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Inner Life of a Catholic

The Profession of Faith 

CHAPTER FIVE

Conclusion

2 The Gift Of Man To God

Such is the spiritual life, looked at from the side of God, as the free gift of an infinitely loving God to His beloved man. It remains for man freely to accept it, for in this free acceptance lies the consummation of it all; and then, having accepted it, with faith, with love, and with hope, to cultivate it. And if this is to be done as a return of love, after the manner of Him who has so given Himself, then it must be by a similar self-surrender.

He has so loved me and has given Himself for me; I must love Him and give myself for Him. In comparison with the life which He holds out to me, I recognize that this life on earth is a very little thing, in itself now of little worth, however great it might have seemed had no other horizon been revealed to me, rendered great only because of its oneness with something far greater. If I would be what He would have me to be, I must give myself to Him as He has given Himself to me, for Him to mold as He pleases; and in proportion to the wholeness of that gift will the spiritual life develop in me.[10]

In three ways is this to be done. There is, first, for one who accepts the supernatural, for every Catholic, for every believer in the Son of God made Man, the natural man within him to be subdued; above all, that part of the natural man which makes him a slave to his lower appetites, "the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life" (I John ii, 16). Against these domineering powers even the natural man must fight, if he would remain a man and not be dragged down to the level of a beast; much more if he would subject to himself, and be complete master of, all that is natural in him.[11]

This necessary self-subjection is the first thing the true follower of Jesus Christ will undertake, and the grace of God will be with him. It is the path laid down to prayer by every master of it; it is the key to that joyful asceticism which has always accompanied the Catholic Church in her history, in her saints, in her hermits and recluses and religious orders, in the hair shirt of a Thomas More, and the voluntary poverty of princes and kings. It is not contrary to nature; the saints were the most natural of men; it is but the conquest of nature, bringing it into subjection that it may serve, not submitting to its tyranny, and feebly, pitifully, calling that submission freedom. Next, on the more positive side, the follower of Jesus Christ will not only strive to conquer the evil that is in him; he will aim at cultivating what is good.[12]

But the greatest of all good is love; love of God in the first place, who "is love," who "hath first loved us," who "has so loved as to give His only begotten Son," who loves us "with an everlasting love," whose love compels the man who would be truly desirous to make Him some return. Now, on the world's own standard, the greatest proof of love is self-surrender. "Greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friend"; and in like manner, greater love for God no man hath, than that he lay down his life for God. But the laying down of life need not mean what is usually meant by death, as we see all around us; there is a complete self-surrender in complete service, in complete devotedness to the beloved. 

So is it with man's love of God. For the sake of God, to estimate life, and everything in it, in accordance with the estimate of God and not his own; for the love of God to strive to become what God would have him be, not merely what he himself would choose, and that no matter how much human nature, as it is called, may resist and fight against it; for the service of God to do with life whatever God would have him to do with it, and not merely to live according to his own ambitions—this is the Christian's ideal. It is a true laying down of his life for his Beloved; it is a perfect fulfillment of the law; "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, with all thy might and with all thy strength."

And it brings with it its own ample reward; as He has promised, a hundredfold, pressed down and flowing over. For to die to oneself with Jesus Christ our Lord is to rise again with Him; to lay aside one's own life for His sake is to receive His life in return. Nor is this mere metaphor, or a merely allegorical way of speaking. In a mystical but none the less true manner Jesus Christ lives in every soul that will receive Him: to it He gives the power to become and to be a Son of God. We live, now not we, but He lives in us. On this account it is that we offer our prayers "Through Jesus Christ our Lord," uniting our nothingness with His unbounded merits. On this account, whenever we perform an act, which of itself is of no worth, it may become of exceeding great value, made pleasing in the sight of God our Father. By this union, feeble creatures as we are, we are supernaturalised, and the deeds which we do partake of the supernatural. We are made "partakers" in the divine nature of Him who has "deigned to partake of our human nature"; <ejus divinitatis participes, qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps>.

