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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12624 ***
+
+OUR LADY SAINT MARY
+
+BY
+
+J. G. H. BARRY, D.D.
+
+1922
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+     Would that it might happen to me that I should be called a
+     fool by the unbelieving, in that I have believed such
+     things as these.
+
+     --Origen.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE MEMBERS
+
+OF THE
+
+LEAGUE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN
+
+THIS VOLUME IS HOPEFULLY
+
+DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The two papers in Part I have been published in the American Church
+Magazine. Of Part II Chapter 1 has been published separately; Chapters
+2, 4, 7, 9 and 12 have been published in the Holy Cross Magazine. The
+rest of the volume is here published for the first time.
+
+I would emphasise the fact that the contents of Part II is a series of
+sermons which were prepared as such, and were preached in the Church of
+S. Mary the Virgin, New York City, for the most part in the Winter of
+1921-22. In preparing them for publication in this volume no attempt has
+been made to alter their sermon character. It is not a theological
+treatise on the Blessed Virgin that I have attempted, but a devotional
+presentation of her life.
+
+I have added to the text as originally prepared certain prayers and
+poems. The object of the selection of the prayers, almost exclusively
+from the Liturgies of the Catholic Church, is to illustrate the
+prevalence of the address of devotion to our Lady throughout
+Christendom. The poems are selected with much the same thought, and have
+been mostly gathered from mediaeval sources, and so far as possible,
+from British. I have no special knowledge of devotional poetry, but
+have selected such poems as I have from time to time copied into my note
+books. This fact has made it impossible for me to give credit for them
+to the extent that I should have liked. I trust that any one who is
+entitled to credit will accept this apology.
+
+Much of the difficulty felt by Anglicans at expressions commonly found
+in prayers and hymns addressed to our Lady is due to prevalent
+unfamiliarity with the devotional language of the Catholic Church
+throughout the ages. Those whose background of thought is the theology
+of the Catholic Church, not in any one period, but in the whole extent
+of its life, will have no difficulty in such language because the
+limitations which are implied in it will be clear to them. To others, I
+can only say that it is fair to assume that the great saints of the
+Church of God in all times and in all places did not habitually use
+language which was idolatrous, and our limitations are much more likely
+to be at fault than their meaning. It is not true in any degree that the
+teaching of Catholics as to the place of the Virgin intrudes on the
+prerogative of our Lord. It is, as matter of fact Catholics, and not
+those who oppose the Catholic Religion who are upholding that
+prerogative. This has been excellently expressed by a modern French
+theologian. "We are established in the friendship of God, in the divine
+adoption, in the heavenly inheritance, solely in virtue of the covenent
+by which our souls are bound to the Son of God, and by which the goods,
+the merits, and the rights of the Son of God are communicated to our
+souls, as in the natural order, the property of the husband becomes the
+property of the wife. Surely, one can say nothing more than we say here,
+and assuredly the sects opposed to the Church have never said more:
+indeed, they are far to-day from saying so much to maintain intact this
+truth, that Jesus Christ is our sole Redeemer, and to give that truth
+the entire extent that belongs to it."
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART I.
+
+CHAPTER I. OF LOYALTY. II. THE MEANING OF WORSHIP.
+
+PART II.
+
+I. MARY OF NAZARETH. II. THE ANNUNCIATION I. III. THE ANNUNCIATION II.
+IV. THE VISITATION I. V. THE VISITATION II. VI. S. JOSEPH. VII. THE
+NATIVITY. VIII. THE MAGI. IX. THE PRESENTATION. X. EGYPT. XI. NAZARETH.
+XII. THE TEMPLE. XIII. CANA I. XIV. CANA II. XV. WHO IS MY MOTHER? XVI.
+HOLY WEEK I. XVII. HOLY WEEK II. XVIII. THE CRUCIFIXION. XIX. THE
+DESCENT AND BURIAL. XX. THE RESURRECTION. XXI. THE FORTY DAYS. XXII. THE
+ASCENSION. XXIII. THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. XXIV. THE HOME OF S.
+JOHN. XXV. THE ASSUMPTION. XXVI. THE CORONATION.
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+OF LOYALTY
+
+O God, who causes us to rejoice in recalling the joys of the
+conception, the nativity, the annunciation, the visitation, the
+purification, and the assumption of the blessed and glorious virgin
+Mary; grant to us so worthily to devote ourselves to her praise and
+service, that we may be conscious of her presence and assistance in all
+our necessities and straits, and especially in the hour of death, and
+that after death we may be found worthy, through her and in her, to
+rejoice in heaven with thee. Through &c.
+
+SARUM MISSAL.
+
+The dream of the Middle Ages was of one Christian society of which the
+Church should be the embodiment of the spiritual, and the State of the
+temporal interests. As there is one humanity united to God in Incarnate
+God, all its interests should be capable of unification in institutions
+which should be based on that which is essential in humanity, and not on
+that which is accidental: men should be united because they are human
+and Christian, and not divided because of diversity of blood or color or
+language. The dream proved impossible of realization, and the struggle
+for human unity went to pieces on the rocks of the rapidly developing
+nationalism of the later Middle Ages.
+
+The Reformation was the triumph of nationalism and the defeat of
+Catholic idealism. It resulted in a shattered Christendom in which the
+interests of local and homogeneous groups became supreme over the purely
+human interests. In state and Church alike patriotism has tended more
+and more to become dominant over the interests that are supralocal and
+universal. The last few years have seen an intensification of localism.
+We have seen bitter scorn heaped on the few who have labored for
+internationalism in thought and feeling. We have seen the attempt of
+labor at internationalism utterly break down under the pressure of
+patriotic motive. We are finding that the same concentration on
+immediate and local interests is an insuperable bar to the realization
+of an ideal of internationalism which would effectively deal with
+questions arising between nations and put an end to war. The Church
+failed to establish a spiritual internationalism; the indications are
+that it will be long before humanitarian idealists will be able to
+effect a union among nations still infected with patriotic motive, such
+as shall bring about a subordination of local and immediate interests to
+the interests of humanity as such. That the general interests are also
+in the end the local interests is still far from the vision of
+the patriot.
+
+What the growth of nationalities with its consequent rise of
+international jealousies and hostilities has effected in civil society,
+has been brought about in matters spiritual by the divisions of
+Christendom. The various bodies into which Christendom has been split up
+are infected with the same sort of localism as infects the state. They
+dwell with pride upon their own peculiarities, and treat with suspicion
+if not with contempt the peculiarities of other bodies. The effort to
+induce the members of any body of Christians to appreciate what belongs
+to others, or to try to construe Christianity in terms of a true
+Catholicity, is almost hopeless. All attempts at the restoration of the
+visible unity of the Church have been wrecked, and seem destined for
+long to be wrecked, on the rocks of local pride and local interests. The
+motives which in secular affairs lead a man to put, not only his body
+and his goods, as he ought, at the disposal of his country; but also
+induce him to surrender his mind to the prevailing party and shout, "My
+country, right or wrong," in matters ecclesiastical lead him to cry, "My
+Church, right or wrong." It is only by transcending this localism that
+we can hope for progress in Church or State--can hope to conquer the
+wars and fightings among our members that make peace impossible.
+
+This infection of localism is not peculiar to any body of Christians.
+The Oriental Churches have been largely state-bound for centuries, and,
+in addition, have been mentally immobile. The Roman Church with its
+claims to exclusive ownership of the Christian Religion has lost the
+vision it once had and subordinated the Catholic interests of the Church
+to the local interests of the Papacy. The fragments of Protestantism are
+too small any longer to claim the universalism claimed by the East and
+West, and perforce acknowledge their partial character; but it is only
+to indulge in a more acute patriotism, and assertion of rights of
+division, and the supremacy of the local over the general. The Churches
+of the Anglican Rite are less bound, perhaps, than others. They are
+restless under the limitations of localism and are haunted by a vision
+of an unrealized Catholicity; but they are torn by internal divisions
+and find their attempts at movement in any direction thwarted by the
+pull of opposing parties.
+
+One result of the mental attitude generated by the conditions indicated
+above is that any attempt to deal with subjects other than those which
+are authorized because they are customary, or tolerated because they
+are familiar, is liable to be greeted with cries of reproach and
+accusations of disloyalty. Such and such teachings we are told, without
+much effort at proof, are contrary to the teachings of the Anglican
+Church, or are not in harmony with that teaching, or are illegitimate
+attempts to bring in doctrines or practices which were definitely
+rejected by our fathers at the Reformation. Those who are implicated in
+such attempts are told that they are disturbers of the peace of the
+Church and are invited to go elsewhere.
+
+As one who is not guiltless of such attempts, and as one who is becoming
+accustomed to be charged with novelty in teaching, and disloyalty in
+practice to that which is undoubtedly and historically Anglican, I have
+been compelled to ask myself, "What is loyalty to the Anglican Church?
+Is there, in fact, some peculiar and limited form of Christianity to
+which I owe allegiance?" I had got accustomed to think of myself as a
+Catholic Christian whose lot was cast in a certain province of the
+Catholic Church which was administratively separated from other parts of
+that Church. This I felt--this separation--to be unfortunate; but I was
+not responsible for it, and would be glad to do anything that I could to
+end it. I had not thought that this administrative separation from other
+provinces of the Catholic Church meant that I was pledged to a different
+religion; I had not thought of there being an Anglican Religion. I have
+all my life, in intention and as far as I know, accepted the whole
+Catholic Faith of which it is said in a Creed accepted by the Anglican
+Church that "except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved." I do
+not intend to believe any other Faith than that, and I intend to believe
+all of that; and I have not thought of myself as other than a loyal
+Anglican in so doing.
+
+But criticism has led me to go back over the whole question and ask
+whether there is any indication anywhere in the approved documents of
+the Anglican Communion of an intention at all to depart from the Faith
+of Christendom as it was held by the whole Catholic Church, East and
+West, at the time when an administrative separation from Rome was
+effected. Was a new faith at any time introduced? Has there at any time
+been any official action of the Anglican Church to limit my acceptance
+of the historic Faith? That many Anglican writers have denied many
+articles of the Catholic Faith I of course knew to be true. That some
+Anglican writer could be found who had denied every article of the
+Catholic Faith I thought quite possible. But I was not interested in the
+beliefs or practices of individuals. I am not at all interested in what
+opinions may or may not have been held by Cranmer at various stages of
+his career, or what opinions may be unearthed from the writings of Bale
+by experts in immoral literature; I am interested solely in the official
+utterances of the Anglican Communion.
+
+In following out this line of investigation I have spent many weeks in
+the reading of many dreary documents: but fortunately documents are not
+important in proportion to the element of excitement they contain. I
+have read the documents contained in the collection of Gee and Hardy
+entitled "Documents Illustrative of English Church History." I have read
+the "Formularies of Faith Put Forth by Authority during the Reign of
+Henry VIII." I have read Cardwell's "Synodalia." And I have also read
+"Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be read in Churches at the
+time of Queen Elizabeth of Famous Memory." I doubt whether any other
+extant human being has read them.
+
+And the upshot of the whole matter is that in none of these documents
+have I found any expressed intention to depart from the Faith of the
+Catholic Church of the past as that Faith had been set forth by
+authority. No doubt in the Homilies there are things said which cannot
+be reconciled with the Faith of Catholic Christendom. But the Homilies
+are of no binding authority, and I have included them in my
+investigation only because I wanted their point of view. That is
+harmonious with the rest of the authoritative documents--the intention
+is to hold the Faith: unfortunately the knowledge of some of the writers
+was not as pure as their intention.
+
+The point that I am concerned with is this: there is no intention
+anywhere shown in the authoritative documents of the Anglican Church to
+effect a change in religion, or to break with the religion which had
+been from the beginning taught and practised in England. The Reformation
+did not mean the introduction of a new religion, but was simply a
+declaration of governmental independence. I will quote somewhat at
+length from the documents for the purpose of showing that there is no
+indication of an intention to set up a new Church.
+
+One or two quotations from pre-reformation documents will make clear the
+customary phraseology in England during the Middle Ages. King John's
+Ecclesiastical Charter of 1214 uses the terms "Church of England" and
+"English Church." The Magna Charta of 1215 grants that the "Church of
+England shall be free and have her rights intact, and her liberties
+uninjured." The Articuli Cleri of 1316 speak of the "English Church."
+The Second Statute of Provisors of 1390 uses the title "The Holy Church
+of England." "The English Church" is the form used in the Act "De
+Hæretico Comburendo" of 1401, as it is also in "the Remonstrance against
+the Legatine Powers of Cardinal Beaufort" of 1428[1].
+
+[Footnote 1: Documents in Gee & Hardy.]
+
+These quotations will suffice to show the customary way of speaking of
+the Church in England. If this customary way of speaking went on during
+and after the Reformation the inference is that there had no change
+taken place in the way of men's thinking about the Church; that they
+were unconscious of having created a new or a different Church. We know
+that the Protestant bodies on the Continent and the later Protestant
+bodies in England did change their way of thinking about the Church from
+that of their fathers and consequently their way of speaking of it. But
+the formal documents of the Church of England show no change. "The
+Answer of the Ordinaries" of 1532 appeals as authoritative to the
+"determination of Scripture and Holy Church," and to the determination
+of "Christ's Catholic Church." The "Conditional Restraint of Annates" of
+1532 protests that the English "as well spiritual as temporal, be as
+obedient, devout, catholic, and humble children of God and Holy Church,
+as any people be within any realm christened." In the Act for "The
+Restraint of Appeals" of 1533, which is the act embodying the legal
+principle of the English Reformation, it is the "English Church" which
+acts. The statement in the "Act Forbidding Papal Dispensations and the
+Payment of Peter's Pence" of 1534 is entirely explicit as to the
+intention of the English authorities. It declares that nothing in this
+Act "shall be hereafter interpreted or expounded that your grace, your
+nobles and subjects intend, by the same, to decline or vary from the
+congregation of Christ's Church in any things concerning the very
+articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom[2]."
+
+[Footnote 2: Gee & Hardy.]
+
+These documents date from the reign of Henry VIII. In the same reign
+another series of authoritative documents was put forth which contains
+the same teaching as to the Church. "The Institution of a Christian Man"
+set forth in 1536, in the article on the Church has this: "I believe
+assuredly--that there is and hath been from the beginning of the world,
+and so shall endure and continue forever, one certain number, society,
+communion, or company of the elect and faithful people of God.... And I
+believe assuredly that this congregation ... is, in very deed the city
+of heavenly Jerusalem ... the holy catholic church, the temple or
+habitacle of God, the pure and undefiled espouse of Christ, the very
+mystical body of Christ," "The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any
+Christian Man" of 1543 in treating of the faith declares that "all those
+things which were taught by the apostles, and have been by an whole
+universal consent of the church of Christ ever sith that time taught
+continually, ought to be received, accepted, and kept, as a perfect
+doctrine apostolic." It is further taught in the same document in the
+eighth article, that on "The Holy Catholic Church," that the Church is
+"catholic, that is to say, not limited to any one place or region of the
+world, but is in every place universally through the world where it
+pleaseth God to call people to him in the profession of Christ's name
+and faith, be it in Europe, Africa, or Asia. And all these churches in
+divers countries severally called, although for the knowledge of the one
+from the other among them they have divers additions of names, and for
+their most necessary government, as they be distinct in places, so they
+have distinct ministers and divers heads in earth, governors and rulers,
+yet be all these holy churches but one holy church catholic, invited and
+called by one God the Father to enjoy the benefit of redemption wrought
+by our Lord and Saviour Jesu Christ, and governed by one Holy Spirit,
+which teacheth this foresaid one truth of God's holy word in one faith
+and baptism[3]."
+
+[Footnote 3: Formularies of Faith in the Reign of Henry VIII.]
+
+With the accession of Edward VI. the Protestant element in the
+Reformation gained increased influence. Our question is, Did it succeed
+in imprinting a new theory of the nature and authority of the Church on
+the formal and authoritative utterances of the Church in England? The
+first "Act of Uniformity" of 1549 contains the now familiar appeal to
+Scripture and to the primitive Church, and the Book set forth is called
+"The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and
+other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, after the Use of the Church of
+England." The "Second Act of Uniformity," 1552, uses the same language
+about the Church of England and the primitive Church. Passing on to the
+reign of Elizabeth, in the "Injunctions" of 1559 there is set forth "a
+form of bidding the prayers," which begins: "Ye shall pray for Christ's
+Holy Catholic Church, that is for the whole congregation of Christian
+people dispersed throughout the whole world, and especially for the
+Church of England and Ireland." In the "Act of Supremacy" of the same
+year it is provided that an opinion shall "be ordered, or adjudged to be
+heresy, by the authority of the canonical Scriptures, or by the first
+four general Councils, or any of them, or by any other general Council
+wherein the same was declared heresy by the express and plain words of
+the said canonical Scriptures." This test of doctrine is repeated in
+Canon VI of the Canons of 1571. "Preachers shall ... see to it that
+they teach nothing in the way of a sermon ... save what is agreeable to
+the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic fathers
+and ancient bishops have collected from this self-same doctrine[4]."
+
+[Footnote 4: Documents in Gee & Hardy.]
+
+It is hardly worth while to spend much time on the Homilies. I will
+simply note that they continue the appeal to the primitive Church which
+is asserted to have been holy, godly, pure and uncorrupt; and to the
+"old holy fathers and most ancient learned doctors" which are quoted as
+authoritative against later innovations. They still speak of the Church
+of England as continuous with the past. I do not find that they treat
+the contemporary reformers as of authority or quote them as against the
+traditional teaching of the Church.
+
+We will go on to one more stage, that is, to the Canons of 1604 which
+represent the mind of the Church of England at the time of the accession
+of James I. They declare that "whosoever shall hereafter affirm, That
+the Church of England, by law established under the King's majesty, is
+not a true and an apostolical church, teaching and maintaining the
+doctrine of the apostles; let him be excommunicated." (III) They appeal
+to the "Ancient fathers of the Church, led by the example of the
+apostles." (XXXI) In treating of the use of the sign of the Cross in
+baptism they assert that its use follows the "rules of Scripture and the
+practice of the primitive Church." And further, "This use of the sign of
+the Cross in baptism was held in the primitive Church, as well by the
+Greeks as the Latins, with one consent and great applause." And replying
+to the argument from abuse the canon goes on: "But the abuse of a thing
+doth not take away the lawful use of it. Nay, so far was it from the
+purpose of the Church of England to forsake and reject the Churches of
+Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any such like Churches, in all things
+that they held and practised, that, as the Apology of the Church of
+England confesseth, it doth with reverence retain those ceremonies,
+which do neither endanger the Church of God, nor offend the minds of
+sober men." (XXX)
+
+It appears clear from a study of the passages quoted and of many others
+of kindred nature that the Anglican Church did not start out upon its
+separate career with any intention of becoming a sect; it did not
+complain of the corruption of the existing religion and declare its
+purpose to show to the world what true and pure religion is. It did not
+put forward as the basis of its action the existing corruption of
+doctrine, but the corruption of administration. Its claim was a claim to
+manage its own local affairs, and was put into execution when the
+Convocation of Canterbury voted in the negative on the question
+submitted to it, viz., "Whether the Roman pontiff has any greater
+jurisdiction bestowed on him by God in Holy Scripture in this realm of
+England, than any other foreign bishop?"
+
+The attitude indicated is one that has been characteristic of the
+Anglican Church ever since. It has always been restless in the presence
+of a divided Christendom; the sin of the broken unity has always haunted
+it. It never has taken the smug attitude of sectarianism, a placid
+self-satisfaction with its own perfection. It has felt the constant pull
+of the Catholic ideal and has been inspired by it to make effort after
+effort for the union of Christendom. It has never lost the sense that it
+was in itself not complete but a part of a greater whole. It has never
+seen in the existing shattered state of the Christian Church anything
+but the evidences of sin. Its appeal has constantly been, not to its own
+sufficiency for the determination of all questions, but to the
+Scriptures as interpreted by the undivided Church. If it has at times
+been prone to overstress the authority of some ideal and undefined
+primitive Church, it was because it thought that there and there only
+could the Catholic Church be found speaking in its ideal unity.
+
+This the attitude of the Anglican Church of the past is its attitude
+to-day. The Lambeth Conference of 1920 gave voice to it:
+
+     "The Conference urges on every branch of the Anglican
+     Communion that it should prepare its members for taking their
+     part in the universal fellowship of the re-united Church, by
+     setting before them the loyalty which they owe to the
+     universal Church, and the charity and understanding which are
+     required of the members of so inclusive a society."
+
+Commenting upon this utterance of the Lambeth Conference the three
+bishops who are the joint authors of "Lambeth and Reunion" say:
+
+     The bishops at Lambeth "beg for loyalty to the universal
+     Church. The doctrinal standards of the undivided Church must
+     not be ignored. Nor must modern developments, consistent with
+     the past, be ruled out merely because they are modern. Men
+     must hold strongly what they have received; but they must
+     forsake the policy of denying one another's positive
+     presentment of truth. That only must be forbidden which the
+     universal fellowship cannot conceivably accept within any one
+     of its groups[5]."
+
+[Footnote 5: Lambeth and Rennion. By the bishops of Peterborough,
+Zanzibar and Hereford.]
+
+The bishops just quoted add: "We rejoice indeed at this new mind of the
+Lambeth Conference." Whether it is a new mind in Lambeth Conferences we
+need not consider; it is certainly no new mind in the Anglican Church,
+but is precisely its characteristic attitude of not claiming perfection
+or finality for itself, but of looking beyond itself to Catholic
+Christendom, and longing for the time when reunion of the churches which
+now make up its "broken unity" will enable it to speak with the same
+voice of authority with which it did in its primitive and
+undivided state.
+
+In attempting to decide what as a priest of the Anglican Communion one
+may or may not teach or practice, one is bound to have regard, not to
+what is asserted by anyone, even by any bishop, to be "disloyal" or
+"unanglican," but to the principles expressed or implied in the
+utterances of the Church itself. From those utterances as I have
+reviewed them, it appears to me that a number of general principles may
+be deduced for the guidance of conduct.
+
+I. The Churches of the Anglican Communion are bound by the entire body
+of Catholic dogma formulated and accepted universally in the
+pre-Reformation Church.
+
+The Anglican documents, to be sure, speak constantly of the "Primitive
+Church," but they do not anywhere define what they mean by that; and
+frequently, by their appeal to the "undivided Church," and to "general
+Councils," they seem to include in their undefined term much more than
+is commonly understood. In any case, the Church has no special authority
+because it is _primitive_: its authority results not from its being
+primitive but from its being _Church_. The only point of the Anglican
+appeal would be the universal acceptance of a given doctrine. Such
+universal acceptance must be taken as proof of its primitiveness, that
+is, of its being contained, explicitly or implicitly, in the original
+deposit of faith. The Anglican Church was content with the summing up of
+this Faith in the Three Creeds, and attempted to formulate no new Greed
+of her own--the XXXIX Articles are not strictly a Creed: they are not
+articles of Faith but of Religion. But the very history of the Creeds
+implies that they are not final, that is, complete, but that they are a
+summing up of the Catholic Religion to date. There are truths which the
+circumstances of the Church in the Conciliar period had not brought into
+prominence which later events compelled the Church to express its mind
+upon. Such a truth is that of the Real Presence of our Lord in the
+Sacrament of the Altar. This truth had attained explicit acceptance
+throughout the Church before the Reformation, sufficiently witnessed by
+the liturgies in use. It is also embodied in the Anglican liturgy. If
+anyone thinks the language of the Anglican Church doubtful on this
+point, the principles enunciated by the Church compel interpretation in
+accord with the mind of the universal Church. There are other truths
+which are binding on us on the same basis of universal consent, but I am
+not seeking to apply the principle in every case but only to
+illustrate it.
+
+II. There is another class of truths or doctrines widely held in
+Christendom, which yet cannot be classed as dogmas of the faith. Such a
+doctrine is that of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin
+Mary. This doctrine has been made of faith in the Roman communion, but
+has not yet ecumenical acceptance, and therefore may be doubted without
+sin by members of the Greek or Anglican Churches. What we need to avoid,
+as the Lambeth Conference has reminded us, is a purely insular and
+provincial attitude in relation to doctrines which have not been
+formally set forth by Anglican authority. The Anglican Church has tried
+its best to impress upon us that there is no such thing as an Anglican
+Religion; there is but one Religion--the Religion of God's Catholic
+Church. What we are to seek to know is not the mind "of the Anglican
+reformers," or the mind "of the Caroline divines," but the mind of the
+Catholic Church. Wherever we shall find that mind expressed, though in
+terms unfamiliar to us, we are bound to treat it with respect. We are to
+seek to know the truth that the truth may make us free--from all pride
+and prejudice, as well as from heresy and blasphemy. And we shall best
+come at this mind in its widest meaning by the study of the writings of
+the saints of all ages and of all parts of the Church. It may fairly be
+inferred that those who have attained great perfection in the Catholic
+life have achieved it by the application of Catholic truth to every
+day living.
+
+III. The members of the Anglican Church have the same freedom as other
+Catholics in the matter of theological speculation. What was done at the
+Reformation was not final in the sense that we are never to believe or
+to teach anything that is not found in Anglican formularies. The fact
+that a certain doctrine like that of the Invocation of Saints was
+omitted from the Anglican formularies is not fatal to its practice. The
+grounds of its omission in practice may or may not have been well
+judged. But the theory of it was never denied, it is indeed contained in
+the Creeds themselves, and change in circumstances may justify its
+revival in practice.
+
+Moreover, the theology of the Christian Church is not a body of static
+doctrine, but is the expression of the ceaseless meditation of the
+saints upon the truths revealed to us by God. To suppose that any age
+whatever has exhausted the meaning of the Revealed Truth would be
+absurd. It is inexhaustible. So long as the mind of the Church is
+pondering it, it brings out from it things old and new. Among ourselves
+it is perhaps at present more desirable that we should bring out the old
+things than seek to find the new. The historic circumstances of the
+Anglican Church have been such as to lead to the practical disuse of
+much that is of great spiritual value in the treasury of the Church. It
+is largely in the attempt to bring into use the riches that have been
+abandoned that some are to-day incurring the charge of disloyalty--a
+charge that they are not careful to answer, if they may be permitted to
+minister to a larger spiritual life in the Church they love.
+
+At the same time the development of doctrine is a real mode of
+enrichment of the theology of the Church. The devout mind pondering
+divine truth will ever penetrate deeper into its meaning. Thus it was
+that in the course of centuries the Church arrived at a complete
+statement of the doctrine of our Lord's person. And what it could
+rightly do in the supreme case, it surely can rightly do in cases of
+lesser moment. We need not be afraid of this movement of thought, for
+the mind of the united Church may be trusted not to sanction any error.
+Our Lord has promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail against
+the Church. We can trust Him to fulfil His promise. He has also promised
+us that the Holy Spirit shall lead us into all the truth. Can He trust
+us not to thwart the work of the Spirit by a provincial attitude as of
+those who already in the utterances of the Anglican formularies claim to
+possess all truth?
+
+IV. There is one other inference to be drawn from what I conceive to be
+the Anglican position, and that is one that relates, not primarily to
+doctrine but to practice. For many years now the Anglican Churches have
+been greatly disturbed by varieties of practice, though it is difficult
+to see why varieties of practice should be in themselves disturbing.
+But without going into that matter, which would carry us far afield, I
+would simply state that the principle already laid down in regard to
+doctrine seems to apply here in the matter of practice: that is, the
+Anglican has the right to use any practice which has not been explicitly
+forbidden by the authorities of the local Church. The Churches of the
+Anglican Communion have never set forth any competent guide for the
+conduct of worship, and by refraining from so doing have left the matter
+in the hands of those who have to conduct services and provide for the
+spiritual needs of those over whom they have been given cure of souls.
+There is nothing more absurd than to assume that nothing rightly can be
+done in these matters except what has been directed by authority; that
+no services can be held but such as have formal authorization; that no
+ceremonies can be introduced but such as the custom of the time since
+the Reformation has made familiar to many.
+
+In such matters authority naturally and necessarily goes along with the
+cure of souls; the priest of the parish must perforce provide for the
+spiritual needs of his parish. If he finds those needs satisfied with
+the rendering of Morning and Evening Prayer--well and good; but those
+who do not find the needs of their parish so satisfied must seek to
+satisfy them by the providing of other spiritual means. And in seeking
+thus to provide for the spiritual growth of souls committed to his care,
+the priest, on the principles of the Anglican formularies, is justified
+and entitled to make use of the means in use throughout Catholic
+Christendom. He is quite justified in calling his people together for a
+prayer meeting, if in his judgment that will be for their spiritual
+good; or if his judgment is different, he is equally justified in
+inviting them to join him in saying the rosary. He may incite to greater
+devotion by a shortened form of Evening Prayer or by popular Vespers. I
+do not think that there is anything in the Christian Religion or in the
+formularies of the Anglican Church that forbids him to have moving
+pictures or special musical services. Nor is there any reason why, if it
+be in his judgment promotive of holiness, he should not provide for his
+parish such services as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. There can
+be no legitimate criticism of a service on the ground of its
+_provenance_.
+
+It is a common reproach against the Anglican Communion that is "does not
+know its own mind." It would be much truer to say that there are many
+members of it who have been at no pains to ascertain whether it have a
+mind or what that mind is: who have been content to confound the mind of
+the Church with the mind of the party to which they are attached by the
+accident of birth or of preference. I do not for a moment contend that
+the party (to use an ugly but necessary word) to which I am attached
+stands, in all things, in perfect alignment with the Anglican
+Formularies. There are circumstances in which it appears to me to be
+necessary to appeal from Anglican action to the mind of that larger
+Body, the whole Church of Christ throughout the world, to which the
+Anglican Church points me as its own final authority. In so doing I do
+not feel that I am disloyal, but that I am actually doing what
+authority tells me to do. These are cases in point. I do not believe
+that a local Church can suppress and permanently disuse sacraments of
+the universal Church. The Anglican Church by its suppression of the
+sacraments of Unction and by its almost universal disuse for centuries
+of the sacrament of Penance, compelled those who would be loyal to the
+Catholic Church to which it appealed to act on their own initiative in
+the revival of the use of those sacraments. I do not believe that the
+local Church has the right or the power to forbid or permanently disuse
+customs which are of universal currency in the Catholic Church. I do not
+believe that it has the right to neglect and fail to enforce the
+Catholic custom of fasting, and especially of fasting before communion.
+I do not believe that any Christian who is informed on these things has
+the right to neglect them on the ground that the Anglican Church has not
+enforced them. On the basis of its own declarations the ecumenical
+overrides the local; and if it be said, "What is a priest, that he
+should undertake to set the practice of his Church right?" the answer is
+that he is a man having cure of souls for whose progress in holiness he
+is responsible before God, and if those who claim authority in such
+matters will not act, he must act, though it be at the risk of his
+immortal soul.
+
+These things seem to be true with the truth of self-evidence. And
+because they seem to be true, I have not hesitated to preach, and now to
+print, the sermons on the life and words of our Lady contained in this
+volume. I am told by many that such teaching is dangerous, but I am not
+told by any of any danger that is intelligible to me. That such
+devotions to our Lady as are here commended trench on the prerogative of
+God, and exalt our Lady above the place of a creature is sufficiently
+answered by the fact that the very act of asking the prayers of Blessed
+Mary is an assertion of her creaturehood--one does not ask the prayers
+of God. And when it is said that devotion to her takes away from
+devotion to her Son, one has only to ask in reply, who as a matter of
+fact have maintained and do maintain unflinchingly the divinity of our
+Lord? Certainly the denials of the divinity of our Lord are found where
+there is also a denial that any honor is due or may rightly be given to
+His Blessed Mother; and where that Mother receives the highest honor,
+there we never for a moment doubt that the full Godhead of Jesus will be
+unflinchingly and unhesitatingly maintained.
+
+     Wherefore in praise, the worthiest that I may,
+     Jesu! of thee, and the white Lily-flower
+     Which did thee bear, and is a Maid for aye,
+     To tell a story I will use my power;
+     Not that I may increase her honour's dower,
+     For she herself is honour, and the root
+     Of goodness, next her Son, our soul's best boot.
+
+     O Mother Maid! O Maid and Mother free!
+     O bush unburnt; burning in Moses' sight!
+     That down didst ravish from the Deity,
+     Through humbleness, the spirit that did alight
+     Upon thy heart, whence, through that glory's might,
+     Conceived was the Father's sapience,
+     Help me to tell it in thy reverence.
+
+     Lady! thy goodness, thy magnificance,
+     Thy virtue, and thy great humility,
+     Surpass all science and all utterance;
+     For sometimes, Lady, ere men pray to thee
+     Thou goest before in thy benignity,
+     The light to us vouchsafing of thy prayer,
+     To be our guide unto thy Son so dear.
+
+     My knowledge is so weak, O blissful Queen!
+     To tell abroad thy mighty worthiness,
+     That I the weight of it may not sustain;
+     But as a child of twelve months old or less,
+     Even so fare I; and therefore, I thee pray,
+     Guide thou my song which I of thee shall say.
+
+     Chaucer. The Prioress' Tale. Version by Wordsworth.
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MEANING OF WORSHIP
+
+O Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all holy thoughts do come; who hast
+taught thy servants to honour thy glorious mother; mercifully grant us
+so to celebrate her on earth with the solemn sacrifice of praise and
+with due devotion, that by her intercession we may be found worthy to
+reign in joy in heaven. Who livest &c.
+
+SARUM MISSAL.
+
+There are thoughts and actions which so enter the daily conduct of our
+lives that we take them for granted and never pause to analyse them. If
+perchance something occurs to make us ask what these thoughts and
+actions truly and deeply mean we are surprised to find that we have, in
+fact, no adequate understanding of them. We have a feeling about them
+and we are quite sure that this feeling is a good and right one. We have
+ends that we are seeking and we are satisfied that the ends are in all
+ways desirable. But suddenly confronted with the question why,
+unexpectedly asked to explain, to justify ourselves, we find ourselves
+dumb. We cannot find adequate exposition for what we nevertheless know
+that we are justified in. It is so with much that we admire; we have
+never tried to justify our admiration, have never thought that it needed
+an explanation; and then, unexpectedly, we find ourselves challenged, we
+find our taste criticised, and in our efforts at self-defence we blunder
+and stumble and hesitate about what we still feel that we are quite
+right in holding fast.
+
+It is common things that we thus take for granted; it is daily
+activities that we thus assume need no explanation. For us who
+habitually gather to the services of the Church there is no more
+taken-for-granted act than worship. Worship is a part of our daily
+experience. At certain times each day we offer to God stated and formal
+acts of worship. Many times a day most likely we pause and for a moment
+lift our thought to our blessed Lord for a brief communion with Him. It
+is a part of our settled experience thus to draw strength from the
+inexhaustible source which at all times is at our disposal. We know how
+the tasks of the day are lightened and our strength to meet them renewed
+by these momentary invasions of the supernatural. There are also special
+times in each week when we meet with other members of the One Body of
+Christ in the offering of the unbloody Sacrifice. We know that in that
+act heaven and earth join, and that not only our brethren who are
+kneeling beside us are uniting with us in the offering of the Sacrifice,
+not only are we one with all those other members of the Body who on this
+same morning are kneeling at the numberless altars of Christendom, but
+that all those who are in Christ are with us partakers of the same
+Sacrifice, and that in its offering we are joined with all the holy
+dead, and by our partaking of Christ are brought close to one another.
+We therefore lovingly take their names upon our lips, and enkindle their
+memory in our hearts; and find that death, which we had thought of as a
+separation, has but broken the barriers to the deepest and most blessed
+communion, and that we are now, as never before, united to those whom we
+find in Christ Jesus our Lord.
+
+And then comes the unexpected challenge: "what does all this mean: these
+repeated and diverse acts that you are accustomed to speak of and to
+think of as acts of worship? What, ultimately, do you mean by worship,
+and can there possibly be found any common feature in these so diverse
+acts which can justify you in regarding them as essentially one? This
+act which is in truth presenting yourself before the majesty of God in
+humble adoration, in the guise of a suppliant child depending upon the
+love of the Father for the supply of the daily needs; or this other act
+which is of such deepest mystery that we approach any attempted
+statement of it with awe, which is in fact the representation of the
+sacrifice of Calvary; and then these invocations by which we ask the
+loving co-operation of our fellow members of Christ that they may
+associate themselves with us in the work of prayer and mutual
+intercession--how can all these acts be brought together under a common
+rubric, how can they all be designated as worship? What in fact is it
+that you mean by worship?"
+
+So are we challenged. So are we thrown back, and in the end thrown back
+most beneficially, to the analysis of our acts. Worship, we tell
+ourselves, is _worth_-ship; it is the attribution of worth or honor to
+whom these are properly due. "Honour to whom honour is due," we hear the
+Apostle saying. Worship is therefore not an absolute value but a varying
+value, the content of any act of which will be determined by the nature
+of the object toward which it is directed. It is greatly like love in
+this respect; its nature is always the same, but its present value is
+determined by the object to which it is directed. We are to love the
+Lord our God, and we are also to love our neighbour; the nature of the
+love is in each case the same; and yet we are not to love our neighbour
+with the limitless self-surrender with which we love God. The love of
+God is the passionate giving of ourselves to Him with all our heart and
+with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength. The
+love of the neighbour is measured and restrained, having in view his
+good that we are seeking, the promotion of his salvation as our fellow
+member in the Body of Christ. In the same way worship will take its
+colour, its significance, its tone, its intensity, not from some
+abstract conception, but from the end it seeks. This is made plain, too,
+when we look at our Bibles and Prayer Books for the actual use of the
+word. There we find much of the worship of God: but we also find a
+limited use of the word. "Then shalt thou have worship in the presence
+of them that sit at meat with thee." (S. Luke, XIV, 10.) And in the
+marriage service of the English Prayer Book we read: "With this ring I
+thee wed, and with my body I thee worship." The same limited content of
+the word is found in the old title of respect--"Your Worship."
+
+But so thoroughly has the word worship become associated with our
+approach to God, that we still, many of us, no doubt, feel the shock of
+the unaccustomed when we hear the worship of the Blessed Virgin or of
+the saints spoken of. It does not help us much to fall back on the Latin
+word, _Cultus_, for we understand that the meaning is the same.
+
+We are helped, I think, if we substitute the parallel word honour for
+worship in the places of its use. We meet in the Church to honour God,
+and we offer the Blessed Sacrifice as the act of supreme honour which is
+due to Him alone; but in connection with the supreme honour offered to
+God we also honour the saints of God by the observance of their
+anniversaries with special services including the Holy Sacrifice. The
+word honour does not sound so ill to ears unaccustomed to a certain type
+of Catholic expression as the word worship: but the meaning is
+untouched.
+
+Let us go on then to the analysis of the notion of worship. In the
+writings of theologians we find an analysis of the notion of worship
+into three degrees. There is, first of all, that supreme degree of
+worship which is called _latria_ and which is the worship due to God
+alone. If we ask what essentially it is that differentiates _latria_
+from all other degrees of worship or honour we find that it is the
+element of sacrifice that it contains. Sacrifice is the supreme act of
+self-surrender to another, of utter self-immolation, and it can have no
+other legitimate object than God Himself. The central notion of
+sacrifice is the surrender of self. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant
+were of value because they were the representatives of the nation and of
+the individuals who offered them; because of the self-identification of
+nation or individual with the thing offered, which must therefore be in
+some sense the offerer's, must, so to say, _contain him_: must be that
+in which he merges himself. So the one Sacrifice of the New Covenant
+gets its essential value in that it is the surrender of the Son to the
+will of the Father. "I am come to do Thy will, O God." Christ's
+sacrifice is self-sacrifice: the voluntary surrender of the whole life
+to the divine purpose.
+
+And when we actually worship God, worship Him with the worship of
+_latria_, our act must be of the same essential nature; it must be an
+act of sacrifice, of self-giving; the offering of ourselves to the will
+of the Father. So it is in our participation in the offering of the
+Blessed Sacrifice. The full meaning of our joining in that act is that
+we are uniting ourselves with our Lord's offering of Himself, and as
+members of His Body share in the sacrifice of the Body which is the
+supreme act of worship. And our other acts of worship lay hold on and
+proceed from this which is the ground of their efficacy. All our
+subordinate acts of worship, so to call them, have their character and
+vitality as Christian acts of the worship of God because of the relation
+of the worshipper to God as a member of the Body of His Son. They are
+offered through the Son and derive their potency from their association
+with Him and His sacrifice. They reach God through the sacrifice of the
+One Mediator.
+
+Worship, then, in this complete sense, is due to God alone; and it is
+separated by a whole heaven from any worship, that is, honour, which can
+be offered to any creature, however exalted. No instructed person would
+for a moment imagine that the prayers which we address to the saints are
+in any degree such worship as is offered to God; but in as much as those
+who are unfamiliar with the forms of the Catholic Religion in its
+devotional expression may easily be led astray, it seems needful to
+stress this fact of the difference between simple petition and such
+acts and prayers as involve the highest degree of worship.
+
+One of the chief sources of confusion in this matter is the failure to
+distinguish between the nature of the act of worship, which is
+determined by the person to whom it is directed, and the mere adjuncts
+of the act. But an act of _latria_ is not constituted such by the fact
+that it is aided in its expression by such circumstances as banners,
+lights, incense and so on. These are quite appropriate to any act of
+honour, and have been customarily so used in relation to human beings.
+There was a certain hesitation in the Church for some time in the matter
+of incense which under the older Covenant had been especially
+appropriated to God, because in the experience of the early Church it
+was demanded, and necessarily refused, as an acknowledgment of the
+divinity of the Emperor. But with the passing of the pagan empire
+incense as the universal symbol of prayer came into use in all manner of
+services wherein intercession was a part.
