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Inner Life of a Catholic

The Profession of Faith 

CHAPTER FIVE

Conclusion

Let us now endeavor to sum up what has been said by way of explanation of what a Catholic means by Catholic life. It is nothing new, nothing original; were it that it would not be Catholic, universal in time and in place. It is as old as, and is to be found in, St. Paul and St. Peter; it comes down to us through St. Augustine and St. Jerome, St. Benedict and St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Theresa, St. John of the Cross, St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul; it has made such heroes as these and by its means they have made others. It is found in, and has been the inspiration of, a Joan of Arc, a Columbus, a Thomas More, a Pasteur, a Pastor, a Foch; Dante, Petrarch, Racine; Chaucer, Crashaw, Francis Thompson; Alfred the Great, Edward the Confessor, Henry VI; Dunstan, Langton, Grosseteste, Colet; yes, by reaction, even in those whose lives in the Catholic past have added no lustre to the Catholic role. It is found today in every part of the world, in every degree of life; in Rome, Paris, London, Berlin, New York, as well as in the African forest, or the Indian jungle, or the Chinese hamlet; the same in belief, the same in moral ideal, the same, thank God, in its fruit. It is a life which follows logically from what the Catholic accepts, from what Christendom till these last centuries has always and everywhere accepted, as the basis of its faith and very being: "Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus" (Phil. ii, 5). Indeed that, to the Catholic, is the importance, is the justification, is the necessity, of what is called dogma, and of an authority which shall be so safe as to make the basis of that dogma sure. 

Without a definite belief, without an authority which cannot err, there can be no solid ground on which he may build up the life he professes; a fact he sees illustrated every day in the ebb and flow, the opinions and the contradictions, the certainties and their flat denial, the ever-changing theories and principles and explanations, the shifting sands, and the houses built upon those sands, falling in ruins about him. In Western Christendom at least, and with that alone need we concern ourselves, his Catholic Church alone stands solid. So much has every other changed, so much does it continue to change, that, in despair, it is claimed that this very instability, and surmise, and fluctuation is in itself a sign of the truth. 

Men speak of changing with the times, they forget that truth does not and cannot change. But the belief and the practice of the Catholic Church are a consistent whole. They have come down through the centuries past, adapted to each succeeding generation, but in themselves unaltered; growing, perhaps, in precision from learning and experience, but always the same one truth. They have been maintained by the vast majority of Christians that have ever been, they are maintained by the vast majority of Christians today, beneath every variety, and nation, and class, and circumstance. In that belief and practice, and in them alone, Christianity still is one; because of them alone, what is called Christian civilization claims to excel every other.

The Catholic mind, the Catholic life, is founded first on the Catholic acceptance of a living, personal, objective, omniscient, omnipotent God, from whom all things created have come, to whom they go, in whom and by whom they live, on whom they depend for everything; but also a God who is all-loving, who is essential love, who has a personal and loving' care of each one of His creatures. This God, the source of all being and all good, is man's first beginning and his last end; from God man came, to Him he goes, in Him he lives and moves and is; he is made for this loving Creator's loving purpose, so that the attainment of that purpose is the whole meaning of man, the one final goal which will give him the full realization of himself, and peace. 

The Catholic mind and life are founded, next, on the Catholic acceptance, wholly and without reservation, of Jesus Christ our Lord, truly God, truly Man, the Redeemer of the human race from a fallen state, the Mediator between God and man, the Lover of men, the infallible Teacher of men, the Model for all men to imitate, the Head of the human body, the Light that has come into the world, the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Priest and the Victim in the one reconciling sacrifice, in which "mercy and truth have met each other, justice and peace have kissed (Ps. Ixxxiv, 11).

Depending on these two axioms, for without them we can go no further, the Christian life, distinct from, yet not apart from, the natural life of man, may be looked at from two extremes. It is the act of God and it is the act of man. On the one hand it is the gift of this loving God, pouring out Himself, as is His nature, on a much-beloved soul; on the other hand, and in return, by the acceptance and use of that bounty, it is the gift of the loving human soul to a much-loved God.
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I. The Gift Of God To Man

First, then, it is the gift, wholly undeserved, of a loving God to the human soul that is loved. From all eternity the God whose essence is love, who can act only out of love, has loved His own creature, man. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee" (Jer. xxxi, 3). The prophet here does but voice the whole mind of God's revelation. He reminds us that only by the eyes of love can the Old and the New Testaments be rightly read, only by a reason enlightened by love can the dealing of God with man be interpreted, only by a will emboldened by love can the outstretched Hand of God be grasped. 

