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Inner Life of a Catholic

The Profession of Faith 

CHAPTER TWO

Life In Jesus Christ

I. The Mystical Body

Allusion has already been made to Jesus Christ our Lord as the Head of the human race, and to His mystical body, in which the Christian is incorporated; for a fuller understanding of the Christian life, and of the Christian Church as accepted by the Catholic, it is needful to examine the meaning of the term more closely. For, to the Catholic, it is much more than a metaphor, much more than a happy way of stating our relation with Jesus Christ our Lord; His own repeated words, and words of those, like St. Paul and St. Peter, who have been His best interpreters, have left us in no doubt that this incorporation is in some sense a real thing. The mystical body, of which Jesus Christ our Lord is the Head and His followers are the members, has a true and living and life-giving existence, the fruits of which are to be seen, as the Catholic believes, both within the soul of every Christian and in the world about him.

First, we may consider the words of Jesus Christ our Lord Himself. And here let it be said that when we study His words, in this place or elsewhere, it is not so much their literal interpretation that we are looking for, as the mind of Him who spoke them.

Taken by themselves they may well be given either too much meaning or too little; when they are brought together, when they are compared with one another, then we may hope they will give us the background of His mind, which is the chief matter that concerns us.

We may begin with that last scene on the side of Olivet, when the preaching of Jesus had definitely ceased, and when He concluded by foreshadowing to His Twelve the end of time and the final judgment. The just shall be separated from the wicked; they shall receive their reward: "Come ye blessed of my Father," because of their service to Him.

"I was hungry and you gave me to eat: I was thirsty and you gave me to drink: I was a stranger and you took me in: naked and you covered me: sick and you visited me: I was in prison and you came to me" (Matt. xxv, 35-36).

The just will wonder when they ever did these things; they will ask when they had ever seen Him in this plight, and He will answer: Amen I say to you, as often as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me" (Matt. xxv, 40).

They are moving words; they open out a new vista of the relations of man to man, both the sufferer and the benefactor, and put them on an entirely new plane. It may be said that they convey no more than that Christ our Lord takes an act of kindness done to the poor and suffering as if it were done to Himself, and if they are considered by themselves alone this may be true; yet even that meaning is a new thing, even that gives a new significance to charity. But if the reward He offers is also considered, if furthermore the words are taken in relation with others that He spoke at other times, we may easily see that His meaning is something more. The words are in the same category with those others, spoken one day to the Twelve apart: "He that heareth you, heareth me, and he that despiseth you despiseth me."

But nowhere is He more explicit than in His address at the Last Supper. There He had given His disciples what He had called "a new commandment."

"A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another" (John xiii, 34).

This is much more than has hitherto been said; it is much more than the general precept that we must love our neighbor as ourselves. It sets before us as a standard His own disinterested love, which has made Him annihilate Himself for the sake of His beloved.

To love my neighbor as I love myself is one thing; to love him even as Jesus Christ our Lord loves me is quite another; for He loves me far more than I love myself, He has done for me far more than I have done or could ever do. He asks of me a love for others which, of myself, is more than I can give; He asks me to love them with His love. But immediately on this, that He may show us where we have the means of doing the impossible, that He may put it within our reach, He makes the well-known comparison: "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.... As the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love" (John xv, 1-9).

In this way is it made possible for us to keep His "new commandment." We are to love our neighbor, not only as ourselves, but as Jesus Christ loves us; and that is rendered yet more sublime, we are to love our neighbor as the Father has loved the Son: "As the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you. As I have loved you, do you love one another." Impossible for us of ourselves, but possible if we "abide in Him," if we "abide in His love," if we love with His love and live with His life. In some mystic way, mystic but none the less real, or the words we have quoted have no meaning, we are united to Jesus Christ, to the Word Incarnate, to the Man-God, so that His life and His love are ours. As the engrafted branch becomes united to the vine and is made one with it, in such a way that the life of the one becomes the life of the other, so we are united with Him; with the result that, while of ourselves we can do nothing, now we are able to do that which is done by Jesus Christ our Lord Himself. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us . . . full of grace and truth . . . and of His fullness we have all received" (John i, 14, 16), not merely in a bestowal of a gift as from one friend to another> but by a communication of life itself. And if of life then also of the container of life, which is the body; if we are one life with Christ, then in some real sense we are one body with Christ also. We are incorporated in Him; we are members of that frame of which He is the Head; in a quite new but very real sense, in Him "we live and move and have our being", we live, now not we, but He lives in us; we bear the marks of Christ upon our body.

The same is again emphasized by Jesus our Lord in the solemn prayer with which the Last Supper concluded. He begins with the appeal that His own should be given eternal life; and by "His own" He lets it be seen that He means not only His Apostles, but also their disciples, and all Christians, all believers in Him, to the end of time. Thus does He pray to His Father:

"And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in me. That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me and I in thee: that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them: that they may be one, as we also are one. I in them, and thou in me: that they may be made perfect in one: and the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me" (John XVII, 20-23).