+
+Such adjuncts therefore are not foreign to those subordinate acts of
+worship or honour which are technically known as _dulia. Dulia_--this
+word means service--is such honour as may be rightly rendered to
+creatures without at all encroaching upon the majesty of God. It is
+_that_ degree of worship that we have in mind when we speak of the
+worship of the saints. That _dulia_ of the saints is expressed when we
+ask for the intercession of this or that saint, and is not essentially
+different from the asking for the prayers of any other human beings. We
+commonly ask for one another's prayers and feel that in doing so we are
+exercising our brotherhood in the Body of Christ in calling into action
+its mutual love and sympathy. We should be beyond measure astonished if
+we were told that such requests for the prayers of our brethren were
+encroachments upon the honour of God and the sin of idolatry! But if in
+this case our surprise is justified, it is difficult to see how the case
+is at all altered by the fact that the fellow members of the Body whose
+prayers we are asking happen to be _dead_, that is, as we believe and
+imply in our request for their intercession, have passed into a new and
+closer relation to our Blessed Lord. Nor, again, does the case seem to
+be at all altered, if the brother whose prayers we ask has been dead a
+long time, and has, by the common consent of Catholic Christendom, been
+received into the number of the saints. The ways in which the human mind
+works under the influence of prejudice are always interesting. There are
+many devout persons who feel that it is a valuable element in their
+religion to have the privilege of following the Kalendar of the Church
+and to keep the saints' days therein indicated by attendance at divine
+service; who yet would be horrified if it were suggested that a prayer
+should be offered to the saint whose day is being observed, and that the
+saint should be made the object of an act of worship. But what
+essentially _is_ the keeping of a saint's day, with a celebration of the
+Holy Communion with special collect, epistle and gospel, but an act of
+worship _(dulia)_ of the saint? The nature of the act would be in no way
+changed if in addition to our accustomed collects there were added one
+which plainly asked for the prayers of the saint in whose honour we are
+keeping the feast.
+
+In the worship of the Church of God a place apart is assigned to the
+honour to be paid to the blessed Mother of our Lord. As the highest of
+all creatures, as highly favoured above all, as she whom God chose to be
+the Mother of His Son, the devout thought of generations of Christians
+has felt that their recognition of her relation to God in the
+Incarnation called for a special degree of honour rightly to express it.
+The thought of the faithful lingers about all that was in any degree
+associated with the coming of God in the flesh: so great was the
+deliverance thereby wrought for man that man's gratitude ever seeks new
+means of expression and ever finds the means inadequate to his love.
+Many of the expressions that are found in devotional writers associated
+with the cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary are an outcome of this
+attitude of mind. To those who are unused to them they seem exaggerated;
+in the vast mass of the devotional writings of Catholic Christendom
+there is no difficulty in finding expressions which _are_ exaggerated;
+but it is well to remember when thinking of this that the exaggeration
+is the exaggeration of love. The tendency of love _is_ to exaggerate the
+forms of its expression. It is, however, we feel on reflection, an error
+to judge by the exaggeration rather than by the love. It is perhaps well
+to ask ourselves whether we are saved from exaggeration by greater
+sanity or by lesser love.
+
+But exaggeration apart, this feeling of the unique position of the
+blessed Mother in relation to the Incarnate Son, as calling forth a
+special honour for her is embodied in the designation of the honour to
+be rendered her as _hyperdulia_--a specially devoted service. It is
+hardly necessary after what has been said to point out that even here in
+the highest honour rendered to any saint there is no passing of the
+infinite gulf which separates Creator from creature, any infringement
+upon the honour of God. No Catholic could dream that blessed Mary would
+be in any wise honoured by the attribution to her of what belongs to her
+Son. These are no doubt commonplaces, but it is better to be commonplace
+than to be misunderstood. The intercession that is asked of the blessed
+Mother is the intercession of one who by God's election is more closely
+associated with God than any other human being is or can be. Her power
+of prayer is felt to proceed from the depth of her sanctity; from, in
+other words, the perfection of her relation to her blessed Son Who is
+the only Mediator and the Saviour of us all.
+
+Let me say in conclusion that this giving of honour to our Lord, and to
+all His saints as united to Him, and the celebration of their days
+according to the Church's year, and the asking of the help of their
+intercession in all the needs of our lives, is not simply a thing to be
+tolerated in those who are inclined to it, is not simply a privilege
+which we are entitled to if we care for it, but is a duty which all
+Christians ought to fulfil because otherwise they are failing to make
+real to them a very important article of the Christian Creed. The
+Communion of Saints, like all other articles of the Creed, needs to be
+put into active use, and will be when we believe it as distinguished
+from assent to it. When we believe that all who live unto God in the
+Body of His dear Son are inspired with active love one toward another,
+we shall ourselves feel the impulse of that love, and be compelled both
+to seek an outlet for it toward all other members of the Body, and also
+will equally feel compelled to seek our own share in the action of that
+love by asking for the prayers of the saints for ourselves and for all
+in whom we are interested. Then will we find in the "worship of the
+saints" one great means whereby we can worship the God of the saints by
+the devout recognition of the greatness of His work in them, May God be
+praised and glorified in all His saints.
+
+     O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,
+       Lowly, and higher than all creatures raised,
+       Term by eternal council fixed upon,
+     Thou art she who didst ennoble man,
+       That even He who had created him
+       To be Himself His creature disdained not.
+     Within thy womb rekindled was the love,
+       By virtue of whose heat this flower thus
+       Is blossoming in the eternal peace.
+     Here thou art unto us a noon-day torch
+       Of charity, and among mortal men
+       Below, thou art a living fount of hope.
+     Lady, thou art so great and so prevailest,
+       That who seeks grace without recourse to thee,
+       Would have his wish fly upward without wings.
+     Thy loving-kindness succors not alone
+       Him who is seeking it, but many times
+       Freely anticipates the very prayer.
+     In thee is mercy, pity is in thee,
+       In thee magnificence, whatever good
+       Is in created being joins in thee.
+
+Dante, Par. XXXIII, 1-21. (Trans. H. Johnson.)
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MARY OF NAZARETH
+
+     Mary, of whom was born Jesus.
+
+     S. Matt. I. 16.
+
+My Maker and Redeemer, Christ the Lord, O Immaculate, coming forth from
+thy womb, having taken my nature upon him, hath delivered Adam from the
+primal curse; wherefore, to thee, Immaculate, the Mother of God and
+Virgin in very sooth, we cry aloud unceasingly the Ave of the Angel,
+"Hail, O Lady, protection and shelter and salvation of our souls!"
+
+BYZANTINE.
+
+The silences of the Holy Scriptures have always provoked speculation as
+to what is left untold. The devout imagination has played about the
+hints we receive and woven them into stories which far outrun any true
+implication of the facts. Thus has much legendary matter gathered about
+the childhood of our Lord, containing the stories, not always very
+edifying according to our taste, which are set down in the Apocryphal
+Gospels. The same eagerness to know more than we are told has produced
+the developed legend of the childhood of our Lady. We can of course
+place no reliance on most of the statements that are there made; perhaps
+the most that we can lay hold of is the fact that S. Mary's father was
+Joachim and her mother Anna. The rest may be left to silence.
+
+But if the facts of the external life of Mary of Nazareth cannot be
+hoped for, certain general truths evidently follow from God's plan for
+her and from her relation to our Blessed Lord. There are certain
+inferences from her vocation which are irresistible and which the
+theologians of the Church did not fail to make as they thought of her
+function in relation to the Incarnation. We know that the work of
+Redemption by which it was God's purpose to lead back a sinful world to
+Himself was a purpose that worked from the very beginning of man's fatal
+separation from the source of his life and happiness. The essential
+meaning of Holy Scripture is that it is a history of the origin of God's
+purpose and of His bringing it to a successful issue in the mission of
+our Lord. In the Scriptures we are permitted to see the unfolding of the
+divine purpose and the preparation of the instruments by which the
+purpose is to be effected. We see the divine will struggling with the
+human will, and in appearance baffled again and again by the selfishness
+and the stupidity of man. We see too that the divine will is in the long
+run successful in securing a point of action in humanity, in winning the
+allegiance of men of good will to co-operation with the purpose of God.
+We see spiritual ideals assimilated, and sympathy with the work of God
+generated, until we feel that that work has gained a firm and enduring
+ground in humanity from which it can act. God is able to consummate His
+purpose, and men begin to understand in some measure the nature of the
+future deliverance and to look forward to the coming of One Who should
+be the embodiment of the divine action and the Representative of God
+Himself with a completeness which no previous messenger of God had
+ever attained.
+
+It we would understand the Old Testament we must find that its intimate
+note is preparation, just as the intimate note of the New Testament is
+accomplishment. God is working to a foreseen end, and is working as fast
+as men will consent to co-operate and become the instruments of His
+purpose. The purpose is not one that can be achieved by the exercise of
+power; it is a purpose of love and can be effected only through
+co-operating love. And as we watch the final unfolding of that purpose
+in the Incarnation of God, we more and more become conscious of the
+preparation of all the instruments of the purpose which are working in
+harmony for the revelation of the meaning of God.
+
+Of all the instruments of this divine purpose, one figure has
+preeminently fascinated the devout imagination because of her unique
+beauty, and has been the object of profound speculation because of the
+intimacy of her relation to God,--Mary of Nazareth. The vocabulary of
+love and reverence has exhausted itself in the attempt to express our
+estimate of her. The literature of Mariology is immense. And no one who
+has at all entered into the meaning of the Incarnation, of what is
+involved in eternal God taking human flesh, can wonder at this. Here at
+the crisis of the divine redeeming action, when the crowning mystery
+which angels desire to look into is being accomplished, we find the
+figure of a village maiden of Israel as the surprising instrument of the
+advent of God. We wonder: and we instinctively feel, that as all the
+other steps and instruments in God's redemption of man had from the
+beginning been carefully prepared, so shall we find preparation here. We
+understand that as God could not come in the flesh at any time, but only
+when the "fulness of time" had come; so He could not come of any woman,
+but only of such an one as He had prepared to be the instrument of His
+Incarnation.
+
+It is involved in the very intimacy of the relation which exists
+between our Lord and His blessed Mother that she should be unique in the
+human race. We feel that we are right in saying that the Incarnation
+which waited for the preparation of the world socially and spiritually,
+must also be thought of as waiting for the coming of the woman who would
+so completely surrender herself to the divine will that in her obedience
+could be founded the antidote to the disobedience which was founded in
+Eve. The race waited for the coming of the new mother who should be the
+instrument in the abolishing of the evil of which the first mother was
+the instrument. And from the very beginning of the thought of the Church
+about blessed Mary there was no doubt that it was implied in her office
+in bearing the God-Man that she should be without sin--sinless in the
+sense of never having in any least degree consented to evil the thought
+of the Church has ever held her to be. It was held incredible that she
+who by God's election bore in the sanctuary of her womb during the
+months of her child-bearing Him who was Lord and Creator and was come to
+save the world from all the stain and penalty of sin should herself be a
+sinner. Without actual sin, therefore, was Mary held to be from the time
+that the thought of the Church was turned upon her relation to our
+Blessed Lord[6].
+
+[Footnote 6: It is true that a few writers among the Fathers see in
+blessed Mary traces of venial sin; who think of her intervention at Cana
+as presumptuous &c. But such notices are not of sufficient frequency or
+importance to break the general tradition.]
+
+For some time this seemed enough. It was not felt that any further
+thought about her sinlessness was needed. But as the uniqueness of Mary
+forced itself more and more upon the brooding thought of theologians and
+saints they were compelled to face the fact that her freedom from actual
+sin was not a full appreciation of her purity, was not an exhaustive
+treatment of her relation to our Lord. The doctrine of the nature of sin
+itself had been becoming clearer to the minds of Christian thinkers. All
+men are conceived and born in sin, it was seen. After S. Paul's
+teaching, the problem of _sin_ was not the problem of sins but the
+problem of sinfulness. The matter could not be left with the statement
+that all men do sin; the reason of their sinning must be traced out. And
+it was traced out, under S. Paul's guidance, to a ground of sin in
+nature itself, to a defect in man as he is born into the world. He does
+not become a sinner when he commits his first sin: he is born a sinner.
+In other words, the problem of man's sinfulness is the problem of
+original sin.
+
+What then do we mean by original sin? Briefly, we mean this. At his
+creation man was not only created innocent, but he was created in union
+with God, a union which conferred on him many supernatural gifts, gifts,
+that is, which were not a part of his nature, but were in the way of an
+addition to his nature. "By created nature man is endowed with moral
+sense, and is thus made responsible for righteousness; but he is unequal
+to its fulfilment. The all-righteous Creator could be trusted to
+complete His work. He endowed primitive man with superadded gifts of
+grace, especially the supernatural gift, _donum supernaturale_, of the
+Holy Spirit[7]."
+
+[Footnote 7: Hall, Dogmatic Theology, V, 263.]
+
+Our purpose does not require us further to particularize these gifts and
+our time does not permit it. We are concerned with this: the effect of
+man's sin was, what the effect of sin always is, to separate man from
+God. To sin, man has to put his will in opposition to the will of God.
+This our first parents did; and the result of their act was the
+destruction of their union with God and the loss of their supernatural
+endowments. They lapsed into a state of nature, only it was a state in
+which they had forfeited what had been conferred upon them at their
+creation. This state of man, with only his natural endowments, is the
+state into which all men, the descendants of Adam, have been born. This
+is the state of original sin. "Original sin means in Catholic theology a
+state inherited from our first human parents in which we are deprived of
+the supernatural grace and original righteousness with which they were
+endowed before they sinned, and are naturally prone to sin." (Hall,
+Dogmatic Theology, Vol. V, p. 281.) We can state the same fact
+otherwise, and more simply for our present purposes, by saying that by
+sin was forfeited the grace of union or sanctifying grace; and when we
+say that a child is born in sin we mean that it is born out of union
+with God, or without the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace. You
+will note here no implication of original sin as an active poison handed
+on from generation to generation. It will be important to remember this
+presently.
+
+When, therefore, the thought of the Church began to follow out what was
+involved in its belief in the actual sinlessness of blessed Mary, in its
+holding to the fact that her relation to God was of such a close and
+indeed unique character that her actual sinfulness would be
+incomprehensible; it was at length compelled to ask, What, in that case
+are we to think of original sin? If the first Eve was created in
+innocence and endowed with supernatural gifts, are we to think that she
+whom the Fathers of the Church from the earliest times have constantly
+called the second Eve, she whom God chose to be the Mother of His Son,
+should be less endowed? Is it a fact any more conceivable that the
+virgin Mother of God should be born in original sin than that she should
+be the victim of actual sin? If by the special grace of God she was kept
+from sin from the time that she was able to know good and evil, is it
+not probable that the freedom from sin goes further back than that, and
+is a freedom from original as well as from actual sin? What is the
+meaning of the Angelic Salutation, "Hail, thou that art _full of
+grace_," unless it refer to a superadded grace, to such _donum
+supernaturale_ as the first Eve received? There is indeed no precedent
+to guide in the case: the prophet Jeremiah and S. John Baptist had been
+preserved from sin from the womb, but this did not involve freedom from
+original sin. Still the fact that there was no precedent was not in
+anywise fatal; the point of the situation was just that there was no
+precedent for the relation to God into which Blessed Mary had been
+called. It was precisely this uniqueness of vocation which was leading
+theological thought to the conclusion of the uniqueness of her
+privilege: and this uniqueness of privilege seemed to call for nothing
+less than an exemption from sin in any and all forms. So a belief in the
+Immaculate Conception grew up despite a good deal of opposition while
+its implications were being thought out, but was found more and more
+congenial to the mind of the Church. She whose wonderful title for
+centuries had been Mother of God could never at any moment of her
+existence have been separate from God. She must, so it was felt, have
+been united to God from the very first moment of her existence.
+
+But what does this exemption from the common lot of men actually mean? I
+think that the simplest way of getting at it is to ask ourselves what it
+is that happens to a child at baptism. Every human child that is born
+into the world is born in original sin, that is, is born out of union
+with God, without sanctifying grace. It is then brought to the font and
+by baptism regenerated, born again, put in a relation to God that we
+describe as union, made a partaker of the divine nature. This varying
+description of the effect of baptism means that the soul of the child
+has become a partaker of sanctifying grace, the grace of union with God.
+Original sin, we say, is forgiven: that is, the soul is placed in the
+relation to God that it would have had had sin not come into existence,
+save that there remains a certain weakness of nature due to its sinful
+heredity. This that happens to children when they are baptised is what
+is held to have happened to Blessed Mary at her creation. Her soul
+instead of being restored to God by grace after her birth, was by God's
+special grace or favour created in union with Him, and in that union
+always continued. The uniqueness of S. Mary's privilege was that she
+never had to be restored to union with God because from the moment of
+her existence she had been one with Him. This would have been the common
+lot of all men if sin had not come into the world.
+
+In view of much criticism of this belief it is perhaps necessary to
+emphasize the fact that a belief in Mary's exemption from original sin
+does not imply a belief that she was exempt from the need of redemption.
+She is a creature of God, only the highest of His creatures: and like
+all human beings she needed to be redeemed by the Blood of Christ. The
+privileges which are our Lord's Mother's, are her's through the foreseen
+merits of her Son--she, as all others, is redeemed by the sacrifice and
+death of Christ. There is in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
+no shadow of encroachment on the doctrine of universal redemption in
+Christ; there is simply the belief that for the merits of the Son the
+Mother was spared any moment of separation from the Father.
+
+It will, of course, be said that this doctrine is but the relatively
+late and newly formulated doctrine of the Latin Church and is of no
+obligation elsewhere; that we are in no wise bound to receive it. In
+regard to which there are one or two things to be said. That we are not
+formally bound to believe a doctrine is not at all the same thing as to
+say that we are formally bound not to believe it. I am afraid that the
+latter is a not uncommon attitude. There is no obligation upon us to
+disbelieve the Immaculate Conception of blessed Mary; there is an
+obligation upon us to understand it and to appreciate its meaning and
+value. We must remember that a doctrine that is not embodied in our
+Creed may nevertheless have the authority of the Church back of it. The
+doctrine of the Real Presence is not stated in the Creed; yet it is and
+always has been the teaching of the Church everywhere in all its
+liturgies. Though any particular statement of the Real Presence is not
+binding, the fact itself is binding on all Christians, and may not
+be doubted.
+
+In much the same way it will be found that theological doctrines of
+relatively late creedal formulation yet have behind the formulation a
+long history of actual acceptance in the teaching of the Church. They
+are theologically certain long before they are embodied in authoritative
+formulae. What the individual Christian has to do is to try to
+assimilate the meaning of theological teaching and to find a place for
+it in his devotional practice and experience. His best attitude is not
+one of doubt and scepticism, but of meditation and experiment. It is
+through this latter attitude that each one is helping to form the mind
+of the Church, and aiding its progressive appreciation of
+revealed truth.
+
+I do not see how any one who has entered into the meaning of the
+Incarnation can feel otherwise than that the uniqueness of the event
+carries with it the uniqueness of the instrument. It can of course be
+said that truth is not a matter of feeling but of revelation. But is it
+not true that God reveals Himself in many ways, and that our feelings as
+well as our intellects are involved in our perception of the truth
+revealed? Do we not often feel that something must be true far in
+advance of our ability to prove it so? And in truths of a certain order
+is there not an intuitive perception, a perception growing out of a
+sense of fitness, of congruity, which outruns the slow advance of the
+intellect? Love and sympathy often far outrun intellectual process. This
+is not to say that feeling is all; that a sense of fitness and
+conformity is a sufficient basis of doctrine. There is always need of
+the verification of the conclusions of the affections by the intellect;
+and the intellect in the last resort will have to be the
+determining factor.
+
+And I think it can be said without hesitation that the intellectual work
+of theological students has quite justified the course that the
+affections of Christendom have taken in their spontaneous appreciation
+of Mary, the Ever-Virgin Mother of Our Lord. What the heart of
+Christendom has discovered, the mind of Christendom has justified. But
+here more than in any other doctrinal development it is love that has
+led the way, often with an eagerness, an _élan_, with which theology has
+found it difficult to keep up.
+
+And as we to-day try to appreciate the place of Blessed Mary in the life
+of the Church of God must we not feel it to be our misfortune that our
+past has been so wrapped in clouds of controversy that we have been
+unable to see her meaning at all clearly? Must we not feel deep sadness
+at the thought that the very mention of Mary's name, so often stirs, not
+love and gratitude, but the spirit of suspicion and dislike? We no doubt
+have passed beyond such feelings, but the traces of their evil work
+through the centuries still persist. They persist in certain feelings of
+reserve and hesitation when we find that our convictions are leading us
+to the adoption of the attitude toward her which is the common attitude
+of all Catholicity, both East and West. When we feel that the time has
+actually come to abandon the narrowness and barrenness of devotional
+practice which is a part of our tradition, we nevertheless feel as
+though we were launching out on strange seas and that our next sight of
+land might be of strange regions where we should not feel at home. If
+such be our instinctive attitude, it is well to remember that progress,
+spiritual as well as other, is conquest of the (to us) new; but that the
+acquisition of the new does not necessarily mean the abandonment of the
+old. We shall in fact lose nothing of our hold on the unique work of our
+Lord because we recognise that His Blessed Mother's association with it
+implies a certain preparation on her part, a certain uniqueness of
+privilege. There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the
+Man Christ Jesus; and all who come to God, come through Him. But they
+come also in the unity of the Body of many members and of many offices.
+And the office of her who in God's providence was called to be the
+Mother of the Incarnate is surely as unique as is her vocation. She
+surely is entitled to receive from us the deep affection of our hearts
+and the highest honour that may be given to any creature.
+
+
+     THE GARLAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARIE.
+
+     Here are five letters in this blessed name,
+     Which, changed, a five-fold mystery design,
+     The M the Myrtle, A the Almonds claim,
+     R Rose, I Ivy, E sweet Eglantine.
+
+     These form thy garland, when of Myrtle green
+     The gladdest ground to all the numbered five,
+     Is so implexéd fine and laid in, between,
+     As love here studied to keep grace alive.
+
+     Thy second string is the sweet Almond bloom
+     Mounted high upon Selines' crest:
+     As it alone (and only it) had room,
+     To knit thy crown, and glorify the rest.
+
+     The third is from the garden culled, the Rose,
+     The eye of flowers, worthy for her scent,
+     To top the fairest lily now, that grows
+     With wonder on the thorny regiment.
+
+     The fourth is the humble Ivy intersert
+     But lowly laid, as on the earth asleep,
+     Preserved in her antique bed of vert,
+     No faiths more firm or flat, then, where't doth creep.
+
+     But that, which sums all, is the Eglantine,
+     Which of the field is cleped the sweetest briar,
+     Inflamed with ardour to that mystic shine,
+     In Moses' bush unwasted in the fire.
+
+     Thus love, and hope, and burning charity,
+     (Divinest graces) are so intermixt
+     With odorous sweets and soft humility,
+     As if they adored the head, whereon they are fixed.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE ANNUNCIATION I
+
+     And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art
+     highly favoured, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou
+     among women.
+
+                  S. Luke, I. 28
+
+Oh God, whose will it was that thy Word should take flesh, at the
+message of the Angel, in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, grant to
+us thy suppliants that, we who believe her to be truly the Mother of
+God, may be assisted by her intercession with thee. Through &c.
+
+ROMAN.
+
+When we attempt to reconstruct imaginatively any scene of Holy
+Scripture it is almost inevitable that we see it through the eyes of
+some great artist of the past. The Crucifixion comes to us as Dürer or
+Guido Reni saw it; the Presentation or the Visitation presents itself to
+us in terms of the imagination of Raphael; we see the Nativity as a
+composition of Corregio. So the Annunciation rises before us when we
+close our eyes and attempt to make "the composition of place" in a
+familiar grouping of the actors: a startled maiden who has arisen
+hurriedly from work or prayer, looking with wonder at the apparition of
+an angel who has all the eagerness of one who has come hastily upon an
+urgent mission. The surroundings differ, but artists of the Renaissance
+like to think of a sumptuous background as a worthy setting for so
+great an event.
+
+We keep close to the meaning of Scripture if we set the Annunciation in
+a room in a cottage of a Palestinian working man. And I like to think of
+S. Mary at her accustomed work when Gabriel appeared, not with a rush of
+wings, but as a silent and hardly felt presence standing before her whom
+the Lord has chosen to be the instrument of His coming. Wonder there
+would have been, the kind of awe-struck wonder with which the
+supernatural always fills men; and yet only for a moment, for how could
+she who was daily living so close to God fear the messenger of God? The
+thought of angels and divine messengers would be wholly familiar to her.
+They had been the frequent agents of God in many a crisis of her
+people's history, and appeared again and again in the story of her
+ancestors on whose details she had often meditated. Yet in her humility
+she could but think it strange that an angel should have any message to
+bear to her.
+
+It is a striking enough scene, as the artists have felt when they tried
+to put it before us. But no artist has ever been able to go below the
+surface and by any hint lead us to an appreciation of the vast
+implications of the moment. This moment of the Annunciation is in fact
+the central moment of the world's history. No moment before or since has
+equalled it in its unspeakable wonder, in its revelation of the meaning
+of God. Not the moment of the creation when all the Sons of God sang
+together at the vision of the unfolding purpose of God; not the morning
+of the Resurrection when the empty tomb told of the accomplished
+overthrow of death and hell. This is the moment toward which all
+preceding time had moved, and to which all succeeding ages will look
+back--the moment of the Incarnation of God.
+
+It is well to ask ourselves at this point what the Incarnation means,
+because our estimate of Blessed Mary as the chosen instrument of God's
+grace will be influenced by our estimate of that which she was chosen to
+do. One feels the failure to grasp her position in the work of our
+redemption often displays a weak hold upon that which is the very heart
+of God's work--the fact of God made man. The moment of the Annunciation
+is the moment of the Incarnation: God in His infinite love for mankind
+is sending forth His Son to be born of a woman in the likeness of our
+flesh. God the Son, the second Person of the ever adorable Trinity, is
+entering the womb of this maiden, there to wrap Himself in her flesh and
+to pass through the common course of a human child's development till He
+shall reach the hour of the Nativity. When we try to grasp the reach of
+the divine Love, its depth, its self-forgetfulness, we must stand in the
+cottage in Nazareth and hear the angelic salutation. And then surely our
+own hearts cannot fail to respond to the revelation of the divine love;
+and something of our love that goes out to our hidden Lord, goes out too
+to the maiden-mother who so willingly became God's instrument in His
+work for our redemption. In imagination I see S. Gabriel kneeling before
+her who has become a living Tabernacle of God Most High, and repeating
+his "Hail, thou that art highly favoured," with the deepest reverence.
+
+"Hail, thou that art full of grace." We linger over this Ave of S.
+Gabriel, and often it rises to our lips. Perhaps it is with S. Luke's
+narrative, almost naked in its simplicity, in our hands as we try once
+more to push our thought deep into the meaning of the scene, that we may
+understand a little better what has resulted in our experience from the
+Incarnation of God, and our thought turns to S. Mary whom God chose and
+brought so near to Himself. Perhaps it is when, with chaplet in hand,
+we try to imagine S. Mary's feelings at this first of the Joyful
+Mysteries when the meaning of her vocation comes clearly before her.
+Hail! thou that art full of grace, of the Living Grace, the very
+Presence of the divinity itself. The plummet of our thought fails always
+to reach the depth of that mystery of Mary's Child. It was indeed
+centuries before the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit
+thought out and fully stated the meaning of this Child; it was centuries
+before it fully grasped the meaning of Mary herself in her relation to
+her divine Son: and after all the centuries of Spirit-guided statement
+and saintly meditation it still remains that many fail to understand and
+to make energetic in life the fact of the Incarnation of God in the womb
+of the Virgin Mary.
+
+And what was S. Mary's own attitude toward the announcement of the
+Angel? Her first instinctive word--the word called out by her imperfect
+grasp of the meaning of the message of S. Gabriel, is: How can this be
+seeing I know not a man? Are we to infer from these words, as many have
+inferred, that in her secret thoughts S. Mary had resolved always to
+remain a virgin, that she had so offered herself to God in the virgin
+state? Possibly when we remember that such was God's will for her it is
+not going too far to assume that she had been prompted thus to meet and
+offer herself to the divine will. Be that as it may there is an obvious
+and instantaneous assumption that the child-bearing which is predicted
+to her lies outside the normal and accustomed way of marriage. She
+clearly does not think that the archangel's words look to her
+approaching union with S. Joseph, even if the nominal nature of that
+marriage were not agreed upon. It is clear that her instantaneous
+feeling is that as the message is supernatural in character, so will its
+fulfilment be, and the wondering _how_ arises to her lips.
+
+The answer to the how is that what is worked in her is by the power of
+the Holy Spirit: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of
+the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which
+shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
+
+As so often in the dealing of God with us, that which is put forward as
+an explanation actually deepens the mystery. It was no abatement of
+Mary's wonder, nor did it really put away her _how_ when she was told
+that the Holy Ghost should come upon her and that the child should be
+the Son of the Highest. And yet this was the only answer to such a
+question that was possible. Our questions may be met in two ways: either
+by a detailed explanation, or by the answer that the only explanation is
+God--that what we are concerned with is a direct working of God outside
+the accustomed order of nature and therefore outside the reach of our
+understanding. Such acts have no doubt their laws, but they are not the
+laws in terms of which we are wont to think.
+
+The question of S. Mary was not a question which implied doubt. It is
+therefore the proper question with which to approach all God's works.
+There is a stress with which such questions may be asked which implies
+on our part unbelief or at least hesitation in belief. It is a not
+uncommon accent to hear to-day in questions as to divine mysteries. Our
+recitation of the creed is not rarely invaded by restlessness, shadows
+of doubt, which perhaps we brush aside, or perhaps let linger in our
+minds with the feeling that it is safer for our religion not to follow
+these out. I am afraid that there are not a few who still adhere to the
+Church who do so with the feeling that it is better for them to go on
+repeating words that they have become used to rather than to raise
+questions as to their actual truth; who feel that the faith of the
+Church rests on foundations which in the course of the centuries have
+been badly shaken, but that it is safer not to disturb them lest they
+incontinently fall to pieces.
+
+In other words there is a wide-spread feeling that such stories as this
+of the Annunciation and of the Virgin birth of our Lord are fables. When
+we ask, why is there such a feeling? the only answer is that the modern
+man has become suspicious of the supernatural. Has there anything been
+found in the way of evidence, we ask, which reflects upon the truth of
+the story in S. Luke? No, we are told; the story stands where it always
+did, its evidence is what it always was. What has changed is not the
+story or the evidence for it but the human attitude toward that and all
+such stories. The modern mind does not attempt to disprove them, it just
+disapproves of them, and therefore declines to believe them. It sets
+them aside as belonging to an order of ideas with which it no longer
+has any sympathy.
+
+It is no doubt true that we reach many of our conclusions, especially
+those which govern our practical attitude towards life, from the ground
+of certain hardly recognised presuppositions, rather than from the basis
+of thought out principles. The thought of to-day is pervaded by the
+denial of the supernatural. It insists that all that we know or can know
+is the natural world about us. It rules out the possibility of any
+invasions of the natural order and declines to accept such on any
+evidence whatsoever. All that one has time to say now of such an
+attitude is that it makes all religion impossible, and sets aside as
+untrustworthy all the deepest experiences of the human soul. If I were
+going to argue against this attitude (as I am not able to now) I should
+simply oppose to it the past experience of the race as embodied in its
+best religious thought. I should stress the fact that what is noblest
+and best in the past of humanity is wholly meaningless unless humanity's
+supposition of a life beyond this life, and of the existence of
+spiritual powers and beings to whom we are related, holds good. No
+nation has ever conducted its life on the basis of pure materialism,
+save in those last stages of its decadence which preluded its downfall.
+
+But without going so far as to reject the supernatural and reject the
+truth of the immediate intervention of God in life, there are multitudes
+of men and women whose whole life never moves beyond the natural order.
+They have no materialistic theory; if you ask them, they think that
+they are, in some sense not very well defined, Christians. But they have
+no Christian interests, no spiritual activities of any sort. For all
+practical purposes God and the spiritual order do not exist for them.
+They are not for the most part what any one would call bad people;
+though there seems no intelligible meaning of the word in which they can
+be called _good_. The best that one can say of them is that they have a
+certain usefulness in the present social order though they are not
+missed when they fall out of it. They can be replaced in the social
+machine much as a lost or broken part can in an engine. And just as the
+part of an engine which has become useless where it is, can have no
+possible usefulness elsewhere, so we are unable to imagine them as
+capable of adaptation to any other place than that which they have
+filled here. Perhaps that is what we mean by hell--incapacity to adapt
+oneself to the life of the future.
+
+All this implies a temper of mind and soul that has rendered itself
+incapable of vision. For just as our ordinary vision of the beauty of
+this world depends not only on the existence of the world but on a
+certain capacity in us to see it, so that the beauty of the world does
+not at all exist for the man whose optic nerve is paralysed; so the
+meaning and beauty, nay, the very existence of the supernatural order
+depends for us upon a capacity in us which we may call the capacity of
+vision. The sceptic waves aside our stories of supernatural happenings
+with the brusque statement, "Nobody to-day sees angels. They only appear
+in an atmosphere of primitive or mediæval superstition, not in the
+broad intellectual light of the twentieth century." But it may be that
+the fact (if it be a fact) that nobody sees angels in the twentieth
+century is due to some other cause than the non-existence of the angels.
+After all, in any century you see what you are prepared to see, what in
+other words, you are looking for. It is a common enough phenomenon that
+the man who lives in the country misses most of the beauty of it. In his
+search for the potato bug he misses the sunset, and disposes of the
+primrose on the river's brim as a common weed. It is true that in order
+to see we need something beside eyes, and to hear we need something
+beside ears. When on an occasion the Father spoke from heaven to the Son
+many heard the sound, and some said, "It thundered"; others got so far
+as to say, "An Angel spake to him."
+
+Let us then in the presence of narratives of supernatural happenings ask
+our _how_ with a good deal of reverence and a good deal of modesty, not
+as implying a sceptical doubt on our part, but as a wish that we may be
+admitted deeper into the meaning of the event. Scepticism simply closes
+the door through which we might pass to fuller knowledge. The
+questioning of faith holds the door open. To those who have not closed
+the door upon the supernatural it is evident that it is permeated with
+forces and influences which are not material in their origin or their
+effects; that God acts upon the world now as He has ever acted upon it.
+If we cannot believe this I do not see that we can believe in God at all
+in any intelligible sense. There is to me one attitude toward the
+supernatural that is even more hopeless than the attitude of
+materialistic scepticism which says, "Miracles do not happen"; and that
+is the attitude which says, "Miracles happened in Bible times, but have
+never happened since." As the one attitude seems to imply that God made
+the world, but after He had made it left it to go on by itself and no
+more expresses any interest in it; so the other implies that after God
+put the Christian religion in the world He left that to go on by itself
+and no longer pays any attention to it. Either to me is wholly
+unintelligible and inconceivable.
+
+And what is worse, is wholly out of touch with the revelation of God
+made in Holy Scripture. That displays God working in and through the
+material universe, and it displays God working in and through the spirit
+of man; and it in no place implies that either the material world or the
+human order is so perfect as to need no further divine action.
+Revelation implies the constant presence and action of God in nature and
+in the Church; it implies that both have a forward look and are not ends
+in themselves but are moving on toward some ultimate perfection. "The
+whole creation groaneth and travaileth ... waiting for the adoption,
+that is, the redemption of our body." We look for a new heaven and a new
+earth; and human society looks to a perfect consummation in the
+fellowship of the saints in light.
+
+Looking out on life from the spiritual point of vantage, we may
+hopefully ask our _how_, and there will be an answer. To blessed Mary S.
+Gabriel replied: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of
+the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which
+shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."--An answer that
+was full of light and of deepest mystery. The immediate question--the
+mode of her conception--was cleared up; it would be through the direct
+action of God the Holy Spirit: but the nature of the Child to be born is
+filled with mystery. We can imagine S. Mary in the days to come finding
+her child-bearing quite intelligible in comparison with the mystery that
+brooded over His nature.
+
+This is the common fact in our dealing with God. We express it when we
+say that we never get beyond the need of faith. We pray that one thing
+may be made clear, and the result of the clearing is the deepened sense
+of the mystery of the things beyond, just as any increase in the power
+of the telescope clears up certain questions which had been puzzling the
+astronomers only to carry their vision into vaster depths of space,
+opening new questions to tantalize the imagination. We find it so
+always. The solution of any question of our spiritual lives does not
+lead as perhaps we thought it would lead to there being no longer any
+questions to perplex us and to draw on our time and our energy; rather
+such solution puts us in the presence of new and, it may well be, deeper
+and more perplexing questions. "Are there no limits to the demands of
+God upon us," we sometimes despairingly ask? And the answer is, "No:
+there are no limits because the end of the road that we are travelling
+is in infinity." The limit that is set to our perfecting is the
+perfection of God, and if we grow through all the years of eternity we
+shall still have attained only a relative perfection.
+
+So the successful passing of one test cannot be expected to relieve us
+from all tests in the future. It is the dream of the child that manhood
+will set it free; and he reaches manhood only to find that it imposes
+obligations which are so pressing that he reverses his dream and speaks
+of his childhood as the time of his true freedom. The meeting of
+spiritual tests is but the proving of spiritual capacity to meet other
+tests. To our Lady it might well seem that the acceptance of the
+conditions of the Incarnation was the severest test that God could
+assign her; that in the light of the promise she could look on to joy.
+But the future concealed a sword which should pierce her very heart. The
+promise contained no doubt wonderful things--this wonder of God's
+blessing that she was now experiencing in the coming of the Holy Ghost,
+in the very embrace of God Himself: this is but the first of the Joyful
+Mysteries which were God's great gifts to her. But her life was not to
+be a succession of Joyful Mysteries, ultimately crowned with the
+Mysteries of Glory. There were the Sorrowful Mysteries as well. They
+were as true, and shall we not say, as necessary, as valuable, a part of
+her spiritual training as the others. She, our Mother, was now near God,
+with a nearness that was possible for no other human being, and it is
+one of the traditional sayings of our Lord: "He that is near Me is near
+fire." And fire burns as well as warms and lights. She is wonderful, the
+Virgin of Nazareth, in this moment when she becomes Mother of God: and
+we share in the rapture of the moment when in the fulness of her joy she
+hardly notices S. Gabriel's departure: but we feel, too, a great pity
+for her as we think of the coming days. So we kneel to her who is our
+Mother, as well as Mother of God, and say our _Ave_, and ask her
+priceless intercession.
+
+     Gabriel, that angel bright,
+     Brighter than the sun is light,
+     From heaven to earth he took his flight,
+       Letare.
+
+     In Nazareth, that great city,
+     Before a maiden he kneeled on knee,
+     And said, "Mary, God is with thee,
+       Letare."
+
+     "Hail Mary, full of grace,
+     God is with thee, and ever was;
+     He hath in thee chosen a place.
+       Letare."
+
+     Mary was afraid of that sight,
+     That came to her with so great light,
+     Then said the angel that was so bright,
+       "Letare."
+
+     "Be not aghast of least nor most,
+     In thee is conceived of the Holy Ghost,
+     To save the souls that were for-lost.
+       Letare."
+
+     Fifteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ANNUNCIATION II
+
+And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according
+to thy word.
+
+S. Luke I. 38
+
+O God, who through the fruitful virginity of blessed Mary didst bestow
+on mankind the rewards of eternal salvation: grant, we beseech thee,
+that we may experience her intercession for us through whom we were made
+worthy to receive the author of life, even Jesus Christ thy Son
+our Lord.
+
+Roman.
+
+S. Mary's momentary hesitation had been due to the surprise that she
+felt at the nature of the angelic message and the difficulty that there
+was in relating it to her state of life. That she, a virgin, should bear
+a son was vastly perplexing; but the answer of S. Gabriel speedily
+cleared away the difficulty: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and
+the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee."
+
+Blessed Mary had no difficulty about the supernatural; she was not
+afflicted with the modern disease that there are no things in heaven and
+earth save such as are contained in our philosophy. She was not of those
+who "cannot believe what they do not understand," It was enough for her
+that a message had come from God: and no matter how little she was able
+to understand the mode of God's proposed action within her, she was
+willing to offer herself to be the instrument of the will of God. No
+doubt that was an habitual attitude and not one taken up on the spur of
+the moment. It is indeed very rarely that what seem spontaneous actions
+are really such; and S. Mary's first word was nearer spontaneity than
+the second. Her exclamation in answer to the angelic _Ave_ was the
+natural expression of her surprise at so unexpected a message: its
+variance from all her thought about her life was the thing that struck
+her; and therefore her instinctive, "How can this be?"
+
+In this second word we have a quite different attitude. Here is
+revealed to us the profound and perfect humility of the Blessed Virgin.
+This answer comes from the experience of her whole life. It is of such
+utterances that we say that they are revealing. What we at any time say,
+does in fact reveal what we are--what we have come to be through the
+experience of our past life. And no doubt it is these instinctive
+utterances which are called out by some unexpected occurrence that
+reveal more of us than our weighed and guarded words. Back of every word
+we utter is a life we have lived. We have been spending years in
+preparing for that word. Perhaps when the time comes to speak it, it is
+not the word we thought we were going to speak, it was not the prelude
+to the action we thought that we were going to perform; it reveals a
+character other than the character that we thought we had. How often the
+Gospel brings that before us! We see the young Ruler come running with
+his brave and perfectly sincere words about inheriting eternal life; and
+then we see him going away when the testing of our Lord demonstrated
+that he only partly meant what he said. It was not S. Peter's brave
+words, "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee," that
+revealed the truth about the Apostle; but the words that were called out
+by the accusation that he was of the company of Jesus: "Then began he to
+curse and swear, saying, I know not the man." We have no doubt that he
+knows himself better when he catches the eye of the Master turned upon
+him and goes and weeps bitterly. And it is true, is it not, that it is
+through words called out and thoughts stirred by the unexpected that we
+often get new insight into our real state. A sudden temptation reveals a
+hidden weakness, and we go away shamed and crushed, saying, "I did not
+suppose that I was capable of that."
+
+But, thank God, the revelation is sometimes the other way; the testing
+uncovers unexpected strength. Of many a man, after some strong trial, we
+say, "I did not know that he had so much courage, or so much patience."