Because of that Divine Love, because love, wherever it is found, in God or in man, cannot but desire the best for its beloved, because love will give what it can and all that it can, for that beloved's good, the God of all love has, from the beginning, predestined for His beloved man a life, a goal, a consummation far above that belonging to man's own nature; a life therefore, and a consummation in a true sense supernatural; a life which can only be described as a sharing in His own perfect life, the life divine.[3]

Nevertheless, for His own greater glory, and for the ultimate glory and reward of man himself, in His infinite wisdom God has refrained from forcing His largesse on His free creature. Of all the creatures He has made in the order of their creation, man alone has the power to honor God with a free service; than willing and loving obedience no greater honor can be paid to any higher power. God Almighty, who will not contradict His own creative act, has left it to man freely to accept, or, if he will, reject, the unique boon that is offered to him; in that acceptance to give to God the glory which man alone can give, and to win for himself in return the glory which man alone can receive. He has left man free to accept the gift or reject it; still His love could not leave man alone to make his choice unaided. For man's own sake, wishing for him only the best, He could not but draw him, induce him, plead to him, nay even threaten him, while at the same time He gave him the means to choose the right way and follow it. 

That man might attain the life offered to him, that even here upon this earth he might live that life so far as human conditions would permit of it, God devised a means by which He Himself might live in every soul who would receive Him. He would not stop short with that which He had done in creating man; in His love for man He would lift him up to more and more, He would draw him unto Himself, He would re-create him, making him to be "born again" in a nobler state of being. This is what the Catholic Church means by the life of grace; that life of which St. Paul, and St. John, and St. Peter never tire of speaking. Man born of woman in the order of nature is "born again of the Holy Ghost" (John iii, 5) in the order of Grace: "Born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John i, 13).[4]

This is what we mean by the supernatural life. It is a new thing, an addition to our life of natural existence. It places us on another plane, the plane of God Himself. It gives to life a new meaning, a goal beyond that of this creation, nay, a right to the attainment of that goal, if only we will ourselves live the life that leads towards it.

Thus is God, the Creator, the Preserver, the All-Father, the Lover, at once the cause of the supernatural life that is within us, and also its ideal. He is its source, its means, and its end; we live in so far as we love Him. And as for all life some kind of organism is needed, so for this supernatural life of man there is bestowed upon him a supernatural organism, by which he may be able to live it. It is an organism which may transform every act he does as man; no longer now are they only his own, no longer are they acts of human nature only with only their natural values, but they are also acts of the life divine that is in him. As such they are pleasing to God, not as the acts of a creature only, but as the acts of a son of His own. They are meritorious in that higher order, they give to man the power to earn for himself the reward that belongs to a son of God. 

It is again the life of a loving God, who cannot restrain Himself in giving, whose only limit in generosity is the limited capacity of the beloved creature, man, to receive. It is entirely His own handiwork, His own reconstruction in us, even as was our creation itself; nay more, it is indeed Himself living in us, in a way that is entirely new, not merely by-virtue of His being—<per potentiam, per praesentiam, per essentiam>, as the philosophers express it—but by virtue of a further union, freely given, freely received. This is what the Catholic means when he speaks of the state of grace, of the life of habitual grace, of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the human soul with His gifts and fruits, and of the actual graces which are poured out on man along with these.

This, then, was the design of God for man from all eternity; in this light has man from all eternity lived as a concept in the Divine Mind. Had man not been told of it, had it never been revealed to him from above, man might never have guessed it; though in the thinking philosophers of old there is easily seen a longing for, and a suspicion of, something of the kind. But once he has been told it, once by revelation of the word of God Himself he has been lifted beyond the world of sense and reason into a realm where truth alone lives unveiled, he reflects and sees how this seeming extravagance of generosity is only in accordance with the nature of that loving God whom he now knows. To do such things is only like God; worthy of Him in His love, worthy of Him in the manner of the gift.

But men failed God. With the human freedom that was his, the one power that distinguished him from all other creatures and made him master of them all, with which he could, if he would, give to God an honor, a glory, a service, that no other creature could give, man abused the grand ideal offered to him, rejected the grace and lost it. He preferred to the life supernatural the natural life he had about him, the life that begins and ends in death, and centers only in himself. He preferred himself to God, the life of "the valley of this death" to the life eternal; man "loved darkness rather than the light" (John iv, 19). With the rejection, deliberately made, he committed an offense against Him who would so honor him; an offense for which, being but a creature, of himself it was impossible to atone.

