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Inner Life of a Catholic

The Profession of Faith 

CHAPTER ONE

Life In God

2. Jesus Christ The Incarnate Word

The Eternal Son of God had become incarnate on earth in the Person of the Man Christ Jesus, that He might give us His all, that He might be one with us, and that, being made one with man, He might lift up mankind once more to the plane from which it had fallen, might restore to it the veritable sonship of God. This much we have seen to be at the root of the Christian faith; without it our faith differs in nothing from any other creed, founded on intellect and nature only. Jesus Christ, the God Man, truly God and truly Man, not merely a man endowed with special divine union, has lived upon this earth the life of man, has given, as man, to His Father, God in heaven, the perfect service of a perfect Man. He has taken on Himself the headship of the human race; He has shouldered its sorrows, even its sins and its wickednesses; He has carried those sins to the Father, and, humbled before Him, has acknowledged their guilt. Since man of himself could make no just atonement, He has offered to atone, as Man, in man's stead.

His offer has been accepted, and He has gone through with it, to the last bitter drop of the cup. Thus is Jesus Christ to us our Benefactor, our one Beloved; what we owe to Him is beyond reckoning, for all eternity we shall sing the praises of Him who has done so much for man.

The Catholic rejoices in dwelling on all that he owes to Jesus Christ, all that Jesus Christ has done for him and still does for him: "Ever living to make intercession for us." He sees in Him, not only the figure of history, but the ever living Mediator between the offended Father and himself: "yesterday, today and the same for ever." And He is the Mediator not by concession only but by right; for since He united in Himself the nature of God and the nature of man, He was born, as it were, for that office. His name signifies it, given to Him before He was born: "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, because he shall save his people from their sins." As the Head of the human race, "the first born of every creature," He has the right, and the prerogative, to act as its spokesman with the Father. But He would not be that and no more; He would not be merely a superman condescending to those beneath Him. He would be "made in all things like to man, without sin"; He would "bear our sorrows and carry our grief"; He would take our burdened upon His own shoulders that so He might speak to the Father as one of us.

Infinite sympathy and pity for mankind, love which was an everlasting love, intensified, if in our human effort to express the truth the word may be used, by experience of life in the flesh, all should be brought to bear upon Him, to urge Him to plead in our behalf.

Such is the meaning of that "emptying of Himself" of which St. Paul makes so much. On the other hand, as God, He is equal to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and has free access to both. As a " well-beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased," He can come before that Father; He can speak to Him, as with right of His own, and He can claim to be heard. Therefore, both from the side of man and from the side of God, He stands the one worthy and sufficient Mediator between them both. And this, to the Catholic, is the first significance of His life on earth. He has taken upon Himself the terrible load of man's temptations: "We have not a high priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities: but one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin" (Heb. iv, 15). He has offered Himself as a victim for man's yielding to them. He has fulfilled that oblation, utterly, completely, by the sacrifice of Himself on Calvary, by obedience unto death, by love unto death, than which there is no love greater, atoning in kind for man's disobedience, for his lack of love.

And the atoning value of this sacrifice has been rendered infinite; first, because of the infinite value of that Victim who, of His own free choice, has been offered; and secondly, because of the extreme to which He has gone in His surrender. For in truth He need not have gone so far. To satisfy all justice one single act of homage of Jesus Christ our Lord would have been atonement enough; had He perished as a child with the victims of Herod at Bethlehem, had He breathed but a breath and died as an infant in His mother's arms, in the sight of the Father this Son of His love would have done enough to redeem the world. But it would not have been enough to satisfy the craving of love divine, burning in the heart of Jesus Christ Himself. "Christ loved me and gave Himself for me." He would not merely make satisfaction; He would give till nothing else remained; He would "empty Himself," He would pour Himself out, flowing over.

To satisfy Himself He must give to the limit, "that where sin abounded grace might more abound . . . Through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. v, 20), and if "greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friend," then must He prove His love to be equal to that test, whether strict justice demanded it or not.