+The quiet unassuming exterior was the mask of an heroic will of which
+very likely not even the possessor suspected the true quality. The
+annals of martyrdom are full of these revelations of unsuspected
+strength. Here in the case of Blessed Mary the quality revealed is that
+of humility so perfect that it dreams not of revolt from the most
+searching trial. It reveals the character of our Mother better than
+pages of description can do. What we see in response to the bewildering
+messages brought by S. Gabriel is the instinctive movement of the soul
+toward God. There is utter absence of any thought of self or of how she
+may be affected by the purpose of God; it is enough that that purpose is
+made plain.
+
+It seems well to insist on this instinctive movement of the soul in
+Blessed Mary because it is one item of the evidence that the Catholic
+Church has to offer for its belief in her sinlesssness. Any momentary
+rebellion, no matter how soon recovered from, or how sincerely
+regretted, against the will of God, would be evidence of the existence
+of sin. But where sin is not, where there is an unstained soul, there
+the knowledge of the will of God will send one running to its
+acceptance; there will be active acceptance and not just submission to
+God's will. Submission implies a certain effort to place ourselves in
+line with the will of God; it often seems to imply that we are accepting
+it because we cannot do anything else. But with Blessed Mary there is a
+glad going forth to meet God; the word "Behold" springs out to meet the
+will of God half-way. It is as though she had been holding herself
+ready, expectant, in the certainty of the coming of some message, and
+now she offers herself without the shadow of hesitation, as to a purpose
+which was a welcome vocation: "Behold the Handmaid of the Lord; be it
+unto me according to thy word." How wonderful is the humility of
+obedience!
+
+And humility--we must stress this--is not a virtue of youth; it is not
+one of the virtues which ripen quickly, but is of slow development and
+delayed maturity. Modesty we should expect in a maiden, and lack of
+self-assertion; and perhaps obedience of a sort. But those do not
+constitute the virtue of humility. We are humble when we have lost self;
+and Mary's wondering answer reveals the fact that she is not thinking of
+herself at all, but only of the nature of the divine purpose. That that
+purpose being known she should at all resist it would seem to her a
+thing incredible, for all her life she had had no other motive of
+action. Her will had never been separated from the will of God.
+
+This state of union which was hers by divine election and privilege, we
+achieve, if we achieve it at all, by virtue of great spiritual
+discipline. We are, to be sure, brought into union with God through the
+sacraments, but the union so achieved is, if one may so express it, an
+unstable union; it is union that we have to maintain by daily spiritual
+action and which suffers many a weakening through our infidelity, even
+if it escape the disaster of mortal sin. We sway to and fro in our
+struggle to attain the equilibrium of perfection which belonged to
+Blessed Mary by virtue of the first embrace of God which had freed her
+from sin. Our tragedy is that we have almost universally lost the first
+engagements of the Spiritual Combat before we have at all understood
+that there is any combat. The circumstances of life of child and youth
+are such that we become familiar with sin before we have the
+intelligence to understand the need of resisting, even if we are
+fortunate enough to have such an education as to awaken a sense of sin
+as opposition to God. There is nothing more appalling than the tragedy
+of life thus defiled and broken and put at a disadvantage before it even
+understands the ideals that should govern its course. When the vision of
+perfection comes and we face life as the field where we are to acquire
+eternal values, we face it with a poisoned imagination and a depleted
+strength. Our battle is not only to maintain what we have, but to win
+back what we have lost.
+
+Under such conditions there is much consolation in learning that we do
+not fight alone but have the constant help and sympathy of those who are
+endued with the strength of perfect purity. Their likeness to us in
+that they have lived the life of the flesh assures us of their
+understanding, and it assures us too of their active co-operation. We
+cannot understand the saints standing outside human life and from the
+vantage point of their achievement looking on as indolent spectators.
+The spectacle offorded by the Church Militant must call out the active
+intercession of all the saints; but especially do we look for helpful
+sympathy from her who is our all-pure Mother, whose very purity gives
+her intercession unmeasured power. She is not removed from us through
+her spotlessness, but by virtue of her clearer understanding of the
+meaning of sin and of separation from God that it brings her, she is
+ready to fly to the help of all sinners by her ceaseless intercession.
+
+The difficulty of our spiritual lives rises chiefly out of the clash of
+wills. A disordered nature, a tainted inheritance, a corrupt environment
+conspire to make the life of grace tremendously difficult. It is only in
+a very limited sense that we can be said to be free, and there is no
+possibility at all of overcoming the handicap of sin, except firm and
+careful reliance on the grace of God. That grace, no doubt, is always at
+our disposal as far as we will use it. Grace moves us, but it does not
+compel us; and we are free always to reject the offer of God. We have
+only to open our eyes upon the world about us to see how rarely is the
+grace of God accepted in any effective way. Even in convinced Christians
+the attempt to live the divided life is the commonest thing possible. It
+sometimes seems as though the prevalent conception of the Christian
+life were that it is sufficient to offer God a certain limited
+allegiance and that the remainder of the life will be thereby ransomed
+and placed at our disposal to use as we will. We find the theory well
+worked out in the current attitude of Christians toward the observance
+of the Lord's Day. It appears to be held that an attendance at Mass or
+Matins is a sufficient recognition of the interests of religion and that
+the rest of the day may be regarded, not as the Lord's Day, but as
+man's--as a day of unlimited amusement and self-indulgence. The notion
+of consecration is abandoned. The only possible outcome of such theories
+of life is what we already experience, spiritual lawlessness and moral
+degradation. I suppose that it will only be through social disaster that
+society will come (as usual, too late) to any comprehension that the
+will of God is what it is because it is only by following the road that
+it indicates that human life can reach a successful development. God's
+laws are not arbitrary inflictions; they are the expression of the
+highest wisdom in the guidance of human life.
+
+Our elementary duty therefore as sane persons is to find what is the
+will of God in any given circumstances; there should be no action until
+there has been an effort to ascertain that will. It were as sensible to
+set about building a house without ascertaining what strength of
+foundation would be needful, or without knowing the sort of material we
+were going to use. One has heard of a house being built in which it
+turned out that there was a room with no doorway, or floor to which no
+stair led up; but we do not commend such exploits as the last word in
+architecture, nor would we commend a farmer who planted his crops
+without attention to the nature of the soil. There are certain
+elementary principles of common sense which we pretty uniformly hold to
+in every matter with the exception of religion; that seems to be held to
+be a separate department of human activity with laws of its own, and in
+which the principles which govern life elsewhere do not hold. We do not
+profess this theory, of course, but we commonly act upon it, while we
+still profess to respect the will of God. It is strange too that after
+having habitually neglected that will, we are greatly disappointed, not
+to say indignant, when after a life of disobedience and scorn of God's
+thought for us we do not find ourselves in possession of the fruits of
+righteousness. If it were not so tragic it would be amusing to hear men
+declaim against the justice of a God whose existence they have
+habitually disregarded.
+
+But, it is often said, it is not by any means easy to find out God's
+will. You talk about it as though it were as easy to know God's will as
+it is to know the multiplication table. Well, at least it can be said
+that one does not get to know the multiplication table without effort!
+What objections as to the obscurity of the will of God will seem to mean
+is that it does take effort to ascertain it. I do not know of any reason
+for regarding that as unjust. If the will of God is what religion
+maintains that it is, of primary importance to our lives, we might well
+be glad that it is ascertainable at all, at the expense of
+whatever effort.
+
+An Almighty God has implanted within every human heart the knowledge
+that His will exists and is important; that is, He has endowed every man
+with a conscience which is the certainty of the difference between right
+and wrong, and the conviction that we are responsible for our conduct to
+some power outside ourselves; that we are not at liberty to conduct life
+on any lines we will. Having so much certainty, it surely becomes us to
+set about ascertaining the nature of the power and the details of the
+will. The very nature of conscience, as a sense of obligation, rather
+than a source of information, should create a desire for a knowledge of
+what God's will is in detail, that is, what is the content of the notion
+of right and wrong.
+
+And while it is true that such content can only be ascertained by work,
+it is not true that the work is a specially difficult one. The
+Revelation of God's mind made through Holy Scripture and through the
+life of His Incarnate Son is an open book that any one can study; and to
+any objection that such study has led chiefly to difference of opinion
+and darkness rather than light, the answer is that such disaster follows
+for the most part only when the guidance of the Catholic Church is
+repudiated; when, that is, we pursue a course in this study which we
+should not pursue in relation to any other. If we were studying geology
+we should not regard it as the best course to scorn all that preceding
+students have done, and betake our unprepared selves to field work! But
+that is the "Bible and the Bible only" theory of spiritual knowledge. If
+we want to know the meaning of the Biblical teaching, we must make use
+of the helps which the experience of the Church has richly provided.
+
+But the nature of the divine will and the particulars of our obligation
+are not merely, perhaps one ought to say, not chiefly, to be assimilated
+through our brains. The best preparation for the doing of the will of
+God and the progressive entering into His mind, is an obedient life.
+Purity of character will carry us farther on this path than cleverness
+of brains. Our Lord's own rule is: _He that doeth the will shall know of
+the doctrine._ In other words, we understand the mind of God and attain
+to the illumination of the conscience, through sympathetic response to
+the will so far as we have seen it. And each new response, in its turn,
+carries us to a deeper and clearer understanding of the will. That is to
+say, our conscience, by habitual response to God's will, so far as it
+knows it, is so illumined as to be able to make trustworthy judgments on
+new material submitted to it.
+
+This is, of course, to be otherwise described as the working of God the
+Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit that dwelleth in us and directs us to
+right judgments if we will listen. Our danger is that self-will
+constantly crops up and complicates the case by representing that the
+line suggested by the Holy Spirit is not in reality in accord with our
+interests. This opposition between the seeming interests suggested by
+self-will, which indeed often contribute to our immediate gratification,
+and our true interests as indicated by the monitions of the Holy
+Spirit, constitutes the real struggle of the life during the period of
+probation. The will of God in every circumstance is usually plain
+enough; but it is silenced by the clamour of the passions and desires
+demanding immediate gratification: and we are all more or less children
+in our insistence on the immediate and our incapacity to wait. But I
+must insist again that it is not knowledge that is wanting but sympathy
+with the course that knowledge directs. We pursuade ourselves that we do
+not know, when the real trouble is that we know only too well. One feels
+that much that is put forward as inability to understand religion is at
+bottom merely disinclination to obey it.
+
+Not that there is not room for genuine perplexity. Often it happens that
+we are not at all certain in this or that detail of conduct. In that
+case it is well to consider whether it is necessary to act before we can
+attain certainty through study or advice. But if act we must, we can at
+least act with honesty, not making our will the accomplice of our
+passions or interests.
+
+I do not believe that there are many cases in which we shall go wrong if
+we make use of all the means at our disposal. A diligent doing of the
+will of God does undoubtedly bring light on unknown problems and
+unexpected situations in which we from time to time find ourselves. If
+our constant attitude has been one of free and glad obedience we need
+not fear to go astray. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord," Blessed Mary
+said; and such an attitude has never failed to meet the divine approval
+and call out the help of God. Just to put ourselves utterly at God's
+disposal is the clearing of all life. "Into Thy hands," is the solution
+of all difficulties.
+
+     I sing a maiden
+       That is matchless;
+     King of all kings
+       To her Son she ches.
+
+     He came all so still
+       To His Mother's bower,
+     As dew in April
+       That falleth on the flower.
+
+     Mother and maiden
+       Was never none but she;
+     Well might such a lady
+       God's Mother be.
+              English, Fifteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+     THE VISITATION I
+
+     And Mary arose in those days, and went into
+     the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah;
+     and entered into the house of Zacharias, and
+     saluted Elizabeth.
+
+                          S. Luke I. 39, 40.
+
+     Grant, we beseech thee, O Lord God, to us thy servants, that
+     we may evermore enjoy health of mind and body, and by the
+     glorious intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be
+     delivered from present sorrows and enjoy everlasting
+     gladness. Through.
+
+     ROMAN.
+
+Those who were faithful in Israel and were looking forward to the
+fulfilment of God's promises would be drawn together by close bonds of
+sympathy. It oftentimes proves that the bonds of a common ideal are
+stronger than the bonds of blood. It was to prove so many times in the
+history of Christianity when in accordance with our Lord's words the
+closest blood relation would be broken through fidelity to Him, and a
+man's foes be found to be those of his own household. But also it is
+true that the possession of common ideals becomes the basis of relations
+which are stronger than race or family. We may be sure that the members
+of that little group of which we catch glimpses now and then in the
+progress of the Gospel story found in their expectation of the Lord's
+deliverance of Israel such a bond. We feel that S. Mary and S. Joseph
+must have been members of this group and that they were filled with the
+hope of God's manifestation. Another family which shared the same hope
+was that of the priest Zacharias whose wife Elizabeth was the cousin of
+Mary of Nazareth. It is to their house in the hill country of Judah we
+now turn our thoughts.
+
+It was a part of the angelic message to S. Mary that her cousin
+Elizabeth had "conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth
+month with her who was called barren." Overwhelmed as S. Mary was by the
+vocation which had come to her, perplexed as to what should be her next
+step, she may well have seized upon the words of the angel as a hint as
+to her present course. She must confide in some one, and that some one,
+we instantly feel, must be a woman. In her own great joy she would need
+some one with whom to share it. In her unprecedented case she would need
+a counselor, and who better could afford aid than her cousin whose case
+was in so many respects like her own, who was already cherishing a child
+whose conception was due to the intervention of God? We understand
+therefore, why it is that without waiting for the further development of
+events, Mary arises, and goes "with haste" to the home of her cousin.
+
+It is just now a house full of joy. For many years there had been
+happiness there, but a happiness over which a cloud rested. The
+affliction of barrenness was their sorrow. To the Hebrew there was no
+true family until the love of the father and the mother was incarnated
+in the child; and through many weary days Zacharias and Elizabeth had
+waited until hope quite failed as they found themselves beyond the
+possibility of bearing a child to cheer them and to hand on their name.
+We may be sure that they were reconciled to the will of God, for it is
+written of them that they were righteous, and the central feature of
+righteousness is the acceptance of the divine will. But though one
+cheerfully accepts the divine will there may still remain a
+consciousness of a vacancy in life; and therefore we can understand the
+joy that came to Zacharias when the angel appeared to him in the temple
+when he was exercising the priest's office and offering the incense of
+the daily sacrifice with the message that he should have a son. It was a
+joy that would be unclouded by the God-sent dumbness which was at once a
+punishment for his lack of immediate faith and a sign of the
+faithfulness of God. It was a joy that would hasten his steps homeward
+with the glad tidings, a joy that would fill the heart of Elizabeth when
+she heard the message of God. Soon the consciousness of the babe in her
+womb would be a growing wonder and a growing happiness. There would be a
+new brightness in the house where the aged mother waits through the
+months and the dumb father with his writing tablet at his side meditates
+upon the meaning of the providence of God and upon the prophecies of the
+angel as to his child's future. But what that future would be he could
+hardly expect to witness; he was too old to live to the day of his
+child's showing unto Israel.
+
+It is to this house that we see S. Mary hastening, sure of finding there
+a heart in which she can confide. She "entered into the house of
+Zacharias and saluted Elizabeth." We are not told what the words of her
+salutation were, but no doubt it was the customary Jewish salutation of
+peace. There could have been no more appropriate salutation exchanged
+between these two in whose souls was abiding the peace of a perfect
+possession of God. The will of God to which they had been accustomed to
+offer themselves all their lives was being accomplished through them in
+unexpected ways; but it found them as ready of acceptance as they had
+been in any of the ordinary duties of life wherein they had been
+accustomed to wait upon God. We may seem sometimes to go beyond Holy
+Scripture in our interpretations of feelings and thoughts which we are
+sure must have been those of the actors in the drama of salvation
+unfolded to us in the Scriptures; but are we not entitled to infer from
+God's actions a good deal of the nature of the instruments He uses? Are
+we not quite safe in the case of S. Mary in the deduction from the
+nature of her vocation of the spiritual perfection to attribute to her?
+Does not God's use of a person imply qualities in the person used? It is
+on this ground that I feel that we are quite safe in inferring the
+spiritual attitude of S. Mary and of S. Elizabeth from the choice God
+made of them to be the instruments of His purpose of redemption.
+
+But we are not inferring, we have the record with us, when we think of
+the joy of the mothers transcended in the joy of the children. The
+unborn Forerunner becomes conscious of the approach of Him of whom he is
+to say later: "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the
+world"; and there is an instantaneous movement that can only be that of
+recognition and worship. The movement of the child is at once understood
+and translated by S. Elizabeth: "And she spake out with a loud voice,
+and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy
+womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come
+to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine
+ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy."
+
+In the presence of such joy and such sanctity we feel that our proper
+attitude is the attitude of adoring wonder that S. Elizabeth expresses.
+We worship our hidden Lord as the unborn prophet worships Him. We have
+no question to ask, nor curiosity at the mode of God's action. We are
+quite content to accept His action as it is revealed to us in Scripture;
+a revelation of the divine presense in humanity which has been
+abundantly verified in all the history of the Church. That verification
+in experience--a verification that we ourselves can repeat--is worth
+infinitely more than all the argument that the centuries have seen.
+
+"Blessed art thou among women," S. Elizabeth cries; and in doing so she
+is but repeating the words of the angel of the Annunciation. This word,
+too, we presently hear S. Mary taking up, and under the inspiration of
+the Holy Ghost saying: "From henceforth all generations shall call
+me blessed."
+
+And so they have. All generations, that is, that have been faithful to
+the Gospel teaching and have assimilated in any degree the consequences
+of S. Mary's nearness to God. When we speak of "Blessed" Mary we are but
+doing what angels and holy women have done, and it is great pity if in
+doing so we have to make a conscious effort, if the words do not spring
+spontaneously from our lips. Surely, we have not gone far toward the
+mastery of God's coming in the Incarnation if we have not felt the
+purity of the instrument through whom God enters our nature. The outward
+and visible sign of our understanding is found in our ability to
+complete the _Ave_ as the Holy Spirit has taught the Church to complete
+it: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour
+of our death."
+
+This reiterated attribution of blessedness to Mary our Mother calls us
+to pause and ask just what blessedness means. It is of course the
+characteristic Scripture locution for those who in some way enjoy the
+special favour of God. Blessedness is the state of those who have
+received special divine gifts of favour. A characteristic scriptural
+description of the blessedness of the righteous in contrast with the
+disaster of the unrighteous may be studied in the first Psalm. In the
+New Testament we naturally turn to the Sermon on the Mount where the
+Beatitudes give us our Lord's thought about blessedness. I think that we
+can describe the notion of blessedness there presented as being the
+state of those who have taken God at His word and chosen Him, and by
+that act of choice, while they have forfeited the world and the world's
+favour, have attained to the spiritual riches of the Kingdom of God.
+They are those to whom God is the Supreme Good, in whose possession they
+gladly count all things but loss. These are they who here in the pilgrim
+state have already attained to the enjoyment of God because they want
+nothing other or beside Him.
+
+Supremely blessed, therefore, is Mary our Mother, who never for a moment
+even in thought was separate from God. From the earliest moment of her
+existence she could say, "My beloved is mine and I am His." We try to
+think out what such a fact may mean when translated into terms of
+spiritual energy, and it seems to mean more than anything else boundless
+power of intercession such as the Church has attributed to S. Mary from
+the earliest times. We see no other way of estimating spiritual power
+save as the power of prayer. It is through prayer that we approach
+God--for we remember that sacrifice is but the highest form of prayer.
+The blessedness of S. Mary, that peculiar degree of blessedness which
+seems signalized by the reiterated attribution of the quality to her,
+must for our purposes to be understood as "power with God," power of
+intercession. It means that our Lord has chosen her to be a special
+medium of approval to Him, and that through her prayers He wills to
+bestow upon men many of His choicest gifts. Naturally, her prayers, like
+our prayers, are mediated by the merits of her divine Son; nevertheless
+they have a peculiar power which is related to her peculiar blessedness
+in that she is the mother of Incarnate God, and by special privilege is
+herself without sin. Of all those to whom we are privileged to turn in
+the joys and tragedies of our lives for the sympathy which helps through
+enlightened, loving prayer, we most naturally resort to her who is all
+love and all sympathy, Mary, the Mother of Jesus, blessed among
+women forever.
+
+Although we are told nothing of these days that S. Mary spent with her
+cousin Elizabeth, we do gather that she remained with her until her
+child was born and that she saw S. John in his mother's arms, and was a
+partaker in the joy of the aged parents. She was present when Zacharias,
+his speech restored, uttered the _Benedictus_ in thanksgiving for the
+birth of his son. It was then, having seen her own Son's Forerunner that
+S. Mary went back to Nazareth filled more than ever with the sense that
+God's hand was in the events that were taking place, and of the approach
+of some crisis in her nation's history. It must have been that she
+talked intimately with Zacharias and Elizabeth and with them tried to
+imagine what was the future in which these two children were so closely
+concerned. When we consider the _Magnificat_ and the _Benedictus_ not as
+the "Gospel Canticles" to be sung in Church but as the utterances of
+pious Israelites under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, we feel how
+very vivid must have been their expectation of God's action in the
+immediate future, and with what intense love and interest they thought
+of the parts to be taken by their children in the deliverance God was
+preparing. How often they must have pondered the God-inspired saying:
+"He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the
+Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he
+shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there
+shall be no end." "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the
+Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his
+ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of
+their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the Dayspring
+from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness
+and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way
+of peace."
+
+We think too of a more intimate sympathy that there would have been
+between these two women, drawn now so close together, not only by the
+blood bond, but by the bond of a common experience. What wonderful
+hours of communing during these three months! The peace of the hills of
+Judah is all about them and the peace of God is in their souls. What
+ecstatic joy, what ineffable love was theirs in these moments as they
+thought of the children who were God's precious gift to them. I fancy
+that there were many hours when they ceased to think of the mystery that
+hung over these children's destiny, and became just mothers lost in love
+of the coming sons.
+
+As we try to think out their relation to each other it presents itself
+to us as a relation of sympathy. Sympathy is community of feeling; it is
+maimed and thwarted when there is feeling only on one side. We speak of
+our sympathy in their affliction for others whom we do not know and who
+do not know us, but that is a very imperfect rendering of the perfect
+thing. No more than love does sympathy reach its perfection in solitude.
+But here in this village of Judah we know that we have the perfect
+thing--sympathy in its most exquisite form.
+
+This capacity for sympathy is one of the greatest of human endowments,
+and, one is glad to think, not like many human endowments, rare in its
+manifestation. In its ordinary manifestation it is instinctive, is
+roused by the spectacle of need calling us to its aid. There come to our
+knowledge from time to time instances of what seem to us very grievous
+failures in sympathy, but investigation shows that ignorance is very
+commonly at the bottom of them. When human beings are convinced of a
+need they are quite ready to respond. Indeed this readiness to respond
+makes them the easy victims of all sorts of impostures, of baseless
+appeals which play upon sentiment rather than convince the
+understanding. And just there lies the weakness of sympathy in that it
+is so easily turned to sentimentality. But the sentimentalist who gushes
+over ills, real or imaginary, can commonly be brought to book easily
+enough. For one thing the sentimentalist is devoted to publicity. He
+loves to conduct campaigns and drives, to "get up" a demonstration or an
+entertainment. I do not mean that he is a hypocrite but only that he
+loves the lime-light. When any tragedy befalls man his impulse is to
+organise a dance in aid of it. It is extraordinary how many people there
+are who will aid a charity by dancing to whom one would feel it quite
+hopeless to appeal for the amount of the dance tickets. And yet they are
+not wholly selfish people; there does lie back of the dance a certain
+sympathetic impulse. We easily deceive ourselves about ourselves, and it
+is well to be sure that we have true sympathy and not just sentiment. It
+is not so difficult to find out. We can test ourselves quickly enough by
+examining our giving. Do we give only when we are asked? Do we yield to
+spectacular appeals or only to those that we have examined and found
+good? Do we put the spiritual interests of humanity first? Is there any
+appreciable amount of quiet spontaneous giving which is known to no one?
+Do we prefer to be anonymous? Such tests soon reveal what we are like.
+One who never gives spontaneously, without being asked, we may be sure
+is lacking in sympathy.
+
+But of course one does not mean that sympathy is so closely related to
+what we call charity as what I have just said, if left by itself, would
+seem to imply. That is indeed the common form assumed by sympathy which
+has to be called out. But the best type of sympathy is the expression of
+our knowledge of one another; it is based on our knowledge of human
+nature and our interest in human beings. Because it is based on
+knowledge it is not subject to be swept away by the sweet breezes of
+sentimentalism. To its perfect exercise it is needful to know
+individuals not merely to know about them. The ordinary limitations of
+sympathy come from this, that we do not want to take time and pains to
+know one another. That, for example, is where the Church falls short in
+its mission to constitute a real brotherhood among its members--they
+have no time nor inclination really to know one another, or they find
+the artificial walls that society has erected impassable. It is, in
+fact, not very easy to know one another, and it is impossible to develop
+the complete type of sympathy with a crowd. For one must insist that
+this highest type of sympathy requires, what the word actually does
+mean, mutual sharing in life, the participation in the lives of our
+fellows and their partaking in our lives.
+
+So we understand why perfect sympathy is conditioned on spirituality.
+Unless we are spiritually developed and spiritually at one we cannot
+share in one another's lives fully. Where there are lives separated by a
+gulf of spiritual differences the completest sympathy is impossible. And
+we understand why Incarnate seems so much nearer to us than God
+unincarnate. It is true that "the Father Himself loveth you"; it is
+true that it is the love of the Blessed Trinity that is expressed in the
+Incarnation. The Incarnation did not create God's love and sympathy, it
+only reveals it. Yet it is precisely the Incarnation that enables us to
+lay hold on God's sympathy with a certainty and sureness of grasp that
+we would not otherwise have. The sight of "God in Christ reconciling the
+world unto Himself" is more to us in the way of proof than any amount of
+declaration can be. To be told of the sympathy of God is one thing, to
+see how it works is another.
+
+Our personal need in this matter is to find the sympathy that will help
+us in something outside ourselves, outside the limitations of human
+nature. Much as we value human sympathy, precious as we find its
+expression, yet we do find that it has for the higher purposes of life
+serious limitations. It has very little power to execute what it finds
+needs to be done. A man may understand another's weakness and may
+utterly sympathise with it; he may advise and console, but in the end he
+finds that he cannot adequately help. The case is hopeless unless he can
+point the sufferer to some source outside himself on which he can draw,
+unless he can lead him to the sympathy of God. God can offer not only
+consolation, not only the spectacle of another life which has triumphed
+under analogous circumstances, but He can give the power to this present
+weak and discouraged life to triumph in the place where it is. He can
+"make a way of escape."
+
+But there is another form of sympathy which we crave and need which is
+just the communion of soul with soul. We are not asking anything more or
+other than to show ourselves. We are overwhelmed with the loneliness of
+life. It comes upon us in the most crowded places, this sense of
+separation from all about us. Oh, that I might flee away and be at rest,
+is our feeling. It is here that we specially need our Lord. Blessed are
+we if we have learned to find in Him the rest we need for our souls, if
+we have learned to open the door that leads always to Him; or, perhaps
+to knock appealingly at that door which He will never fail to open. It
+is then that we find the joy of the invitation "Come unto me all ye that
+are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."
+
+But Christ, the perfect Sympathiser, has associated others with Himself.
+If we can go to him, so can others; the Way is open to all. And those
+who go and are associated with Him are gathered into a family. Here
+among those who have followed the interests which are ours, and have
+pursued the ends that we are pursuing, and cultivated the qualities
+which we value, we feel sure of that sympathetic understanding of life
+which we seek. And especially among those members of the Body who have
+gone on to the end in fidelity to the ideals of the life which is hid
+with Christ in God shall we look for understanding and help. It is from
+this point of view that the Communion of Saints will mean so much to us.
+We value the strength of mutual support which inevitably grows out of
+associated life. We cannot think of the saints of God as having passed
+beyond us into some place of rest where they are content to forget the
+problems of earth: rather we are compelled to think of them as still
+actively sharing in those interests which are still the interests of
+their divine Head. Until, Jesus Himself cease to think of us who are
+still in the Pilgrim Way, and cease to offer Himself on our behalf, we
+cannot think of any who are in Him as other than intensely interested in
+us of the earthly Church, or as doing other than helping by prayer for
+us that we with them may attain our end. And especially shall we feel
+sure that at any moment of our lives we may turn to the Mother in
+confident expectancy of finding most helpful sympathy and most ready
+aid. Her life to-day is a life of intercession, of intercession which
+has all the power of perfect understanding and perfect sympathy. Let us
+learn to go to her; let us learn that as God is praised and honoured in
+His saints, as our Lord choses to work through those who are united to
+Him, so it is His will that great power of prayer shall be hers of whom
+He assumed our nature, that nature through which He still distributes
+the riches of His grace.
+
+     As I lay upon a night,
+     My thought was on a Lady bright
+     That men callen Mary of might,
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     To her came Gabriel so bright
+     And said, "Hail, Mary, full of might,
+     To be called thou art adight;"
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     Right as the sun shineth in glass,
+     So Jesus in His Mother was,
+     And thereby wit men that she was
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     Now is born that Babe of bliss,
+     And Queen of Heaven His Mother is,
+     And therefore think me that she is
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     After to heaven He took His flight,
+     And there He sits with His Father of might,
+     With Him is crowned that Lady bright,
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     English, Fifteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE VISITATION II
+
+And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath
+rejoiced in God my Saviour.
+
+S. Luke I. 46, 47.
+
+Forasmuch as we have no excuse, because of the multitude of our sins,
+we plead through thee, O Virgin Mother of God, with Him whom thou
+didst bear.
+
+Lo, great is thine intercession, strong and acceptable with our Saviour.
+
+O Stainless Mother, reject not us sinners in thine intercession with Him
+Whom thou didst bear.
+
+COPTIC.
+
+Wonderful was this day in the little town of Judah where these two
+women, each in her way an instrument of God in the upbuilding of His
+Kingdom, met and rejoiced together. There is revealed to us something of
+the possibilities of our religion when we try to follow the thought of
+these two women. They are so utterly devoted to God that God can speak
+to them. I think that it is well for us to dwell on this fact for a
+moment. We are apt to look upon inspiration, what is described as being
+filled with the Holy Ghost, as somewhat of a mechanical mode of God's
+operation. Our mistaken view is that God takes control of the faculties
+of a human being and uses them for His own purposes.
+
+But that is quite to misunderstand God's method. God uses the faculties
+of a man in proportion as the man yields himself to Him; and one who is
+living a sincere religion becomes in a degree the medium of God's
+self-expression. This possibility of expressing God increases as we
+increase in sanctity. Those who have completely yielded themselves to
+God in a life of sanctity become in a deep sense the representatives of
+God: they have, in S. Paul's phraseology, His mind. To be capable of so
+becoming the divine instrument it is necessary, not only to offer no
+opposition to God's purposes, but to make ourselves the active
+executants of them. Our Christian vocation is thus to be the instrument
+of God, to be the visible demonstrations of His power and presence.
+There is a true inspiration, a true speaking for God to-day, no doubt,
+as true as at any time in the Church's history, wherever there is
+sanctity. What is lacking to present day utterances of sanctity is not
+the action of the Holy Spirit, but authentication by the Church: that is
+given only under certain special circumstances and for special purposes.
+But there is no need to limit the inspiring action of the Holy Spirit to
+such utterances as for special reasons have received official
+recognition.
+
+What we need to feel is the constant action of the Holy Spirit--that He
+wants to speak through every man. And it helps to clear our minds if we
+go to our Bibles with the expectation of finding here, not exceptions to
+all rules which obtain in common life, but types of the divine action.
+The isolation of Bible history has done much to create a feeling of its
+unreality. What has happened only in the Bible can, we are apt to feel,
+safely be disregarded in daily life in the twentieth century. But if
+what we find there is customary modes of divine action in life,
+exceptional in detail rather than in principle, the attitude we shall
+take will be wholly different. We shall then study them with the feeling
+expressed in S. Paul's saying, "These things are written for our
+learning," and we shall expect to find in us and about us the same order
+of divine action, we shall learn to look on our lives as having their
+chief meaning in the fact that they are possible instruments of God; we
+shall learn to regard failure as failure to show forth God to the world.
+
+In a way we can read our facts backward: the fact that "Elizabeth was
+filled with the Holy Ghost," and the fact that Mary under the same
+divine impulse gave utterance to the words of the Magnificat, is a
+revelation of the character of these two women which would satisfy us of
+their sanctity had we no other evidence of it. The choice of them by God
+to be His instruments is evidence of the divine approval; and that
+approval can never be false to the facts; what God treats as holy
+must be holy.
+
+So we come to holy Mary's Song with the feeling that in studying it we
+shall find in it a revelation of S. Mary herself. She is not an
+instrument on which the Holy Spirit plays, but an intelligent being
+through whom He acts. She, like S. Elizabeth, is filled with the Holy
+Spirit--she had never been in the slightest degree out of union with
+God--but still the Magnificat is her utterance; it represents her
+thought; it is the measure, if one may so put it, in modern terminology,
+of her degree of spiritual culture. Much that we say about S. Mary, her
+simplicity, her social place, and so on, seems to carry with it the
+implication of the ignorance and spiritual dullness that we associate
+with the type of poverty we are accustomed to to-day. But the poor folk
+whom we meet in association with our Lord are neither ignorant nor
+spiritually dull; and it would be a vast mistake to think of Blessed
+Mary as other than of great intelligence and spiritual receptivity, or
+as deficient in understanding of the details of her ancestral religion.
+We have no reason to be surprised that she should sing Magnificat, or to
+think that the Holy Spirit was speaking through her thoughts which were
+quite beyond her comprehension. Inspired she was, but inspired, no
+doubt, to utter thoughts that had many times filled her mind.
+
+Her spiritual attitude as revealed in the Magnificat is but the attitude
+which must have been hers habitually--the attitude that exalts God and
+not self. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in
+God my Saviour." That is the starting-place of all holy souls--the
+adoration of God. True humility is never self-conscious because self is
+lost in the vision of God. S. Mary was bearing in her pure body the very
+Son of God. Admit, if you will, that as yet she did not understand the
+full reach of her vocation; but she did know that she had been chosen by
+God in a most signal manner to be the instrument of His purpose. That
+which S. Elizabeth spoke under divine impulse,--"Whence is this that the
+mother of my Lord should come to me?"--must have had clear meaning for
+her. But the wonder of all that God is accomplishing through her only
+brings her to God's feet. That "He that is mighty hath done me great
+things," is but the evidence of His sanctity, not of her greatness.
+
+One never gets through wondering at the beauty of humility; and it is
+one of the marks of how far we are from spiritual apprehension when we
+find this splendid virtue unattractive. It does indeed cut across many
+of the instinctive impulses of our nature; it can hardly be said to have
+dawned on humanity as a virtue until the Incarnation of God. Therein it
+has revealed to us God's attitude in His work and, by consequence, the
+natural attitude of all such as would associate themselves with God. It
+is not so much a self-denying as a self-forgetting virtue. It is ruined
+by the very consciousness of it. Such phrases as "practicing humility"
+seem self-contradictory--when one begins to practice humility it becomes
+something else. We do not conceive of our Lady as setting out to be
+humble, of thinking of what a humble person would do under such and such
+circumstances. She does not, as I was saying, think of herself at all,
+but thinks of God. The "great things" she has are His gift. That He has
+looked upon her low estate, and that in consequence of His visitation
+"all generations shall call her blessed," is a manifestation of the
+divine glory and goodness, not an occasion of pride to the recipient of
+God's gifts.
+
+We who are so self-seeking, who are so greedy of praise, who are
+constantly wanting what we feel is our due, who hunger to be
+"appreciated," who are full of proud boasting about our accomplishment,
+will do well to meditate upon this point of view. We acknowledge the
+supremacy of God with our lips, but in our acts we are quite prone to
+assume that we are independent actors in the universe where whatever we
+have is due to our own creative powers. We claim a certain lordship over
+life, a certain independent use of it. We resent the pressure of
+religious principle as setting up a sort of counter-claim to control
+that which it is ours to dispose of as we will. Most of our difficulties
+come from this godless attitude which claims independence of life. It
+results in a religion which is willing to pay God tribute, but is not
+willing to belong to God. But the humble person has nothing of his own
+and moreover wants nothing; he wants simply that God shall use him, that
+he shall be found a ready instrument in God's hands.
+
+It is this readiness that we find in Blessed Mary when she answered the
+astonishing announcement of the angel with her, "Behold the Handmaid of
+the Lord." It is that quality which we find in her here when she
+construes God's purpose in terms which go out far beyond her individual
+life and sees in her experience but one item in God's dealing with
+humanity in His age-long work of "bringing His wanderers home." We
+should have far less difficulty and find our lives far more significant
+if we could get rid of our wretched egotism and find it possible to lose
+ourselves in the work of God. We should then find the work important
+because it is God's work and not because we are associated with it. We
+should also find it less easy to be discouraged because we should not
+understand our failure to be the failure of God. Discouragement is but
+one of the aspects of egotism, and not the most attractive.
+
+We cannot rise to anything like a passion of holiness unless we have
+found God to be all in all. Only so can we lose ourselves in God. And I
+must, at whatever risk of over-dwelling, stress the fact that we can
+only attain this point of view by dwelling on God and not on self. Let
+God be the foreground of our thought. Let our souls magnify the Lord.
+Let us dwell upon the "great things" God has done for us. In every life
+there is such a wonderful manifestation of the divine goodness--only we
+do not take time to look for it. It is well to take the time: to write
+out, if need be, our spiritual history. We shall then find abundant
+evidence of the goodness of God. It may be that it is a goodness that is
+seen chiefly in offers, in opportunities to be something which we have
+declined or have only imperfectly realized. Be that as it may, there is
+no life, I am quite convinced, that has not a spiritual history which is
+a marvellous history of what God at least wanted to do for it. It is
+also a history of what He actually has done: a history of graces, of
+rich gifts, of deliverances. It matters not that we have been so
+heedless as to miss most of what God has done. The facts stand and are
+discoverable whenever we care to pay enough attention to them to
+ascertain their true meaning. When we do that, then surely we shall be
+compelled to do, what blessed Mary never needed to do, fall at God's
+feet in an act of penitence, seeing ourselves, perhaps for the first
+time, in the light of God's mind.
+
+The Magnificat, if we consider it as a personal expression, is a
+wonderful expression of selfless devotion, where the perception of the
+glory and majesty of God excludes all other thoughts. It is, too, a
+thanksgiving for the personal gift which is her vocation to be the
+Mother of the Saviour. Out of her lowliness she has been exalted--how
+highly she herself cannot at the time have dreamed. We can see what was
+necessarily involved in God's choice of her, and to-day we think of her
+as in her perfect purity exalted in heaven far above all other
+creatures. Mother of God most holy we call her, and in the words of her
+canticle ever repeat her thanksgiving as our thanksgiving, too, for the
+vocation that God sent her and for the gift which through her has
+come to us.
+
+But there is a more universal aspect of the Magnificat. Essentially it
+is the presentation of the constant antithesis which runs through all
+revelation between the flesh and the spirit, between the Kingdom of God
+and the Kingdom of this world. It embodies the conception of God
+striving to save a world which has revolted from Him, and now at last
+entering upon that stage of His work which is the beginning of a triumph
+over all the powers of the adversary. In Mary's song the contrasted
+powers are still presented under the Old Testament terminology which was
+the natural form of her thought. The adversaries of God are the proud,
+the mighty, the rich; while those who are on God's side are the humble,
+the god-fearers, the hungry. The form of the thought and its essential
+meaning remain the same through the centuries, though our terminology
+changes somewhat. Presently in the pages of the New Testament we shall
+get the presentation as the contrast between the children of this world
+and the sons of God. We shall find the briefest expression of the latter
+to be the saints.
+
+We no longer feel that rich and poor express a spiritual contrast. Nor
+do we, who are quite accustomed to the action of labour leaders, regard
+social position as being the exclusive seat of arrogancy. But we know
+that the spiritual values which are expressed in the varying terminology
+are constant; we know that the warfare between God and not-God is still
+the most important phenomenon in the universe. And it happens as we look
+out on the battlefield where the forces of good and evil contend, where
+before our eyes they seem to sway back and forth on the field of human
+life with every varying fortunes, that we not seldom feel that the
+battle is not obviously falling to the side of righteousness. There come
+moments when we are oppressed by what seems to us the lack of power in
+the ideals of righteousness. The appeal of the proud and of the rich is
+so dazzling; the splendour of the visible kingdom of the world is so
+intoxicating, the contagion of the crowd which follows the uplifted
+banner of Satan is so penetrating, that we hardly wonder to see the new
+generations carried away in the sweep of popular enthusiasm. Here is
+excitement, exhilarating enjoyment, the throb and sting of the flesh,
+the breathless whirl of gaiety, the physical quiet of satisfied desires.
+What is there to appeal on the other side? As the crowds troop past to
+the sound of music and dancing they for a moment raise their eyes, and
+above them rises a hill whereon is a Cross and on the Cross an emaciated
+Victim is nailed, and at the foot of the Cross a small group of
+discouraged folk--S. John, The blessed Mother, the other Mary--stunned
+by the grief born of the death of Son and Friend.
+
+These two utterances stand in eternal contrast: "All these things will
+I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me": and, "I, if I be
+lifted up, will draw all men unto me." As yet the appeal made from an
+"exceeding high mountain" visibly seems to prevail against that made
+from "the place which is called Calvary."