And furthermore because of this union, love working all in all, in every other soul as in mine, we are made one with each other, in a sense far more real and effective than human nature of itself could make us. Being made one, we long that all the rest of mankind who are still outside this divine embrace should attain it, should be made one with us, sharing in the same ineffable inheritance: "that Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts: that, being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth. To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all understanding: that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.... With all humility and mildness, with patience supporting one another in charity. Careful to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. One body and one spirit: as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all" (Eph. iii, 17-19; iv, 2-6)

To this union with God, little as it often knows it, human nature naturally tends. That craving for its own perfection, for its own complete realization of itself, which is inherent in every normal human being, is no more than the effort of the soul, striving to respond to the attraction, the forestalling love of God. However it may seek its satisfaction and completion elsewhere it is never satisfied; there is always something more, so much more that what it attains seems as nothing, and slips like water from its grasp. For "He has first loved us," and He has implanted His own love in us. He has loved us "with an everlasting love," and love of the everlasting is our own love no less.

He loves with a love that is infinite, personal and true, that never fails, that always abides; that love, if we will receive it, of necessity tells on us, and almost unknowingly we yearn to give it back. That is the secret of human longing, of its dissatisfaction with itself, of everything it actually attains. We reach out to God whether we are aware of it or not; we hunger to possess Him, it has become part of our being to do so: "Thou hast made us, O Lord, for thyself, and our hearts shall find no rest till they rest in thee."

Hence it comes about that there is no knowledge in this world that can compare with the knowledge of God. For we cannot love what we do not know; and since the love of God is man's one satisfaction, then the knowledge of God, if he is true to himself, should be man's chief occupation. More than that, since God Himself is love, the knowledge of God is the knowledge of love, and that in its sublimest degree, in its sublimest object. It was love that inspired and gave the one commandment, making it suffice for all else: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind and with thy whole strength."

This knowledge of God and of the love of God, in itself and in its bestowal on us, cannot but react upon ourselves. Of ourselves we know we are nothing, we are undeserving of that love, and by our infidelities we have made ourselves still less worthy. Still we crave for it; and that alone will make us feel the need, will make us strive that we may become more lovable, will compel us to look up to Him who still loves us with a love that will not be broken, to plead for His mercy, His forgiveness, His pity and condolence; to throw ourselves upon Him that He may take us again to His embrace. It will make us seek in all things to do the will of Him who has so loved us, and whom we would fain love in return; for to do the will of the Beloved is, in itself, a joyful proof of love. It will make us recognize His laws and obey them, seek His counsels and follow them, search out occasions for His glory and promote them, find in the events of life, be they happy or unhappy, only manifestations of His good pleasure, and therefore opportunities for further proofs of love. It will draw us, furthermore, to prayer, for in prayer we are in communion with the Beloved; in prayer, as its definition tells us, the mind and heart of man are raised to God.

If this is the interior orientation of the soul of the man who once knows his relation to God, in his exterior life it will inevitably manifest itself. For the things of life are no less the creatures of the living God than we are; in their degree He loves them all, He is in them all, they declare Him and His glory by their very being. "The heavens show forth the glory of God: and the firmament declareth the work of His hands" (Ps. xviii, 1).

"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof: the world and all that dwelleth therein" (Ps. xxiii, 1). "The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made: His eternal power also and His divinity" (Rom. i, 20). In the things of earth, then, and through them, we may recognize, if we will, His handiwork, nay, we may recognize even Himself; for they, too, are His image, they have caught some shadow of His infinite beauty and lovableness, they, too, give back some reflection of that great central Sun which is Himself. Thus does the whole ordering of life come to be the design of Him who "ruleth from end to end mightily and disposeth all things sweetly." 

Though to us, oftentimes, His purpose is a mystery, and His ways, not as our ways, are past finding out, yet behind all that appears on the surface we know that His will and ordination, and His love, the prompting of that ordination, are for ever shining; even as the sun is ever shining behind the blackest cloud, indeed, as that cloud is itself no more than of the sun's own making, and is ultimately for good. Conformity to the will of God is no mute, compulsory, fatalistic submission; it is the glad acceptance of His guidance who knows us better than we know ourselves; it is the loyal service of a King to serve whom is man's highest honor. It is a return of love for love, yearning to repay, in what feeble manner it can, all that has been bestowed upon it; it is a fulfillment of that purpose for which we have been made, and therefore is the only means by which we can attain any true satisfaction even in this life.[13]

And if in the material things and events of life we find God and the will of God, how much more shall we find them in the men and women about us! They, too, even as ourselves, Jew and Gentile, bond and free, are made to His image and likeness, be they who they may, however unseemly to our purblind human eyes. Grace does not destroy nature, the supernatural does not in any way obliterate that which is truly natural; if, then, nature itself prompts us to love our fellow-man, the love of God urges us to love him even more. Love and reverence for God binds even closer the family tie, the bond between husband and wife, between parents and children.