By this means has our Mediator, Jesus Christ, won for man, not forgiveness only and therefore redemption only; He has won for him all those other graces and powers by means of which he may be drawn to the closest union with God. In this light does St. Paul repeatedly sum up the life's work of his Lord and Savior:

"Blessed be God, the 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 predestined us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the promise of his will; with the praise and glory of his grace in which he hath graced us in his beloved Son. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins, according to the riches of his grace" (Eph. i, 3-7)

All this, in the first place, Jesus Christ our Lord has done, has won for mankind, in His capacity as Mediator, by His life and death. But He has done much more. To encourage weak man in his effort to rise to higher things, to give him confidence and strength, over and above that which he can have of himself, He has instituted and left for the use of men, what we know as the whole sacramental system. He has given His Father, as from man, His own life and blood: He has given to man, as from His Father, those free gifts of supernatural strength, those seven outward signs which themselves confer the graces they signify. That man may be able the better to meet every vital moment of life, that he may the more surely fulfill, in Jesus Christ, the duties belonging to each state, that, so far as may be, he may live on earth the very life of Jesus Christ Himself, He has given to him those channels of grace which shall be readily opened to him if and when-he wills it. The blood of Jesus Christ has been given to the Father; by the Father it is given back to man through the Sacraments.

The Sacraments are the veins of Christ's mystical body, dispensing that blood, and life with it, to all the members. Furthermore, if also man wills it, He has given to everyone the power, which of course of himself he has not, to make to the Father satisfaction of his own and to win, to deserve, merit for himself. Of himself, as we have seen, natural man can do nothing of worth in the order of the supernatural; but he "can do all things in him who strengthens him." Incorporated in Jesus Christ, in the real sense we shall later consider, man partakes of the life of Jesus, his own deeds are made one with those of his Master and Lord even as the deeds of my hand are mine. As the branch of the vine is impregnated with the life of the vine itself, as on that account it bears fruit which of itself it could never bear, even so are the deeds of the man who is grafted in Christ Jesus impregnated through and through with that divine charity of which Jesus Christ is the principle and source. With Him, and in Him, and through Him, they become in themselves deeds of the kind called satisfactory, that is pleasing to God in the order not of nature but of Christ, worthy of merit, fruitful in prayer and petition.

In the third place, Jesus Christ our Lord is our Mediator in the matter of religious obligation; that is of the duty which is owed by man to God. It is the duty, the function of the creature to give glory to its creator, even as the work of art gives glory to the artist whose mind has conceived it and whose hand has executed it. "The heavens show forth the glory of God: and the firmament declareth the work of his hands" (Ps. xviii, I). It is, further, the duty of the creature endowed with higher faculties, for instance, with understanding and free will, to give to God yet further glory, corresponding to the trust that his Creator has placed in him; even as the King's representative, his viceroy, entrusted with the King's insignia and powers, honors his King most by being most worthy of him wherever he may be. And as the painted picture, by giving glory to its maker, finds therein its own chief glory; as the written book is of value because of the author revealed in it, for its wisdom is no more than the reflection of the mind which has conceived it; as the King's vicegerent is then most honored when he is most worthy of his King; so does the creature find its own noblest glory in reflecting the glory of God its Creator, its truest use of reason in reflecting His mind, its worthiest use of life in His service.

Still, even taken at its best, how poor and dull a thing is the glory which the creature of itself can give to its Creator! How much more is that power of giving lessened when we consider the fallen state of man! But Jesus Christ comes to his rescue. Now, at last, united with Him, the creature can praise and honor its God, can render Him homage and service, with a tongue and a hand, a mind and a will, and love and a proof of that love, worthy of God Himself. In union with the heart of Jesus Christ the creature can utter its own heart; and God the Father finds its utterings worthy even that He should hear. Nay more, for Christ our Lord lives in His creature, communicates to it His own power of giving praise and reverence, and glory. When then it speaks its own words, it is no longer itself that speaks, but Christ its Lord that speaks in it.