+
+And what have we to counteract the depression which is the natural
+reaction from the spectacle of the world-rejection of Christ? We have
+the truth which is embodied in Mary's Magnificat, we have the fact of
+Mary's vocation to be the Mother of God. The revelation of God's meaning
+and purpose is a basis of optimism which no promise of Satan can
+overthrow. When all is said, the view from the exceeding high mountain
+is a view of the Kingdom of this world only; from the place called
+Calvary you can see the Kingdom of God as well. From this point of
+vantage alone the permanent values of life are visible; and to the taunt
+flung at us, the taunt so terrifying to the young, "You are losing
+life," the enigmatic reply from the Cross is that you have to lose life
+to gain it; that permanent and eternal values are acquired by those who
+have the self-restraint and the foresight not to sacrifice the substance
+to the shadow, nor to mistake the toys of childhood for the riches of
+manhood. "In the meantime life is passing and the shadows draw in and
+you have not attained" so they say. True: we count not ourselves to have
+yet attained; but we press on toward the mark of our high calling in
+Christ Jesus our Lord. We are not in a hurry, because the crown we are
+seeking is amaranthine, unfading. We are not compelled to compress our
+enjoyment within a given time; we do not awake each morning with the
+thought that we may not outlast the daylight; we are not hurried and
+fevered with the sense of our fragility. The kingdoms of the world and
+the glory of them must be seized now: Satan cannot afford to wait
+because his kingdom has an end. But God can afford to wait because of
+His Kingdom there is no end.
+
+We are content then with _promises_ and with such partial fulfilment as
+we find on our pilgrim-way. We are content because we see the end in the
+beginning. To those who in the first days of the Church objected that
+though the promises were wonderful and abundant the fulfilment was
+small; to those who said we do not yet see the perfection of the
+kingdom; the answer of inspiration was: True, we do not yet see the
+accomplishment of all of God's promises, but we do see Jesus. And there
+is where we stand to-day. The work that God has to do in the
+spiritualising of the human race is tremendous; but we actually see its
+beginning in Jesus, and we are content to wait with God for the perfect
+accomplishment.
+
+And we must remember when we think of the work of God in terms of time,
+that the length of time that is required to accomplish the
+spiritualisation of the human race is not to be estimated in terms of
+the divine will but in terms of the human will. It is not divine power
+but human resistance which is the determining factor, for God will not
+compel us to obey Him, nor would compelled obedience have any spiritual
+value. And we can estimate something of the human resistance that has to
+be overcome by concentrating attention upon one unit of that resistance.
+That is, we can learn from the study of our own life what is the
+resistance of one human being to the triumph of the will of God; and,
+taking oneself as a fair sample of the race can multiply our resistance
+to God's will by the numbers of the race. We are perfectly certain of
+the will of God: God wills that all men shall come to the knowledge of
+the truth and be saved. "This is the will of God, even your
+sanctification." So far as we are thwarting that will we are playing
+into the hands of the power of evil. But that power is of limited
+existence; it draws to its end. Its death knell was struck when the
+noon-day darkness lifted from Calvary.
+
+Therefore the rejoicing of blessed Mary, whose Song reads the necessary
+end in the beginning, is well considered; and we rejoice with her and in
+her. It is our privilege--and it is a vast privilege--to rejoice in
+blessed Mary as the instrument of God in bringing the triumph of His
+Kingdom one stage nearer its accomplishment. And in especial we rejoice
+because we see in her one more, and the most marked, illustration of the
+divine method. "He hath regarded the low estate of His Handmaiden." "He
+hath exalted them of low degree." "He hath filled the hungry." The
+method of God is to work to His results through those who are
+spiritually receptive. The less of self there is in us the more room
+there is for God. "The Kingdom of God is within you," that is, the
+starting-point of God's work in the building of the Kingdom is within
+the soul of man. He must master the inner man, must win the allegiance
+of our souls, before His work can make any progress at all. The Kingdom
+of God cometh not "with observation," that is, from the outside in an
+exhibition of power; it must of necessity come from the inside in
+demonstration of the Spirit. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God,
+they are the sons of God."
+
+In blessed Mary we see the new starting-point in this last stage of the
+work of God. For the foreseen merits of her Son she is brought into
+union with God and spared the taint of sin, and becomes the second Eve,
+the Mother of the new race. Acting upon her pure humanity, the Holy
+Spirit produces that humanity which joined to the divinity in the Second
+Person of the Blessed Trinity becomes the Christ, the Son of the Living
+God. In Mary's rejoicing in this so great fact, the bringing of human
+redemption, we rightly share. It is with a right understanding of her
+Song that the Church throughout the ages has embodied it in its worship
+and through it constantly rejoices in God its Saviour. The actual
+detailed accomplishment of God's work in man's redemption is going on
+under our eyes. It is regrettable that human stupidity seems to prefer
+dwelling upon what seem God's failures, and are actually our own, rather
+than upon the constant triumphs of grace. But God reigns; and we can
+always find grounds of optimism if we can find that He is day by day
+reigning more perfectly in us. When we pray "Thy Kingdom Come," the
+field to examine for the fulfilment of our prayers is the field of our
+own souls.
+
+     Our Lady took the road
+     To Zachary's abode;
+     O'er mountain, vale and lea,
+     Full many a league sped she
+     Toward Hebron's holy hill,
+     By God's command and will.
+
+     Full light did Mary, make
+     Of trouble for his sake.
+     God's Very Son of yore
+     Within her breast she bore;
+     And angels bright and fair,
+     Unseen, her fellows were.
+
+     She, ere she took her way,
+     An orison would say,
+     That God her steps might tend
+     Safe to their journey's end;
+     And there, in manner meet,
+     Her cousin she 'gan greet.
+
+     Elizabeth full fain
+     Eft bowed her head again;
+     She wist 'twas God's own Bride,
+     As, worshipful she cried:
+     'O Lady, Full of Grace,
+     Whence do I see thy face?'
+
+     O House and Home of bliss,
+     O earthly Paradis--
+     Nay, Heaven itself on ground
+     Wherein the Lord is found,
+     The Lord of Glory bright,
+     In goodness great and might--
+
+     Clean Maiden thou that art,
+     Come, visit this my heart;
+     And bring me chief my Good,
+     God's Son in Flesh and Blood;
+     Bless body, soul; and bide
+     For ever by my side.
+
+     From the Köln Gesang-Buch. XVI Cent.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+S. JOSEPH
+
+     Joseph, her husband, being a just man--
+
+     S. Matt. I. 19.
+
+     O God, our refuge and our strength, look down in mercy upon
+     thy people who cry to thee; and by the intercession of the
+     glorious and immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God, of St.
+     Joseph her spouse, and of thy blessed apostles Peter and
+     Paul, and of all saints, in mercy and goodness hear our
+     prayers for the conversion of sinners, and for the liberty
+     and exaltation of our holy mother the church. Through.
+
+     ROMAN.
+
+When we read the Gospels, not simply as a record of events but as
+revelation of the method of God, we are constantly impressed with what
+we cannot otherwise describe than as the care of God for detail. There
+is a curious type of mind which finds it possible to think of God as
+Creator and Ruler of the universe, but impossible to conceive Him as
+interested in or concerning Himself with the minutiae of human life; who
+can conceive God as caring for a solar system or a planet, but not as
+caring for a baby. Surely it is a strange notion of God that thinks of
+Him as estimating values in terms of weight and measure: surely much
+more intelligible is the Gospel presentation of Him as concerned with
+spritual values and exercising that minute care over human life which is
+best expressed by the word _Father_. It is very significant that as the
+volume of revelation unrolls, the earlier notions of God as Ruler,
+Governor, King, give way to the notion of Father, until in our Lord's
+presentation of the character of God it is His Fatherhood which stands
+in the forefront. What our Lord emphasises in the character of God are
+precisely the qualities of love and care and sympathy which the word
+Father connotes.
+
+And nowhere do we see this loving care of God which we call His
+Providence better set out for our study than in the detailed preparation
+which preceded and attended the birth of His Son into this world. There
+was that preparation of the Mother who was to be the source of the
+humanity of the Child Jesus which we have been dwelling upon; there was
+also the preparation for the proper guardianship of both Mother and
+Child during the years of Jesus' immaturity. There are certain things
+which are self-evident when once we turn our minds to them; and it is
+thus self-evident that the care of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother
+would require the preparation of the man to whom they should be
+committed. In the state of society into which our Lord was born, He and
+His Mother would need active guardianship of a peculiar nature. The man
+who should provide for our Lord's infancy must be a man, in the nature
+of the case, who was receptive of spiritual monitions and devoted to the
+will of God. It was a delicate matter to live before the world as the
+husband of Mary of Nazareth, and to live before God as the guardian of
+her virginity and as the foster-father of her divine Son. Only a very
+choice nature could respond to the demands thus made upon it, a nature
+which had been habitually responsive to the will of God and long
+nurtured by the richness of His grace.
+
+We know very little of St. Joseph; but God's choice of him for the
+office he was to fulfil near the blessed Virgin Mary and her Son reveals
+the nature of the man. He is described to us as "a just man," one whose
+judgment would not be swayed by prejudices, but who would be open to the
+consideration of any case upon its merits: a man who would not view
+events in the light of their effect upon himself and his plans, but who
+can calmly consider what in given circumstances is due to others. Such
+men are rare at any time for their production is a matter of slow
+discipline.
+
+We gather that both S. Joseph and S. Mary were of the same lineage, were
+descended from the same ancestor, David. We gather also that S. Joseph
+was much older than his bethrothed wife, for he had been already married
+and had a family. All the notices of these brothers and sisters of the
+Lord imply that they were considerably older than the Child of Mary, and
+that they felt that they had the sort of authority over Him which
+commonly belongs to the elder children of a family; the sort of doubt
+and criticism of His course which would be the instinctive attitudes of
+elders toward the unprecedented course of a younger. We have, I think, a
+right to infer from the terms of the narrative, that S. Joseph would
+have been well acquainted with S. Mary and was not taking a wife who was
+a stranger to him. Indeed, considering the actual development of the
+situation, I myself feel quite certain that those are right who maintain
+that the proposed marriage was intended to be merely a nominal union,
+the ultimate design of which was the protection of the virginity of
+Mary. I find it impossible to think of that virginity as other than of
+deliberate purpose from the beginning, and prompted by the Spirit of God
+for the purposes of God for which it served. There is, to be sure, no
+revelation of this in Holy Scripture, but there are facts which suggest
+themselves to the devout meditations of saints which we feel that we may
+safely take on the authority of their spiritual intuitions. Such a fact
+is this of Mary's purposed virginity which I am content to accept on the
+basis of its congruity with S. Mary's life and vocation. Of the fact of
+her perpetual virginity there can be no dispute among Catholic
+Christians.
+
+To S. Joseph thus preparing himself to be the guardian of the blessed
+Virgin it could only come as a tremendous shock that she should be found
+with a child. Our character comes out at such times of trial as when
+something that we had taken quite for granted fails us, and we are left
+breathless and bewildered in in the face of what would have seemed
+impossible even had we thought of it. What was S. Joseph's attitude? The
+beauty and sanity of his character at once shows itself. Grieved and
+disheartened as he must have been, disappointed as he could not but be,
+he yet thinks at once of his bethrothed, not of himself. How far could
+he save her?--that was his first thought. He would at least avoid
+publicity. "Being a just man, and not willing to make her a public
+example, he was minded to put her away privily." It is the quality that
+we express by the word benevolence--the quality of mature and deliberate
+wisdom. We feel that such a man could be trusted under any
+circumstances of life.
+
+We feel, too, that God would not leave S. Joseph in doubt as to the
+course he was to pursue, or as to the character of Mary herself. There
+could no shade of suspicion be permitted to rest upon her. Hence "while
+he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto
+him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take
+unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the
+Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his
+name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins."
+
+It is not difficult to imagine the joy of S. Joseph at this angelic
+message. We all know the sense of relief which comes when, after facing
+a most trying situation, and being forced to make up our minds to act
+when action either way is almost equally painful, we find that we are
+delivered from the necessity of acting at all, that the whole state of
+things has been utterly misunderstood. It was so with S. Joseph; and in
+his case there was the added joy which springs from the nature of the
+coming Child as the angel explains it to him. He who had accepted the
+charge of Mary was now to add to that charge the charge of her Child:
+and the Child is the very Saviour whom his soul and the souls of all
+pious Israelites had longed for. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he
+shall save his people from their sins." We cannot expect that S. Joseph
+would have taken in the full meaning of this message, but he would have
+understood that he was called to a wondrous co-operation with God in the
+work of the redemption of Israel.
+
+As we think of S. Joseph it is this co-operation which is the
+significant thing in his life. As we study human life in the only way in
+which it is much worth while to study it, in the light of revelation, it
+becomes clear to us that there is purpose in all human life. Often we
+observe a purpose that we are not able to grasp, but in the light of
+what we know from revelation we do not doubt of its presence. Even lives
+that seem obscure and insignificant we feel sure must have a divine
+meaning; and the pathetic thing about most human life is that it never
+dreams of its own significance. We are consumed with the notion that
+God's instruments must be great, while it is on the face of revelation
+that they are commonly humble and of seeming insignificance. It is the
+work that is important, and the instrument becomes important through its
+relation to the work. We all at least have the common vocation of the
+Christian, and it would be difficult to exaggerate the spiritual
+significance of that. S. Joseph seems to us at once set apart by his
+vocation to be the guardian of the divine Child, to protect and to
+nurture the years of His human immaturity. This is no doubt a unique
+vocation, but is it quite so far separated from ordinary Christian
+experience as we assume? You and I are also constituted guardians of the
+divine Presence. This very morning, it may be, we have received within
+the Tabernacle of our breast the same Presence that S. Joseph
+guarded--the Presence of Incarnate God. In that Presence of His humanity
+our Lord abode with us but a few minutes and then the Presence withdrew:
+but He left behind Him a real gift, the gift of an increase in
+sacramental grace.
+
+Was that a light thing: Was it indeed so much less than the vocation of
+S. Joseph? And how have we guarded this Presence? Those few moments
+after the reception of our Incarnate Lord at the altar--how do we
+habitually spend them? Do we spend them in guarding the Presence? There
+is much to be learned about the meaning and the value of guarding the
+Eucharistic Gift. Our thanksgiving after Communion is fully as important
+as our preparation for receiving it. I am more and more inclined to
+think that much of the fruitlessness of communions which is so sad a
+side of the life of the Church is due to careless reception and
+inadequate thanksgiving. It is the adoration of our Lord within the
+Tabernacle of our body and thanksgiving to Him for having come to us
+that is the _appropriation_ of the Gift of the Sacrament. He comes to us
+and offers Himself to us with all the benefits of His life and death;
+and then having offered Himself "He makes as though he would go
+farther," and he does actually go, unless we are awake to our spiritual
+opportunity, and constrain Him, saying, "abide with us, for it is toward
+evening and the day is far spent."
+
+We think of S. Joseph then, as with a relieved and rejoicing heart he
+enters upon his new realised vocation as the head of the Holy Family.
+The marriage which he had been upon the point of abandoning he now
+enters that he may give S. Mary and her coming Child his full
+protection.
+
+So S. Joseph "took unto him his wife; and knew her not till she had
+brought forth her first-born Son." These words have been so
+misunderstood as to imply that the marriage of S. Joseph and S. Mary was
+consummated after the birth of our Lord. Grammatically they convey no
+such implication; the mode of expression is perfectly simple and well
+known by which a fact is affirmed to exist up to a certain time without
+any implication as to what happens after. And the meaning of the passage
+which is not at all necessitated by its grammatical construction is
+utterly intolerable in Catholic teaching. The constant teaching of the
+Church is the perpetual virginity of Mary--that she was a virgin "before
+and in and after her child-bearing." There was to be sure an heretic
+named Helvidius who taught otherwise, but he was promptly repudiated by
+all Catholic teachers and but served to emphasize the depth and
+clearness of the Catholic tradition. Upon this point there has never
+been any wavering in the mind of the Church, and to hold otherwise shows
+a lamentable lack of a Catholic perception of values and but a
+superficial grasp upon what is involved in the Incarnation.
+
+The impression we get of S. Joseph is that of a man of great simplicity
+and gentleness of character--that childlikeness which was later praised
+by his foster Son. Such qualities do not produce much impression on the
+superficial observer, but they are of great spiritual value. They are
+the concomitants of a special type of open-mindedness. Open-mindedness
+is a quality much praised and little practiced. But the open-mindedness
+which is commonly praised is not the open-mindedness which is
+praiseworthy. What is at present meant by open-mindedness is in reality
+failure to have any mind at all upon a given subject. It is the attitude
+of doubt which never proceeds so far as to arrive at a solution. To have
+an open mind means to the contemporary man to hold all conclusions
+loosely, to consider all things open to question, to be ready to
+abandon what now appears to be true in favour of something which
+to-morrow may appear to be more true. In other words, we are invited to
+base life on pure scepticism.
+
+Now no life can be so conducted. We live by a faith of some sort,
+whether it be a faith in God or no. The most sceptical mind has to
+believe something to act at all. It cannot even doubt without affirming
+a belief in its own intellectual processes. The open mind that never
+reaches any certainty to fill it is a very poor possession indeed. And
+it is not at all what we mean when we say of S. Joseph that he was
+open-minded. We mean that he was receptive of new spiritual impressions
+and capable of further spiritual development. There are minds, and they
+are not unusual among people of a certain degree of spiritual
+development, which we can best describe as having reached a given stage
+of growth and then shut up. Or, to vary the figure, they impress one as
+having a certain capacity, and when that has been reached, being able to
+contain nothing further. They come to a stop. From that point they try
+to maintain the position they have acquired. But that is impossible:
+they inevitably fall away unless they are going forward. When the power
+of spiritual assimilation is dead, we are spiritually in a dying
+condition.
+
+What we mean by having an open and childlike mind, then, is that one has
+this power of spiritual assimilation and, consequently, a power of
+growth. The sceptic is afflicted with spiritual indigestion; he is an
+invalid who is quite certain that any food that is offered him is
+indigestible. His soul withers away through its incapacity to believe.
+The open-minded saint has a healthy spiritual digestion. This does not
+mean that, in vulgar parlance, he can, "swallow anything"; it does mean
+a power of discrimination between food offered him,--that he assimilates
+what is wholesome and rejects the rest. The sceptic is pessimistic as to
+the existence of any wholesome food at all; he starves his soul for fear
+that he should believe something that is not true. The saint, with the
+test of faith, sorts the food proposed to him, and grows in grace, and
+consequently in the knowledge and the love of God.
+
+Open-mindedness is sensitiveness to spiritual impressions, readiness for
+spiritual advance, even when such impressions cut across much that has
+seemed to us well settled, and such advance involves the upset of his
+established ways of thought. What distinguishes the evolution in the
+thought of the sceptic from that in the thought of the saint is that in
+the one case the result is destructive and in the other constructive.
+The sceptic is like a man who starts to build a house, and then
+periodically tears down what he has so far built and begins again on a
+new plan; the saint is like the house builder who broadens his plan in
+the course of construction, and who finds that within the limits of his
+general scheme there is room for indefinite improvement. The one never
+gets any building at all; the other gets a palace of which the last
+stages are of a more highly decorated school of architecture than he
+had conceived, or indeed, could conceive, when he began his work.
+
+In S. Joseph's case nothing could be more revolutionary in appearance
+than the truth he was asked to accept. He was asked to believe in the
+virgin-motherhood of his bethrothed, and in the fact that the Child soon
+to be born was He Who was to save Israel from his sins. He was asked to
+accept these incredible statements and to act upon them by taking Mary
+to wife as he had proposed. And he did not hesitate to accept the
+evidence of a dream and act in accordance with it. How could he do this?
+Because the required action which seemed so revolutionary of all his
+previous notions was, in fact, quite in accordance with his knowledge of
+God and of the promises of God. Though a simple man, perhaps because he
+was a simple man, he would know something of the teaching of the
+prophets. That teaching would have given him thoughts about God which
+would have, unconsciously, prepared him for these new acts of God.
+Though we cannot see before how a prophecy is to be fulfiled, after the
+event we can see that this is what is intended by it. We were actually
+being prepared by the prophecy for what was to take place. And thus, no
+doubt, S. Joseph's mind, being filled with the teaching of the
+Scriptures which he had heard read in the Synagogue every Sabbath day,
+would find that this new act of God on which he was asked to rely was,
+in fact, but a new step in the unfolding of that Providence which had
+for centuries been shaping the history of his nation.
+
+It is a quality to cultivate, this simple open-mindedness which is
+ready to respond to new spiritual impulses. It is precisely what
+prevents that deadly attitude of soul which proceeds as though religion
+were for us exhausted: as though we had reached the limit of expectancy.
+But to expect nothing is to receive nothing, because it is only
+expectancy that perceives what is offered. We move in a world which is
+thronged with spirtual impulses and energetic with spiritual powers. God
+is trying to lead us on to new spiritual experiences by which we may
+attain to a better understanding of Him. There is no assignable limit to
+our possible growth. But we fix a limit when we close our souls to
+further experiences by the practical denial that they exist. If we are
+childlike, we are always expecting new things of our Father; if we are
+open-minded we are alive to the activities of the spiritual world. We
+are conscious of possessing a growing religion, a religion truly
+evolutionary, constantly bringing to our knowledge unsuspected riches
+stored in the very principles whose meaning we had assumed that we had
+exhausted.
+
+Perhaps one of the treasures of our religion of which we have not
+achieved full consciousness is God's choice of us to be the guardians of
+His revelation. It is our charge "to keep the faith." I suppose that
+this responsibility is commonly regarded as belonging to some vaguely
+imagined Church which hands it on from generation to generation, to us
+among others, but without imposing on us an obligation of any active
+sort. But we are the Church--members in particular of the Body of
+Christ. And in the dissemination of the faith the last appeal is to us,
+not to some outside tribunal. When the Church wishes to discover its
+faith and make it articulate, its place of search is in the minds and
+hearts of the faithful. Our responsibility is to testify to the Catholic
+Faith, not so much by positively asserting it as by making it active and
+vivid in our lives so that its presence and power can by no means be
+mistaken. You, for instance, in common with the rest of the faithful,
+are the custodians of this truth of the perpetual virginity of the
+Blessed Virgin Mary. It may seem a small matter, but it is not. That it
+is not is readily seen from this fact, that when the perpetual virginity
+of our Blessed Mother is denied then also the Incarnation of her Son is
+denied or is held only in a half-hearted way. The Church stresses such
+facts, not only because they are facts, but because by their character
+they form a hedge about the truth of the Incarnation of our Lord. And we
+who are Catholic Christians must feel an obligation to hold fast this
+fact. We ought actively to show our firm adherence to it. How? Chiefly
+by our attitude towards Blessed Mary herself, by the devotion that we
+show her. If we are quite indifferent to devotion to Blessed Mary, if we
+show her no honour, if we likewise fail in honour to her guardian, S.
+Joseph, is it not to be expected that our grasp upon the truths which
+are enshrined in such devotion will be feeble, and that we shall hold
+them as of small moment? The whole system of Catholic thought is so
+nicely articulated, so consistently held together, that failure to hold
+even the smallest constituent indicates a faulty conception of the
+whole. Catholics are constantly accused of over-stressing devotion to
+blessed Mary and the saints and thereby encroaching upon the honour due
+to our Lord. The answer to the reproach is to be found in the question:
+Who to-day are defending to the very death the truth of our Lord's
+Incarnation and the truths that hang upon it? Are they those who deny
+the legitimacy of invocation, or those in whose religious practise it
+holds an important and vital place?
+
+
+     A PANEGYRICK ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.
+
+     I do not tremble, when I write
+     A Mistress' praise, but with delight
+     Can dive for pearls into the flood,
+     Fly through every garden, wood,
+     Stealing the choice of flow'rs and wind,
+     To dress her body or her mind;
+     Nay the Saints and Angels are
+     Nor safe in Heaven, till she be fair,
+     And rich as they; nor will this do,
+     Until she be my idol too.
+     With this sacrilege I dispense,
+     No fright is in my conscience,
+     My hand starts not, nor do I then
+     Find any quakings in my pen;
+     Whose every drop of ink within
+     Dwells, as in me my parent's sin,
+     And praises on the paper wrot
+     Have but conspired to make a blot:
+     Why should such fears invade me now
+     That writes on her? to whom do bow
+     The souls of all the just, whose place
+     Is next to God's, and in his face
+     All creatures and delights doth see
+     As darling of the Trinity;
+     To whom the Hierarchy doth throng,
+     And for whom Heaven is all one song.
+     Joys should possess my spirit here,
+     But pious joys are mixed with fear:
+     Put off thy shoe, 'tis holy ground,
+     For here the flaming Bush is found,
+     The mystic rose, the Ivory Tower,
+     The morning Star and David's bower,
+     The rod of Moses and of Jesse,
+     The fountain sealèd, Gideon's fleece,
+     A woman clothèd with the Sun,
+     The beauteous throne of Salomon,
+     The garden shut, the living spring,
+     The Tabernacle of the King,
+     The Altar breathing sacred fume,
+     The Heaven distilling honeycomb,
+     The untouched lily, full of dew,
+     A Mother, yet a Virgin too,
+     Before and after she brought forth
+     (Our ransom of eternal worth)
+     Both God and man. What voice can sing
+     This mystery, or Cherub's wing
+     Lend from his golden stock a pen
+     To write, how Heaven came down to men?
+     Here fear and wonder so advance
+     My soul, it must obey a trance.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE NATIVITY
+
+     She brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in
+     swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there
+     was no room for them in the inn.
+
+     S. Luke II. 7.
+
+     It is very meet to bless thee who bore the Christ, O ever
+     Blessed and Immaculate Mother of God. More wondrous than the
+     Cherubim and of greater glory than the Seraphim art thou who
+     remaining Virgin didst give birth to God the Word. Verily, do
+     we magnify thee, O Mother of God. In thee, O full of grace,
+     all creation exults, the hierarchy of angels and the race of
+     men. In thee sanctified temple, spiritual paradise, glory of
+     virgins, of whom God took flesh, through whom our God Who was
+     before the world became a Child. Of thy womb He made a
+     throne, and its dominion is more extensive than the heavens.
+     In thee, O full of grace, all creation exults: glory to thee.
+
+     RUSSIAN.
+
+We see a man and a woman on the road to Bethlehem where they are going
+to be taxed according to the decree of Augustus. Bethlehem would be
+known to them as the home of their ancestors, for they were both of the
+lineage of David. It was a painful journey for them for Mary was near
+the time of her delivery. We follow them along the road and into the
+village, as the twilight fades, and see them seeking shelter for the
+night. Bethlehem is a small place and the inn is crowded with those who
+have come on the errand with them, and the only place where they can
+find refuge for the night is a stable. But they are not used to luxury,
+and the stable serves their purpose.
+
+It also serves God's purpose. One understands as one reads this
+narrative of the Nativity what is meant by the Providential government
+of the world. We see how various lines of action, each free and
+independent, yet converge to the production of a given event. The
+different characters in the drama are all pursuing their own courses and
+yet the result is a true drama, not an unrelated series of events.
+Caesar's action, Joseph's lineage, our Lord's conception, all working
+together, bring about the fulfilment of prophecy by the birth of the
+Messiah in Bethlehem. There is in the universe an over-ruling will which
+works to its ends by co-operating with human freedom, and not
+destroying it. We are not the sport of chance, not the slaves of fate,
+but free men; and yet through our freedom, through our blunders and
+rebellions and sins as well as through our obedience, the work of God is
+moving to its conclusion. Man did all that he could to defeat the ends
+of God and to thwart God's purpose of redemption. Yet on a certain night
+in Bethlehem of Judea the light of God overcame the human darkness, and
+the voices of God's angels pierced the human tumult, and Jesus Christ
+was born. "God of the substance of his Father begotten before all
+worlds, man of the substance of his mother, born in the world; perfect
+God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."
+
+The manifestation came to certain shepherds watching their flocks in the
+fields about Bethlehem; simple men, quite unable to take in the meaning
+of what they see and hear. One cannot help thinking of what it would
+have meant in the way of an intellectual revolution if to some Greek or
+Roman philosopher, speculating on the destiny of humanity, the truth
+could have come that the future of the world was not in the court of
+Augustus, that it was not dependent on the Roman armies or Greek
+learning, but that it was bound up in the career and teaching of a Baby
+that night born in a stable in an obscure village in Judea. As we
+imagine such a case we see in the concrete the meaning of the revolution
+set in motion by this single event; and we are led to adore the ways of
+God in that He has chosen for the final approach to man for the purpose
+of redemption, this way of simplicity and humbleness. Man would not
+have thought of this as the best path for God to follow in this purpose
+of rescue, but we can be wise after the event and see that this Child
+born in poverty and obscurity would have fewer entanglements to break
+through, fewer obstacles to overcome.
+
+But these thoughts are far away from the night in Bethlehem. In the
+stable there where a Baby is lying in Mary's arms and Joseph stands
+looking on, there is no speculation about the world-consequences of the
+event. There is rather the splendour of love: the love of the mother in
+the new found mystery of this her Child; the love of God who has given
+her the Child. And all is a part of the great mystery of love, of the
+love wherewith God loves the world. "God so loved the world that He gave
+His only begotten Son." Here is the Son, lying in Mary's arms, wrapped
+in swaddling clothes, and Mary looks into His face as any human mother
+looks into the face of her child. But through the eyes that smile up
+into Mary's face, God is looking out on a world of sorrow and pain and
+sin that He has come to redeem, and for which, in redeeming it, to die.
+Presently, the shepherds come in and complete the group, the
+representatives of universal humanity at the birth of their King, We
+have the whole world-problem in small, but here there is no
+consciousness of it. No echo of world-politics or of movements of
+thought break in here. But we know that here is the beginning of that
+which will set at naught world-politics and revolutionise movements of
+thought, that here is the centre about which humanity will move in the
+coming time. Here is that which is fundamental and abiding because here
+is the one invincible power of the universe--love. All else will fail:
+prophecies, systems of philosophy, religions, political and social
+structures; each in the time of its flourishing, proclaiming itself the
+last word of human wisdom,--these in bewildering succession have arisen
+and passed away. But love has survived them all. Love never faileth;
+through the slow succession of the centuries it is winning the world
+to God.
+
+It were well if we could learn to look on the happenings of this world
+as the miracles of divine love. We think of the power, the justice, the
+judgment of God as visible in this world's history; but these are but
+the instruments of love, and all that He does has its foundation in love
+and receives its impulse from love. This Nativity is the divine love
+coming into the world on its last adventure, determined to win man, all
+other means failing, by the extremity of sacrifice. The final word about
+this Child will be that having loved his own He loved them unto the
+uttermost, he loved them without stinting, with the uttermost capacity
+of love. Understanding this meaning of the love of God, we are prepared
+for the further fact that God uses all sorts of instruments as the
+instruments of His love. He shares Himself. He pours Himself into human
+life. He takes men into partnership in the work of redemption. Whenever
+a soul is mastered by love, it becomes a tool in God's hands. The
+progress of the Church--of God's Kingdom--might be described as the
+accumulation of these tools wherewith God works--souls who are so
+devoted to Him as to be the medium of bringing His power, the power of
+love, to bear on the souls of their brethren.
+
+To be the highest, the most perfect, of all the instruments of
+redemption God chose Mary of Nazareth to be the Mother of His Son. She
+is the most complete human embodiment of God's love. She, in her perfect
+purity, can transmit that love as power with the least loss of energy in
+the process of transmission. When we think of the saints as the means of
+God's action, we think of blessed Mary as the highest of the saints and
+the means most perfectly adapted to God's ends. Here at Bethlehem she
+holds God in her arms and looks into the human face that He has taken
+for this present work and all her being is absorbed in love. Oblivious,
+we think her, of her mean surroundings, of the animals that share with
+her their stable, of the shepherds who come in and look on in wonder, of
+S. Joseph standing by in sympathy. Love is all. Love is a passion
+consuming her being--what can the attendant circumstances matter? And
+to-day, after all these centuries: to-day the Child is the Ascended and
+Enthroned Redeemer, His risen and glorified humanity, transmitting
+something of the divine glory, seated at the right hand of the Majesty
+of God. And Mary, the Mother? Can we have any other thought than that
+she who on the first Christmas morning looks into the face of her Baby,
+still, to-day, looks up into the face of her divine Son, and the look is
+the same look of love? And can we think of the look that comes back to
+her from eyes that are human, taken from her body, though they be in
+very truth the eyes of God--can we think, I say, of the eyes of her
+Child and her God bringing anything else than the message of love? Can
+we think that when in answer to our invocation she presents our prayers
+in union with her own, that love will fail?
+
+But let us come back to earth--to Bethlehem--on that first Christmas eve
+and listen to the songs of the angels as they sing over the star-lit
+fields. How near heaven seems! How real is God! How joyful is this
+season of peace to men of good will! The message is of peace, but that
+peace will need to have its nature explained in the coming years if
+men's hearts are not to fail them and their faith wither away. It is not
+a general peace to the world that is being proclaimed. Later on our Lord
+will say: "My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I
+unto you." It is such a gift as can be enjoyed only by men of good will;
+converted men, that is to say, men whose will is close set with the will
+of God. For how should there be peace in any world on any other terms?
+How can there be peace for those who are in rebellion against God? Our
+Lord can promise peace, and can fulfil His promise because He is
+bringing a new potency into human life. He is a new way of approach to
+God, a new way into the Holiest of all. Through His humanity God is
+united to man, and through it man, any man, can be united to God. And
+one of the results of that union is this gift of peace, and the fact
+that it arises from the union explains its new character, why our Lord
+calls it His peace.
+
+This peace is the Christmas gift of the divine child to us. This is the
+method of God's work, from the inside out; from the spiritual fact to
+its external result. We do not begin by finding peace with this world:
+"in the world ye shall have tribulation." And most of the failure to
+attain peace, and much of men's loss of faith is due to repudiation of
+the divine method. We live in a disordered and pain-stricken world where
+human life is uniformly a life of trial and struggle, and our easy
+yielding to temptation is an attempt at some sort of an adjustment with
+the world such as we think will produce peace and quiet. We constantly
+demand of religion that it should effect this for us. So far as one can
+see much of the revolt against religion to-day has its ground in the
+failure of religion to meet the demands made upon it for a better world.
+Men look out on a world seething with unrest and filled with injustice,
+and they turn upon the Church and ask, "Why have you not changed all
+this? Are you not, in fact, neglecting your duty in not changing it? Or
+if you are not neglecting your duty, you must at least confess to your
+impotence. Your self-confessed business is to make a better world."
+
+True; but only on the conditions which love imposes. Religion does not
+propose to improve the world by a more skilful application of the
+principles of worldliness. It does not propose to turn stones into bread
+at the demand of any devils whatsoever. It does not say, "If you will
+support me and give me a certain superficial honour, I will bless your
+efforts and increase the success of your undertakings." Religion
+proposes to improve the world on the condition that the principles of
+religion shall be accepted as the working principles of life; on
+condition, that is, that love shall be made the ground of human
+association. Religion can make a better world, it can make the kingdoms
+of God and of His Christ; but it can only do so on the condition that it
+is whole-heartedly accepted and thoroughly applied. The proof that it
+can do this is in the fact that it can and does make better individuals.
+Wherever men and women have lived by the principles of the Gospel they
+have brought forth the fruits of the Gospel. It has done this, not under
+some specially favourable circumstances, but it has done it under all
+circumstances of life and in all nations of men. What has been done in
+unnumbered individual cases, can be done in whole communities when the
+communities want it done. It is quite pointless in times of great social
+distress to ask passionately, "why does not God make a better world?"
+The only question which is at all to the point is, "why has God not made
+_me_ better?" The problem of God's dealing with the world is, in
+essence, the problem of God's dealing with me. If He has not reformed
+me, if I do not, in my self-examination, find that I am responding to
+the ideals of God, as far as I know them, there is small point in
+declamations about the state of society. Society that is godless, is
+just a mass of godless individuals; and I can understand why God does
+not reform the world perfectly well from the study of my own case. What
+in me prevents the full control of God is the same that prevents that
+control over the whole of society: and I know that that is not lack of
+knowledge, but lack of love. Men ignore the primary obligation of life:
+"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... and thy neighbour as thyself." As
+long as they ignore that, there can be no reformed world, no world
+reflecting the divine purpose, no society,--whatever may be its widely
+multiplied legislation,--securing to men conditions of life which are
+sane and satisfactory.
+
+Therefore the Child who is born of Mary in Bethlehem while the angels
+are singing their carols over the fields where the shepherds watch, the
+Child Who brings peace to men of good will, still, after nearly two
+thousand years, finds His gift ignored and His longing to lift men to
+God unsatisfied. "He came unto His own and His own received Him
+not"--and the conditions are not vitally changed to-day. When we think
+of a world of fifteen hundred million human beings, the number of those
+who profess and call themselves Christians is comparatively small; the
+number of actually practicing Christians, of men and women who do live
+by the Gospel, without reserve and without compromise, is vastly
+smaller. The resistance of the principles of the Gospel is to-day
+intense; the demand for compromise is insistent. We are asked to throw
+over a system which has obviously failed, and to accept as the
+equivalent and to permit to pass under the same name a system which is
+fundamentally different; a system whose end is man and not God, whose
+means are natural and not supernatural, which seek to produce an
+adjustment with this world that means comfort, rather than an adjustment
+with the spiritual world which means sanctity.
+
+The ideal achievement of peace is here in Bethlehem where the mother
+holds the Holy Child to her breast, while her spirit is utterly in union
+with Him Who is both man and God. There is never any break in the pure
+peace of S. Mary because there is never any moment when her will is
+separated from the will of God, when her union with Him fails. This
+peace of perfect union has, through the merits of her Son, been hers
+always; she has never known the wrench of the will that separates itself
+from God. She has always been poor; she has been perplexed with life;
+she has suffered and will suffer intensely, suffer most where she loves
+most; but peace she has never lost, because her will has never wavered
+in its allegiance. What visibly she is doing in these moments of her
+great joy, holding God to her breast in a passion of love, she in fact
+is doing always--always is she one with God.
+
+That undisturbed peace of a never broken union is never possible for us.
+We have known what it is to reject the will of God and go our own way
+and indulge the appetites of our nature in violation of our recognised
+standards of life. If we are to come to peace it must be along the rough
+road of repentance. And it is wholly just that it should be so; that we
+should win back to God at the expense of shame and suffering; that we
+should retrace the road that we have travelled, with weary feet and
+bleeding heart. This after all does not much matter: what does matter
+immensely is that there is a road back to God and that we find it. What
+matters is that we discover that repentance and reformation are the only
+road to peace. We are offered many other roads alleged to lead to the
+same place; but not even a child should be deceived by the modern
+substitutes for repentance, by the shallow teaching whereby it is
+attempted to persuade men of the innocence of sin. They are never worth
+discussing, these modern substitutes for repentance. Men accept them,
+not because they are rational or convincing, but because they offer a
+justification for going the way that they have already made up their
+minds to go. But it is plain that whatever else they do they do not
+afford a basis for peace. They are no rock foundation for eternity.
+Other foundation for peace can no man lay or has laid than the
+acceptance of the salvation offered in Jesus Christ. He is our peace;
+and when we discover that, He makes peace in us by the application to
+our souls of the Blood of His Cross. This is the peace He came to bring.
+This the peace that the angels announced as they sang over Bethlehem.
+This is the peace which is ceaselessly proclaimed from the altars of the
+Christian Church, the peace of God which passeth understanding, the
+peace which is offered to all men of good will.
+
+How shall we attain it? By being men of good will, plainly. But what
+constitutes good will in a man? That which I have already discussed,
+perhaps abundantly, simplicity and childlike obedience of character. S.
+Joseph, the guardian of Mary and her Child here in Bethlehem, is the
+best example we can have of a man of good will, a man who under the most
+difficult circumstances responded with perfect readiness and complete
+obedience to the heavenly message that came to him. This is to be his
+course through the few years that he will live, to give himself to the
+will of God in the care of Jesus. We are men of good will if we do
+whatsoever our Lord says to us, if we are seeking first of all the
+Kingdom of God and its righteousness, if our estimate of values
+corresponds to our Lord's.
+
+There is our trouble--that old trouble of feebly trying to live the life
+of the Kingdom when what we actually want is the offer of this world.
+There is, there can be, no peace in a divided life. There is a certain
+spiritual sloth which has the exterior look of peace, as a corpse looks
+peaceful, but it has no relation to the peace which God gives. It is in
+fact the wages of sin, wages easily earned and long enjoyed. But so long
+as we are spiritually alive, so long we cannot enjoy whole-heartedly
+even the most fascinating of sins because there is lurking in the
+background the sense of the transitoriness of our sin and of the
+imminence of death and judgment. There is the skeleton in every man's
+closet until he finally makes choice on one side or the other. For we
+are not ignorant of the spiritual obligations of life. We always know
+more than we have achieved. When we talk about our ignorance and
+perplexity, we are not meaning ignorance and perplexity about the
+obligation to live in a certain way, and to perform certain duties, on
+this particular day: rather we are making this alleged ignorance of the
+future an excuse for not taking action in the present, action which we
+know to be obligatory.
+
+And peace is so wonderful a gift! To feel oneself in harmony with God,
+to know that one is carefully seeking His will and making it one's first
+and highest duty to perform it. To have found the peace of the forgiven
+soul as the result of absolution, at the expense of much shame and
+repugnance, it may be, but with what marvellous compensations when we go
+away with a sense of restored purity and the friendship of God--life
+looks so different when we look at it through purified eyes! The old
+life has held us so tightly, the old sins have clung so close; and then
+there was a day when we gave up self and turned to God and the Gift of
+God in Jesus Christ; and then we saw how miserable and vile and naked we
+had been all through the time of our boasted freedom; and we came as
+children to Mary's Child and offered ourselves to Him for cleansing. We
+kneel and offer to Him our wills and ask that they may be made good, and
+kept good in union with His most holy will. Then we find how true this
+word is: "In Me ye shall have peace: in the world ye shall have
+tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." It is
+true, is it not? not only as we commonly interpret, that the disciples
+of Christ shall have tribulation in this world; but that much that we,
+giving ourselves to the world, counted joy, was in reality tribulation,
+and we are glad to be rid of it.
+
+     A babe is born to bliss us bring.
+     I heard a maid lulley and sing.
+     She said: "Dear Son, leave Thy weeping:
+     Thy, Father is the King of bliss."
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Lulley," she said and sung also,
+     "My own dear Son, why are Thou wo?
+     Have I not done as I should do?
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Nay, dear mother, for thee weep I nought,
+     But for the woe that shall be wrought
+     To Me ere I mankind have bought.
+     Was never sorrow like it i-wis."
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Peace, dear Son! Thou grievest me sore:
+     Thou art my child, I have no more.