"Husbands love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and delivered himself up for it.... So also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies" (Eph. v, 25-28).

Here is the Catholic ideal of the married state, no less than the love of Christ Himself for His beloved, which He proved by His death. And for the ideal of parenthood there is proposed no less than the fatherhood of God Himself; "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named" (Eph. iii, 14,15).

To the child too, is given the model of Him who for thirty years "was subject to" His parents (Luke ii, 51); they learn to obey as they obey Him from whom all authority descends. So is it, again, in our dealings with those we love. Friendship is not stifled by the example of Him who loved as Jesus Christ loved; St. John is our witness, St. Paul, built upon that example, is a burning furnace of pure love of friends. And with all our relations with man it is the same. For the sake of God, because He gave it to us, because we believe it to be His will even more than ours, we accept the lot, the duty, the profession, the fortune that is ours.

For His sake, because He cares for man, which is a more sure and all-embracing ground than any affection of our own, we too would care for them and cherish them; because Jesus Christ gave Himself for men, we too, in our little way, would give to men what we have and what we are. To do this in His way, to love our fellow-men because Christ loves them, for the reasons that He loves them, in the way that He loves them, is only to prove our love of God the more; and it is to prove it in a manner that draws us the nearer to Him, that draws from ourselves lives far more noble and heroic than human nature of itself can hope to produce.

"Let us therefore love God: because God hath first loved us. If any man say 'I love God,' and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not? And this commandment we have from God, that he who loveth God loveth also his brother" (I John iv, 19-21).

Thus does the love of God compel us to the love of man, to the love of each man and of all men together; members of one single body, which is the body of Jesus Christ, inspired by the same love, which is His love burning in us all. Thus, too, does the love of man take us back to the love of Him who is at once the source and the object of all love; we are His body, members of one another, so near to Him, and to one another to Him, that His spirit is our spirit, His truth is ours, infallible and safe, His life is one with our own.

This love, born of God in whom we have believed, and who is faithful, outpoured on everything that is, even as His own is outpoured, one, holy, universal, apostolic, is the ideal of the Catholic faith in practice. It is the fulfillment of the Catholic mind: "In this shall men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one for another." It is its word made flesh, the goal towards which the Catholic would aspire; and however much in actual effect he may fall short, still he hopes, in spite of failure, that he may yet draw more towards it "through the same Jesus Christ our Lord."

10 "He that shall lose his life for me, shall find it" (Matt. x, 39).
"For whosoever shall save his life shall lose it, and he that shall lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose himself and cast away himself" (Luke ix, 24, 25).
"He that loveth his life shall lose it: and he that hateth his life in this world keepeth it unto life eternal" (John 12, 25).

11 "The night is passed and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of this darkness, and put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day: not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh and its concupiscence" (Rom. xiii, 12-14).
"I say then: Walk in the spirit: and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the spirit: and the spirit against the flesh. For these are contrary one to another: so that you do not the things you would.... And they that are Christ's have crucified their flesh, with its vices and concupiscence. If we live by the spirit let us walk in the spirit" (Gal. v, 16-25)
"Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, to refrain yourselves from carnal desires which war against the soul" (I Pet. ii, 11).

12 For he that will love life and see good clays, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak no guile. Let him decline from evil and do good. Let him seek after peace and pursue it: because the eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and His ears are open unto their prayers; but the countenance of the Lord upon them that do evil things" (I Pet. iii, 10-12).

13 "I have run the way of thy commandments, when thou didst enlarge my heart. Set before me for a law the way of thy justifications O Lord, and I will always seek after it. Give me understanding and I will search thy law: and I will keep it with my whole heart. Lead me into the path of thy commandments: for this same I have desired."