Jesus Christ is not only our sovereign and sufficient Mediator, making all things new; He is also our great High Priest, the High Priest of the New Law. It must strike every reader of the Old Testament how the religion there expressed centered in the priest, and the priest's sacrifice. It must strike him no less how the prophecy of Him that was to come was that which spoke of Him as "a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech." When He had come and gone, there is no more emphatic analysis of the work He did than the Epistle to the Hebrews; and that Epistle is entirely concerned with the Priesthood of Jesus Christ our Lord. Or rather it goes further. Not only is He a Priest, He is the one and only Priest, in the fullest sense, of the New Dispensation, and His sacrifice stands alone. Whereas before His coming all sacrifices had been symbolic only, His sacrifice was more than a symbol; it was real, and it was no more nor less than the sacrifice of Himself. And since He could die only once, therefore the sacrifice He offered could be only one; one nevertheless which amply compensated for all that was required. In this light not only in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in many other places the work and significance of Jesus upon earth are summed up. "Christ also hath loved us, and hath delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness" (Eph. v, 2). "For there is one God, and one Mediator of God and man, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a redemption for all, a testimony in due times" (I Tim. ii, 5, 6).

"Christ, having come an high priest of-the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation; neither by the blood of goats and of calves, but by his own blood, entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of an heifer, being sprinkled, sanctify such as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered himself unspotted unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? And therefore he is the mediator of the New Testament: that by means of his death for the redemption of those transgressions which were under the former testament, they that are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance" (Heb. ix, 11-15). In other words, Jesus Christ our Lord, our Sovereign High Priest, made expiation for the sins of the world by the sacrifice of His own self, the shedding of His own blood.

He has established a new covenant between God and man; through Him who has sacrificed Himself man and God are brought together. Such is the meaning and significance of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ to the Catholic mind; this is the reason why the Catholic makes so much of the sign of the cross and the crucifix. The Passion to him is much more than a mere superhuman act of moral courage; it is more even than a superhuman act of love; it is far more than the greatest of human tragedies.

It was a solemn sacrifice in the truest sense, of a Victim made by Himself, in a free oblation. "He was offered because he willed it"—"by a merciful and faithful high priest"—"that he might be a propitiation for the sins of many" (Heb. viii, 17). The outpouring of the blood of that Victim has purified the world; it has washed out the handwriting that was against fallen man. On Calvary the work of the Atonement, the Redemption, was completed: "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world." On Calvary by a voluntary act of perfect obedience, and of perfect love, in a perfect Victim and by a perfect Priest, a perfect and complete sacrifice was accomplished. Justice was perfectly fulfilled, love was perfectly satisfied; for the first time on earth God was given perfect glory, and man was saved and redeemed.

What this means in practice to the Catholic, St. Bernard has expressed very beautifully. Thus he speaks in one of his sermons: "Jesus weeps, but not as others weep, at least not for the same reason. In others it is feeling that prevails, in Him it is love. They weep because of what they suffer, He weeps out of compassion, because of what others suffer or will suffer. They lament the heavy yoke that weighs upon the sons of Adam; He bewails the yoke which those same sons of Adam have imposed upon themselves, the evil they have done. Nay more; for the evil they have done He now sheds tears, soon He will shed His very blood. Oh, the hardness of my heart! Would that, O Lord, even as the Word was made flesh, so my heart might become a thing of flesh no less, instead of the stone that it is! This is what Thou hast promised by the prophet who has said: I will take away from you the heart of stone, and will give you a heart of flesh (Ezech. xi, 19).

"Brethren, the tears of Christ fill me with shame and grief. I was reveling without in the courtyard while in the secret of the King's chamber the sentence of death was being passed upon me. The King's only Son heard what was being said; He laid aside His crown, He clothed Himself in sackcloth, He sprinkled ashes upon His head, He laid bare His feet, He came forth weeping and lamenting that this poor little slave had been condemned to death. I look at Him as on a sudden He comes out; I am struck dumb with the strangeness of the sight; I ask the reason and I hear. What shall I do? Shall I go on with my sport, and so make sport of His tears? Surely I must be foolish and mad, since I will not follow Him, since along with Him I will not weep.

"This is the reason for my shame; but what of my grief and fear? . . . I know nothing of this awful truth; I thought myself safe and secure; and behold the Son of a Virgin is sent, the Son of God most high, and the order is given that He must be put to death, just that by the balsam of His precious blood my wounds may be healed! "The Son of God is all compassionate and weeps: shall man witness the Passion and laugh?"