+     Should I see men mine own Son slay?
+     Alas, my dear Son, what means all this?"
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "My hands, Mother, that ye now see,
+     Shall be nailed to a tree;
+     My feet also fast shall be,
+     Men shall weep that shall see this."
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Ah, dear Son, hard is my happe
+     To see my child that lay in my lap,--
+     His hands, His feet that I did wrappe,--
+     Be so nailed; they never did amisse."
+       Now sing we with Angelis:
+       Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Ah, dear Mother, yet shall a spear
+     My heart asunder all but tear:
+     No wonder if I care-ful were
+     And wept full sore to think on this."
+       Now sing we with Angelis:
+       Gloria in excelsis.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE MAGI
+
+Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the
+king, Behold, there came Magi from the East to Jerusalem, Saying, Where
+is he that is born king of the Jews?
+
+S. Matt. II, i.
+
+Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, which hath borne for us God the
+Word. We give thee salutation with the Angel Gabriel, saying, Hail, thou
+that art full of grace; the Lord is with thee.
+
+Hail to thee, O Virgin, the very and true Queen; hail, glory of our
+race. Thou hast borne for us Emmanuel.
+
+We pray thee, remember us, O thou our faithful advocate with our Lord
+Jesus Christ, that He may forgive us our sins.
+
+COPTIC.
+
+Out of the East, over the desert, we see coming to Bethlehem the train
+of the star-led Magi. The devout imagination of the Church, dwelling
+upon the _significance_ rather than the bare historical statements of
+the Gospel, have seen them as the representatives of the whole Gentile
+world. We often think of the treatment of the sacred story by the
+teachers and preachers of the Church as embroidering the original
+narratives with legendary material. We can look at it in that way; and
+by so doing, I think, miss the meaning of the facts. What we call
+ecclesiastical legend will often turn out on examination to be but the
+unfolding of the meaning of an event in terms of the creative
+imagination. The object is to present vividly what the event actually
+means when the meaning is of such widely reaching significance as far to
+overpass the simple facts. It is thus, I take it, that we must
+understand the story of the Magi as it takes shape in pious story. That
+the Magi were kings, and that they were three in number, emphasises the
+felt importance of their coming to the cradle of our Lord. Actually,
+they were understood to represent the Gentile world offering its
+allegiance to our blessed Lord, and therefore they would naturally
+represent the three branches of the Gentile world as it was understood
+at the time. The importance of their mission was reflected in the
+presentation of them as kings--no less persons were required to fill
+the dignity of the part. There was, too, a whole mass of prophecy to be
+reckoned with and interpreted in its relation to the event, the most
+obvious of which was that of Isaiah: "And the Gentiles shall come to thy
+light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising."
+
+The Church story is essentially true, is but a dramatic rendering of the
+Gospel story. We may however content ourselves with the more simple
+rendering. We can hardly think of the stable as the setting of the
+reception of the Eastern Sages. Just when they came we cannot tell; but
+we seem compelled to put the Epiphany where the Church puts it in her
+year, somewhere between the Nativity and the Presentation, and the scene
+of it will still be, the Gospel implies, Bethlehem. "Now when Jesus was
+born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Behold, there
+came Magi from the East to Jerusalem." And at the direction of Herod,
+and guided by the Star they came to Bethlehem and offered their gifts
+and their worship. "They saw the young child with Mary his mother, and
+fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures,
+they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh."
+
+We try to get before us what would have been the mind of S. Mary through
+all these happenings which attended the birth of her Child. What is
+written of her here is no doubt characteristic: "Mary kept all these and
+pondered them in her heart." Wonder at the ways of God had been hers for
+so many months now--wonder, with devout meditation upon their meaning.
+Where there is no resistance to God's will but only the desire to know
+it more fully there is always the gradual assimilation of the truth. S.
+Mary moves in a realm of mystery from the moment of the Annunciation to
+the very end of her life. It is so difficult to understand what is the
+meaning of God in this unspeakable gift of a Son conceived by the power
+of the Holy Spirit, and in the constant accompaniment of pain and
+disaster and disappointment which is the unfolding experience of her
+life in relation to Him. But we feel in her no speculation, no
+rebellion, no insistence on knowing more; but we feel that there must
+have been a growing appreciation of the work of God, unhesitating
+acceptance of His will. Just to keep things in one's heart is so often
+the best way of arriving at an understanding of them; is the best way,
+at least, of arriving at the conviction that what we in fact need to
+understand is not so much what God does as that it is God Who does it.
+Our true aim in life is to understand God, and through that
+understanding we shall sufficiently understand life. Failure in human
+life is commonly due to an attempt to understand life without any
+attempt to understand it in relation to God. It is like an attempt to
+understand a work of art without an attempt to understand the artist, to
+estimate in terms of mechanical effort, rather than in terms of mind. A
+work of art means what the artist means when he creates it: life means
+what God means in His creation and government of it, and it is hopeless
+to expect to understand it without reference to the mind of God.
+
+Therefore Mary's way is the right way--the way of acceptance and
+meditation. So she sought to follow the mind of God. We are told little
+of her, but we are told quite enough to understand this. We know well
+her method, that she kept things in her heart. And we have one splendid
+example of the result of the method in the Magnificat. There the results
+of her communion with God break forth in that Canticle which ever since
+has been one of the priceless treasures of the Church. The Gospels never
+tell us very much; but if we will follow Mary's method they tell us
+enough to let us see the very hand of God in the working out of our
+salvation; they give us sample events from which we easily infer God's
+meaning otherwhere.
+
+And we may be sure that the months that followed the Annunciation would
+have been months of ever-deepening spiritual communion, resulting in a
+rapidly advancing spiritual maturity. One necessary result would have
+been to prepare the blessed Mother to receive new manifestations of
+God's Providence, and to fit them into the whole body of her experience.
+She would not at any time be lost in helpless surprise before a new
+development of the purpose of God. Surprised as she must have been when
+the Eastern Sages came to kneel before the Child she carried at her
+breast, and hail Him as born King of the Jews, she would have set to
+work to fit this new experience into what her acquired knowledge of the
+divine meaning had become. And one can have no doubt that these visitors
+from afar would have told her enough of the grounds of their action to
+illumine for her the prophecies concerning her Son.
+
+The special incidents that the Gospel select for record leave us always
+conscious that they _are_ a selection and therefore must have special
+significance. That we are told that the Magi offered certain gifts,
+rather than told the words of homage wherewith they presented them turns
+our attention to the nature of the gifts as presumably having a
+significance in themselves rather than because of any actual value. In
+the gifts of these Gentiles come from afar to kneel before Him Whom they
+recognise as King of the Jews, we are compelled to see a certain
+attitude of humanity toward Him Who is revealed to be not only the King
+of the Jews, but Lord of Heaven and earth; they give what humanity needs
+must always give--the gold of a perfect oblation, the incense of
+perpetual intercession, the myrrh of a humble self-abandonment.
+
+These which are offered as the ideal tribute of humanity by the star-led
+Magi are found in their highest human perfection exemplified in the
+Mother of the Child to Whom the tribute is made. Perfect are they in our
+Lord; and she who is nearest Him in nature is nearest Him in the
+perfection of nature. We turn from God's ideal as set out in our blessed
+Lord to see it reflected as in a glass in the life of her whose
+perfection is the perfect rendering of His grace. Mary is so perfect
+because, by God's election, she is "full of grace."
+
+We, alas! limp after the ideal at a long distance. One pictures the
+life of sanctity under the familiar symbol of the race course, where
+many start in the race, and many, one by one, fall out by the wayside.
+Those who go on the race's end, go on because of certain qualities of
+endurance that we discover in them. In those who run the spiritual race
+for the amaranthine crown these qualities of endurance are not natural,
+but supernatural: they come not of birth but of rebirth. They are
+qualities which we draw from God. "It is not of him that willeth, nor of
+him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." The hand that sets the
+race confers the gifts that enable one to win it. "So run that ye
+may obtain."
+
+And perhaps the chiefest of all those gifts is that which makes us, the
+children of God, capable of the adoration of our Father. Worship is no
+other than the utter giving of ourselves, giving as Christ gave, "Who
+being originally in the form of God, thought it not a thing to be
+grasped at to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, and took upon Him
+the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men"; giving as
+the blessed Virgin gave when she gave, as she must have thought and have
+been willing to give, her whole reputation among men in response to the
+call of God; giving complete, in which there is no withholding. That is
+worship, sacrifice, the pure gold of self-oblation.
+
+But it is possible to think of the power of worship from another point
+of view. God never takes but He gives. What He appears to take He gives
+back with His blessing, and we find the restored gift multiplied
+manifold. So in the very act of our worship God confers on us power.
+
+For it is true, is it not, that in the very act of worship we
+experience, not exhaustion but exhilaration. In the very act of giving
+ourselves to God, God gives Himself to us, and in overflowing abundance.
+That is what we find to be true in our highest act of worship, the
+blessed Eucharist. Here God and man meet in a perfect communion. Here we
+offer ourselves in sacrifice--ourselves, our souls and bodies--in union
+with the sacrifice of our Lord; and here our Lord, Who is the sacrifice
+itself, not only offers Himself, but also He imparts Himself to those
+who are united with Him. And out of this sacrifice, thus issuing in an
+act of union, there flows the perpetual renewing of the vitality of the
+spiritual life. We are sustained from day to day by this sacrificial
+feeding; our strength which is continually being drawn upon by the
+demands of life, by the temptations we have to resist, by the exertion
+that is called for in all spiritual exercise, is renewed by our
+participation in the Body and Blood of our Lord. I am sure that all
+those who are accustomed to frequent communion feel the drain upon their
+strength when at any time they are deprived of their great privilege. I
+am also sure that many who feel that their spiritual life is but
+languid, or those other many who seem only dimly to feel that there are
+spiritual problems to be met, and spiritual strength needed for the
+meeting of them, would find themselves immensely helped, would find
+their minds illumined and their strength sustained in more frequent
+participation in the sacrificial worship and feasting of the Church.
+The attitude of vast numbers of those who are regarded as quite sincere
+Christians is wholly incomprehensible. The life of God is day by day
+poured out at the altars of the Church, and they go their way in seeming
+unconsciousness of its presence, of its appeal, of its virtue, or of
+their own sore need of it. The Magi come from a far distance on a
+hazardous journey into an unknown country that they may offer the gold
+of their adoration to an infant King; and the Christian feebly considers
+whether he is not too tired to get up of a morning and go a short
+distance to receive the Body and Blood of the Redeemer of his soul!
+
+The Magi came also bringing the incense of their intercession. Their
+privilege was that they were admitted to the very Presence Chamber of
+the great King. That the Infant in Mary's arms did not show any sign of
+kingship, the humble room where they were received bore no resemblance
+to the presence chamber of such kings as they were accustomed to wait
+upon, was to them of no consequence. They were endowed with the gift of
+faith, and believed the supernatural guiding rather than the outward
+seeming. The faith that had followed the star from so great a distance
+was not likely to be quenched by the antithesis of what must have been
+their imagination of the reality, of all the pictures that had been
+filling their minds as they pushed on across the desert. It was no more
+incredible that the King Whom they were seeking should be found in
+humble guise in a peasant's cottage than that they should have been
+guided to Him by a heavenly star. The gift of God to them was that they
+should be permitted to enter the presence of the King.
+
+This right of admission to the divine Presence is the precious gift of
+God to us. Since the heavens received the ascending Lord the Kingdom of
+heaven has been open to all believers. Prayer is a very simple and
+common thing in our experience; and yet when we try to think out its
+implications we are overwhelmed with the wonder of it. It implies a God
+Who waits upon our pleasure: it reveals to us a Father Who is ever ready
+to listen to the voice of His children. No broken hearted sinner,
+overwhelmed with the conviction of his vileness, cries out in the agony
+of his repentance but God is ready to hear. "He is more ready to hear
+than we to pray." No man pours out his thanksgivings for the abundant
+blessings he discovers in his life but the heart of God is glad in his
+gladness. No child kneels at night to repeat his simple prayer but God
+bends over him and blesses him. The wonder of it is summed up in our
+Lord's words: "The Father Himself loveth you," which are as an open door
+into the inner sanctuary, an invitation to enter to those who are
+hesitating on the threshold of the Holy of Holies.
+
+And there is no danger of tiring God: we come ceaselessly, endlessly.
+The cries of earth go up to Him, pitiful, ignorant, foolish cries; but
+they find God ready to hear and answer, fortunately not according to our
+ignorance but according to His great mercy. We think of the clouds of
+prayer in all ages, from all nations, in all tongues, and the very
+vastness of them gives us an index of the divine love.
+
+And it is not simply for ourselves that we pray, nor do we pray by
+ourselves; it is of God's love that in the work of prayer we are
+associated with one another. There is nothing further from the divine
+plan of life than our present individualism. Our temptation is to be
+egotistic and self-centred; to want to approach God alone with our
+private needs and wishes. We incline to travel the spiritual way by
+ourselves; we want no company; we want no one between our souls and God.
+But that precisely is not the divine method. We come to God through
+Christ; we come in association with the members of the Body. Our
+standing as Christians before Him is dependent upon our corporate
+relation to one another in His Son.
+
+Important issues are involved. We attain through this associated life of
+the Christian the power of mutual intercession. We find that it is our
+privilege to share our prayers with others, and to be interested in one
+another's lives. We have common interests and we work them out in
+common. Therefore when we try to put before us an ideal picture of the
+power of prayer, it will not be the solitary individual offering his
+personal supplications to the Father, but it will be the community of
+the faithful assembled for the offering of the divine Sacrifice. It is
+the praying Body that best satisfies our ideal of prayer, where we are
+conscious of helping one another in the work of intercession. We
+remember, too, when we think of prayer as prayer of the Body of Christ,
+that it is not just the visible congregation that is participating in
+it, but that all the Body share in the intercessions, wherever they may
+individually be. Our thoughts go up from the little assembly in the
+humble church and lose themselves in the splendour of the heavenly
+intercession where we are associated with prophets and apostles and
+martyrs, and with Mary the Mother of God.
+
+There was a third gift that the Magi brought to Him Whom they hailed
+King, a gift that is more perplexing as a gift to royalty than the other
+two. That gold and incense should be offered a King is clearly His royal
+right; but what has he to do with the bitterness of myrrh? But to this
+King myrrh is a peculiarly appropriate gift, for it is the symbol of
+complete self-abandonment. He who came to do not His own will but the
+will of Him that sent Him; Who laid aside the robes of His glory,
+issuing from the uncreated light that He might clothe Himself with the
+humility of the flesh, is properly honoured with the gift of myrrh.
+
+And as it was the symbol of His humility, so is it the symbol of our
+humanity in relation to Him. It suggests to us that uttermost of
+Christian virtues, the virtue of entire abandonment to the will of God.
+This is a most difficult virtue to acquire. We cling to self. We are
+devoted to our own wills. We rely on our own judgment and wisdom. We are
+impatient of all that gets in the way of our self-determination. We have
+in these last days made a veritable religion out of devotion to self, a
+cult of the ego.
+
+But he who will enter into the sanctuary of the divine life, he who
+will seek union with God, he who will be one with the Father in the Son,
+must abandon self. He must lose his life in order to save it. He must
+let go the world to cling to the Lord of life. This will of the man
+which is so insistent, so persistent, so assertive, so tenacious, must
+be laid aside and the Will of Another adopted in its place. Often this
+is bitter. Very true of us it is that when we were young we girded
+ourselves and walked whither we would; but it must be in the end, if we
+make life a spiritual success, that when we are old another shall gird
+us and carry us whither we would not.
+
+The secret of life is found when the bitterness of myrrh is turned to
+sweetness in the discovery that the outcome of the sacrificial life is
+not that it be narrowed but enlarged; and that for the life which we
+have entrusted to Him God will do more than we ask or think. When our
+will becomes one with the will of God we are surprised to find that we
+have ceased to think of what we once called our sacrifices, because life
+in Christ reveals itself to us as of infinite joy and richness, so that
+we forget the things that are behind and gladly press on.
+
+     Queen of heaven, blessed may thou be
+     For Godes Son born He was of thee,
+     For to make us free.
+          Gloria Tibi, Domine.
+
+     Jesu, Godes Son, born He was
+     In a crib with hay and grass,
+     And died for us upon the cross.
+           Gloria Tibi, Dominie.
+
+     To our Lady make we our moan,
+     That she may pray to her dear Son,
+     That we may to His bliss come.
+          Gloria Tibi, Dominie.
+
+     Sixteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PRESENTATION
+
+And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were
+accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.
+
+S. Luke II. 22.
+
+O come let us worship the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the
+Holy Ghost,--we the Christian nations, for He is our true God.
+
+And we hope in Holy Mary, that God will have mercy upon us through her
+prayers.
+
+Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, who hath borne for us God the Word.
+
+     COPTIC
+
+The reading of a story in the Gospels is often like looking through a
+window down some long arcade; there is in the foreground the group of
+actors in whom we are presently interested, and beyond them is the whole
+background of contemporary life to which they belong, of which they are
+a part. If we have time to think out the meaning of this surrounding
+life we gain added insight into the meaning of our principal characters.
+It is so now as we watch this group of humble peasant folk coming up to
+the temple to fulfil the demands of the law of Moses. In the precincts
+of the temple they are merged in a larger group whose interests are
+clearly identical with their own, and whom we easily see to be the local
+representatives of a party--the name, no doubt, suggests an organisation
+which they had not--scattered throughout Judea. Their interest was the
+redemption of Israel. They were the true heirs of the prophets, and
+among them the prophecies which concerned the Lord's Christ were the
+subject of constant study and meditation. Amid the movements and
+intrigues of political and religious parties, they abode quietly in the
+temple, as Simeon and Anna, or in their homes, as Zacharias and
+Elizabeth, _waiting_. Their power was the silent power of sanctity, the
+power that flows from lives steeped in meditation and prayer. They
+constitute that remnant which is the depository of the hopes of Israel
+and the saving salt which prevents the utter putrefaction of the body of
+the nation.
+
+We cannot for a moment doubt that Mary and Joseph were of this remnant,
+and that they were in complete sympathy with those whom they found here
+in the temple when the Child Jesus was brought in "to do for him after
+the custom of the law." The actual ceremony of the purification was soon
+over, the demands of the law satisfied. Neither Jesus nor Mary had any
+inner need of these observances; their value in their case was that by
+submission to them they associated themselves closely with their
+brethren, our Lord thus continuing that divine self-emptying which he
+had begun at the Incarnation. We are impressed with the completeness of
+this stooping of God when we see the offering that Mary brings, "A pair
+of turtle doves," the offering of the very poor. Our Lord has accepted
+life on its lowest economic terms in order that nothing in His mission
+shall flow from adventitious aids. He must owe all in the accomplishment
+of His work to the Father Who gave it Him to do. It will be the essence
+of the temptation that He must soon undergo that He shall consent to
+call to His aid earthly and material supports and base His hopes of
+success on something other than God.
+
+Accidentally, there is this further demonstration contained in the
+poverty of the Holy Family, that, namely, the completest spiritual
+privilege, the fullest spiritual development, is independent of
+"possessions." It is no doubt true that "great possessions" do not of
+necessity create a bar in all cases to spiritual accomplishment; but to
+many of us it is a consolation to know that the completest sanctity
+humanity has known has been wrought out in utter poverty of life. We
+shall have occasion to speak more of this later; we now only note the
+fact that those whom we meet in the pages of the New Testament as
+waiting hopefully for the redemption of Israel are waiting in poverty
+and hard work.
+
+What we find in S. Mary as she passes through the ceremony of her
+purification from a child-bearing which had in no circumstance of it
+anything impure, is the spirit of sacrifice which submission to the law
+implies. She has caught the spirit of her Son, the spirit of selfless
+offering to the will of God. It is the central accomplishment of the
+life of sanctity. The life of sanctity must be wrought out from the
+centre, from our contact with God. No one becomes holy by works,
+whatever may be the nature of the works. Works, the external life, are
+the expression of what we are, they are the externalization of our
+character. If they be not the expression of a life hid with Christ in
+God they can have no spiritual value, whatever may be their social
+value. The kind of works which "are done to be seen of men" "have their
+reward," that is, the sort of reward they seek, human approval; they
+have no value in the realm of the spirit.
+
+But the life that is lived as sacrifice, as a thing perfectly offered to
+God, is a life growing up in God day by day. It is our Lord's life,
+summed up from this point of view in the "I come to do thy will, O
+God." Its most perfect reflection is caught by blessed Mary with her
+acceptance of God's will: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord." But it is
+the life expression of all sanctity; for the saint is such chiefly by
+virtue of his sacrificial attitude. It is the completest account of the
+life of sanctity that it "leaves all" to follow a divine call. It is the
+response of the Apostles who, as James and John, leave their father
+Zebedee and the boats and the nets and the hired servants, to follow
+Jesus. It is the answer of Matthew who rises from the receipt of custom
+at the Master's word. It is the answer of all saints in all times.
+Sanctity means the abandonment of all for Christ: it means the embracing
+of the poverty of Jesus and Mary.
+
+Is sanctity then, or the possibility of it, shut within the narrow
+limits of a poor life? Well, even if it were, the limits would not be so
+very narrow. By far the greater part of the human race at any time has
+been poor, as poor as the Holy Family. Unfortunately, Christianity is
+forgetting its vocation of poverty and becoming a matter of
+well-to-do-ness. But we need not forget that the poor are the majority.
+However, the fact is not that economical poverty is automatically
+productive of spirituality, but that accepted and offered poverty is the
+road to the heart of God. It is not denied that the rich man may
+consecrate and offer his goods to God and make them instruments of God's
+service; but in the process he runs great risk of deceiving himself and
+of attempting to deceive God--the risk of quietly substituting for the
+spirit of sacrifice the spirit of commercial bargaining, and attempting
+to buy the favour of God, and of ransoming his great possessions by a
+well-calculated tribute. It is not so much our possessions as the way we
+hold them that is in question; it is a question whether the inner motive
+of our life is the will to sacrifice or the will to be rich. "They that
+desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many
+foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition,"
+
+These dangers S. Paul noted as the besetting dangers of riches are
+counteracted by the possession of the spirit of sacrifice which holds
+all things at the disposal of God, and views life as opportunity for the
+service of God. And in so estimating life, we must remember that money
+is not the only thing that human beings possess. As I pointed out the
+vast majority of the human race have no money: it by no means follows
+that they have no capacity or field for the exercise of the spirit of
+sacrifice. There is, for instance, an abundant opportunity for the
+exercise of that spirit in the glad acceptance of the narrow lot that
+may be ours. Probably many, indeed most, poor are only economically
+poor; they fall under S. Paul's criticism in that "they desire to be
+rich," and are therefore devoid of the spirit of sacrifice that would
+transform their actual poverty into a spiritual value. But all the
+powers and energies of life do in fact constitute life's capital. A poor
+boy has great possessions in the gifts of nature that God has granted
+him. He may use this capital as he will. He may be governed by "the
+desire to be rich," or by the desire to consecrate himself to the will
+and service of God--and the working out of life will be accordingly. He
+may become very rich economically, or he may devote his life to the
+service of his fellows as physician, teacher, missionary, or in
+numberless other paths. Once more, the meaning of life is in its
+voluntary direction, and whatever may be his economic state, he may, if
+he will, be "rich toward God."
+
+If what we are seeking is to follow the Gospel-life, if we are seeking
+to express toward man the spirit of the Master, we find abundant field
+for the exercise of this spirit of sacrifice in our daily relations with
+others. S. Paul's rule of life: "Look not every man to his own things,
+but every man also to the things of others," is the practical rule of
+the sacrificed will. It seeks to fulfil the service of the Master by
+taking the spirit of the Master--His helpfulness, His consideration, His
+sympathy--with one into the detail of the day's work. It is one of the
+peculiarities of human nature that it finds it quite possible to work
+itself up to an occasional accomplishment, especially in a spectacular
+setting, of spiritual works, which it finds itself quite impotent to do
+under the commonplace routine of life. The race experience is accurately
+enough summed up in the cynical proverb: "No man is a hero to his
+valet." It expresses the fact that in ordinary circumstances, and under
+commonplace temptations, we do not succeed in holding life to the
+accomplishment which is ours when we are, as it were, on dress parade.
+In other words, we respond to the opinions we desire to create in
+others; and the spirit of sanctity is a response not to public opinion,
+but to the mind and thought of God. When we seek the mind of Christ, and
+seek to reproduce that mind in our own lives, seek to be possessed by
+it, then we shall gladly render back to God all life's riches which we
+have received from Him, and acknowledge in the true spirit of poverty
+that "all things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we
+given Thee."
+
+The world has got into a very ill way of thinking of God as _force_.
+Force seems in the popular mind to be the synonym of _power_. The only
+power that we understand is the power that _compels_, that secures the
+execution of its will by physical or moral constraint. With this
+conception of power in mind men are continually asking: "Why does not
+God do this or that? If he be God and wills goodness, why does He not
+execute goodness, use power to accomplish it?"
+
+It ought to be unnecessary to point out that such a conception of power
+is quite foreign to the Christian conception of God. Goodness that is
+compulsory is not goodness. Human legislation, in its enforcement of
+law, looks not to the production of goodness but to the production of
+order, a quite different thing. But God's heart is set upon the
+sanctification of His children and is satisfied with nothing less than
+that. "This is the will of God, even your sanctification." But
+sanctification cannot be compelled. The divine method is, that "when the
+fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born
+under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might
+receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth
+the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Through
+this method we "were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." The
+result is not that we are compelled to obey, but that "the love of
+Christ constraineth us." The account of the apostolic authority is not
+that it is a commission to rule the universal Church, but "now then we
+are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray
+you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."
+
+The study of this divine method should put us on the right track in the
+attempt to estimate the nature of sanctity and the results we may expect
+from it. We shall expect nothing of spiritual value from force. We shall
+be quite prepared to turn away from the governing parties in Jerusalem
+as from those who have repudiated the divine method and are therefore
+useless for the divine ends. We shall turn rather to those who gather
+about the temple and there, in a life of prayer and meditation, wait for
+the redemption. It is to these, who are the real temple of the Lord,
+that the Lord "shall come suddenly," that the manifestation of God will
+be made. And their hearts will overflow with joy as they behold the
+fulfilment of the promises of God.
+
+The power of God is the power of love; and it is that love, and that
+love alone, that has won the victories of God. It is a very slow method,
+men say. No doubt. But it is the only method that has any success. The
+method of force seems effective; but its triumphs are illusory. Force
+cannot make men love, it can only make them hate. The world is being won
+to God by the love of God manifested in Christ Jesus our Lord. And it is
+as well to remember, when we are tempted to complain of the slowness of
+the process, that the slowness is ours, not God's. The process is slow
+because men will not consent to become the instruments of God's love for
+the world, will not transmit the crucified love of God's Son to their
+fellows. They continually, in their impatience, revert to force of some
+sort, for the attainment of spiritual ends. They become the tools of all
+sorts of secular ambitions which promise support in return for their
+co-operation. And the result may be read by any one not blinded by
+prejudice in the futility and incompetence of modern religions of all
+sorts. It is seen perhaps most of all in the pride of opinion which
+keeps the Christian world in a fragmentary condition, and which
+approaches the undoing of the sin of a divided Christendom with the
+preliminary announcement that no separated body must be required to
+admit that it has been in the wrong. Human disregard of the divine
+method of love and humility can hardly go farther; and the only
+practical result that can be expected to follow is such as followed from
+the negotiations of Herod and Pontius Pilate--a new Crucifixion of the
+Ever-sacrificed Christ.
+
+We have risen to the divine method when we have learned to rely for
+spiritual results upon God alone. Then is revealed to us the power of
+sanctity. We turn over the pages of the lives of the saints, of those
+who have been great in the Kingdom of God, and we are struck by the
+growing influence of these men and women. They are simple men and women
+whose life's energy is concentrated on some special work; they are
+confessors or directors; they work among the very poor; they lead lives
+of retirement in Religious Houses; they are preachers of the Gospel;
+they are missionaries. The one thing that they appear to have in common
+is utter consecration to the work in hand. And we see, it may be with
+some wonder, that as they become more and more absorbed in their special
+work, they become more and more centres of influence. Without at all
+willing it they draw people about them, become centres of influences,
+arouse interest, become widely known. In short, they are, without
+willing it, centres of energy. Of what energy? Obviously, of the energy
+of love: the love of God manifested in them draws men to God. The man at
+whose disposal is unlimited force compels men to do his will; but he
+draws no one to him except the hypocrite and the sycophant who expect to
+gain something by their servility. The saint draws men, not to himself,
+but to God; for obviously it is not his power but God's power that is
+being manifested through him.
+
+Unless we are very unfortunate we all know people whose attractiveness
+is the attractiveness of simple goodness. They are not learned nor
+influential nor witty nor clever, but we like to be with them. When we
+are asked why, we can only explain it by the attractiveness of their
+Christlikeness. What we gain from intercourse with them is spiritual
+insight and power. Their influence might be described as sacramental:
+they are means our Blessed Lord uses to impart Himself. They are so
+filled with the mind of Christ that they easily show Him to the world;
+and withal, quite unconsciously. For great love is possible only where
+there is great humility.
+
+And this power of sanctity which is the outcome of union with God is a
+permanent acquisition to the Kingdom of God. God's Kingdom is ultimately
+a Kingdom of saints. The sphere of God's self-manifestation in human
+life increases ever as the saints increase; and the power of sanctity
+necessarily remains while the saint remains, that is, forever. The saint
+remains a permanent organ of the Body of Christ, a perdurable instrument
+of the divine love. To speak humanly, the more saints there are, the
+more the love of God can manifest itself; the wider its influence on
+humanity. And the greater the Saint, that is, the nearer the Saint
+approaches the perfection of God, to which he is called--Be ye therefore
+perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect--the more influential he
+must be; that is the more perfectly he will show the divine likeness and
+transmit the divine influence. When we think of the power of the saints
+as intercessors that is what actually we are thinking of,--the
+perfection of their understanding of the mind of Christ.
+
+But to return to this world and to the gathering in the temple on the
+day of the Purification. These are they in whom the hope of Israel
+rests. Israel is not a failure because it has brought forth these. God's
+work through the centuries has not come to naught because in these
+there is the possibility of a new beginning. The consummate flower of
+Israel's life is the Blessed Mother through whom God becomes man; and
+these who meet her in the temple are the representatives of those hidden
+ones in Israel who will be the field wherein the seed of the Word can be
+sown and where it will bring forth fruit an hundredfold. Jesus, this
+Child, is God made man; and these around Him to-day, Mary and Joseph,
+Simeon and Anna, are those who will receive His love and will show its
+power in the universe forever.
+
+And so it will remain always; the good ground wherein the seed may be
+sown and bring forth unto eternal life is the spiritual nature of man,
+made ready by humility and love,--"In quietness and confidence shall be
+your strength." In the quietness that waits for God to act, the
+confidence that knows that He will act when the time comes. It is well
+if our aspiration is to be of the number of those who live lives hid
+with Christ in God; who are seeking nothing but that the love of God may
+be shed abroad in their hearts; who are "constrained" by nothing but the
+love of Jesus. It is true that this simplicity of motive and aim will
+bring it about that our lives will be hidden lives, lives of which the
+world will take no note. We may be quite sure that none of the rulers of
+Israel thought much about old Simeon who passed his time praying in the
+temple. And if we want to be known of rulers it is doubtless a mistake
+to take the road that Simeon followed. But the reward of that way was
+that he saw "the Lord's Christ," that it was permitted him to take in
+his arms Incarnate God, and then, in his rapture, to sing _Nunc
+Dimittis_. We cannot travel two roads at once. When the Holy Family goes
+out from the temple it can go, if it will, to the palace of Herod, or it
+can go back to Bethlehem. It cannot go both ways and we know the way
+that it took. And we in our self-examination to-night can see two roads
+stretching out before us. We can go the way of the world, the way that
+seeks (whether it finds or no) popularity and prominence, or we can join
+the Holy Family and in company with Jesus and Mary and Joseph go back to
+the quietness and hiddenness of the House of Bread where the saints
+dwell. With them, sheltered by the Sacrifice of Jesus and the prayers of
+Mary and Joseph we can wait for the Redemption in the full manifestation
+of the life of God in us, and for the time when the love of God shall be
+fully "shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given us."
+
+     O Sion, ope thy temple-gates;
+     See, Christ, the Priest and Victim, waits--
+        Let lifeless shadows flee:
+     No more to heaven shall vainly rise
+     The ancient rites--a sacrifice
+        All pure and perfect, see.
+
+     Behold, the Maiden knowing well
+     The hidden Godhead that doth dwell
+        In him her infant Son:
+     And with her Infant, see her bring
+     The doves, the humble offering
+        For Christ, the Holy One.
+
+     Here, all who for his coming sighed
+     Behold him, and are satisfied--
+        Their faith the prize hath won:
+     While Mary, in her breast conceals
+     The holy joys her Lord reveals,
+        And ponders them alone.
+
+     Come, let us tune our hearts to sing
+     The glory of our God and King,
+        The blessed One and Three:
+     Be everlasting praise and love
+     To him who reigns in heaven above,
+        Through all eternity.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+EGYPT
+
+The angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and
+take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt.
+
+S. Matt. II, 13.
+
+Deliver us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, from all evils past, present, and
+to come: and at the intercession for us of Blessed Mary who brought
+forth God and our Lord, Jesus Christ; and of the holy apostles Peter,
+and Paul, and Andrew; and of blessed Ambrose Thy confessor, and bishop,
+together with all Thy saints, favorably give peace in our days, that,
+assisted by the help of Thy mercy, we may ever be both delivered from
+sin, and safe from all turmoil. Fulfil this, by Him, with Whom Thou
+livest blessed, and reignest God, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for
+ever and ever.
+
+AMBROSIAN.
+
+Those who live in intimate union with God, the peace of whose lives is
+untroubled by the constant irruption of sin, are peculiarly sensitive to
+that mode of the divine action that we call supernatural. I suppose that
+it is not that God wishes to reveal Himself to souls only at crises of
+their experience or under exceptional conditions, but that only souls of
+an exceptional spiritual sensitivity are capable of this sort of
+approach. Communications of the divine will through dream or vision of
+inner voice are the accompaniment of sanctity; one may almost say that
+they are the normal means in the case of advanced sanctity. Most of us
+are too much immersed in the world, are too much the slaves of material
+things, to be open to this still, small voice of revelation. Our eyes
+are dimned by the garish light of the world, and our ears dulled by its
+clamour, so that our powers of spiritual perception are of the
+slightest. This is quite intelligible; and we ought not to fall into the
+mistake of assuming that our undeveloped spirituality is normal, and
+that what does not happen to us is inconceivable as having happened at
+all. If we want to know the truth about spiritual phenomena we shall put
+ourselves to school to those whose spiritual natures have attained the
+highest development and in whose experience spiritual phenomena are of
+almost daily happening.
+
+To the man "whose talk is of oxen," whose whole life is absorbed in the
+study of material things, a purely spiritual manifestation comes as a
+surprise. His instinctive impulse is to deny its reality as a thing
+obviously impertinent to his understanding of life. But one whose life
+is based on spiritual postulates, who is, however feebly, attempting to
+shape life in accordance with spiritual principles, though he may never
+have attained anything that can be interpreted as a distinct revelation
+from God by vision or voice or otherwise, yet must he by the very basic
+assumptions of his life be ready to regard such manifestations of God as
+intelligible, and indeed to be expected. So far from regarding divine
+interventions in life as impossible, we shall regard the Christian life
+which has no experience of them as abnormal, as not having realised its
+inheritance. The degree and kind of such intervention in life will vary;
+but it is the fact of the intervention that is important: the mode in a
+special case will be determined by the needs of that case. As we think
+along these lines we reach the conclusion that what we call the
+supernatural is not the unnatural or the abnormal, but is a higher mode
+of the natural.
+
+We are not surprised therefore to find that those whose spiritual
+development was such as to make it possible for God to choose them to
+fulfil special offices in relation to the Incarnation; who could be
+chosen to be, in the one case, the Mother of God-incarnate, and in the
+other, to be the guardian of the divine Child and His Blessed Mother,
+have the divine will in regard to the details of the trust committed to
+them, imparted to them in vision and in dream. So far from such vision
+and dream suggesting to us "a mythical element" in the Gospel
+narratives, they rather confirm our faith in that they harmonize with
+our instinctive conclusions as to what would be natural under the
+circumstances. We are prepared to be told that at this crisis in the
+Holy Child's life "the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream,
+saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into
+Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will seek
+the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child
+and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt."
+
+Thus early in our Lord's life is the element of tragedy introduced. The
+Incarnation of God stirs the diabolic powers, the rulers of "this
+darkness" to excited activity. The companion picture of the Nativity, of
+the Holy Child lying in Mary's arms, of the wondering shepherds, of the
+Magi from a far country,--the shadow of all this idyllic beauty is the
+massacre of the Innocents, the wailing of Rachel for her children. It
+is, as it were, the opening of a new stage in the world-old conflict
+where the powers of evil appear to have the advantage and can show the
+bodies of murdered infants as the trophies of their victory.
+
+But are we to think of the death of a child as a disaster? Has any
+actual victory redounded to the Prince of Power of the Air? One
+understands of course the grief and sense of loss that attends the death
+of any child, the breaking of the dreams which had gathered about its
+future. What the father and the mother dreamed over the cradle and
+planned for the future does not come to pass--all that is true. But in a
+consideration of the broader interests involved, does not the death of a
+baby have a meaning far deeper than a disappointment of hopes and
+dreams? It is true, is it not? that the coming of the child brought
+enrichment into the life of its parents? There was a new love born for
+this one child which is not the common property of all the children of
+the family, but is the peculiar possession of this child and its
+parents. Life--the life of the parents--is better and nobler by virtue
+of this love. They understand this, because when they stand by the side
+of the child's coffin they never feel that it had been better that this
+child had not come into existence. And more than that: as they commit
+this fragile body to the grave they know that there is no real sense in
+which they can say that they have lost this child. Rather, the child is
+a perpetual treasure, for the moment contemplated through tears, but
+presently to be thought of with unclouded joy. It is so wonderful a
+thing to think of this pure soul caught back to God; to think of it
+growing to spiritual maturity in God's very presence; to think of it
+following the Lamb withersoever He goeth. Yes: to think of it also as
+our child still, with our love in its heart, knowing that it has a
+father and a mother on earth, and, that, just because of its early
+death, it can be to them, what otherwise they would have been to it--the
+guard and helper of their Jives. In God's presence are the souls of
+children as perpetual intercessors for those whom they have left on
+earth; and they may well rejoice before God in that what appeared the
+tragedy of their death was in fact a recall from the field of battle
+before the testing of their life was made. We wept as over an
+irreparable loss,
+
+     While into nothingness crept back a host
+     Of shadows unexplored, of sins unsinned.
+
+The artists have imagined the souls of those who first died for Jesus
+attending Him on the way to Egypt as a celestial guard. In any case we
+are certain that the angels who watched about Him so closely all His
+life were with the Holy Family as they set out upon the way of exile. It
+would have been a wearisome march but that Jesus was there. His presence
+lightened all the toils of the desert way. Egypt, their place of refuge,
+would not have seemed to them what it seems to us, a land of wonder, of
+marvellous creations of human skill and intelligence, but a place of
+banishment from all that was dear, from the ties of home and religion.
+The religion which lay wrapped in the Holy Child was to break down
+barriers and hindrances to the worship of God; but the time was not yet.
+For them still the Holy Land, Jerusalem, the Temple, were the place of
+God's manifestation, and all else the dwelling place of idols. They must
+have shuddered in abhorrence at those strange forms of gods which rose
+about them on every hand. We cannot ourselves fail to draw the contrast
+between the statues which filled the Egyptian sanctuaries and before
+which all Egypt, rich and poor, mighty and humble, prostrated
+themselves, and this Child sleeping on Mary's breast. The imagination of
+the Christian community later caught this contrast and embodied it in
+the legend that when Jesus crossed the border of Egypt, all the idols of
+the land of Egypt fell down.
+
+We cannot follow the thought of the Blessed Mother through these strange
+scenes and the experiences of these days. No doubt in the Jewish
+communities already flourishing in Egypt there would be welcome and the
+means of livelihood. But there would be perplexing questions to one
+whose habit it was to keep all things which concerned her strange Child
+hidden in her heart, the subject of constant meditation. Why, after the
+divine action which had been so constant from His conception to His
+birth, and in the circumstances which attended His birth, this reversal,
+this defeat and flight? Why after Bethlehem, Egypt? Why after
+Gabriel, Herod?
+
+It brings us back again to the primary fact that the Incarnation is
+essentially a stage in a battle, and that the nature of God's battles is
+such that He constantly appears to lose them. He "goes forth as a giant
+to run His course"; but the eyes of man cannot see the giant--they see
+only a Babe laid in a manger. We are tricked by our notion of what
+is powerful.
+
+     "They all were looking for a king
+     To slay their foes and lift them high;
+     Thou cam'st, a little baby thing
+     That made a woman cry."
+
+The battle presents itself to us as a demand that we choose, that we
+take sides. The demand of Christ is that we associate ourselves with
+Him, or that we define our position as on the other side. "The
+friendship of the world is enmity with God" is a saying that is true
+when reversed: The friendship of God is enmity with the world. An open
+disclosure of the friendship of God sets all the powers of the world
+against us. This may be uncomfortable; but there does not appear to be
+any way of avoiding the opposition.
+
+Our Lord, in His Incarnation, not only stripped Himself of His glory,
+took the servant form, and in doing so deliberately deprived Himself of
+certain means which would have been vastly influential in dealing with
+men, but He also declined, in assuming human nature, to assume it under
+conditions which would have conferred upon Him any adventitious
+advantage in the prosecution of His work. He would display to men
+neither divine nor human glory: He would have no aid from power or
+position, from wealth or learning. He undertook His work in the strength
+of a pure humanity united with God. He declined all else. And He found
+that almost the first event of His life was to be driven into exile.
+
+And they who are associated with Him necessarily share His fortunes.