Still the God of love would not be outdone. Man had refused Him, man had chosen to be a groveling human being and no more. He had told his Lover he would have none of Him; but the Lover would still pursue. He would yet come to man; He would yet win man, if in any way that were possible, and would take him unto Himself. He would plead to Himself that man was blind, that he knew not what he did; He would win him by a further divine extravagance of love. Nevertheless should this be done in order, according to that perfect harmony which was His, and which was reflected in His creation. 

While He was infinitely loving He was also infinitely just; and that justice might be fulfilled, as well as love and mercy satisfied, He would have this gift of Himself, once rejected by man, by man to be won back. Yet how could this be done? For, as we have seen, natural man could of himself merit nothing any more. "By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned" (Rom. v, 12). And the dead can do no more. Man, who by his own hand had died to the life of God, could not again of himself rise from the dead, and take back the life he had rejected.

But the God of love found a solution; such a solution as only love could have devised, only love divine could have carried out.[5]

To redeem the lost and enslaved, to raise the dead to life, to give to the offender a place once more in the household, and at the same time to give to Himself as God an adequate return for that which had been taken from Him, God Himself, in the person of His Son, came into this world, and lived the life and died the death of man. As man, truly man, yet immaculate and unstained "in all things like to man, without sin," Jesus Christ, the Son of God, made truly Man, in the nature of man upon this earth, gave to His Father a perfect service; as Man, and in the name of the whole human race. As Man, yet with the power of the Godhead within Him, He asked of His Father forgiveness for the evil that had been done; and He gave His human life, the last drop of His blood, in full atonement. Love devised the means; love made the willing sacrifice; love accepted the atonement with gladness, and once more poured itself out on its beloved.[6]

Thus in Jesus Christ, truly God and truly Man, and only because He was both in His one single Person, mankind gave back to God a perfect and an adequate service and homage, nay more, a service and an homage more adequate and perfect than he could ever have given had he never fallen; or rather, had Jesus Christ never been made Man.

Man had repaid to God a divine satisfaction; in Jesus Christ, with Jesus Christ, through the merits of Jesus Christ, man could again look up and be forgiven with both justice and mercy satisfied, and take on his supernatural life anew. So much has man received through Jesus Christ our Lord; this is the fundamental significance of what the Catholic means by the Incarnation and the Redemption. But that has not been all. It has not been enough for a God of love, made a Man of love, to have canceled the handwriting that was against His beloved, and then to have left him to work out his destiny as best he could. Jesus Christ our Lord is indeed truly God, and as such can claim an equality with the Father; but He is also truly Man. As such He has made Himself the equal of man and in that equality the model of mankind, even in the ways of this life, with all its weakness, with all its groping in the dark.[7]

In other words, God as He is from all eternity, Jesus Christ is also in time Man like other men, with one only safeguard as we have seen. He is the Friend of man, bringing down to earth that love which was in Him in heaven; the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ beats with the love of God. He is the Brother of man, a member of, one with, the human family, of the same flesh and blood as other men; being such, nothing that is human is alien from Him, joy or sorrow, success or failure, learning or ignorance. 

Because of what He is and of what He has done, He is the source and the sower of all that is good in the held of mankind: "Of his fullness we have all received" (John i, 16). "He is the blessed and only mighty, the King of kings and Lord of lords" (I Tim. vi, 15). He is the foundation stone of the human temple, the coping stone of the arch. He is wedded to His own by a band more close than that of marriage, for He is the living Head of the living mystical body. In phrases such as these with an emphasis which implies that they would have them taken as more than mere metaphors, the writers of the New Testament endeavor to describe what Jesus Christ our Lord is to men by the simple reason of His humanity.[8]

Thus in Jesus Christ all men are one, or may be one, as the branches of the vine are one growth, one thing, whether they come from the trunk or are engrafted on it.[9]

In this way is man's spiritual life seen to be a pure gift of God, coming to him, at once in justice and in mercy and in love, through the merits of the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord. He is its source, He is its sustenance, He is its model; He has also provided the means by which we may keep and develop it. And the means are mainly these. Lest man in his weakness misunderstand, or in his shallowness misinterpret, or in his preoccupation forget, or in his self-seeking ignore the vital truth which He has revealed, and for which He has shed His blood, He has provided for all time a safe guide, who shall keep that truth secure and alive, and shall save man from his own blindness.

"Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And to thee I will give the keys of the Kingdom of heaven" (Matt. xvi, 18).

"He that heareth you, heareth me: and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me" (Luke x, 16).

"These things have I spoken to you, abiding with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and will bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you" (John xiv,. 25, 26).

"I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the spirit of truth is come, he will teach you all truth" (John xvi, 12, 13).

"Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi, 15, 16)

The Catholic reads these passages and many others like them. He remembers the repeated word that "God is faithful" and ever unchanging; and he wonders how it can be that man nevertheless can doubt or deny His abiding and infallible guidance. He who gave such insight into Himself and His life of love, who uttered such commands to His beloved creatures, who gave such assurances of perpetual presence: "Behold I am with you all days," could never leave man wholly to his own resources, to find his way in the dark as best he might. He to whom time is as nothing, who is as much with men today as He was when Jesus Christ His Son uttered those words, who cares no less that we of this generation should belong to Him than those of Capharnaum and Bethsaida, cannot have deserted us. He has said it, and His word is true; because we believe in Him we believe in His representative, whoever and whatever that representative may be.

The word of God is true; the voice that utters that word is, when uttering it, infallible; were the Catholic to doubt he must alter his whole concept of God, of his loving God, of a God who has bound himself by love to His creature. Love such as His cannot deceive nor be deceived; love such as His cannot fail its beloved; if at any time it has spoken with certainty it speaks with certainty for ever. "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," because I believe in the absolute fidelity of God.

This is the first means by which the life of God in the soul of man is preserved, the means of sure guidance. As Jesus Christ our Lord spoke infallibly by His own mouth, so does He speak infallibly by the mouth of that Church of which He is the living Head.

Next there is the gift of the sacraments and with them the sacramental life. "You shall draw waters in joy out of the fountains of the Savior," sang the prophet (Isaias, xii, 3); and the Catholic believes that forth from the opened side of Christ have come those seven streams, those "outward signs of inward grace," those ceremonies which, if performed by the humble creature, of themselves bestow on man an ever-increasing means for his justification and salvation. 

They are not mere devotions; they are not mere ritual practices; they are outward signs of grace given within; the Catholic believes that they have their origin in the institution of Jesus Christ Himself, and that in their acceptance he receives from the hands of the same Jesus Christ, and in virtue of His great victory, a positive addition of the supernatural - to be gained in no other way. Other graces, thanks to his union with Christ, the Christian may acquire by effort of his own; the grace of the sacraments he cannot earn, he can only open the gates, by the key which Christ Himself has ordained, that the flood of Christ's love may flow over him.

Hence it is that in the reception and use of the sacraments the practice of the Catholic religion is most manifested; the Catholic will use both terms as complementary to each other, as if they expressed the same thing. It is common to hear him describe his fellow Catholic as one who "goes to the sacraments."

Lastly, among these seven sacraments is one which is specially dear to him. It is that which is at once a sacrament and a sacrifice. The Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass, the "Sacred Banquet, in which Christ is made our food, the memory—of His Passion is renewed, the soul is filled with grace, and a pledge is given to us of future glory,"—this sacrament has inevitably become the center round which all Catholic practice circles. In the Holy Eucharist the Catholic believes, on the authority of Jesus Christ Himself, consistently maintained by His delegated authority through the centuries, that his Lord and Master abides with him on earth; through it he believes that the same Lord and Master comes into him, dwells within him, feeds his life with His own, nay, absorbs him into Himself, so that he no longer lives but Christ lives in him. 

In the Holy Mass he is with that same Lord, not only at the hour at which it is said, but at that other hour when the Sacrifice of Calvary was actually performed. It is a tremendous truth, yet it is a truth none the less; and all Europe, indeed all the world wherever Christianity has reached, is strewn with the evidences of what that truth has done for mankind. Jesus Christ, "yesterday, today, and the same for ever";—this, in a word, is the Catholic faith, this is the Catholic mind; life in the Catholic Church is no more nor less than this: 

"For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." It is the crowning act of a God of love, the last extreme of Jesus Christ, the God-man, in His effort to conquer the heart of His beloved but stubborn creature. And He has won. The prophecy has been fulfilled: "From the rising of the sun even to the going down thereof my name is great among the Gentiles: and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation. For my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of Hosts" (Mal. i, 11).

But to the Catholic the Mother cannot be separated from the Son; indeed to him to honor the one is to honor and imitate the other. Through her willing acceptance He came into the world, by her "Fiat" the work of redemption was begun; the love of the Mother for the Son, and the love of the Son for the Mother, the natural blended with the supernatural, bound them together inseparably, in life, in death, and after death. For years she commanded and He obeyed; to the end she was always His Mother; at the last He gave us to her, and her to us, for our mutual cherishing and keeping. Therefore is she now, for us who have been given to her to be her own children, an advocate with her Son such as is no other; on our part, since she has been so bequeathed to us, to honor her is to honor Him. To treat her as a loving child treats a loving mother is to do that very thing which He did, and which He has asked us to do in His place.