It remained and it remains for each individual man that comes into the world, only that man should accept, should apply to himself the fruits of that sacrifice, the charity, the satisfaction, the merits of his divine Redeemer. That he may be able to do this to the fullest; that man may continue through all succeeding ages and in every place, to glorify God in a manner worthy of Him, and may have the fruits of this redemption applied to himself in a very torrent, Jesus Christ our Lord, the night before He suffered, instituted a sacrifice of memorial. In that sacrifice, under the species or appearance of bread and wine, the "priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech" continues to offer Himself as a victim for us all, and will continue so to offer Himself to the end of time.

So has Jesus Christ reconciled man with God. But He has also looked manward. It is impossible to suppose that He would come into the world and do all this, and then leave the world still to grope in its utter blackness. He is the light that is to come into the world, to enlighten every man that will believe in Him. Repeatedly He claimed this title for Himself; He was the light, and the light was the life of man. We may look back and see for ourselves how He has fulfilled His mission; since the coming of Christ to earth, wheresoever His influence has spread, life in the world has become a new thing.

We may look about us today, and see how that enlightenment still goes on. In His own time the pagan culture, with all its help from human reason, was played out; its philosophers no longer believed in it, its people had outlived it, superstition followed superstition; and men no longer knew, or very much cared, what they believed. The forms were kept, the exterior clothes of religion, for without them it seemed that civilization itself must collapse. But the forms no longer had a meaning, or if they had, it was often the opposite to that which they had at first contained. Even among the Jews there had been a falling away, a perversion of ideals, substitution of convention for truth. The one true God still remained their belief; but He was the God of Abraham only. The law had divorced itself from religion, had become an end in itself, and no longer a means, and there had followed a bondage which had become intolerable.

Jesus Christ came into the midst of all this. He rose above legalism; He spoke "as one having authority and not as the scribes"; and the authority He claimed was that of the direct Messenger of God Himself. He gave back to man that religion of the spirit for which human nature craved. The human race was of itself purblind, wandering "like sheep without a shepherd" as, left to itself, it had always wandered and it always will.

He gave to it a means of safe guidance, no less than His own infallibility; and this He established for all time in His mystical body, the living Church. Given that Christ is God, given that He is "yesterday, today and the same for ever," infallibility surely must follow as an easy consequence. It is not a mere question of history or development, for history and development are themselves fallible. As it is itself something more than human, so must it rest on a superhuman basis. It rests, not on history, but on Jesus Christ Himself, who cannot deceive or be deceived, who has promised to be with His own "all days, even to the consummation of the world," who lived, and died, and rose again "to give witness to the truth." Had He done less, then would He have done no more than groping man before Him; having done it, we recognize in His lasting infallibility the only becoming seal of the Word of God.

<Veritas Domini manet in aeternum>: "The truth of the Lord remaineth for ever." And what He taught answered in all respects to the eager question of the human soul. What was that human soul? What was life? Whence had it come, and why? What was its goal, its purpose? He told it, as one having authority, in the name of God Himself, that it had come from God and to God it must return; from God who would be to it a Father, who had created it for His very own, who had sanctified and blessed it beyond all believing, who, by His Providence, cared for it at every moment of its being. It had come from God who loved it with an everlasting love, who had adopted it and clothed it as a son of His own, who had breathed His own life into it that it might rise above itself, might reach beyond this world and this world's narrow horizon, might become a member of His own kingdom, His own household. What then was it in itself? Let it recognize its dignity, its worth with this new life in it; in comparison with it the whole world were a trifle. "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" It was no longer a mere creature, it was now an adopted member of the household of God Himself, a brother of the Word Incarnate, a member of His mystical body, a branch of Him the Vine, a child of His Church, founded on a rock that nothing should ever destroy, a treasured thing, even in the eyes of God Himself, seeing that it had been bought by the blood of His own Son, His own eternal, infinitely beloved Son Himself.

