be ye therefore perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. v, 48). It is an ideal none too high, seeing what glorious things have befallen us; since the Father has adopted us as sons, and since it is His will that we should henceforth call Him Father, He cannot but will that we should grow in likeness to Him, and He cannot but give us the means by which we may attain to that likeness. Indeed what else is the significance of the Incarnation? The Son of God has become man, has been "made in all things like to man without sin," that man in his turn may become like to God. He has lived the life of a man, and has died his death, that man in return may live and die like Him. And to be like to the Son is to be like to the Father:

"He who hath seen me hath seen the Father also" (John xiv, 9).
"No man cometh to the Father but through me" (John xiv, 6).

But above all other virtues there is one which Jesus Christ our Lord puts before His own as that which most likens them to the Three Persons in one God, it is the virtue of fraternal charity, of love of one man for another, of man for his fellow-men. By that characteristic men were to know who were His disciples. He would give the injunction to them, as a new commandment; He would set His own great love before them as a standard for their own; in the light of the Blessed Trinity, of His own love, the commandment He renewed took a new significance.

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another" (John xiii, 34, 35)

"As the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love.... This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (John xv, 9-12).

When, at the end of the Supper, He uttered His last prayer for His own He asked specially for this, and the motive that urged Him to ask it was that it would make them most like to God. "That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us" (John xvii, 21).

It is impossible to make too much of this final prayer; still less is it possible that anyone but Jesus Christ our Lord, the true Son of God, would have uttered it, or could even have conceived it. The ideal union is that of the Blessed Trinity; the union of man with man is then most perfect when it is most in accordance with that model. And that this may be made possible, He Himself comes and lives in man, in each one and in all; when that indwelling has produced its effect, then, and by that evidence, "the world may believe that thou hast sent me." Fraternal charity, union among the brethren, is, or should be, the one great "mark?' of His Church from the beginning, emphasized by Himself. Holiness, catholicity, apostolic succession, these from their very nature can only be the fruit of time, but the mark of unity is always: "And the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul" (Acts iv, 32).

So, in his time, St. Paul understood the "new commandment" that Jesus Christ had given. Whatever other virtues he extolled and encouraged, in the end he came always back to this; whatever other evils he reprehended, he attacked none more vehemently than breach of union. He knew already, from experience, how true was His Master's warning, that in this, more than in anything else, men should know who were His disciples. We have seen in a former chapter, how He deprecated nothing more than disunion; how he never tired of reminding his people that they were one body and one spirit, that they had one and the same Father, who dwelt in them all, how they should make it their chief endeavor to preserve "the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. iv, 3-6). And what he taught in word, that same, it is very evident, was in the minds of the early Christians. They came from very different origins, Jew and Gentile, Greek and Roman, Asiatic and African, slave, free man, and noble. They had in themselves by nature almost every cause that would make them split apart, social antipathies, national prejudices and aspirations, philosophic differences, rival teachers even of the sacred Word, when the Gospels had not yet been written, infiltrations from without, superficial parallelisms with other forms of belief, divergences of policy in the treatment of neophytes, divergences in regard to the ancient Jewish law, dark gropings as to the future, the needs of various Churches, demanding sacrifice from one another. Nevertheless, in spite of these and other disintegrating forces, with nothing of nature to help them, even though at times they were none too clear how their beliefs were to be defined, these early Christians knew that of all things else their Christianity must be one; that without unity there was no true Christianity; that he who broke away was to be considered no true Christian, on whatever ground he seceded.

This was their inner spirit, and their driving power, this impressed itself most on the pagan world around them. "See how these Christians love one another," the onlookers said; and they knew that in that love there was life. They rose up against it, for centuries they tried to kill that life and they could not, for it was more than the life of man, more than a man-made unity. It had risen from the dead; having once risen it could die no more, "death could no more have dominion over it" (Rom. vi, 9). Then its enemies, since they could not destroy it, did what they could to imitate it, and to weaken its witness they produced a "religion" like to it in many ways. They adopted its customs, its ceremonial, its forms of government, even its sacraments; an emperor with the forces of an empire behind him set up a hierarchy on its lines. But all these failed, they were human and, like all things human, were destined to die. Such union came from without, it had not grown from within. They went down one by one, even the world soon had no use for them; only the one united because living Church, the vine whose husbandman was the Father Himself, continued to grow.

So it has always been, and so it is today. The strength of the Church is her unity, which nothing is able to break, not because it is too strong, for humanly it is weak, but because it is a unity that is not of this earth.

"The weak things of the world hath God chosen that he may confound the strong. And the base things of the world and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen: and the things that are not, that he might bring to nought the things that are: that no flesh shall glory in his sight. But of him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and justice and sanctification and redemption" (I Cor. i, 27-30).

In the history of the Church of God there may be records of divisions and differences, there may be secessions, there may be scandals within her own household, but in spite of them all the one Catholic Church lives on. These things her Founder Himself foretold must come to pass; they were-the necessary consequence of that human element with which it was His will to work. On the other side seceders come together or endeavor to do so. They would claim a unity in name which has no meaning in fact; they would put on a semblance of unity by methods of their own; may God bless their efforts. They would agree among themselves betimes lest worse evil befall them. But such unity is not, and cannot claim to be, a living thing; it comes only from without, it is a convention and no more, only on the surface does it even appear to resemble that unity which is the living Christ. It can make no pretense to that unity of faith, and of love, and of hope which St. Paul and his Christians knew, and understood, and loved and for which they laid down their lives. The unity that comes from without is mechanical; it is not a living organism; it has no head, no body, no members of that body, united by a common life indwelling in them all. The pagan world looks on and is not deceived, or edified, or won by make believe; and it is against the rock of paganism that true Christianity is tested.

One, not only by convention, not only by comprehension, but by force of an eternal government, not by wealth or social bond, not even in the first place by a hierarchy, but by a life which must be there before a hierarchy can exist at all, this is the secret of the Catholic Church. "Before Abraham was I am." Before organization is Christ; the Catholic Church, as St. Augustine says in his vigorous way, is Jesus Christ upon earth.

We hear the cry "Back to Christ" often repeated, and it is one that is surely sincere from whatever side it may come. But that the goal may be secure the cry must go further. It must not stop with Christ the man, it must go back through Christ to God, for that, as He has expressly told us, is the whole purpose of His coming. It must reach upward and onward to the Three Divine Persons in one God who dwells in us, the Center of all true religion, the strength by which we live and are, the ideal towards which human nature, consciously or unconsciously, aspires, the model of that true unity, and true love, which is, or should be, the Christian's distinctive mark, his best assurance that he is what he would be, a friend of God.