"As thou, Father, in me and I in thee."—"That they may be one in us."—"That they may be one as we also are one."—"That they may be made perfect in one."—That this perfect union may prove to the world "that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me."—This is more than metaphor; it is far more than the mere extravagant language of love; it rings too true, and is too repeatedly emphatic, to be the invention of any human writer. It is a positive teaching, repeated that it may not be mistaken, expressed as the main idea in the mind and heart of Jesus Christ our Lord at the most crucial moment of His life; and the oneness with His own of which He speaks is daringly compared with the oneness which exists between God the Father and God the Son: "as thou and I are one." Two Persons, yet one Godhead; two Persons, Jesus Christ and myself, yet one life, one body, even the body of Jesus Christ Himself. We can all say it, and claim the privilege; every true believer in, and faithful follower of, Christ can claim it; therefore in Him, made members of His one same body, equal branches of one same vine, receiving from Him each the same life, we are members one of another.

We are loved by the Father even as Jesus Christ is loved, for we are His body; we are of the family of the Father, for we are coheirs with Christ; we are raised to a dignity which gives a new meaning to life, a new significance to all creation. We are ennobled, and by that ennobling are compelled to endeavor to live up to the honor, to make ourselves more noble; we understand better now why, early in His life, Jesus Christ our Lord put before us that strange-sounding and seemingly impossible standard: "Be ye therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. v, 48).

Thus is the doctrine of the mystical but no less real union of the Christian with Christ an integral part of Christ's own teaching. St. Paul takes hold of the same, and makes it the basis of all he has to say; it is to him the root meaning of the term Christianity, and of the Christian Church. That Church, to him, was less an organization, more an organism; not an institution, but a living thing; and the older he grew in the ways of God and the experience of men the more he insisted on this concept. It is worthy of note that the light was first given to him at the moment of his conversion; three times the story is told, and in each narration, the same is emphasized. Saul was struck to the ground. The voice he heard did not say: "Why persecutest thou my people?" but, "Why persecutest thou me?" And when Saul asked who it was that. spoke, he received the answer: "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest" (Acts, ix, 5).

Saul never forgot the lesson of those words. He would seem to have made them the chief subject for his life's meditation, so that their significance, and their consequences, grew upon him more and more. To be a Christian was to be one with Christ; to be a member of the Church was to be a member of that living body of which Christ was the Head: when we have said that, we have said almost all that need be said to explain the soul of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. Thus he writes to his wavering Corinthians, who had not yet grasped the need for unity among themselves: "As the body is one and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, are yet 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 have we all been made to drink. For the body also is not one but many.... Now you are the body of Christ, and members of members" (I Cor. Xii, 12-27).

Even more explicit is his mind much later, in the Epistle to the Ephesians. And here it is well to remember the difference between the circumstances of these two letters. In the Epistle to the Corinthians he was dealing with still but partially formed Christians, and he had himself still some way to go before he found the words that would express the truth as he knew it. Here, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, he is dealing with those whom he had known from the earliest days of his apostolate. He has no misgivings about their steadfastness; he is sure he can give them the best he has to give, and they will not misunderstand; the whole Epistle rings with the emotion of a deeply affectionate heart, striving to give of its very best to those it loves dearly. Moreover, in the interval, Paul himself has spent long years in prison. He has had many hours to meditate upon the vision he has seen, to watch the growth of that living thing as it has spread about the Roman Empire, not by any organization, not by system, but like a tree by its own internal life; and he has found at last the words by which his thoughts may be sufficiently expressed. Hence, when he writes, it is no longer only as a glorious bond of union that he describes the mystical body; that is not enough. It is as a consummation, a goal, attainable even in this world, giving us an ideal, a standard, the attainment of which is its own reward, is the perfect man. Thus he writes:

"I, therefore, a prisoner in the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation in which-you are called: 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. iv, 1-6).

This is his ideal; how is it to be secured? The rest of the Epistle makes it clear. It is by "the building up the body of Christ; until we all meet in the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ: that henceforth we be no more children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine . . . but doing the truth in charity, we may in all things grow up in him who is the Head, even Christ; from whom the whole body, being compacted and fitly joined together, by what every joint supplieth, according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in charity" (Eph. iv, 12-16).

Thus does St. Paul develop what he has mentioned in an earlier chapter when he has said of Jesus Christ his Lord: "He hath subjected all things under his feet, and hath made him head over all the Church, which is his body, and the fullness of him who is filled all in all" (Eph. i, 22-23).

It is explicit enough. To St. Paul, and to the whole Church that was one with him, besides the historic Christ who has lived His thirty-three years on this earth and has died, there is also a mystic Christ, the same as the former and yet distinct—how feeble are human words and ideas when we would express the supernatural!—who continues in the world, living among and in men, a Christ with a head, a soul, and members, making together one living spiritual body.

"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 predestined us unto the adoption of children, through Jesus Christ unto 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).