+Unless they will abandon the Child, Mary and Joseph must set out on the
+desert way. They had no doubt much to learn; but what is important is
+not the size or amount of what we learn, but the learning of it. When we
+are called, as they were, to leave all for Christ, it often turns out
+as hard, oftentimes harder, to leave property as riches; and the reason
+is that what we ultimately are leaving is neither poverty nor riches,
+but self: and self to us is always a "great possession."
+
+Therein, I suppose, lies the solution of the problem of the relation of
+property and Christianity in the common life. Idleness is sin; every one
+is bound to some useful labour, no matter what his material resources
+may be. And if we work for our living, if our labour is to be such as
+will support us, then there at once arises the problem of possessions.
+Useful, steady labour will ordinarily produce more than "food and
+raiment." Under present social arrangments accumulated property is
+handed on to heirs. A man naturally wants to make some provision for his
+family. Or he finds himself in possession of considerable wealth and the
+impulse is to spend in luxuries of one sort or another,--modern
+invention has put endless means of ministering to physical or aesthetic
+comfort within his reach. He can have a motor car, a country house, an
+expensive library; he can have beautiful works of art. And then he is
+confronted with the picture of the Holy Family which can never have
+lived much beyond the poverty line. He realises the nature of our Lord's
+life of poverty and ministry. And though the plain man may not feel that
+he can go very far in imitating this life, he does feel that there is a
+splendour of achievement in those who take our Lord at His word and sell
+all to follow Him.
+
+But the literal abandonment of life to the ideal of poverty is clearly
+not what our Lord contemplated for the universal practice of His
+followers. He nowhere indicates that all gainful labour is to be
+abandoned, or that having gained enough for food and raiment we are to
+idle thereafter, or even give ourselves to some ungainful work. The
+Kingdom of heaven does not appear to be society organised on the lines
+of socialism or otherwise. Our Lord contemplated life going on as it is,
+only governed by a new set of motives. It has as the result of the
+acceptance of the Gospel a new Orientation; and as a result of that it
+will view "possessions" in a new way. The acceptance of the Gospel means
+the self surrendered utterly to the will of God, and all that self
+possesses held at the disposal of that will. We may expect that God's
+will for us will be manifested in the events of life and its
+opportunities, and we shall hold ourselves alert and ready to embrace
+that will. It may be that the call will come to sell all, and we need to
+beware lest the thoroughness of the demand terrify us into the
+repudiation of our Lord's service; lest the thought of the sacrificed
+possessions send us away sorrowing. Ordinarily the call is less
+searching than that; or perhaps the mercy of God spares us from demands
+that would be beyond our strength. In any case, the truly consecrated
+self will regard luxury as a dangerous thing, replete with entanglements
+of all kinds, that it were well to avoid at the expense of any
+sacrifice. One does well to hold "possessions" in a very loose grip,
+lest the hold be reversed, and we become their servants rather than
+they ours. And it is well to emphasise again that the mere size of
+possessions is of small importance. There is a not very rational
+tendency to think of this as being a matter of millions, for the man of
+moderate income to think that there is no problem for him. The problem
+is as pressing for him as for any man. His minimum of comfort may be as
+tightly grasped as the other man's maximum. The only solution of the
+problem will be found in the converted self. Those who have really given
+themselves to God hold all things at His disposal. They are not thinking
+how they can indulge self but how they can glorify God.
+
+Egypt to many will stand for another sort of abandonment which much
+perplexes the immature Christian: that is, the sort of isolation in
+which the new Christian is quite likely to find himself when first he
+attempts to put Christian principles into practice. We imagine one
+brought up in the ordinary mixed circles of society, where there are
+unbelievers and lax Christians mingled together, and where there are no
+principles firmly enough held to interfere with any sort of enjoyment of
+life which offers. Such an one--a young woman, let us suppose--in the
+Providence of God becomes converted to our Lord, and comes to see that
+the lax and indifferent Christian life she had been leading was a mere
+mockery of Christian living. Speedily does she find when she attempts to
+put into action the principles of living which she now understands to be
+the meaning of the Gospel that a breach of sympathy has been opened
+between her and her accustomed companions; that many things which she
+was accustomed to do in their society and which made for their common
+fund of amusement are no longer possible to her. The careless talk, the
+shameless dress, the gambling, the drinking, the Sunday amusements--such
+things as these she has thrown over; and she finds that with them she
+has thrown over the basis of intimacy with her usual companions. It is
+not that they are antagonistic but simply that their points of contact
+have ceased to exist. Her own inhibitions exclude her automatically from
+most of the activities of her social circle. She finds herself much
+alone. Her friends are sorry for her and think her foolish and try to
+win her back, but it is clear to her that she can only go back by going
+back from Christ.
+
+This is the common case of the young whether boy or girl to-day, and the
+practical question is, Can they endure the isolation? It is easy to say:
+Let them make Christian friends; but that is not always practical,
+especially in the present state of the Church when there is no cohesion
+among its members, no true sense of constituting a Brotherhood, of being
+members of the same Body. We have to admit that the attempt to hold a
+high standard usually ends in failure, at least the practical failure of
+a weak compromise. But there are characters that are strong enough to
+face the isolation and to readjust life on the basis of the new
+principles and to mould it in accord with the new ideals. The period of
+this readjustment is one of severe testing of one's grasp on principles
+and one's strength of purpose. But the battle once fought out we attain
+a new kind of freedom and expansion of life. We look back with some
+amusement at the old life and the things that fascinated us in the days
+of our spiritual unconsciousness much as we look back at the games that
+amused us in our childish hours. The desert of Egypt that we entered
+with trepidation and fearful hearts turns out not to be so dreadful as
+we imagined, and indeed the flowers spring up under our feet as we
+resolutely tread the desert way.
+
+These trials must be the daily experience of those who attempt to put
+their religion into practice, and these perplexities must assail them so
+long as the Christian community continues to show its present social
+incompetence; so long, that is, as we attempt to make the basis of our
+social action something other than the principles of the spiritual life.
+A Christian society, one would naturally think, would spring out of the
+possession of Christian ideals; and doubtless it would if these ideals
+were really dominant in life, and not a sort of ornament applied to it.
+Any social circle contains men and women of various degrees of
+intellectual development and of varying degrees of experience of life;
+what holds them together is the pursuit of common objects, the objects
+that we sum up as amusement. Now the Christians in a community certainly
+have a common object, the cultivation of the spiritual life through the
+supernatural means offered by the Church of God. One would think that
+this object would have a more constraining power than the attractions of
+motoring or golf; but in fact we know that this is not so save in
+individual cases. There is not, that is to say, anywhere visible a
+Christian community which is wrought into a unity by the solidifying
+forces of its professed ideals. Those very people whose paths converge
+week by week until they meet at this altar, as they leave the altar,
+follow diverging paths and live in isolation for the rest of their time.
+
+One of the constant problems of the Church is that of the loss of those
+who have for a time been associated with it--of those who have for a
+time seemed to recognise their duty to God, and their privileges as
+members of His Son. They drift away into the world. We pray and meditate
+and worry over this and try to invent some machinery which will overcome
+it. But it cannot be overcome by machinery, especially by the sort of
+machinery which consists in transferring the amusements that people find
+in the world bodily into the Church itself. It cannot and will not be
+overcome until a Christian society has been created which is bound
+together by the interests of the Kingdom of God, and in which those
+interests are so predominant as to throw into the shade and practically
+annihilate other interests. And especially must such spiritual interests
+be strong enough to break down all social barriers so that the cultured
+and refined can find a common ground with the uneducated and socially
+untrained in the spiritual privileges that they share in common. When
+the banker can talk with his chauffeur of their common experience in
+prayer, and the banker's wife and her cook can confer on their mutual
+difficulties in making a meditation, then we shall have got within
+sight of a Christian society; but at present, while these have no
+spiritual contact, it is not within sight. The primitive Christian
+community in Jerusalem made the attempt at having all things in common.
+Their mistake seems to have been that they, like other and more modern
+people, by "all things" understood money. You cannot build any society
+which is worth the name on money, a Church least of all. It is
+unimportant whether a man is rich or poor; what is important is his
+spiritual accomplishment: and it is common spiritual aims and
+accomplishments which should make up the "all things" which possessed in
+common will form the basis of an enduring unity. But not until
+accomplishment becomes the supreme interest of life can we expect to get
+out of the impasse in which we at present find ourselves; in which, that
+is, the person can be converted to Christianity and enter into union
+with God in Christ and become a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, and
+wake to find himself isolated from his old circle by his profession of
+new principles; but not, by his new principles, truly united to his
+fellow citizens in the Kingdom of God! One is tempted to write, What a
+comedy; but before one can do so, realises that it is in fact a tragedy!
+
+     Mother of God--oh, rare prerogative;
+     Oh, glorious title--what more special grace
+     Could unto thee thy dear Son, dread God, give
+     To show how far thou dost all creatures pass?
+     That mighty power within the narrow fold
+     Did of thy ne'er polluted womb remain,
+     Whom, whiles he doth th' all-ruling Sceptre hold,
+     Not earth, nor yet the heavens can contain;
+     Thou in the springtide of thy age brought'st forth
+     Him who before all matter, time and place,
+     Begotten of th' Eternal Father was.
+     Oh, be thou then, while we admire thy worth
+     A means unto that Son not to proceed
+     In rigour with us for each sinful deed.
+
+     John Brereley, Priest (Vere Lawrence Anderton, S.J.) 1575-1643
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+NAZARETH
+
+     And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was
+     subject unto them.
+
+     S. Luke II, 51.
+
+     The Holy Church acknowledges and confesses the pure Virgin
+     Mary as Mother of God through whom has been given unto us the
+     bread of immortality and the wine of consolation. Give
+     blessings then in spiritual song.
+
+     ARMENIAN.
+
+After the rapid succession of fascinating pictures which are etched for
+us in the opening chapters of the Gospel there follows a space of about
+twelve years of which we are told nothing. The fables which fill the
+pages of the Apocryphal Gospels serve chiefly to emphasise the
+difference between an inspired and an uninspired narrative. The human
+imagination trying to develop the situation suggested by the Gospel and
+to fill in the unwritten chapters of our Lord's life betrays its
+incompetence to create a story of God Incarnate which shall have the
+slightest convincing power. These Apocryphal stories are immensely
+valuable to us as, by contrast, creating confidence in the story of
+Jesus as told by the Evangelists, but for nothing more.
+
+We are left to use our own imagination in filling in these years of
+silence in our Lord's training; and we shall best use it, not by trying
+to imagine what may have occurred, but by trying to understand what is
+necessarily involved in the facts as we know them. We know that the home
+in Nazareth whither Mary and Joseph brought Jesus after the death of
+Herod permitted them to return from Egypt was the simple home of a
+carpenter. It would appear to have been shared by the children of
+Joseph, and our Lady would have been the house-mother, busy with many
+cares. We know, too, that under this commonplace exterior of a poor
+household there was a life of the spirit of far reaching significance.
+Mary was ceaselessly pondering many things--the significance of all
+those happenings which, as the years flowed on without any further
+supernatural intervention, must at times have seemed as though they were
+quite purposeless. Of course this could not have been a settled feeling,
+for the insight of her pure soul would have held her to the certainty
+that such actions of God as she had experienced would some day reveal
+the meaning which as yet lay hidden.
+
+In the meantime other things did not matter much, seeing she had Jesus,
+the object of endless love. Every mother dreams over the baby she cares
+for and looks out into the future with trembling hope; so S. Mary's
+thoughts would go out following the hints of prophecy and angelic
+utterances, unable to understand how the light and shadow which were
+mingled there could find fulfilment in her Child. But like any other
+mother the thought would come back to her present possession, the
+satisfaction of her heart that she had in Jesus. With the growth of
+Jesus there would come the unfolding of the answering love, which was
+but another mode in which the love of God she had experienced all her
+life was manifesting itself. Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and we are
+able to enter a little into the over-flowing love of Mary as she watched
+the advance, this unfolding from day to day. The wonder that was hers in
+guiding this mind and will, in teaching our Lord His first prayers, in
+telling Him the story of the people of whom He had assumed our nature!
+There was here no self-will, no resistance to guidance, no perversity to
+wound a mother's heart. In the training of an ordinary child there are
+from time to time hints of characteristics or tendencies which may
+develop later into spiritual or moral disaster. There are growls of the
+sleeping beast which make us tremble for the future: there are hours of
+agony when we think of the inevitable temptations which must be met, and
+suggestions of weakness which colour our imagination of the meeting of
+them with the lurid light of defeat. But as Mary watched the unfolding
+character of Jesus she saw nothing there that carried with it the least
+suggestion of evil growth in the future, no outcropping of hereditary
+sin or disordered appetite. A constantly unfolding intelligence, and
+growing interest in the things that most interested her, an eagerness to
+hear and to know of the will and love of the eternal Father, these are
+her joy. That would have been the centre--would it not?--of the
+unfolding consciousness of Jesus: the knowledge of the Father.
+
+Training by love, so we might describe the life in the Home at Nazareth.
+And we must not forget the grave ageing figure who is the head of the
+household. _The Holy Family_--that was the perfect unity that their love
+created. There is a wonderful picture of these three by Sassaferato
+which catches, as no other Holy Family that I know of does, the meaning
+of their association. S. Mary whom the artistic imagination is so apt,
+after the Nativity, to transform into a stately matron, here still
+retains the note of virginity which in fact she never lost. It is the
+maiden-mother who stands by the side of the grave, elderly S. Joseph,
+the ideal workman, who is also the ideal guardian of his maiden-wife.
+And Jesus binds these two together and with them makes a unity,
+interpreting to us the perfection of family life.
+
+Family life is a tremendous test, it brings out the best and the worst
+of those who are associated in it. The ordinary restraints of social
+intercourse are of less force in the intimacy of family life: there is
+less need felt to watch conduct, or to mask what we know are our
+disagreeable traits. It is quite easy for character to deteriorate in
+the freedom of such intercourse. It is pretty sure to do so unless there
+is the constant pressure of principle in the other direction. The great
+safeguard is the sort of love that is based on mutual respect,--respect
+both for ourselves and for others. We talk a good deal as though love
+were always alike; as though the fact that a man and a woman love each
+other were always the same sort of fact. It does not require much
+knowledge of human nature or much reflection to convince us that that is
+not the case. Love is not a purely physical fact; and outside its
+physical implications there are many factors which may enter, whose
+existence constitute the _differentia_ from case to case. It is upon
+these varying elements that the happiness of the family life depends.
+One of the most important is that character on either side shall be such
+as to inspire respect. Many a marriage goes to pieces on this rock; it
+is found that the person who exercised a certain kind of fascination
+shows in the intimacy of married life a character and qualities which
+are repulsive; a shallowness which inspires contempt, an egotism which
+is intolerable, a laxity in the treatment of obligations which destroys
+any sense of the stability of life. A marriage which does not grow into
+a relation of mutual honour and respect must always be in a state of
+unstable equilibrium, constantly subject to storms of passion, to
+suspicion and distrust.
+
+And therefore such a marriage will afford no safe basis on which to
+build a family life. But without a stable family life a stable social
+and religious life is impossible. It is therefore no surprise to those
+who believe that the powers of evil are active in the world to find that
+the family is the very centre of their attack at the present time. The
+crass egotism lying back of so much modern teaching is nowhere more
+clearly visible than in the assertion of the right of self-determination
+so blatantly made in popular writings. By self-determination is
+ultimately meant the right of the individual to seek his own happiness
+in his own way, and to make pleasure the rule of his life. "The right to
+happiness" is claimed in utter disregard of the fact that the claim
+often involves the unhappiness of others. "The supremacy of love,"
+meaning the supremacy of animalism, is the excuse for undermining the
+very foundations of family life. No obligation, it appears, can have a
+binding force longer than the parties to it find gratification in it.
+Personal inclination and gratification is held sufficient ground for
+action whose consequences are far from being personal, which, in fact,
+affect the sane and healthy state of society as a whole.
+
+The decline of a civilisation has always shown itself more markedly in
+the decline of the family life than elsewhere. The family, not the
+individual, is the basis of the social state, and no amount of
+theorising can make the fact different. Whatever assails the integrity
+of the family assails the life of the state, and no single family can be
+destroyed without society as a whole feeling the effect. "What," it is
+asked, "is to be done? If two people find that they have blundered, are
+they to go on indefinitely suffering from the result of their blunder?
+If an immature boy or girl in a moment of passion make a mistake as to
+their suitability to live together, are they to be compelled to do so at
+the expense of constant unhappiness?"
+
+It would seem obvious to say that justice requires that those who make
+blunders should take the consequences of them; that those who create a
+situation involving suffering should do the suffering themselves and not
+attempt to pass it on to others. It is not as though the consequences of
+the act can be avoided; they cannot. What happens is that the incidence
+of them is shifted. It is a part of the brutal egotism of divorce that
+it is quite willing to shift the incidence of the suffering that it has
+created on to the lives of wholly innocent people; in many cases upon
+children, in all cases upon society at large. For it is necessary to
+emphasize the fact that society is a closely compact body: so interwoven
+is life with life that if one member suffer the other members suffer
+with it. Breaches of moral order are not individual matters but social.
+This truth is implied in society's constantly asserted right to regulate
+family relations in the general interest even after it has ceased to
+think of such relations as having any spiritual significance. We need
+to-day a more vivid sense of the _community_ lest we shall see all sense
+of a common life engulfed in the rising tide of individual anarchism. We
+need the assertion in energetic form of the right of the community as
+supreme over the right of the individual. We must deny the right of the
+individual to pursue his own way and his own pleasure at the expense of
+the rights of others. And to his insolent question, "Why should I suffer
+in an intolerable situation?" we must plainly answer: "Because you are
+responsible for the situation, and it is intolerable that you should be
+permitted to throw off the results of your wickedness or your stupidity
+upon other and innocent people."
+
+And it is quite clear that should society assert its pre-eminent right
+in unmistakable form and make it evident that it does not propose to
+tolerate the results of the egotistic nonsense of self-determination and
+the right of every one to live his own life, the evils of divorce and of
+shattered families would presently shrink to relatively small
+proportions. The present facility of divorce encourages thoughtless and
+unsuitable marriages in the first place; and in the second place,
+encourages the resort to divorce in circumstances of family disturbance
+which would speedily right themselves in the present as they have done
+in the past if those concerned knew that their happiness and comfort
+for years compelled an adjustment of life. When as at present any one
+who loses his temper can rush off to a court and get a marriage
+dissolved for some quite trivial reason, there is small encouragement to
+practice self-control. If a man and woman know that the consequences of
+conduct must be faced by them, and cannot be avoided by thrusting them
+upon others, they will no doubt in the course of time learn to exercise
+a little self-control.
+
+The family is the foundation of the state because, among other things,
+it is the natural training place of citizens: no public training in
+schools and camps can for a moment safely be looked to as a substitute
+or an equivalent of wholesome family influence. If the family does not
+make good citizens we cannot have good citizens. The family too is at
+the basis of organised religious life; if the family does not make good
+Christians we shall not have good Christians. The Sunday School and the
+Church societies are poor substitutes for the religious influence of the
+family, as the school and the camp are for its social interests.
+
+One is inclined to stress the obvious failure of the family to fulfil
+its alloted functions in the teaching of religion as the root difficulty
+that the Christian religion has to encounter and the most comprehensive
+cause of its relative failure in modern life. The responsibility for the
+religious and moral training of children rests squarely upon those who
+have assumed the responsibility of bringing them into the world, and it
+cannot be rightly pushed off on to some one else. To the protest of
+parents that they are incompetent to conduct such training, the only
+possible reply is a blunt, "Whose fault is that?" If you have been so
+careless of the fundamental responsibilities of life, you are
+incompetent to assume a relation which of necessity carries such
+responsibility with it. It is no light matter to have committed to you
+the care of an immortal soul whose eternal future may quite well be
+conditioned on the way in which you fulfil your trust. It would be well
+as a preliminary to marriage to take a little of the time ordinarily
+given to its frivolous accompaniments and seriously meditate upon the
+words of our Lord which seem wholly appropriate to the circumstance:
+"Whoso shall cause to stumble one of these little ones which believe in
+me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
+and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea." It is the careless
+and incompetent training of children which in fact "causes them to
+stumble" when the presence of word and example would have held them
+straight. It has been (to speak personally) the greatest trial of my
+priesthood that out of the thousands of children I have dealt with, in
+only rare cases have I had the entire support of the family; and I have
+always considered that I was fortunate when I met with no interference
+and was given an indifferent tolerance. It is heart-breaking to see
+years of careful work brought to naught (so far as the human eye can
+see: the divine eye can see deeper) by the brutal materialism of a
+father and the silly worldliness of a mother.
+
+The interplay of lives in a family should be consciously directed by
+those who control them to the cultivation, to the bringing out of the
+best that is in them. Education means the drawing out of the innate
+powers of the personality and the training of them for the highest
+purposes. It is the deliberate direction of personal powers to the
+highest ends, the discipline of them for the performance of those ends.
+The life of a child should be shaped with reference to its final destiny
+from the moment of its birth. It should be surrounded with an atmosphere
+of prayer and charity which would be the natural atmosphere in which it
+would expand as it grows, and in terms of which it would learn to
+express itself as soon as it reaches sufficient maturity to express
+itself at all. It should become familiar with spiritual language and
+modes of action, and meet nothing that is inharmonious with these. But
+we know that the education of the Christian child is commonly the
+opposite of all this. It learns little that is spiritual. When it comes
+to learn religion it is obviously a matter of small importance in the
+family life; if there is any expression of it at all, it is one that is
+crowded into corners and constantly swamped by other interests which are
+obviously felt to be of more importance. Too often the spiritual state
+of the family may be summed up in the words of the small boy who
+condensed his observation of life into the axiom: "Men and dogs do not
+go to Church." In such an atmosphere the child finds religion and morals
+reduced to a system of repression. God becomes a man with a club
+constantly saying, Don't! He grows to think that he is a fairly virtuous
+person so long as he skilfully avoids the system of taboos wherewith he
+feels that life is surrounded, and fulfils the one positive family law
+of a religious nature, that he shall go to Sunday School until he is
+judged sufficiently mature to join the vast company of men and dogs.
+
+Nothing very much can come of negatives. Religion calls for positive
+expression; and it is not enough that the child shall find positive
+expression once a week in the church; he must find it every day in the
+week in the intimacy of the family. He must find that the principles of
+life which are inculcated in the church are practiced by his father and
+his mother, his brother and his sister, or he will not take them
+seriously. If he is conscious of virtue and religious practice as
+repression, a sort of tyranny practiced on a child by his elders, his
+notion of the liberty of adult life will quite naturally be freedom to
+break away from what is now forced upon him into the life of
+self-determination and indifference to things spiritual that
+characterises the adult circle with which he is familiar.
+
+But consider, by contrast, those rare families where the opposite of all
+this is true; where there is the peace of a recollected life of which
+the foundations are laid in constant devotion to our Lord. There you
+will find the nearest possible reproduction of the life of the Holy
+Family in Nazareth. Because the life of the family is a life of prayer,
+there will you find Jesus in the midst of it. There you will find Mary
+and Joseph associated with its life of intercession. In such a family
+the expression of a religious thought will never be felt as a discord.
+The talk may quite naturally at any moment turn on spiritual things.
+There are families in which one feels that one must make a careful
+preparation for the introduction of a spiritual allusion: one does it
+with a sense of danger, much as one might sail through a channel strewn
+with mines. There are other families in which one has no hesitation in
+speaking of prayer, of sacraments, of spiritual actions, as things with
+which all are familiar in practice, and are as natural as food and
+drink. In this atmosphere it produces no smile to say, "I am going to
+slip into the Church and make my meditation"; or, "I shall be a little
+late to-night as I am making my confession on my way home." Religion in
+such a circle has not incurred contempt through familiarity: it still
+remains a great adventure, the very greatest of all indeed; but it is an
+adventure in the open, full of joy and gladness.
+
+The Holy Family was a family that worked hard. It is no doubt true that
+our Lord learned his foster-father's trade, so that those who knew him
+later on, or heard His preaching, asked, "Is not this the carpenter?"
+But the Holy Family was a radiant centre of joy and peace because Jesus
+was in the midst of it. Where Jesus dwells there is the effect of his
+indwelling in the spiritual gladness that results. Mary was never too
+busy for her religious duties nor Joseph too tired with his week's work
+to get up on the Sabbath for whatever services in honour of God the
+Synagogue offered. They were perhaps conscious as the Child "increased
+in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" of a spiritual
+influence that flowed from Him, and sweetened and lightened the life of
+the home. They were not conscious that in His Person God was in the
+midst of them; but that is what we can (if we will) be conscious of. We
+are heirs of the Incarnation, and God is in the midst of us; and
+especially does Jesus wish to dwell, as He dwelt in Nazareth, in the
+midst of the family. He wishes to make every household a Holy Family. He
+is in the midst of it in uninterrupted communion with the soul of the
+baptised child; and the father and mother, understanding that their
+highest duty and greatest privilege is to watch and foster the spiritual
+unfolding of the child's life in such wise that Jesus may never depart
+from union with it, become as Joseph and Mary in their ministry to it.
+There is nothing more heavenly than such a charge; there is nothing more
+beautiful than such a family life.
+
+There is often a pause in God's work between times of great activity--a
+time of retreat, as it seems, which is a rest from what has preceded and
+a preparation for what is to come. Such a pause were these years at
+Nazareth in the life of Blessed Mary. The time from the Annunciation to
+the return from Egypt was a time of deep emotion, of spirit-shaking
+events. Later on there were the trials of the years of the ministry,
+culminating in Calvary. But these years while Jesus was growing to
+manhood in the quietness of the home were years of unspeakable privilege
+and peace. The daily association with the perfect Child, the privilege
+of watching and guarding and ministering to Him, these days of deepening
+spiritual union with Him, although much that was happening to the mother
+was happening unconsciously,--were strengthening her grasp on ultimate
+reality, so that she issued with perfect strength to meet the supreme
+tragedy of her life. How wonderful God must have seemed to her in those
+thirty years of peace! To all of us God is thus wonderful in quiet
+hours; and the quiet hours are much the more numerous in most of our
+lives. But have we all learned to use these hours so that we may be
+ready to meet the hours of testing which shall surely come? No matter
+how quiet the valley of our life, some day the pleasant path will lift,
+and we must climb the hilltop where rises the Cross. It will not be
+intolerable, if the quiet years have been spent in Nazareth with Jesus
+and Mary and Joseph.
+
+     Most holy, and pure Virgin, Blessed Mayd,
+       Sweet Tree of Life, King David's Strength and Tower,
+       The House of Gold, the Gate of Heaven's power,
+     The Morning-Star whose light our fall hath stay'd.
+
+     Great Queen of Queens, most mild, most meek, most wise,
+       Most venerable, Cause of all our joy,
+       Whose cheerful look our sadnesse doth destroy,
+     And art the spotlesse Mirror to man's eyes.
+
+     The Seat of Sapience, the most lovely Mother,
+       And most to be admired of thy sexe,
+       Who mad'st us happy all, in thy reflexe,
+     By bringing forth God's Onely Son, no other.
+
+     Thou Throne of Glory, beauteous as the moone,
+       The rosie morning, or the rising sun,
+       Who like a giant hastes his course to run,
+     Till he hath reached his two-fold point of noone.
+
+     How are thy gifts and graces blazed abro'd,
+       Through all the lines of this circumference,
+       T'imprint in all purged hearts this Virgin sence
+     Of being Daughter, Mother, Spouse of God?
+
+     Ben Jonson, 1573-1637.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE TEMPLE
+
+     And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Know ye
+     not that I must be in my Father's house?
+
+     S. Luke II, 49.
+
+     We give thanks unto thee, O Lord, who lovest mankind, Thou
+     benefactor of our souls and bodies, for that Thou hast this
+     day vouchsafed to feed us with Thy Heavenly Mysteries; guide
+     our path aright, establish us all in Thy fear, guard our
+     lives, make sure our steps through the prayers and
+     supplications of the glorious Mother of God and Ever Virgin
+     Mary and of all Thy saints.
+
+     RUSSIAN.
+
+The time was come when by the law of His people the Boy Jesus must
+assume the duties of an adult in the exercise of His religion. Therefore
+His parents took Him with them to Jerusalem that He might participate in
+the celebration of the Passover. It would be a wonderful moment in the
+life of any intelligent Hebrew boy when for the first time he came in
+contact with the places and scenes which were so familiar to him in the
+story of his nation's past; and we can imagine what would have been the
+special interest of the Child Jesus who would have been so thoroughly
+taught in the Old Testament Scriptures, and who would have felt an added
+interest in the places He was now seeing because of their association
+with His great ancestor, David. Still His chief interest was in the
+religion of His people, and it was the temple where the sacrificial
+worship of God was centred that would have for Him the greatest
+attraction. This was His "Father's House," and here He Himself felt
+utterly at home. We are not surprised to be told that He lingered in
+these courts.
+
+"And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus
+tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and His mother knew it not."
+They had perfect confidence in Jesus; and yet it seems strange that they
+should have assumed that He was somewhere about and would appear at the
+proper time. When the night drew on and the camp was set up there was no
+Child to be found. Then we imagine the distress, the trouble of heart,
+with which Mary and Joseph hurry back to Jerusalem and spend the ensuing
+days in seeking through its streets. We share something of our Lord's
+surprise when we learn that the temple was the last place that they
+thought of in their search. Did they think that Jesus would be caught by
+the life of the Passover crowds that filled the streets of Jerusalem?
+Did they think that it would be a child's curiosity which would hold him
+fascinated with the glittering toys of the bazaars? Did they think that
+He had mistaken the caravan and been carried off in some other direction
+and was lost to them forever? We only know that it was not till three
+days had passed that they thought of the temple and there found Him.
+"And when they saw Him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto Him,
+Son, why has thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have
+sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought
+me? Know ye not that I must be in my Father's house?"
+
+S. Mary and S. Joseph were proceeding on certain assumptions as to what
+Jesus would do which turned out to be untenable. It is one of the
+dangers of our religion--our personal religion--that we are apt to
+assume too much which in the testing turns out to be unfounded. We reach
+a certain stage of religious attainment, and then we assume that all is
+going well with us. When one asks a child how he is getting on he
+invariably answers: "I am all right." And the adult often has the same
+childish confidence in an untested and unverified state of soul. We are
+"all right"; which practically means that we do not care to be bothered
+with looking into our spiritual state at all. We have been going on for
+years now following the rules that we laid down when we first realised
+that the being a Christian was a more or less serious matter. Nothing
+has happened in these years to break the placidity of our routine. There
+has never been any relapse into grievous sin; we have never felt any
+real temptation to abandon the practice o£ our religion. We run along as
+easily and smoothly as a car on well-laid rails. We are "all right."
+
+But in fact we are all wrong. We have lapsed into a state of which the
+ideal is purely static: an ideal of spiritual comfort as the goal of our
+spiritual experience here on earth. We have acquired what appears to be
+a state of equilibrium into which we wish nothing to intrude that would
+endanger the balance. We are, no doubt, quite unconsciously, excluding
+from life every emotion, every ambition, as well as every temptation,
+which appears to involve spiritual disturbance. But we need to be
+disturbed.
+
+For the spiritual life is dynamic and not static; its ideal is motion
+and not rest. Rest is the quality of dead things, and particularly of
+dead souls. The weariness of the way, which is so obvious a phenomenon
+in the Christian life, is the infallible sign of lukewarmness. What we
+need therefore is to break with the assumption that we know all that it
+is necessary to know, and that we have done or are doing all that it is
+necessary to do. It is indeed the mark of an ineffective religion that
+the notion of necessity is adopted as its stimulus, rather than the
+notion of aspiration. The question, "Must I do this?" is a revelation of
+spiritual poverty and ineptitude. "I press on," is the motto of a
+living religion.
+
+Personal religion, therefore, needs constantly to be submitted to new
+tests, lest it lapse into an attitude of finality. Fortunately for us,
+God does not leave the matter wholly in our hands, but Himself, through
+His Providence, applies a wide variety of tests to us. It is often a
+bitter and disturbing experience to have our comfortable routine broken
+up and to find that we have quite miserably failed under very simple
+temptations. And the sort of failure I am thinking of is not so much the
+failure of sin as the failure of ideal. It is the case of those who
+think that they have satisfactorily worked out the problems of the
+spiritual life, and have reached a satisfactory adjustment of duty and
+practice, and then find that if the adjustment changes their practice
+falls off. The outer circumstances of life change and the change is
+followed by a readjustment of the inner life on a distinctly lower
+plane. It is revealed to us that the outer circumstances were
+controlling the spiritual practice, and not the practice dominating the
+circumstances. The ruling ideal was that of comfort, and under the new
+circumstances the spiritual ideal is lowered until it fits in with a new
+possibility of comfort in the altered circumstances. It is well to
+examine ourselves on these matters and to find what is the actual
+ruling motive in our religious practice.
+
+We may have assumed that we have Jesus, when all the assumption meant
+was that we thought that He was somewhere about. After all, it will not
+aid us very much if He is "in the company," if we go on our day's
+journey without Him. It is a poor assumption to build life upon, that
+Jesus exists, or that He is in the Church, or that He is the Saviour. It
+is nothing to us unless He is _our_ Saviour, unless He is personally
+present in us and with us. And it is not wise or safe to let this be a
+matter of assumption, even though the assumption rest on a perfectly
+valid experience in the past; we cannot live on history, not even on our
+own history. That Jesus is with us must be verified day by day, and we
+ought to go no day's journey without the certainty of His presence. We
+can best do that, when the circumstances of life permit, by a daily
+communion. There at the altar we meet Jesus and know that He is with us.
+When the circumstances of life do not permit, (and often they do, when
+we lazily think they do not) there are other modes of arriving at
+spiritual certainty.
+
+It is quite easy to lose Jesus. He does not force His companionship upon
+us, but rather when we meet Him. "He makes as though he would go
+farther." He offers Himself to us; He never compels us to receive Him as
+a guest. And when we have in fact received Him, and asked Him to abide
+with us, He does not stay any longer than we want Him. We have to
+constrain Him. In other words, we lose Jesus, we lose the vitality of
+our spiritual life (though we may retain the routine practice of our
+religion), if we are not from day to day making it the most vital issue
+of our lives. That does not necessarily mean that we are spending more
+time on it than on anything else, but that we are putting it first in
+the order of importance in our lives and are sacrificing, if occasion
+arise, other things to it, rather than it to them. That a man loves his
+wife and child does not necessarily mean that he actually spends more
+time on them than he does on his business, but it does mean that they
+are more important in his life than his business, and if need arise it
+will be the business that is sacrificed to them and not they to the
+business. Spirituality is much less a matter of time than of energy. A
+wise director can guide a man to sanctity who will probably consecrate
+his Sunday, and give the director one half hour on week days to
+dispose of.
+
+To lose Jesus does not require the commission of great sin, as we count
+sin. The quite easiest way to lose Him is to forget Him and go about our
+business as though He did not exist. That is a frequent happening. For
+vast numbers Jesus does not exist except for an hour or so on Sunday.
+They give Him the formal homage of attendance at church on Sunday
+morning and then they go out and forget Him, not only for the rest of
+the week but for the rest of the day. The religion which thus reduces
+itself to a minimum of attendance at Mass on Sunday morning is surely
+not a religion from which much can be expected in the way of spiritual
+accomplishment. If it be true that there is a minimum of religious
+requirement which will ensure that we "go to heaven," then that sort of
+religion may be useful; but I do not know that anywhere such a minimum
+_is_ required. The statement that I find is "Thou shalt love the Lord
+thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
+mind, and with all thy strength." The outstanding characteristic of love
+is surely not niggardliness, but passionate self-giving. All things are
+forgiven, not to those who are careful to keep within the limits
+required, but to those who "love much."
+
+The study of many cases, the experience of over thirty years in the
+confessional, convinces me that the chief cause of spiritual failure
+among Christians is not the irresistible impact of temptation but the
+lack of spiritual vision. The average man or woman is not consciously
+going anywhere; but they are just keeping a rule which is the arbitrary
+exactment of God. It might just as well be some other rule. That is, in
+their minds, the practice of the spiritual life has no immediate ends;
+it is not productive of spiritual expansion; it is not a ladder set up
+on earth to reach heaven on which they are climbing ever nearer God, and
+on the way are catching ever broader visions of spiritual reality as
+they ascend. The knowledge and the love of God are to them phrases, not
+practical goals, invitations to paths of spiritual adventure. Hence,
+having no immediate ends to accomplish, they find the whole spiritual
+routine dull and unattractive and naturally tend to reduce it to a
+minimum. It is not at all surprising that in the end they drop religion
+altogether, as why should one keep on travelling a road that leads
+nowhere? How can one love and serve a Jesus whom one has lost?
+
+The problem of personal religion is the problem of finding Jesus, of
+bringing life into a right relation to Him. The plain path is to follow
+the example of His parents who sought Him "sorrowing." Sorrow for having
+lost Jesus is the true repentance. Repentance which springs from fear of
+consequences, or from disgust with our own incompetence and stupidity
+when we realise that we have made a spiritual failure of life, is an
+imperfect thing. True repentance has its origin in love and is therefore
+directed toward a person. It is the conviction that we have violated the
+love of our Father, our Saviour, our Sanctifier. Sorrow springing from
+love is sorrow "after a godly sort." It is easy for us to drift into
+ways of carelessness and indifference which seem not to involve sin, to
+be no more than a decline from some preceding standard of practice which
+we conclude to have been unnecessarily strict; but the result is an
+increasing disregard of spiritual values, a growing obscuration of the
+divine presence in life. Then the day comes when some quite marked and
+positive spiritual failure, a failure of which we cannot imagine
+ourselves to have been guilty, when we were living in constant communion
+with our Lord, arouses us to the fact that for months our spiritual
+vitality has been declining and that we have ended in losing Jesus. It
+is a tremendous shock to find how fast and how far we have been
+travelling when we thought that we were only slightly relaxing an
+unnecessarily strict routine: that when we thought that we were but
+acting "in a common sense way," we were in reality effecting a
+compromise with the world. Well is it then if the surprise of our
+disaster shocks us back to the recovery of what we have lost, if it send
+us into the streets of the city, sorrowing and seeking for Jesus.
+
+Mere spiritual laziness is at the bottom of much failure in religion.
+There is no success anywhere in life save through the constant pressure
+of the will driving a reluctant and protesting set of nerves and muscles
+to their daily tasks. The day labourer comes home from his work with his
+muscular strength exhausted, but he has to go back to the same
+monotonous task on the morrow: his family has to be fed and clothed and
+he cannot permit himself to say, "I am tired and will stay away from
+work to-day." The business or professional man comes back from his
+office with a wearied brain that makes any thought an effort, but he
+must take up the routine to-morrow; the pressure of competitive business
+does not permit him to work when and as much as he chooses. But the
+Christian who is engaged in the most important work that is carried on
+in this world, the work of preparing an immortal soul for an unending
+future, is constantly under the temptation "to take a day off"--to let
+down the standard of accomplishment till it ceases to interfere with the
+business or the pleasure of life; is constantly too tired or too busy to
+do this or that. In short, religion is apt to be treated in a manner
+that would ensure the bankruptcy of any material occupation in life. Why
+then should it not ensure spiritual bankruptcy?
+
+Surely, to retain Jesus with us, to live in the intimacy of God, is the
+most pressingly important of our duties; it is worth any sort of
+expenditure of energy to accomplish it. And it cannot be accomplished
+without expenditure of energy. The view of religion which conceives it
+as a facile assent to certain propositions, the occasional and formal
+participation in certain actions, the more or less strict observance of
+certain rules of conduct, is so far from the fact that it is not worth
+discussing. Religion is the realised friendship of God; it is a personal
+relation of the deepest and purest sort; and, like all personal
+relations, is kept alive by the mutual activities of those concerned.
+The action of one party will not suffice to keep the relation in healthy
+state. The love of God itself will not suffice to maintain a being in
+holiness and carry him on to happiness who is himself quite indifferent
+to the entire spiritual transaction--whose attitude is that of one
+willing to be saved if he be not asked to take much trouble about it.
+That lackadaisical attitude can never produce any result in the
+spiritual order; it can only ensure the spiritual decline and death of
+one who has not thought it worth while to make an effort to live.
+
+Jesus can be found; but the finding depends upon the method of the
+seeking. There are many men who claim, and quite honestly, to be in
+pursuit of truth: to find the truth is the end of all their efforts. Yet
+they do not succeed in finding it. Why is this? I think that the
+principal reason is that they are constituting themselves the judges of
+the truth; they first of all lay down certain rules which God must obey
+if He wishes them to believe in Him! They insist on having, before they
+will believe, a kind of evidence that is impossible of attainment. They
+assert that this or that is impossible, and the other thing incredible.
+They partially ascertain the laws that govern the material universe, and
+they deny to the Maker of the universe the power to act otherwise than
+in accord with so much of the order of nature as they have discovered!
+They deny to God the sort of personal action in this world that they
+themselves constantly exercise.
+
+The method is not a method that can be hopeful of success. And it is
+worth noting that it is not a method that these same men followed in
+their investigations of the natural world. They have not accumulated
+information about natural law by first laying down rules as to how
+natural law must act, and refusing to listen to any evidence which does
+not fall in with these rules: rather, they have set themselves to
+observe how nature does act, and then deduced rules from their
+observation. Why not pursue the same method in religion? Why not in an
+humble spirit observe how God does act? Why start by saying, "Miracles
+do not happen?" Why reject as incredible the Virgin Birth and the
+Resurrection? Why not get a bigger notion of God than that of a
+mechanician running a machine, and think of Him as a Person dealing with
+persons? The relation of persons cannot be mechanical or predetermined;
+they are and must be free and spontaneous: they have their origin, not
+in the pressure of invariable law but in the impulse of love.
+
+Nor is the search for Jesus that is inspired by mere curiosity likely
+to be a success. There are many people who are curious about religion,
+and they want to know why we believe thus and so; and particularly why
+we act as we do. Why do you keep this day? What do you mean by this
+ceremony? Do you think that it is wrong to do this or that? Such people
+wander about observing; but their observation we understand is the
+observation of an idler who does not expect to be influenced by what he
+observes, but only to be amused. These are they who run after the latest
+thing in heresy, the newest thing in thought. What is observable about
+them is that they never seriously contemplate doing anything themselves.