This was the human soul as Jesus Christ saw it, and as He described it to the soul itself. It was a picture beyond anything any philosophers before Him had conceived, or any seer had divined. Man looked up from his darkness to the mountains whence came this new light; and the light was a new life. For in the truth and vision that this light revealed life itself assumed a new meaning and significance. What was it to be? To what purpose? Its destiny was not the grave, but the house of God the Father, not the laying up of trifles that perish, but of a crown incorruptible. Its fullness of being was just the knowledge of the Father, the love of Him received and returned, the likeness to Him as the likeness of a child to a parent, growing daily in perfection, making of this sordid existence another thing, giving it a new meaning, a new ideal, a new goal, crowning it all with the certainty of another life, in which death would be swallowed up in victory. No wonder those who heard Him were "in admiration at his doctrine" (Matt. vii, 28). It was at once human and divine, perfectly responding to man's cravings, the answer to his questionings, the fulfillment of his noblest dreams, truth supernatural, yet never for a moment beyond the range of his everyday life.

"Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven."
"Blessed are ye that hunger now, for you shall be filled."
"Blessed are ye that weep now, for you shall laugh."
"Blessed shall you be when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Be glad in that day and rejoice, for behold your reward is great in heaven" (Luke vi, 20-25).

No wonder again that His enemies, when they had heard Him, came away saying: "Never did any man speak as this man hath spoken" (John vii, 46). For He spoke as one who saw and knew what no other man could conceive, and that in language which no other man has equaled, with a clearness, an emphasis, a conviction, a certainty, yes, with a mastery of word and phrase which was its own pledge of truth. He was the Way, the Truth, the Life. He claimed the title, and no man dared to deny Him. Alone of all men He could ask: "Which of you shall convict me of sin?" Alone He could say: "Come to me all ye that labor and are burdened and I will refresh you"; and when He so called there was no one who dared to say to Him that His claim was arrogant.

Lastly, for the litany must end, Jesus Christ was not one to confine Himself to words. Of all that He taught He was the perfect model; perhaps most of all in this, that He was a model whom every man that comes into the world can take for his own ideal. Of no other man, not the greatest, can this safely be said. We may see in others ideals of this quality or that, of this or that virtue; but even to the greatest, if we would be just, we must grant the margin that is common to all men. Jesus Christ stands alone. He needs no margin, His perfection is confined to no one virtue or quality; look for any limitation in Him and you will not find it. He became Man, He lived among men His human-divine life, the equal of man in all things, hidden away as most true greatness is hidden, obedient as all men must obey, showing in all that He did how closely united are prayer and action, how man might sanctify, and so make perfect, every condition of social life, how he might face, and ultimately bring to good, every trial and adversity, every failure and every success. He taught, by example and experience as well as by word, patience and endurance, and hope in suffering; He braved every wrong which He knew His followers would one day have to face. He endured agony of body and soul; He bore contempt from men, ignominy and shame, ingratitude, insolence, abandonment, treason, injustice, cruelty, deprivation, every insult that comes in the lot of man. No man should ever have to say that his doom was worse than the doom of Jesus Christ.

And yet, in spite of all, though the completed picture is that of "a worm and no man," in whom "there was no sightliness that we should be desirous of him" —yet is His example all attraction." "When I shall be lifted up, I will draw all things to myself." So He had said of Himself on one occasion, and indeed throughout all time His prophecy has been fulfilled. That sinless and undeserving Sufferer, enduring what He did, out of pure love for those who by right ought to have suffered in His place, has founded a new civilization; His sufferings have borne their fruit in this world as well as in the next. The sign of the cross has been seen in the sky; on Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, Christendom has been built. Through the ages He has drawn about Him countless men and women to whom suffering itself, on His account, has become a joy. For it has made them the more like to Him; it has made them one with Him; it has enabled them to "fill up what was wanting" in His own suffering; it has given them the means to prove their love for Him, even as He has used the same means to prove His love for them. It has enabled them to share His life, and to do, in Him and with Him, the work for God and man for which He Lived and for which He died. Nor is the procession ended. Jesus Christ and-His Cross will remain the ideal of millions to the end of time; in that more than all things lies man's salvation, even through the valley of this death.