And with her are the angels and saints. They, too, are our brethren; they are part of the great family of God, His sons and His heirs, members of that same body to which we belong. They have in their day fought the good fight, they have finished their course, they have received the crown of justice from Him who is the Just Judge. In their place of rejoicing they have a care for us. "There shall be joy before the angels of God upon one sinner that doth penance." If angels rejoiced at the birth of Jesus Christ amongst us, singing "Glory to God in heaven, and on earth peace to men of good will"; if when He was hungry "angels came and ministered to Him in His need"; if, in His hour of distress, when He prayed that the chalice might pass from Him, an angel gave Him new strength; if the children of men have their angels in heaven to protect them:—"See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. xviii, 10),—then we may be sure that we have the help, the prayers, and the company of all these in the battle of life. "For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood: but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places" (Eph. vi, 12).

3 "Blessed be the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with spiritual blessings in heavenly places, in Christ as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and unspotted in his sight, in charity, who hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ with himself according to the purpose of his will: unto the praise of the glory of his grace, in which he hath graced us in his beloved Son" (Eph. i, 3-6).
"Blessed be the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy hath regenerated us unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead: unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that cannot fade, reserved in heaven for you" (1 Pet. i 3-4).

4 "You are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you" (Rom. viii, 9).
"For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear: but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father). For the Spirit of God giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God. And if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God and joint heirs with Christ" (Rom. viii, 15-17).
"And because you are sons, God hath sent the spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father. Therefore now he is not a servant but a son. And if a son an heir also through God" (Gal. iv 6, 7)

5 "God so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son: that whosoever believeth in him may not perish, but may have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to judge the world: but that the world may be saved by him" (John iii, 16, 17).
"By this hath the charity of God appeared towards us, because God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we may live by him. In this is charity: not as though we had loved God, but because he hath first loved us, and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins" (John iv, 9, 10).

6 "God commendeth his charity towards us: because when as yet we were sinners according to the time, Christ died for us. Much more therefore, being now justified by his blood shall we be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son: much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. And not only so: but also we glory in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received reconciliation" (Rom. v, 8

7 "I have given you an example," He said of Himself: "I am the way and the truth, and the life." St. Paul is bold in his emphasis of this point.
"For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal to God but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in nature found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross" (Phil. ii, 5-8).
"We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that through the grace of God he might taste death for all. For it became him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, who had brought many children into glory, to perfect the author of their salvation by his passion" (Heb. ii, 9, 10).
"We have not a High Priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities, but one tempted in all things as we are, without sin" (Heb. iv, 15).
"Wherefore it behoved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and faithful High Priest before God, that he might be a propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that wherein he himself hath suffered and been tempted, he is able to succor them also that are tempted" (Heb. ii, 17, 18).
"For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and of sin, hath condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. viii, 3).

8 Now therefore, ye are no more strangers or foreigners: but you are fellow-citizens with the Saints and domestics of God, built upon the foundations of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the comer stone: in whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into an holy temple of the Lord. In whom you also are built together into an habitation of God in the spirit" (Eph. ii, 19-22).
"You are God's husbandry: and you are God's building" (I Cor. 9)
"For other foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus" (I Cor. iii, 11).
"Christ as the Son in his own house: which house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and glory of hope unto the end" (Heb. iii, 6).
"Unto whom coming, as to a living stone, rejected indeed by man but chosen and made honorable by God: be ye also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ" (s Pet. ii, 4-5).
"As therefore you have received Jesus Christ the Lord, walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him and confirmed in the faith, as also ye have learned: abounding in him in thanksgiving" (Col. ii, 6, 7).
"For the woman that hath an husband, whilst her husband liveth is bound to the law. But if her husband be dead she is loosed from the law of her husband.... Therefore my brethren, you also are become dead to the law, by the body of Christ: that you may belong to another, who is risen again from the dead that we may bring forth fruit to God" (Rom. vii, 2, 4).
"For I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God. For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor. xi, 2).
"For as the body is one and hath many members and all the members of the body, whereas they are many are one body: so also is Christ. For in one spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free: and in one spirit we have all been made to drink.... Now you are the body of Christ and members for member" (x Cor. xii 12, 27).
"For as in one body we have many members but all the members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ: and every one members one of another" (Rom. xii, 5).

9 "Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine: you the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing. If any one abide not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch and shall wither" (John xv, 4-6).
"I am come that they may have life and may have it more abundantly" (John x, 10).
"I am the light of the world. He that followeth me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John viii, 12).