+They are like those multitudes who followed our Lord about for awhile
+but were dispersed by the test of hard sayings.
+
+But Jesus can be found. He is found of all those who seek Him humbly and
+sincerely, putting away self and desiring simply to be led: who do not
+challenge Him with Pilate's scornful, "What is truth?" but rather say,
+"Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief." He is easily found of those
+who know where to look for Him. There is no mystery about that,--He will
+certainly be in His Father's House. The surprise of Joseph and Mary that
+He had thus dealt with them is answered by Jesus' surprise that they did
+not certainly know where He would be: "Wist ye not that I must be in My
+Father's House?"
+
+In the House of God, the Church of God, is the ready approach to Jesus.
+It is in the last degree foolish to waive aside the Church in which are
+stored the treasures of more than nineteen centuries of Christian
+experience as though it did and could have nothing to say in the matter.
+A seeker after information as to the meaning of the constitution of the
+United States would be considered a madman if he impatiently turned from
+those of whom he made enquiry when they suggested the decrees of the
+Supreme Court as the proper place to seek information. Surely, from any
+point of view, the Church will know more about Jesus than any one else:
+if in all the centuries it has not discovered the meaning of Him Whom it
+ceaselessly worships there is small likelihood that that meaning will be
+discovered by an unbeliever studying an ancient book! If the Church
+cannot lead us to Jesus, and if it cannot interpret to us His will,
+there is small likelihood that any one else will be able to do so. And
+if during all these centuries His will has been unknown it can hardly be
+of much importance to discover it now. If His Church has failed, then
+His Mission is discredited.
+
+For us who have accepted His revelation as made to the Church and by it
+unfailingly preserved, who have learned to find Him there where He has
+promised to be until the end of time, there is another sense in which we
+think of His words as words of encouragement and consolation. There are
+hours in life which press hard upon us; there are other hours when the
+sense of God's love and goodness fills us with thankfulness and joy. In
+such hours we crave the intimacy of personal communion: we want to tell
+our grief or our joy. And then we take our way to the temple, and know
+that we shall find Him there in His Incarnate Presence in His Father's
+House. We go in and kneel before the Tabernacle and know that Jesus is
+here. Here in the silence He waits for us. Here in the long hours He
+watches; here is the ever-open door leading to the Father where any man
+at any time may enter. He who humbled Himself to the hidden life of
+Nazareth now humbles Himself to the hidden life of the Tabernacle: and
+we who believe His Word, have no need to envy Joseph and Mary the
+intimacy of their life with Jesus, because here for us, if we will, is a
+greater intimacy--the intimacy of those of whom it can be said: They
+evermore dwell in Him and He in them.
+
+     Lady of Heaven, Regent of the Earth,
+      Empress of all the infernal marshes fell,
+     Receive me, thy poor Christian, 'spite my, dearth,
+      In the fair midst of thine elect to dwell:
+      Albeit my lack of grace I know full well;
+     For that thy grace, my Lady and my Queen,
+     Aboundeth more than all my misdemean,
+      Withouten which no soul of all that sigh
+     May merit heaven. 'Tis sooth I say, for e'en
+      In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+     Say to thy Son, I am his--that by his birth
+      And death my sins be all redeemable--
+     As Mary of Egypt's dole he changed to mirth,
+      And eke Theophilus', to whom befell
+      Quittance of thee, albeit (so men tell)
+     To the foul fiend he had contracted been.
+     Assoilzie me, that I may have no teen,
+      Maid, that without breach of virginity
+     Didst bear our Lord that in the Host is seen:
+      In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+     A poor old wife I am, and little worth:
+      Nothing I know, nor letter aye could spell:
+     Where in the church to worship I fare forth,
+      I see heaven limned with harps and lutes, and hell
+      Where damned folk seethe in fire unquenchable:
+     One doth me fear, the other joy serene;
+     Grant I may have the joy, O Virgin clean,
+      To whom all sinners lift their hands on high,
+     Made whole in faith through thee, their go-between:
+      In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+
+
+
+     ENVOY
+
+
+     Thou didst conceive, Princess most bright of sheen,
+     Jesus the Lord, that hath no end nor mean,
+     Almighty that, departing heaven's demesne
+       To succour us, put on our frailty,
+     Offering to death his sweet of youth and green:
+     Such as he is, our Lord he is, I ween:
+       In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+CANA I
+
+     And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee;
+     and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus was called,
+     and his disciples, to the marriage.
+
+     S. John II, 1.
+
+     Grant, O Lord, we beseech thee, that we thy servants may
+     enjoy constant health of body and mind, and by the glorious
+     intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be delivered
+     from all temporal afflictions, and come to those joys that
+     are eternal. Through.
+
+     Having received, O Lord, what is to advance our salvation;
+     grant we may always be protected by the patronage of blessed
+     Mary, ever a virgin, in whose honor we have offered this
+     sacrifice to thy majesty. Through.
+
+     Old Catholic.
+
+"There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was
+there." To S. John Blessed Mary is ever the "mother of Jesus." He never
+calls her by her name in any mention of her. Jesus who loved him and
+whom he loved and loves always with consuming passion, held the
+foreground of his consciousness; all other persons are known through
+their relation to Him. As he is writing his Gospel-story toward the end
+of his life, the Blessed Virgin has long been gone to join her Son in
+the place of perfect love. We cannot conceive of her living long on
+earth after His Ascension. Her "conversation" would in a special way be
+"in heaven." Whatever the time she remained here awaiting the will of
+God for her, we may be sure that the days she spent under the protection
+of S. John were wonderful days for him, wherein their communing would
+have been the continual lifting of their hearts and souls to Him, Child
+and Friend, who is also God enthroned at the Right Hand of the Father.
+It is not unlikely that the marvellous spiritual maturity of which we
+are conscious in the writings of S. John was aided in its unfolding by
+the intimacy of his relations with S. Mary. But always she remained to
+him what she was because of what Jesus was; she remained to the end "the
+mother of Jesus."
+
+Here at the marriage of Cana the way in which she is mentioned suggests
+that she was staying in the house where the marriage was celebrated: she
+was simply there; Jesus and the disciples were called, invited, to the
+wedding. Some relationship, it has been suggested, between S. Mary and
+the bride or groom led to her presence in the house. That however is
+mere conjecture. The marriage in any case was a wonderful one, for both
+Jesus and Mary were there. It was therefore the ideal of all weddings
+which seem to lack the true note of the new matrimony which springs from
+the Incarnation if they take place without such guests. As in
+imagination we follow Mary as she goes quietly about the house, which
+like her own was a home of the poor, helping in the arrangements of the
+wedding, one cannot help recalling many weddings with which one has had
+something to do, and in the arrangements of which we cannot think of
+Mary as having any part. They were the arrangements of the weddings of
+Christians, and the weddings took place in a Christian church; but
+neither is Mary there nor Jesus called. We are unable to think of Mary
+as present amid the tumult of worldiness and frivolity, the endless
+chatter over dress and decoration, which so commonly precedes the
+celebration of a sacrament which is the symbol of "the mystical union
+that there is betwixt Christ and His Church." That deep piety which puts
+God and God's will before all else would strike a jarring note here,
+where the dominant note is still the pagan note of the decking of the
+slave for her new master. It is perhaps not without significance of the
+direction of the movement of the modern mind that the protests of the
+emancipated woman are against the Christian, not the pagan elements in
+matrimony: she tends to regard marriage as a state of temporary luxury
+rather than the perfect union of two souls in Christ. Clearly in
+marriages which are regarded as purely temporary engagements, dependent
+on the will of the parties for their continuance, there is no place for
+the mother of Jesus. The purity that emanates from her will be a silent
+but keenly felt criticism on the whole conception underlying a vast
+number of modern marriages. Even as I write I read that in a certain
+great city in the United States the number of divorces granted was one
+fourth of the number of the marriages celebrated.
+
+Clearly at marriages which are surrounded with this atmosphere of
+paganism, be they celebrated where they may, there is no place for the
+Blessed Mother; and neither is Jesus called. His priest, unfortunately,
+is often called, and dares celebrate a sacrament which in the
+circumstances he can hardly help feeling is a sacrilege. There are many
+cases in which what purports to be Christian marriage is between those
+who are not Christians, or of whom only one is a Christian in any
+complete sense. One hears frequently of the sacrament of matrimony being
+celebrated when only one of the parties is baptised. It is of course
+possible for any priest to act on the authority conferred upon him by
+the state and in his capacity as a state official perform marriages
+between those whom the state authorises to be married: but why do it
+under the character of a priest? or why throw about the ceremony the
+suggestions of a sacrament?
+
+If Jesus is really to be called to a marriage, it means that the
+preparations for the marriage will be largely spiritual. The parties to
+the marriage will approach the marriage through other sacraments. They
+will both be members of the Church of God by baptism; and they will be,
+or look forward to becoming, communicants. They will prepare for the
+sacrament of matrimony by receiving the sacrament of penance, and
+receiving the communion. What better preparation for starting a new
+life, for setting out to create a new family in the Kingdom of God, a
+family in which the ideals of the life at Nazareth are to be the ruling
+ideals, than that cleansing of soul that fits them for the beginning of
+a new life? A priest has great joy when he knows that those who are
+kneeling before him to receive the nuptial blessing are souls pure in
+God's sight, dwellings ready and adorned for the coming of Christ.
+
+For it is the normal and fitting crown of the ceremonies of marriage
+that Jesus be there, that the Holy Mass be celebrated and that those who
+have just been indissolubly united may as their first act partake of the
+Bread of Heaven which giveth life to the world. I myself would rather
+not be asked to celebrate a wedding unless it is to be approached with
+the purity of Mary, and sealed by the partaking of Jesus. It is so great
+and wonderful a thing, this sacrament of matrimony. Here are two human
+beings setting out to fulfil the vocation of man to build up the Kingdom
+of God, to set up a new hearth where the love of God may be manifest and
+where children may be trained in the knowledge and love of God; where
+the life of Christ may find contact with human life and through it
+manifest God to the world--how wonderful and beautiful and holy all
+that is! And then to remember what commonly takes place is to be
+overcome with a sense of what must be the pain of God's heart.
+
+We go back to look into the home where Mary seems to be directing the
+arrangements of the wedding feast. It was a poor home and not much could
+be provided; the wine, so essential to the feast, failed. What was to be
+done? To whom would Mary look? She could have no money to buy wine. One
+feels that after Joseph's death she had come more and more to look to
+Jesus for help of all sorts. The deepening of their mutual love, the
+completeness of their understanding, would make this the natural thing.
+S. Mary feels that if there is any help in these embarrassing
+circumstances, any way of sparing the feelings of the bridegroom, Jesus
+will know it and help. There is no doubt in her mind; but the certainty
+that He can help. So she turns to Him with her "they have no wine." The
+words as we read them contain at once an appeal and a suggestion: an
+appeal for help, advice, guidance, with the hint that Jesus can
+effectually help if He will. It is not as some have rather crudely
+thought a suggestion that He perform a miracle, but the appeal of one
+who has learned to have unlimited trust in Him.
+
+The reply of our Lord cannot fail to shock the English reader; and the
+very nature of the shock ought to indicate that there is something wrong
+with the translation. The words sound brusque and ill-mannered; and our
+Lord was never that nor could be, least of all to His blessed Mother.
+The dictionaries all tell us that the word translated woman is quite as
+well translated lady, in the sense of mistress or house mother. There is
+really a shade of meaning that we have no word for. Perhaps we best
+understand what it is that is missed if we recall the fact that when our
+Lord addressed S. Mary from the Cross He used the same word: "Woman,
+behold thy son." In such circumstances we understand that the word on
+our Lord's lips is a word of infinite tenderness. I do not believe that
+we could do better than to translate it mother. We might paraphrase our
+Lord's saying thus: "Mother, we are both concerned with the trouble of
+these friends; but do not be anxious; I will act when the time comes."
+His words are perfectly simple and courteous, though they do, no doubt,
+suggest that her anxiety is unnecessary and that He will act in due
+time. If we are to understand that our Lady was suggesting that He
+perform a miracle, then He certainly yielded to her intercession.
+
+Indeed, this short aside in the rejoicing of the marriage celebration is
+suggestive of wide reaches of thought. It suggests, which concerns us
+most here, something of the mode of prayer. Prayer is not a force
+exercised upon God, it is an aspiration that He answers or not as He
+sees fit, according as He sees our needs to be: and if He answers, He
+answers in His own way and at His own time--when His hour is come. The
+intercession of the saints, and of the highest saint of all, the holy
+Mother, must thus be conceived as aspiration not as force. We hardly
+need to remind ourselves that Blessed Mary though the highest of
+creatures is still a creature and infinitely removed from the uncreated
+God. When we think of her prayers or the prayers of the saints as having
+"influence" or "power" with God, we must remember the limitations of
+human language. It is quite possible through inaccurate use of language
+to create the impression that we believe the prayers of the saints to be
+prevailing with God because of some peculiar spiritual energy that
+belongs to them, or, still worse, because we regard them as a sort of
+court favourites who have special influence and can get things done that
+ordinary people cannot. We need only to state the supposition to see
+that we do not mean it. When we think what we mean by the influence of
+the prayers of the saints, of their prevailingness with God, we know
+that we mean that the superior value of the prayers of the saints is due
+to the superior nature of their spiritual insight, to their better
+understanding of the mind and purpose of God. Blessed Mary is our most
+powerful intercessor because by her perfect sanctity she understands God
+better than any one else. No educated Christian believes that she can
+persuade God to change His mind or alter His judgment, or that she or
+any saint would for a moment want to do so. Nor do we who cry for aid in
+the end want any other aid than aid to see God's will and power to do
+it: we have no wish or hope to impose our will on God. Prayer is
+aspiration, the seeking for understanding, the submitting our desires to
+the love of God; and the prayer of the saints helps us because they are
+our brothers and sisters, of the same household, and join with us in the
+offering of ourselves to God that we may know and do His holy will. And
+we can see here in this incident at Cana the whole mode of prayer. There
+is the just implied suggestion of the need, the hint of her own thought
+about the matter, in the way in which S. Mary presents the case to
+Jesus. There is the divine method which approves the end sought but
+reserves the time and method of fulfilling it to the "hour" which the
+divine wisdom approves. There is the ideal Christian attitude which
+accepts the divine will perfectly, and says to the servants: "Whatsoever
+he saith unto you, do it."
+
+"They have no wine": S. Mary's word expresses the present weakness of
+humanity, Man is born in sin, that is, out of union with God. That hoary
+statement of dogmatic theology seems to stir the wrath of the modern
+mind more than any other dogma of the Christian Faith, except it be the
+dogma of eternal punishment. It is rather an amusing phenomenon that
+those who have no visible basis for pride are likely to be the most
+consumed with it. The pride of Diogenes was visible through the holes in
+his carpet; the pride of liberalism is visible in its irritability
+whenever the subject of sin, especially original sin, is mentioned. Yet
+the very complacency of liberalism about the perfection of man, is but
+another evidence (if we needed another) of his inherent sinfulness, his
+weakness in the face of moral ideals. If we confess our sins we are on
+the way to forgiveness; but if we say that we have no sin the truth is
+not in us.
+
+This boasting of capacity to be pure and strong without God,
+theologically the Pelagian heresy, is sufficiently answered by a
+cursory view of what humanity has done and does do. Even where the
+Christian religion has been accepted the accomplishment is hardly ground
+for boasting. The plain fact is (and you may account for it how you
+like, it remains in any case a fact) that human beings are terribly weak
+in the face of moral and spiritual ideals. They are not sufficiently
+drawn by them to overcome the tendency of their nature toward a quite
+opposite set of ideals. We do run easily and spontaneously after ideals
+which the calm and enlightened judgment of the race, whether Christian
+or non-Christian, has continuously disapproved. We know that Buddha and
+Mahomet and Confucius would repudiate Paris and Berlin and New York and
+London with the same certainty if not with the same energy as Christ. We
+live in a time when a decisive public opinion gets its way; and
+therefore we are quite safe in saying that the misery and sin which go
+unchecked in the very centres of modern civilisation exist and continue
+because there is no decided public opinion against them.
+
+All attempts at reform which are merely attempts to reform machinery are
+futile, they can produce only passing and superficial results. There is
+only one medicine for the disease of the world, and that medicine is the
+Blood of Christ. Ultimately, one believes, that will be applied; but
+evidently it will not be applied in any broad way as a social treatment
+till all the quack remedies have demonstrated their uselessness. The
+last two centuries have been the flowering time of quacks. The mere
+history of their theories fills volumes. Our own time shows no decline
+in productiveness, nor decline in hopefulness in the efficacy of the
+last remedy to bid for support. But the time of disillusionment must
+some time come.
+
+When that time comes all men will lift their eyes, as individual men
+have always lifted them, up to the hills whence cometh their help.
+Except they had kept their eyes so resolutely fastened on the earth at
+their feet they would have seen, what has always been visible to those
+who lift up their eyes, a crucified Figure on the one supreme hill of
+earth,--the hill called Calvary. There "one Figure stands, with
+outstretched hands" saying, with inextinguishable optimism, the
+indestructible optimism of God, "and I, if I be lifted up, will draw all
+men unto me."
+
+What in the end will prevail with them, what will make them turn to the
+Tree which is for the healing of the nations, is the perception that in
+it is the remedy for the weakness that they have either sought to heal
+by other means, or have resolutely denied to exist at all. There are men
+whose wills are so strong that even in the grip of some serious disease
+they will long go on about their business asserting that there is
+nothing the matter with them and overcoming bodily pain and weakness by
+sheer will power; but the end comes finally with a collapse that is
+perhaps beyond remedy. We live in a society which has the same
+characteristics, but it may be that it will see its state and turn to
+healing. For God cannot heal except with our co-operation. Christ pleads
+from the Cross, but he can do no more. He will not submit to our tests;
+He will not come down that we may believe in Him. We must come to Him,
+laying aside all our pride and self-will, and kneel by the Cross to
+ask His help.
+
+We know, do we not? that that is the law for the individual; that we
+found the meaning of Christ, and what He can do in life, when we laid
+aside pride and self-will and humbly asked help and pardon. It may be
+that we resisted a long while, struggling against the pull of the divine
+magnet; but if we have attained to spiritual peace it is because the
+Cross won, because we found ourselves kneeling at the feet of Jesus.
+Perhaps we have not got there yet, but are only on the way. Perhaps our
+religion as yet is a formality and not a devotion. Perhaps our pride
+still struggles against the Catholic practice of religion. Then why not
+give way now, to-night? Let Mary take you and lead you to Jesus. She
+will bring you to him with her half-suggestion, half-prayer: "He has no
+wine." He has got to the end of his strength, and he has found the
+weariness of self, he is ready for healing. O my divine Son, is not this
+your opportunity, your "hour"?
+
+Jesus loves to have us bring one another to Him. It is so obviously the
+response to His Spirit, that carrying out of His teaching, so to love
+the brother that we may bring him to the healing of the Cross. To care
+for the spiritual needs of the brother is a real ministry: it is an
+extension of Christ in us that clothes us with the power to aid other
+souls in work or prayer. What a beautiful picture of this work there is
+in the Gospel of St. John. "And there were certain Greeks among them
+that came up to worship at the feast: the same came therefore to Philip,
+which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we
+would see Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and
+Philip tell Jesus." And this work of presenting souls to Jesus which is
+so clearly one of our chief privileges, how should not that be also the
+privilege of all the saints, and especially of the Holy Mother? Blessed
+Mary, we may be sure, delights in leading souls who so hesitatingly come
+to her, to the presence of her Son,--just presenting them in their need
+and with her prayer, which is all the plea that is needed to attract the
+love and mercy of Jesus. "Why not," ask certain people who have not
+thought out the meaning of Catholic dogma, "why not go at once to our
+Lord; why go in this roundabout way?" Why not? Because of our human
+qualities. Because we need company and sympathy. For the same reason
+precisely that makes us ask one another's prayers here. "The Father
+Himself loveth you." Why in this roundabout way ask me to pray? You do
+not come to me because you lack faith in God or in God's love; you come
+to me because you feel, if only implicitly, that in the Body of Christ
+association in love and sympathy and work is a high privilege, and that
+it is God's will that we should work together and "bear one another's
+burdens." And the frontiers of the Kingdom of God are not the frontiers
+of the Church Militant, and its citizens are not only the citizens of
+the Church here below, but--we believe in the Communion of saints.
+
+The hour of God strikes for any soul when that soul yields to
+prevenient grace and places itself utterly at the disposal of God,
+confiding wholly in His divine wisdom. When our Lord had answered His
+Blessed Mother she turned away satisfied. She did not have to concern
+herself any further; it was now in Jesus' hands to provide as He would.
+It remained but to see that His will should be carried out when He
+made it known.
+
+Submission is a difficult attitude to acquire; but it is such a happy
+attitude when once one has acquired it. The critics of it wholly mistake
+it and confound it with fatalism. It is not fatalism, or passive
+acquiescence in another's will--a will that we have no part in forming
+and cannot reject. Submission is the acceptance of God's will as the
+expression of the highest wisdom for us. It is not true that we have no
+part in forming it; it is at any time an expression of God's will for us
+which is determined by the way in which we hitherto have corresponded to
+that will. Submission means that we have put ourselves in a position of
+active co-operation with that will, that we have made it ours: because
+it is the expression of a divine wisdom and love we make it wholly ours.
+And we have found in the acceptance of it not bondage but liberty. It is
+wonderful how our preconceived notion of God and religion vanishes
+before the first gleams of experience. To the unregenerate the service
+of God is utter bondage; to the regenerate it is perfect freedom. And
+the difference seems to be accounted for by the reversal of ideals, by a
+new direction of affections. "I will run the way of thy commandments,
+when thou hast set my heart at liberty,"
+
+A true conversion is, perhaps, signified, more than in any other way, by
+the liberty of the heart,--by this change in the object of our love.
+That has been the constant exhortation to us, to love that which is
+worthy of love. "Set your affection on things above." "Love not the
+world, neither the things that are in the world." And we, loving the
+world and the things that are in the world, listen impatiently. But
+there is no possibility of a sincere conversion without a change of
+love. "A change of heart" conversion is often called, and so inevitably
+it is. And as we go through our self-examination one of the most
+profitable questions we can ask is, "What do I love?" That will commonly
+tell the whole story of the life, for "where a man's treasure is, there
+will his heart be also."
+
+Richard Rolle said: "Truly he who is stirred with busy love, and is
+continually with Jesu in thought, full soon perceives his own faults,
+the which correcting, henceforward he is ware of them; and so he brings
+righteousness busily to birth, until he is led to God and may sit with
+heavenly citizens in everlasting seats. Therefore he stands clear in
+conscience and is steadfast in all good ways the which is never noyed
+with worldly heaviness nor gladdened with vainglory."
+
+
+     CANA I
+
+
+     O Glorious Lady, throned in light,
+     Sublime above the starry height,
+     Whose arms thine own creator pressed,
+     A Suckling at thy sacred breast.
+     Through the dear Blossom of thy womb,
+     Thou changest hapless Eva's doom;
+     Through thee to contrite souls is given
+     An opening to their home in heaven.
+     Thou art the great King's Portal bright,
+     The shining Gate of living light;
+     Come then, ye ransomed nations, sing
+     The Life Divine 'twas hers to bring.
+     Mother of Love and Mercy mild,
+     Mother of graces undefiled.
+     Drive back the foe, and to thy Son
+     Lead thou our souls when life is done.
+     All glory be to thee, O Lord,
+     A Virgin's Son, by all adored,
+     With Sire and Spirit, Three in One,
+     While everlasting ages run.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+CANA II
+
+     And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus saith unto him,
+     They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I
+     to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.
+
+     S. John II, 3, 4.
+
+     We, the faithful, bless thee, O Virgin Mother of God, and
+     glorify thee as is thy due, the city unshaken, the wall
+     unbroken, the unbreakable defence and refuge of our souls.
+
+     BYZANTINE.
+
+"Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." These words have often been
+called the Gospel according to S. Mary. They certainly sum up her whole
+attitude in life. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me
+according to thy word," she had said in reply to the message S. Gabriel
+brought her: and that is the meaning of her whole life-story, that she
+is at all times ready to accept the will of God, to give herself to the
+fulfilment of the divine purpose. There is no more perfect attitude, for
+it is the attitude of her divine Son whose meat it was to do the will of
+the Father and to finish His work, whose whole life's attitude was
+compressed into the words of His self-oblation in Gethsemane, "Not my
+will, but thine be done."
+
+And this is the virtue that Jesus Christ inculcates upon us. "When ye
+pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven ... thy will be done." There
+is no true religion possible without that attitude. And therefore one is
+deeply concerned about the immediate future inasmuch as the spirit of
+obedience, the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of Mary, is so rare. As one
+looks into the social development of the Christian era, one feels that
+the life and example of S. Mary has been of immense influence in the
+development of the ideal of womanhood. The rise of woman from a wholly
+subordinate and inferior condition to a condition of complete equality
+with man has owed more to S. Mary than to any other factor. I am not
+concerned with political equality; that under our present conditions of
+social development women should have that equality if they want it seems
+to me just, but I am by no means satisfied that in the long run it will
+prove a boon either to them or to society at large. But I am at present
+thinking of their spiritual equality, which after all is the basis of
+their other claims; and this comes to them through the Gospel, and was
+shown to the mind of the Church largely through S. Mary. In the earliest
+records of the Church woman stands on the same level of privilege as
+man, and the same sort of spiritual accomplishment is expected of her.
+
+There are many members of the Body of Christ and there is a certain
+spiritual equality among them; but "all members have not the same
+office." In the Holy Spirit's distribution of functions within the Body
+there is a difference. Some functions, by the allotment of God, women
+are not called to exercise: these are sacramental and ruling functions.
+Others, as prophecy (the daughters of S. Philip), and ministry (the
+deaconess), are given them. For centuries she recognised this allotment
+and gave her best energies to her appointed works. She showed herself a
+true daughter of Mary in her loyal acceptance of the divine will and her
+zeal in its accomplishment. And what was the result? The Calendar of
+Saints, filled with the names of women, is the answer. There are no more
+wonderful works of God than the women whose names are commemorated at
+the altars of the Church and whose intercession is constantly asked
+throughout Catholic Christendom. There can be no thought of narrowness
+of opportunity or limitations in life as we study that wonderful series
+of women who have illumined the history of the Church from the day of S.
+Gabriel's message to this very moment when there are many many women who
+are faithfully following their vocation and doing God's will, and who
+will one day be our intercessors about the throne of God and of the
+Lamb, as they are our intercessors in the Church on earth to-day. Why
+any woman should complain of lack of opportunity and of the narrowness
+of the Church--the Church that has nourished S. Mary and S. Monica, S.
+Catherine of Genoa and S. Theresa; the foundresses of so many and so
+varied Religious Orders, so many who have devoted their lives to
+teaching, nursing, conducting works of charity, I am at a loss to
+understand. To-day we are witnessing all over the world a revolt of
+women against the Church; we hear not infrequent threats of what is to
+be done to the Church by those revolted members. I am afraid that woman
+is on the edge of another tragedy. She is once more looking fascinated
+at the fruit which "is good for food, and pleasant to the eyes and to be
+desired to make one wise," and listening to a voice that whispers: "Thou
+shalt be as God."
+
+The question which is becoming more urgent everywhere is, What are the
+women of the future to be,--the daughters of Eve, or the daughters of
+Mary? It is not a question for declamation, but a question that calls
+for immediate action: and the action must be the action of women. If
+women clamour for work in the Church of God, here it is, and here it is
+abundantly; and to accomplish it there is no need that they "seek the
+priesthood also." The work in the Church of God is in the first place a
+work that God has given mothers to do; it is the primary duty of a
+mother to bring up her children, and especially her daughters, in fear
+of the Lord. That she can always succeed I do not for a moment claim;
+there are many adverse factors in the situation that she has to deal
+with. But she is inexcusable if she does not give her effort to the work
+as the most important work of her life. She is utterly inexcusable and
+must answer to God for the result if she turn her children over to the
+care of maids and teachers while she occupies herself with society or
+any exterior work.
+
+In the second place the work of the Church of God is a work that ought
+to appeal to all women and a work that any woman can help in. All women
+can help the spiritual progress of the Church by meditating upon the
+life of Blessed Mary and fashioning their lives upon her example. We are
+all tremendously affected by example, and that is especially true of
+young girls. Their supreme terror seems to be that they should be caught
+doing or saying something different from what all other girls say or do
+or wear. Their opinions are as imitative as their clothes. Hence the
+need of the pressure of a strong Christian example, which would result
+most readily in the union of Christian women in a single ideal. Our
+present difficulty is that so many of our women who are devout members
+of the Church in their private capacity, so far succumb to the
+group-mind in their social relations that they are possessed by the same
+terror as the young girl in the face of the possibility of being
+different. Therefore are they careful to hide their real feeling for
+religion and their devotion to spiritual things under the mask of
+worldly conformity which evacuates their example of much of the power
+that it might have. I am quite convinced that fear of the world is about
+as strong an impulse toward evil as love of the world.
+
+We need that women should clear their ideals and realise their public
+responsibility for the presentation of them. We need terribly at this
+moment insistence on the purity and simplicity of the Holy Mother of
+God. One is stunned at the abandonment of the ideal of reserve and
+modesty that the last few years have seen. Women seem to take it quite
+gaily: men, one notes, take it much more seriously. I have been
+consulted by more than one father during the past year as to the
+possibility of sending a boy to a school where he would be kept out of
+the society of half-naked girls. Have mothers no longer any sense of the
+value of purity? Or have they simply abandoned all responsibility that
+normally goes with being a mother? One recognises how helpless a man is
+under the circumstances, that his intervention in such matters simply
+casts him for the part of family tyrant; but why should a mother abandon
+her duty simply because her daughter says: "You don't understand. Girls
+are not as they were when you were young. All the girls do this. No
+other mother takes the line that you do. You are not modern."
+
+One knows, of course, that the whole matter of decline in manners and
+morals is but a part of the world-wide revolt against the morality of
+Jesus Christ that we are witnessing everywhere. Social and religious
+teachers, students of history and social movements have seen the
+approach of this revolt for a long time, have been watching its rise and
+growth. When they have pointed out the end of the path that we have been
+travelling, they have been disposed of by calling them pessimists. These
+"pessimists" pointed out long ago that the denial of the obligation to
+believe would be followed by an abandonment of all moral standards. They
+pointed out to the devotees of "liberal religion" that they are in
+reality the leaders of a moral revolt, that if it does not make any
+difference what you believe it will soon come to make no difference what
+you do. It is a rather silly performance to blow up the dam which holds
+back the mass of water of an irrigation system and imagine that no more
+water will flow out than you want to flow out. When the Protestant
+revolt blew up the restraining dams of the Catholic Religion they had no
+right to expect that only so much denial of Catholic truth as it suited
+them to dispense with would be the result. Through the broken dams the
+whole religion of Christ has been flowing out and it is mere empty
+pretence to claim that all that is of any value is left. It is
+impossible to maintain anything of the sort now that all the moral
+content of the Christian system is openly thrown overboard by vast
+numbers of the population of the world, in every country that claims to
+be civilised. It is useless to say that there has always been evil in
+the world and that the maintenance of the Catholic religion has never
+anywhere abolished sin. That is true, but it is not to the present
+point. The social situation is one where there are definite religious
+and moral ideals strongly maintained and universally recognised, though
+there are many men and women who violate them; it is quite another
+situation when the ideals themselves are repudiated and set aside as
+superstitions. That is our case to-day. The Christian theory is
+confronted with a theory of naturalism in morals, and those who follow
+that theory do not do so with a feeling that they are violating accepted
+ideals, but with the assumption that they are missionaries setting forth
+a new faith. Those who have revolted from the Kingdom of God have now
+set up another kingdom and proclaimed openly, "We will not have this Man
+to reign over us." The revolt which began with a breach in the dogmatic
+system of the Church and denial of the authority of the Catholic Church
+in favour of the right of private judgment, has ended, as it could not
+help but end, in open abandonment of the life-ideal of the Gospels. We
+now have the application of the right of private judgment in the theory
+that one's morals are one's own concern. Such things have happened
+before. "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every one did
+what was right in his own eyes." The social state depicted in the Book
+of Judges reflects this revolt. The result of the same repudiation of
+authority is seen in modern society where what is right in one's own
+eyes is the whole Law and Gospel. Are we to remain quiescent, or are we
+to make the attempt to generate moral force?
+
+But how can Christendom generate any more moral force? The teaching of
+the Gospel which it proclaims is perfectly plain. True, but is the
+adherence of the Church to its statements perfectly plain? Is there no
+falling away, no compromise, there?
+
+When one speaks thus of the Church one is conscious of a confusion of
+thought in the use of the word. The teaching of the formal documents of
+the Church is not here in question; what we necessarily mean is the
+effect that the existing membership of the Church is having upon
+contemporary life. What we have especially in mind is the attitude of
+the clergy and the action of the congregation in the way of moral force.
+What sort of a front is the church presenting to the world, what sort of
+moral influence is it exercising?
+
+It seems to me perfectly evident that all along the line the conventions
+of contemporary society have been accepted in the place of the
+life-ideals of the Gospel of Jesus. We have accepted plain departures
+from or compromises with Christian teaching as the recognised law of
+action. This is due largely to the natural sloth of the human being and
+his disinclination to struggle for superior standards. He feels safe and
+comfortable if he can succeed in losing himself in a crowd: thus he
+escapes both trouble and criticism. A violation of law may become so
+common that there is no public spirit to oppose it. The same thing may
+happen in morals,--violations of the Christian standard, if sufficiently
+widespread, command almost universal acquiesence. What is actually
+uncovered in the process is the fact that the plain man has no morals of
+his own, but imitates the prevailing morality; and if fashion sets
+against some particular ruling of the Christian Religion he feels quite
+secure in following the fashion. The _vox dei_ in Holy Scripture and in
+Holy Church affect him not at all if he be conscious that he is on the
+side of the _vox populi_.
+
+It is easy to illustrate this. The non-Catholic Christian world has the
+Bible, and boasts of its adherence to it as the sole guide of life; but
+in the matter of divorced persons it utterly disregards its teachings.
+By this acceptance of an unchristian attitude it has vastly weakened the
+fight for purity in the family relation which the Catholic Church, at
+least in the West, has always waged. It deliberately divides the
+Christian forces of the community and to a large extent thereby
+nullifies their action. The divisions of Christendom are terrible from
+every point of view; but there are certain questions on which a united
+mind might well be presented, and in relation to which an united mind
+would go far to control the attitude of society. An united Christian
+sentiment against divorce would go far to reduce the evil.
+
+On the other hand the progress of the movement to abolish the evils
+growing out of the use of alcohol has had its strength in the Protestant
+bodies. On the whole (there were no doubt individual exceptions) the
+Churches of the Catholic tradition have been lukewarm in the matter. It
+is quite evident that the reform could never have been carried through
+if left to them, and especially if left to the bishops and clergy of the
+Roman and Anglican Communions. It is a plain case of failure to support
+a vast moral reform because of the pressure of opinion in the social
+circles in which they move, combined with a purely individualistic
+attitude toward a grave social question.
+
+Another instance is ready at hand in the practical abandonment of the
+religious observance of Sunday. To Christians Sunday is the Lord's day,
+and is to be observed as such. It is not true that an hour in the
+morning is the Lord's day, and is to be given to worship, and that the
+rest of the day is given to us to do what we will with. But in our own
+Communion do we get any strong protest in favour of the sanctity of the
+day? Or are not the clergy compromising in the hope that if they
+surrender the greater part of the day to the world they will be able to
+save an hour or two for God? But is anything actually saved by this sort
+of compromise? Do we not know that the encroachments of worldliness that
+have narrowed down Sunday observance to an hour a day will ultimately
+demand that hour, that is, will deny any obligation other than the
+obligation of inclination? Are we not bound to stand by the Lord's day?
+Are we to be made lax by silly talk about puritanism? Those who talk
+about the "Puritan Sunday" would do well to read a little of the
+Medieval legislation of the Church. Are we to keep silent in the pulpit
+because wealthy and influential members of the congregation want to
+play golf and tennis on Sunday afternoons, or children want to play ball
+or go to the movies? Are we to be taken in by talk of hard work during
+the week and consequent need of rest? It is no doubt well that a man
+should arrange his work with a view to an adequate amount of rest; but
+it is also well that he should rest in his own time and not in God's.
+The Lord's day is not a day of rest. It ought to be, and is intended to
+be, a very strenuous day indeed.
+
+One could easily spend hours in pointing out where and how the Gospel
+standard of life has been abandoned or compromised, and the life of the
+Christian in consequence conformed to the world. The result would only
+strengthen the position that has been already sufficiently indicated
+that a wholly different standard of living has been quietly substituted
+throughout the Western world for the standard that is contained in Holy
+Scripture. Now we are either bound to be Christians or we are not; and
+we are not Christians solely by virtue of certain beliefs more or less
+loosely held. Our Lord's word is: "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever
+I command you." And the Gospel view of life is a perfectly plain one,
+and is as far removed from the common life of Christians to-day as it
+possibly can be. The Gospel conception of the Christian life is
+contained first of all in our Lord's life. That is the perfect human
+life; and the New Testament optimism is well illustrated by its
+conviction that that life in its essential features can, with the grace
+of God, be imitated by man. And by those who have approached it in this
+spirit of optimism it has been found imitable. Innumerable men and women
+have lived the Christian life in the past and are living it in the
+present. To-day the possibility of living the Christian life, of
+bringing life approximately to the standard of the Gospel, is declared
+to be an impracticable piece of optimism, and our Lord's teaching
+hopelessly out of touch with reality. When people talk of the difficulty
+of living the Christ-life under modern conditions, the plain answer is
+that there is in fact only one difficulty in the matter, and that is the
+difficulty of wanting to do it. It is a confession of utter spiritual
+incompetence to say that we cannot follow the Gospel standards under
+modern conditions because of the isolation in which we at once find
+ourselves if we attempt it. If the attempt to be a Christian isolates
+us, it tells a pretty plain tale about our chosen companionship. It is
+asserting that it is hard for us to be Christians because we are devoted
+to the society of those who are not Christians, of those who ignore it
+and habitually insult the teachings of our Saviour. That is surely an
+extraordinary confession for a Christian to make! Can we imagine a
+Christian of the first period of the Church excusing himself for
+offering incense to the divinity of Augustus on the ground that if he
+did not do so certain court festivities would be closed to him, and that
+his friends would think him odd!
+
+"Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you," "The friendship
+of this world is enmity with God." We have to choose. It is not that we
+may choose. It is not that it is possible to have a little of both. As
+Christians it is quite impossible in any real sense to have the
+friendship of the world, though many Christians think that they can.
+What really is open to us is the enmity of the world if we are sincere
+and strict in our profession, and the contempt of the world if we are
+not. You have not to read very deep in contemporary literature to learn
+what the world thinks about the Christian who ignores or compromises his
+standards. The world knows perfectly well what constitutes a Christian
+life, and it shows a well merited scorn of those who, not having the
+courage openly to abandon it, yet show by their lives that they do not
+value it. We may not show the same sort of contempt for the "weak
+brother" as S. Paul calls him, but we ought to make it plain that we
+have no sort of approval of the brother who pleads weakness as an excuse
+for laxity.
+
+There is one law of life and only one; and that is summed up in our
+Lady's direction to the servants at Cana in Galilee: "Whatsoever he
+saith unto you, do it." There is no ground for pleading that our Lord's
+will is an obscure will, or that circumstances have so changed that much
+that He set forth in word and example has no application to-day in the
+America of the twentieth century. Perhaps if any one feels that there is
+some truth in the last statement, he would do well to examine the case
+and to find out just what and how much of the Gospel teaching is
+obsolete, and how much has contemporary application, and to ask himself
+whether he is constantly putting in action that part which he thinks
+still holds good. It will, I think, on examination be found that none of
+our Lord's teaching is obsolete, though in some cases changed
+circumstances may have changed its mode of application. Certainly there
+is nothing obsolete in His teaching in the matter of purity. The virtues
+that He dwells upon--humility, meekness and the rest--are universal
+qualities on which time and social change have no effect.
+
+What Christian conduct needs on our part is interest. We have to make
+clear to ourselves that a certain kind of life is like the life of God,
+and therefore is the medium for understanding God, and ultimately for
+enjoying God. The Christian life is not an arbitrary thing; it is the
+highest expression of humanity. Any other life is a distortion of the
+human ideal. People talk as though they thought that by the arbitrary
+will of God they were obliged to be good--a thing wholly contrary to our
+nature and to our present interests. But goodness is the natural
+unfolding of our nature as God made it: we find our true expression in
+the likeness of God. Perfection is what nature aspires to. Religion is
+not a curb on nature; religion is a help to enable nature to express
+itself. Nature reaches its perfect expression when by the grace of God
+it becomes godlike.
+
+And the words of Christ are our guide to the perfect expression of our
+best. Therefore the earnest Christian is willing to give time to the
+careful study of them, and of the whole ideal of life that is contained
+in them. He is not concerned with what they will cut him off from; he is
+concerned with that to which they will admit him. He is concerned to
+find the meaning of Christ's teaching. This that S. Paul says is
+fundamental is his rule of life: "Be not conformed to this world: but be
+ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is
+that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."
+
+     Of one that is so fayr and bright
+       _Velut maris stella_,
+     Brighter than the day is light,
+       _Parens et puella_;
+     I crie to thee, thou see to me,
+     Levedy, preye thi Sone for me,
+       _Tam pia_,
+     That I mote come to thee
+       _Maria_.
+
+     Al this world was for-lore
+       _Eva peccatrice_,
+     Tyl our Lord was y-bore
+       _De te genetrice_.
+     With _Ave_ it went away
+     Thuster nyth and comz the day
+       _Salutis_;
+     The welle springeth ut of the,
+       _Virtutis_.
+
+     Levedy, flour of alle thing,
+       _Rosa sine spina_,
+     Thu here Jhesu, hevene king,
+       _Gratia divina_;
+     Of alle thu ber'st the pris,
+     Levedy, quene of paradys
+       _Electa_:
+     Mayde milde, moder _es
+       Effecta_.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+WHO IS MY MOTHER?
+
+Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is
+my brother, and sister, and mother,
+
+S. Matt. XII, 50.
+
+Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we may keep with an
+immaculate heart the sacrament which we have received in honour of the
+blessed virgin mother Mary; so that we who celebrate her feast now, may
+be found worthy when we have left this life to pass into her company.
+Through &c.
+
+SARUM MISSAL.
+
+Our Blessed Lord had begun his ministry of preaching. The mark of the
+early days of that preaching was success. Crowds came about Him wherever
+He taught. The fact that there were frequent miracles of healing no
+doubt added to the popularity that He achieved. It was largely the
+popularity of a new and strange movement, of a preaching cutting across
+the normal roads of instruction to which the Jewish people were
+accustomed. There was a fascination about its form, its picturesque way
+of conveying its meaning, its use of the parable drawn from the everyday
+circumstances of life. There was nothing of hesitation in the words of
+the new Preacher, but the ring of a dogmatic certainty. "He taught as
+one having authority, and not as the scribes." He pushed aside the
+rulings of the traditional teaching with His, "Ye have heard it said ...
+but I say." "Verily, verily, I say unto you." And yet there are people
+who tell us that there was nothing dogmatic about our Lord and His
+teaching! One would infer from much that is written upon the subject of
+our Lord's teaching that He was a very mild giver of good advice but
+evidently the Scribes and Pharisees did not think so. They saw in Him a
+man who was setting himself to undermine their whole authority.
+
+This popularity was at a high point when an interesting event happened
+of which we have an account in the first of the Gospels. "His mother
+and His brethren stood without, desiring to speak with Him." One gathers
+from the whole tone of the narrative that they were anxious about Him,
+that they looked with doubt upon this career of popular teacher that He
+was launched upon and felt that He was going too far. He needed advice
+and restraint, perhaps; it may be that there were already reports of
+possible interference by the national authorities. The fact that His
+"brethren" were present suggests the well meant interference of the
+older members of the family, who must always have thought Jesus rather
+strange. That they had induced His mother to come with them makes us
+think that they were counting on the influence naturally hers, an
+influence which must always have been apparent in their family
+relations. So we reconstruct the incident.
+
+No doubt S. Mary herself was anxious. She must always have been anxious
+as to what would be the next step in the development of her mysterious
+Child. And while there was one side of her relation to Jesus which would
+always have run out into mystery, the mystery of the as yet unrevealed
+will of God; on the other side she was no doubt a very real normal human
+mother, with all a mother's anxiety and need of constant intervention in
+the life of her Child. I do not suppose that S. Mary, any more than any
+other mother, ever understood that her Son had grown up and could be
+trusted to conduct the ordinary affairs of the day without her help. She
+was no doubt as much concerned as any mother with the fact that His feet
+might be wet, or that He might not have had any lunch, or that he might
+have got run over by a passing chariot, or have been taken mysteriously
+ill. It was, we may think, this mother-attitude which brought her along
+with the brethren to give some advice as to how to carry on the
+preaching mission and avoid getting into trouble with the religious
+authorities. "One said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren
+stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said
+unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And
+he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my
+mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father
+which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and
+my brother."
+
+Our Lord had a way of turning the passing incidents of the moment to
+account in His preaching, making them the texts of moral and spiritual
+teaching. One gathers that more than one of the parables and parabolic
+sayings was suggested by something that was before the eyes of His
+hearers. He was quick to seize any spoken word, any question, any
+exclamation, and to turn it to immediate account. It was so now. The
+report that His mother and His brethren were seeking Him, He made the
+occasion of a statement of vast import. When we try to think it out, it
+was not in the least, as it has been perversely understood, an impatient
+rebuff of an untimely interference, an indication that He did not care
+for their intervention in a work that they did not understand. There is
+really nothing of all that, but a seizing of a passing incident as the
+medium of an universal truth. It is the skill of one who knows that the
+human attention is caught by a matter, however trifling, which is
+vividly present. The scene is sharply defined for us: our Lord
+interrupted in His talk; the report of the mother and the brethren
+seeking Him; the obvious interest of the people as to how He will take
+their intervention; and then the rapid seizing of this interest to make
+His declaration: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in
+heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother."
+
+And what are we to understand Him to mean? Surely He is declaring that
+through the revelation of God that He is, there is a new stage in God's
+work for man being entered upon, and that this new stage will be
+characterised by the emergence of a new set of relations, relations so
+important that they throw into the background the ordinary relations of
+life. He is proclaiming to them the advent of the Kingdom of God; and in
+that Kingdom, the service of God will be put first, before all human
+relations. It will not be antagonistic to human relations; indeed, it
+will hallow them and raise them to a higher level; but in case they, as
+not infrequently they will, decline to adjust themselves to the work of
+the Kingdom, or set themselves in opposition to it, then will they be
+brushed aside, no matter what they be. If we can consecrate our human
+relations and bring them into God, then will they be ours still with a
+vast enrichment and a rare spiritual beauty; but if they remain selfish,
+insist on absorbing all attention and energy, then they must be broken.
+The love of father and mother and children is an holy thing wherever we
+find it, but it is capable of becoming a selfish and perverse thing,
+insistent upon its own ends and declining wider responsibilities. In
+that case it must be regarded from the standpoint of a higher good: if
+it stand in the path of the Kingdom it must be swept aside. So our Lord
+declared in one of the most searching of His utterances; one of the
+utterances which we feel could come only from the lips of God: "Think
+not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but
+a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and
+the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her
+mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be those of his own household. He
+that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he
+that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
+
+That is the teaching of the incident before us. Our Lord's primary
+mission is to declare the will of God, and to make known the mind of the
+Father to all who will heed. Their acceptance of this will of the Father
+will bring them into a new relation to Him more important than, and
+transcending, all relations of flesh and blood. But--and this is
+important to mark--it does not exclude relations of flesh and blood; but
+it demands that they shall be put on a new basis and be assimilated to
+the higher relation. In our Lord's case they were in fact so
+assimilated. The blessed Mother and the brethren did not resist God's
+will when they came to understand it. They were, we know, glad of the
+higher relation, the new privilege. There is no ground at all for the
+suggestion of any breach between them. They are of the inner circle
+always in the Kingdom of the regenerate.
+
+This fundamental truth of Christ's teaching, that through Him a new and
+closer relation to the Father becomes possible, and that the Kingdom is
+its embodiment, is one of the truths which have received constant
+lip-service, but have never been really assimilated in the working life
+of the Church. That the Church is the Body of Christ and we His members,
+and that by virtue of this membership in Him we are also members one of
+another; that we are, at our entrance into the Kingdom, made, as the
+Catechism puts it, members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the
+kingdom of Heaven are truths of most marvellous reach and of splendid
+social implications. But can we say that they have very wide or real
+acknowledgment?
+
+In face of a divided Christendom it seems almost farcical to talk of a
+Christian Brotherhood. The baptismal membership of the Church of God has
+fallen into group organisations whose mutual antagonism is of the
+bitterest kind. The so-called "religious press" is perhaps the saddest
+picture of modern Christian life. One could name a half dozen journals
+off hand, organs of this or that group, every one a sufficient
+refutation of the claim of the Christian Religion to be a Brotherhood of
+the Redeemed. There is no possible excuse for the tone of such
+publications.
+
+No doubt it is an inevitable result of the state of a divided
+Christendom that there should be disputes and controversies. We shall
+never reach any expression of the Brotherhood that is the Church by
+saying, Peace, Peace, where there is no Peace. The unity we look to must
+be reached through painful sacrifice and through conflict; and we know
+that the wisdom that is from above is "first pure, and then peaceable,"
+But it is quite possible while holding with all firmness to the truth,
+to hold it in the fear and love of God.
+
+So long as Christendom is thus divided into hostile camps the ideal of
+brotherhood is impossible of realisation. I do not want however to
+discuss this matter from the point of view of Church unity. I want to
+point out that within the groups themselves there is small vision of the
+meaning of the oneness of Christ. For brotherhood is the expression of a
+spiritual reality. It looked for a moment in the early days of the
+Church as though the ideal would be realised. The description of the
+Church was that "all that believed were together, and had all things in
+common: and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all
+men, as every man had need." That was, no doubt, a passing phase of the
+life of the Church in Jerusalem, but we have evidence that elsewhere all
+distinctions based upon social considerations were for the moment swept
+away. There is "neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
+there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
+Our glimpses of the congregations of the early Church are of men and
+women of all classes held together by the bond of a common membership in
+Christ, so strongly felt as to enable them to forget all worldly
+distinctions. Their sense of redemption was strong. They thrilled with
+the joy of deliverance from the old life "after the flesh." They knew
+that they were regenerate, new creations, and that this was the
+distinction of the brother who knelt beside them at their communions. It
+mattered not at all what he was in the world, whether he were Greek or
+Barbarian, whether he were patrician or freedman, whether he were of the
+slaves of Rome or of Caesar's household. The man who knelt to receive
+his communion might be a great nobleman, the priest who communicated him
+might be a slave: that did not matter; the significant thing was that
+they were both one in Jesus Christ.
+
+That did not last. I suppose that it could not be expected to last in an
+unconverted or half converted world. It could only last on condition of
+the fairly complete isolation of the Christian group from the rest of
+society, pending the conversion of society as a whole. But it proved
+impossible to secure the isolation. The only real isolation was in
+monastic groups which naturally could contain only such men and women as
+God called to a special sort of life: the whole of society could not be
+so organised. As the Church grew and took in the various social
+constituents included in the Empire, it took them in differentiated as
+they were. There seems to have been no real effort to break down race
+distinctions or class distinctions. There were no doubt protests, but
+the protests were as ineffective then as now. "You cannot change human
+nature," men say; but that in fact is precisely what Christianity
+claims to do. Unless it can change human nature it is a failure.
+
+The ideal of Christianity is not the abolition of inequality (only a
+certain sort of social theorists are insane enough to expect that). All
+men are born unequal in a variety of ways, physical, intellectual,
+moral; and under any form of society that so far has been invented they
+are born in social classes which remain very hard realities in spite of
+our theories. What Christianity aims at accomplishing is to transcend
+these inequalities, natural and artificial, by raising men to a state of
+spiritual equality, a state which ensures true and full enjoyment of all
+the privileges of the child of God. In this state there is open to all
+the gift of sanctifying grace which is the possession of God now, and in
+the future will unfold into the capacity of the complete participation
+of the life of heaven. This belongs to, is within the grasp of, any
+child, any ignorant peasant, any toiler, as much as it is within the
+grasp of bishop or priest or Religious. And this much--and how much it
+is!--the Church has succeeded in accomplishing. It may be slow in
+offering the riches of the Gospel to the unconverted world, but where it
+has presented the Gospel, it presents it to all men as a Gospel of
+salvation and sanctification. When tempted to discouragement let us
+remember that whatever the shortcoming of the Church, it is yet true
+that every man, woman and child in these United States of America can
+through its instrumentality, become a saint whenever he desires. But,
+naturally, to become a saint, effort is necessary.
+
+Where the Church has failed is not in the offer of salvation and
+sanctity, but in removing some of of the obvious obstacles to its
+attainment by many to whom it appeals, to whom its divine mission is. It
+has not succeeded in convincing us that we are members one of another,
+that is, it has not succeeded in persuading us to act upon what we
+profess in any broad way. The Church is not a fellowship in any
+comprehensive sense. The divisions which run through secular society and
+divide group from group run through it also. The parish which should be
+the exemplification of the Christian brotherhood in action is not so.
+Too often a parish is known as the parish of a certain social group.
+There are parishes to which people go to get "into society." Very likely
+they do not succeed, but that is the sort of impression that the parish
+membership has made upon them. Then there are parishes to which people
+"in society" would not be transferred. There are churches in which no
+poor person would set foot, not that they would be unwelcome, but that
+they would feel out of place. So long as such things are true, our
+practice of brotherhood has not much to commend of it.
+
+And when we go about setting things right I am not sure that we do not
+mostly make them worse. I do not believe that it is the business of the
+Church to set about the abolition of inequalities and the getting rid of
+the distinctions between man and man. Apart from the waste of time due
+to attempting the impossible, what would be gained? Pending the arrival
+of the social millenium we need to do something; and that something, it
+seems to me a mistake to assume must be social. "We must bring people
+together": but what is gained by bringing people together when they do
+not want to be together, and will not actually get together when you
+force them into proximity. There is nothing more expressive of the
+failure of well-meant activity than a church gathering where people at
+once group themselves along the familiar lines and decline to mix,
+notwithstanding the utmost endeavours of clergy and zealous ladies to
+bring them together. The thing is an object lesson of wrong method.
+
+Is there a right method? There must be, though no one seems to have
+found it yet. There is in any case a right point of departure in our
+common membership in Jesus Christ. Suppose we drop the supposition that
+we make, I presume because we think it pious, that if they are both
+Christians a dock labourer ought to be quite at home at a millionaire's
+dinner party, or a scrub-woman in a box at the Metropolitan opera house.
+Suppose we drop the attempt to force people together on lines which will
+be impossible till after the social revolution has buried us all in a
+common grave, and fasten attention on the one fact that, from our
+present point of view, counts, the fact that we are Christians. Suppose
+one learns to meet all men and all women simply on the basis of their
+religion; when that forms the bond that unites us when we come together,
+we have at once common grounds of interest in the life and activities of
+the Body of Christ. Suppose the millionaire going down town in his motor
+sees his clerk walking and stops and picks him up, and instead of
+talking constrainedly about the weather or about business, he begins
+naturally to talk to him about spiritual matters. Why could they not
+talk about the Mission that has just been held, or the Quiet Day that is
+in prospect? One great trouble, is it not? is that we fight shy of
+talking to our fellow-Christians of the interests that we really have in
+common and try to put intercourse on some other ground where we have
+little or nothing in common. The things that should, and probably do,
+vitally interest us, we decline to talk about at all. We are so stiff
+and formal and restrained in all matter of personal religious experience
+that we are unable to express the fact of Christian Brotherhood. The
+fact that you smile at the presentment of the case, that you cannot even
+imagine yourself talking about your spiritual experience with your clerk
+or your employer, shows how far you are from a truly Christian
+conception of Brotherhood.
+
+Our Lord's words that we are making our subject indicate the paramount
+importance that He laid upon the acceptance of God's will as the
+ultimate rule of life. "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which
+is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother." "Ye
+are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." That is the common
+ground on which we are all invited to stand, the ground of a common
+loyalty to God, of intense zeal for the cause of God. Our Lord gave His
+whole life to that cause. As His disciples watched Him on an occasion,
+they remembered that it was written: "The zeal of thine house hath
+eaten me up." Zeal is not a very popular quality because it is always
+disturbing the equanimity and self-complacency of lukewarm people. And
+then, we dislike to be thought fanatics. But I fancy that there will
+always be a touch of the fanatic about any very zealous Christian, and
+it is not worth while to suppress our zeal for fear of the world's
+judgment upon it. What we have to avoid is the misdirection of zeal.
+There is, no doubt, a zeal which is "not according to knowledge." We
+need to be sure, in other words, that our zeal is a zeal for God, and
+not a zeal for party or person or cause. It is no doubt quite easy to
+imagine that we are seeking to do God's will when we are merely seeking
+to impose on our own will. Self-seeking is quite destructive of the
+friendship and service of God. The Kingdom whose interests we are
+attempting to forward may turn out to be a Kingdom in which we expect to
+sit on the right hand or the left of the throne because of the
+brilliance of the service rendered.
+
+Life is simplified very much when the will of God thus becomes its
+guiding principle, and all other relations of life are subordinated to
+our relation to our heavenly Father. Then have we brought life to that
+complete simplicity which is near akin to peace. When we have learned in
+deciding any line of action not to think what our neighbours and friends
+will feel, or what the world will think, but only what God will think,
+we have little difficulty in making up our minds. Suppose that a boy has
+to make up his mind whether he will study for the priesthood, the vital
+thing on which to concentrate his thought and prayer is whether God is
+calling him to that life, and if he is convinced that he is being called
+the whole question should be settled. In fact in most cases it is far
+from being settled because this simplicity has not been attained. There
+is a whole social circle to be dealt with, who urge the hardness of the
+life, the scant reward, the greater advantages of a business career, and
+so on; all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the question to
+be decided. It is so all through life. In most questions of life's
+decisions, no doubt, there is no sense of any vocation at all, of a
+determining will of God; but is not that because we assume that God has
+no will in such matters, and leaves us free to follow our own devices?
+Such an assumption is hardly justified in the case of One to Whom the
+fall of a sparrow is a matter of interest. It is our weakness, or the
+sign of our spiritual incompetence, that we have unconsciously removed
+the greater part of life from the jurisdiction of the divine will. We do
+not habitually think of God as interested in the facts of daily
+experience; we do not take Him with us into offices and factories.
+Perhaps we think that they are hardly fit places for God, and I have no
+doubt that He has many things to suffer there. But He is there, and will
+suffer, until we recognise His right there, and insist upon His there
+being supreme.
+
+Let us go back for a moment to Our Lady standing outside the place where
+Jesus was preaching, perplexed and worried at the course He was taking.
+I suppose that it is always easier to surrender ourselves unreservedly
+into God's hands than it is to so surrender some one we love. I suppose
+that S. Mary so trusted in God that she never thought with anxiety of
+what His providence was preparing for her; but she would not quite take
+that attitude about her Son; or rather, while she did intellectually, no
+doubt, take that attitude, her feelings never went the whole distance
+that her mind went. But surrender to the will of God means complete
+surrender of ourself and ours. It means absolute confidence in God, it
+means lying quiet in his arms, as the child lies still in the arms of
+his mother. It means that we trust God.
+
+      Rose-Mary, Sum of virtue virginal,
+      Fresh Flower on whom the dew of heaven downfell;
+     O Gem, conjoined in joy angelical,
+      In whom rejoiced the Saviour was to dwell:
+      Of refuge Ark, of mercy Spring and Well,
+     Of Ladies first, as is of letters A,
+      Empress of heaven, of paradise and hell--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.
+
+     O Star, that blindest Phoebus' beams so bright,
+      With course above the empyrean crystalline;
+     Above the sphere of Saturn's highest height,
+      Surmounting all the angelic orders nine;
+      O Lamp, that shin'st before the throne divine,
+     Where sounds hosanna in cherubic lay,
+      With drum and organ, harp and cymbeline--
+     Mother, of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     O Cloister chaste of pure virginity,
+      That Christ hath closed 'gainst crime for evermo';
+     Triumphant Temple of the Trinity,
+      That didst the eternal Tartarus o'erthrow;
+      Princess of peace, imperial Palm, I trow,
+     From thee our Samson sprang invict in fray;
+      Who, with one buffet, Belial hath laid low--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     Thy blessed sides the mighty Champion bore,
+      Who hath, with many a bleeding wound in fight,
+     Victoriously o'erthrown the dragon hoar
+      That ready was his flock to slay and smite;
+      Nor all the gates of hell him succour might,
+     Since he that robber's rampart brake away,
+      While all the demons trembled at the sight--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     O Maiden meek, chief Mediatrix for man,
+     And Mother mild, full of humility,
+     Pray to thy Son, with wounds that sanguine ran,
+       Whereby for all our trespass slain was he.
+       And since he bled his blood upon a tree,
+     'Gainst Lucifer, our foe, to be our stay,
+       That we in heaven may sing upon our knee--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     Hail, Pearl made pure; hail, Port of paradise;
+       Hail, Ruby, redolent of rays to us;
+     Hail, Crystal clear, Empress and Queen, hail thrice;
+       Mother of God, hail, Maid exalted thus;
+       O Gratia plena, tecum Dominus;
+     With Gabriel that we may sing and say,
+       Benedicta tu in mulieribus--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.
+
+     William Dunbar,
+
+     XV-XVI. Cents.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+HOLY WEEK I
+
+Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.
+
+S. Matt. XXVI, 56.
+
+Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God, accept, O Lord, our
+prayers and save us.
+
+May the Holy Mother of God and all the saints be our intercessors with
+the Heavenly Father, that He may deign to be merciful to us, and in pity
+save His creatures. Lord God all-powerful! save us and have mercy
+upon us.
+
+Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God, the Immaculate
+Mother of Thine only Son, and through the prayers of all the saints,
+receive, O Lord, our supplications; hear us, O Lord, and have mercy upon
+us; pardon us, bear with us, and blot out our sins, and make us worthy
+to glorify Thee, together with Thy Son and the Holy Ghost, now and ever,
+world without end. Amen.
+
+Armenian.
+
+We try to see our Lord's passion through the eyes of His Blessed
+Mother. We feel that all through Holy Week she must have been in direct
+touch with the experiences of our Lord. Her outlook would have been that
+of the Apostolic circle the record of which we get in the Gospels. Our
+Lord's ministry had showed a period of popularity during which it must
+have seemed to those closest to Him that they were moving rapidly to
+success; and then, after the day at Caeserea Phillipi, when His
+Messianic claims had been acknowledged, they would have been filled with
+enthusiasm for the mission the meaning of which was now defined. Then
+came a period of disappointment. Our Lord declined to become a popular
+leader, and by the nature of His preaching, the demands that He made
+upon those who were inclined to support Him lost popularity till it was
+a question to be considered whether the very Apostles would not desert
+Him. Then came the flash of renewed enthusiasm which is evidenced by the
+Palm Sunday entry, bringing, no doubt, renewed hopes to those nearest
+our Lord who seem to have been utterly unable to accept the view of His
+failure and death that He kept before them. But the hope vanished as
+quickly as it was roused. In less than a week the rejoicing group of
+Sunday followed Him from the Upper Chamber to the shades of Gethsemane.
+The betrayal, the trial, the end, come quickly on.
+
+This to S. Mary was the piercing of the sword through the very heart.
+These were the days when the meaning of close association with Incarnate
+God, with God Who was pursuing a mission of rescue, came out. The
+mission of the Son for the Redemption of man meant submitting to the
+extremity of insult and torture, and it meant that those who were
+closest associated with Him should be caught into the circle of His
+pain. As our Lord was displaying the best of which humanity is capable,
+so was He calling out the worst of which it is capable. These last days
+of the life of Jesus show where man can be led when he surrenders
+himself to the dominion of the Power of Evil and becomes the servant of
+sin. The triumph of demoniac malice through its instruments, the Roman
+governor, the Jewish authorities, of necessity swept over all who were
+related to our Lord. The storm scattered the Apostolic group and left
+the Christ to face His trial alone. Yet not alone: He himself tells us
+the truth. "Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be
+scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am
+not alone, because the Father is with me." It was what the Prophet had
+foreseen: "All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is
+written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered."
+
+We do not know where S. Mary was during these days, but we are sure that
+she was as near our Lord as it was possible for her to be. We know that
+her own thought would be of the possibility of ministering to Him. We
+know that she would not have fled with the Apostles in their momentary
+panic. She was at the Cross, and she was at the grave, and she would
+have been as near Him in the agony and the trial as it was possible for
+her to be. And she too was in agony. Every pang of our Lord found echo
+in her. Every blow that fell upon His bleeding back, she too felt. Every
+insult that the soldiers inflicted, hurt her. Our Lord in the
+consciousness of His mission is constantly sustained by the thought that
+His Passion and Death is an offering to the will of the Father,--an
+offering even for these miserable men who are brutally treating a man
+whom they know to be innocent. Her sorrow is the utter desolation of
+seeing the One Whom she loves above all else suffer, while she can bear
+Him no alleviation in His suffering, cannot so much as wipe the blood
+from off His wounded brow, cannot even touch His hand, and look her love
+into His eyes. She follows from place to place while our Lord is being
+hustled from Caiaphas to Pilate and from Pilate to Herod and back again;
+from time to time hearing from some one who has succeeded in getting
+nearer, how the trial is going on, what the accusation is, how Jesus is
+bearing Himself, what answers He has made, what the authorities have
+said. Once and again, it may be, catching a distant glimpse of Him as He
+is led about by the guards, seeing Him always more worn and weary,
+always nearer the point of collapse. Herself, too, nearer collapse; yet
+going on still with that strength that love gives to mothers, determined
+at the cost of any suffering to be near Him, as near as she can be, till
+the very end. So we see her on that day in the streets of Jerusalem,
+and think of the distance travelled since the morning when Gabriel said
+to her, wondering: "Hail thou that art highly favoured.... Blessed art
+thou among women."
+
+We, too, follow. We have so often followed, with the Gospel in our
+hands, and wondered at the method of God. We have tried hour after hour
+to penetrate the meaning of the Passion, to find what personal message
+it brings, to discover what light it throws on our own lives. We have
+gone out into Gethsemane and placed ourselves with the three chosen
+Apostles while our Lord went on to pray by Himself; and we have
+discovered in ourselves the same weariness, the same tendency to sleep,
+in the presence of what we tell ourselves is the most important of all
+interests. We call up the scene under the olives, and find that we
+wander and are inattentive and idle when we most want to be attentive
+and alert. We place ourselves in the group that surrounds our Lord when
+the soldiers, led by Judas, come, and ask ourselves shall I too run
+away? And our memory flashes the answer: You have run away again and
+again: you have in the face, not of grave dangers, but of insignificant
+trifles--how insignificant they look now--for fear of criticism, for
+fear of being thought odd, for fear of the opinion of worldly
+companions, for fear of being pitied or laughed at, over and over again
+you have run away. The things that seemed important when they were
+present seem pitifully insignificant in the retrospect.
+
+We follow out of the garden to the meeting-place of the Sanhedrin, to
+the Judgment seat of Pilate, to the palace of Herod. Any impulse to
+criticise S. Peter is speedily suppressed: we have denied so often under
+such trifling provocation. S. Peter was frightened from participation in
+the act of our Lord's sacrifice through mortal fear of his life. We have
+stayed away from the offering of the Holy Sacrifice, how often! from
+mere sloth, from disinclination to effort, from the fact that our
+participation would prevent us from joining in some act of worldly
+amusement. S. Peter, following to the high Priest's palace to see the
+end, looks heroic beside our frivolity. We follow through the details of
+the trial, we go to Herod's palace and see the brutal treatment of our
+Lord, and we remember of these men that their conduct was founded in
+ignorance. We do not for a moment believe that they would have spit upon
+our Lord and buffeted Him, and crowned Him with a crown of thorns, if
+they had believed that He was God. But we believe that He is God. Our
+desertion of Him when we sin, our contempt of His expressed ideals when
+we compromise with the world, our departure from His example when we
+excuse ourselves on the ground of very minor inconveniences from keeping
+some holy day or fasting day, are not founded in ignorance at all. They
+can hardly be said to be founded in weakness, so slight is the
+temptation that we do not resist. As we meditate on the Passion, as we
+keep Good Friday, very pitiful all our idleness and subterfuges appear
+to us. But we so easily shake off the effect! We emerge from our
+meditation almost convinced that the stinging sense of the truth of our
+conduct which we are experiencing is the equivalent of having reformed
+it. We go out with a glow of virtue and by night realise that we have
+sinned again!
+
+It is no doubt well that we should not be permanently depressed about
+our spiritual state, but only because we have taken all the pains we can
+to heal the wounds of sin. There is no need that any one should abide in
+a state of sin because there has been in the Precious Blood a fountain
+opened for sin and for uncleanness, and by washing therein, though our
+souls were as scarlet, they shall become white as snow. We have the
+right to a certain optimism about ourselves if it be founded on actual
+spiritual activity which ceaselessly tries to reproduce the
+Christ-experience in us, even the experience of the Passion by the
+voluntary self-discipline to which we subject ourselves. A brilliant
+writer has spoken of those whose view of their lives is drawn from "that
+fountain of all optimism--sloth." That is a true saying: our optimism is
+often no more than an idle refusal to face facts; a quaint and
+good-natured assumption that nothing very much matters and that
+everything will be all right in the end!
+
+This easy going optimism is commonly as far as possible from
+representing any spiritual fact. If we are seeking any serious and
+fruitful relation to the Passion of our Lord, we must seek it along the
+Way of the Cross. To follow His example means to follow His experience,
+to treat life as He treated it. The content of our lives is quite
+different, but the treatment of the given fact must be essentially the
+same. We need the same repulse of temptation, the same quiet disregard
+of the appeals of the world, whether it offer the alleviation of
+difficulty or the bestowal of pleasure as the reward of our allegiance.
+And we, sinners in so manifold ways, need what our Lord did not need,
+repulsion from our sins as the necessary preliminary to forgiveness.
+
+My experience makes me feel very strongly that we are apt to be
+deficient in the first step in repentance--contrition. As we follow the
+Way of Sorrows we know that our Lord is suffering _for us_; and we feel
+that the starting point of our repentance must lie in our success in
+making that a personal matter. In our self examination, in our approach
+to the sacrament of penance, we are compelled to ask ourselves, Am I in
+fact sorry for my sins? It surely is not enough that we fear the results
+of sin, or that we are ashamed at our failure. This really is not
+repentance but a sort of pride. There must, I feel, be sorrow after a
+godly sort. That is, true contrition, true sorrow for sin, is the sort
+of sorrow which is born of the Vision of God; it has its origin in love.
+I have found in our Lord love giving itself to me, and I must find in
+myself love giving itself to Him. To my forgiveness it is not enough
+that God loves me. I know that He loves me and will love me to the end,
+whether I repent or not; but the possibility of forgiveness lies in my
+love of Him, whether it takes such hold on me as actually to stimulate
+me to forsake sin. I shall never really forsake sin through shame or
+fear; one gets used to those emotions after a little and disregards
+them. But one does not get used to love; it grows to be an increasing
+force in life, and so masters us as to draw us away from sin.
+
+Contrition then will be the offspring of love. It will be born when we
+follow Christ Jesus out on the Sorrowful Way and understand that He is
+going out for us. Then we want to get as near Him as possible: we want
+to take His Hand and go by His side. We want to stand by Him in His
+trial and share His condemnation. We want constantly to tell Him how
+sorry we are that we have brought Him here. We shall not be content that
+He feel all the pain. We are convinced that we ought to share in the
+pain as we share in the results of the Passion. When we have achieved
+this point of view we shall feel that our approach to Him to ask His
+forgiveness needs, it may be, much more care than we have hitherto
+bestowed upon it. We have thought of penance as forgiveness; now we
+begin to see how much the attitude which precedes our entrance to the
+confessional counts, and that we must value the gift of God enough to
+have made sure that we are ready to receive it. We kneel down,
+therefore, and look at our crucifix, and say: "This hast Thou done for
+me," and make our act of love in which we join ourselves to the Cross of
+Jesus. We tell ourselves that love is the beginning and end of our
+relation to Him.
+
+It is to be urged that every Christian should be utterly familiar with
+the life of our Lord, and should spend time regularly in meditation upon
+His life, and especially upon His Passion. Love is the constant
+counteractive of familiarity; and it is kept fresh in our souls by the
+contemplation of what our Lord has actually done for us. A general
+recalling of what He has done has not the same stimulating force as the
+vivid placing before us of the actual details of His work. To most of us
+visible aids to the realisation of our Lord's action for us are most
+helpful. A crucifix on the wall of one's room before which one can say
+one's prayers, and before which also we stop for a moment time and again
+in the course of the day, just to say a few words, to make an act of
+love, of contrition, or of union, keeps the thought of the Passion
+fresh. We gain in freshness and variety of prayer by the use of such
+devotions as the litany of the Passion or the Way of the Cross. A set of
+cards of the Stations help us to say them in our homes. It is much to be
+desired that we accustom ourselves to devotional helps of all sorts. We
+are quite too much inclined to think that there is something of
+spiritual superiority in the attempt to conduct our devotional life
+without any of the helps which centuries of Christian experience have
+provided. It is the same sort of feeling that makes other Christians
+assume that there is a superiority in spiritual attainment evidenced by
+their dispensing with "forms," especially with printed prayers. It is
+just as well to remember that we did not originate the Christian
+Religion, but inherited it; and that the practices of devotion that have
+been found helpful by generations of saints, and after full trial have
+retained the approval of the greater part of Christendom, can hardly be
+treated as valueless, much less as superstitious. The fact that saints
+have found them valuable and one has not, may possibly not be a
+criticism of the saints.
+
+The meditation upon the Way of the Cross, the vision of Jesus scourged,
+spitted upon, crowned with thorns, may well give us some searchings of
+heart in regard to our own easy-going, luxurious life. Nothing seems to
+disturb the modern person so much as the suggestion that the chief
+business of the Christian Religion is not to look after their comfort.
+They hold, it would appear, to the pre-Christian notion that prosperity
+is an obvious mark of God's favour, and that by the accumulation of
+wealth they are giving indisputable evidence of piety. It is well to
+recall that there is no such dangerous path as that of continual
+success. I do not in the least mean to imply that success is sinful or
+indicates the existence of sin, but I do mean to insist very strongly
+that the successful man needs to be a very spiritually watchful man. He
+is quite apt to think that he may take all sorts of liberties with the
+laws of God. There are, no doubt, evident dangers to the unsuccessful
+man, but the Holy Scriptures have not thought it worth while to spend
+much time in denouncing him. It has a good deal to say of the danger,
+not so much of wealth, as of prosperity in general: "Behold, this was
+the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and
+prosperous ease were in her." When we find ourselves in a satisfied and
+comfortable home life, so comfortable that we find it difficult to get
+up to a week-day Mass, and disinclined to go out to a service after
+dinner, we need watching.
+
+And the best watchman is oneself; and the best method of
+self-examination is by the Cross. Is there any sense in which we can be
+said to be following our Lord on the Sorrowful Way? Have we taken up the
+Cross to go after Him, or are we assuming that we can just as well drift
+along with the crowd of those who only look on? We all need from time to
+time to consider the Catholic teaching as to mortification and
+self-discipline. I am quite aware that to insist on this is not the way
+of popularity, but nevertheless I learned a long time ago that about the
+only way that a priest can take if he wishes to be saved is the way of
+unpopularity. And therefore I am going to insist that the practice of
+rigorous self-discipline is essential to any healthy Christian life. We
+cannot dispense ourselves from this, for the mere fact that we are
+dispensing ourselves is the proof that we need that upon which we are
+turning our back. Briefly, what I mean is that the assumption of the
+Cross by a Christian means that he is taking into his life, voluntarily,
+personal acts of self-sacrifice which he offers to our Lord as the
+evidence and the means of his own Cross-bearing.
+
+The unruliness of our nature can only be kept in order by continual acts
+of self-discipline. We, no doubt, recognise the need of the discipline
+of the passions, but our theory, so far as we can be said to have one,
+would seem to be that the discipline of the passions means resistence to
+special temptations as they arise. We may no doubt sin through the
+passions, and therefore we need a minimum of watchfulness to meet
+temptations which come our way. I submit that such a way of conducting
+life is quite sufficient to account for the vast amount of failure we
+witness or, perhaps, experience. When from time to time the country gets
+alarmed about its health, when it is threatened with some epidemic such
+as influenza, the papers are full of medical advice the sum of which is
+you cannot dodge all the disease germs that are in the air, but you can
+by a vigorous course of exercise and by careful diet, keep yourself in a
+state of such physical soundness that the chances are altogether
+favourable for your withstanding the assaults of disease. No doubt the
+vast majority of people prefer not to follow this advice. A considerable
+number of them resort to various magic cults, such as letting sudden
+drafts of cold air in upon the inoffensive bystander with a view to
+exorcising the germs. But it remains that the medical advice is sound:
+it amounts to saying, "Keep yourself in the best physical condition
+possible and you will run the minimum chance of being ill."
+
+The Catholic treatment of life and its recommendation of discipline and
+mortification has precisely the same basis as the physical advice--an
+ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. We are exposed to
+temptation constantly, and we need to recognise the fact and prepare
+ourselves to meet it; and the best preparation is the preparation of
+self-discipline for the purpose of keeping rebellious nature under
+control. Good farming does not consist in pulling up weeds; it consists
+in the choice and preparation of the ground in which the seed is to be
+sown; it looks primarily to the growth of the seed and not to the
+elimination of the weeds. Our nature is a field in which the Word of God
+is sown; its preparation and care is what we need to focus attention on,
+not the weeds.
+
+Self-discipline is the preparation of nature, the discipline of the
+powers of the spiritual life with a view to what they have to do. And
+one of the important phases of our preparation is to teach our passions
+obedience, to subject them to the control of the enlightened will. If
+they are accustomed to obey they are not very likely to get out of hand
+in some time of crisis. If they are broken in to the dominion of
+spiritual motive, they will instinctively seek that motive whenever they
+are incited to act. Hence the immense spiritual value of the habitual
+denial to ourselves of indulgence in various innocent kinds of activity.
+I do not at all mean that we are never to have innocent indulgences: I
+do mean that the declining of them occasionally for the purpose of
+self-discipline is a most wholesome practice. How frequently it is
+desirable must be determined by the individual circumstances. It is
+utterly disastrous to permit a child to have everything it wants because
+there is sufficient money to spend, to permit it to run to soda
+fountains or go to the picture houses as it desires. Any sane person
+recognises that; but does the same person recognise the sane principle
+as applying in his own life? Does he feel the value of going without
+something for a day or two, or staying from places of amusement for a
+time, or of abandoning for a while this or that luxury?
+
+The principle is of course the ascetic principle of self-mastery. It is
+best brought before us by the familiar practice of fasting, which is
+very mildly recommended to us in its lowest terms in the table in the
+Book of Common Prayer. Naturally, its value is not the value of going
+without this or that, but the value of self-mastery. The very fact that
+our appetites rebel at the notion shows their undisciplined character.
+The child at the table begins to ask, not for a sensible meal founded on
+sound reasons of hygiene, but for various things that are an immediate
+temptation to the appetite. The adult is not markedly different save
+that he preserves a certain order in indulgence. The principle of
+fasting is that he should from time to cut across the inclination of
+appetite, and either go without a meal altogether, or select such food
+as will maintain health without delighting appetite. So man gains the
+mastery over the animal side of his nature and shows himself the
+child of God.
+
+The actual practice of the ascetic life really carries us much farther
+than these surface matters of a physical nature that have been cited. It
+applies in particular to the disposition of time and the ruling of daily
+actions. The introduction of a definite order into the day actually
+seems to increase the time at one's disposal. I know, I can hear you
+saying: "If you were the head of a family, and had children to look
+after, you would not talk that way. You would know something of the
+practical difficulties of life." But indeed I am quite familiar with the
+situation. And if I were so situated I am certain that I should feel
+all the more need of order. Families are disorderly because we let them
+be; because we do not face the initial trouble of making them orderly. A
+school or a factory would be still more disorderly than a family if it
+were permitted to be. Any piece of human mechanism will get out of order
+if you will let it. That is precisely the reason for the insistence on
+the ascetic principle--this tendency of life to get out of order; that
+is the meaning of all that I have been saying, of the whole Catholic
+insistence on discipline. Time can be controlled; and, notwithstanding
+American experience, children can be controlled; and control means the
+rescuing of the life from disorder and sin, and the lifting it to a
+level of order and sanity and possible sanctity.
+
+We cannot hope to meet successfully the common temptations of life
+except we be prepared to meet them, except there be in our life an
+element of foresight. An undisciplined and untried strength is an
+unknown quantity. The man who expects to meet temptation when it occurs
+without any preparation is in fact preparing for failure. I do not
+believe that there is any other so great a source of spiritual weakness
+and disaster as the going out to meet life without preceding discipline,
+thus subjecting the powers of our nature to trials for which we have not
+fitted them. Self-control, self-discipline, ascetic practice, are
+indispensible to a successful Christian life.
+
+     O STAR of starrès, with thy streamès clear,
+     Star of the Sea, to shipman Light or Guide,
+     O lusty Living, most pleasant t'appear,
+     Whose brightè beames the cloudès may not hide:
+     O Way of Life to them that go or ride,
+     Haven from tempest, surest up t'arrive,
+     O me have mercy for thy Joyès five.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     O goodly Gladded, when that Gabriel
+     With joy thee gret that may not be numb'rèd,
+     Or half the bliss who couldè write or tell,
+     When th' Holy Ghost to thee was obumbrèd,
+     Wherethrough the fiendès were utterly encombrèd?
+     O wemless Maid, embellished in his birth,
+     That man and angel thereof hadden mirth.
+
+     John Lydgate of Bury,
+     XV Cent.
+     From Chaucerian and Other
+     Poems, edited by W. W. Skeat,
+     1894.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+HOLY WEEK II
+
+And after they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put
+his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.
+
+S. Matt. XXVII, 31.
+
+     Forgive, O Lord, we beseech thee, the sins of thy people:
+     that we, who are not able to do anything of ourselves, that
+     can be pleasing to thee, may be assisted in the way of
+     salvation by the prayers of the Mother of thy Son. Who.
+
+     Having partaken of thy heavenly table, we humbly beseech thy
+     clemency, O Lord, our God, that we who honour the Assumption
+     of the Mother of God, may, by her intercession, be delivered
+     from all evils. Through.
+
+OLD CATHOLIC.
+
+The way of the Cross is indeed a Sorrowful Way. We have meditated upon
+it so often that we are familiar with all the details of our Lord's
+action as He follows it from the Judgment Seat of Pilate to the Place of
+a Skull. I wonder if we enough pause to look with our Lord at the crowds
+that line the way, or at those who follow Him out of the city. It is not
+a mere matter of curiosity that we should do so, or an exercise of the
+devout imagination; the reason why we should examine carefully the faces
+of those men who attend our Lord on the way to His death is that
+somewhere in that crowd we shall see our own faces: it is a mirror of
+sinful humanity that we look into there. All the seven deadly sins are
+there incarnate.
+
+It is extremely important that we should get this sort of personal
+reaction from the Passion because we are so prone to be satisfied with
+generalities, to confess that we are miserable sinners, and let it go at
+that! But to stop there is to stop short of any possibility of
+improvement, because we can only hope to improve when we understand our
+lives in detail, when we face them as concrete examples of certain sins.
+
+There was pride there. It was expressed by both Roman and Jewish
+officialism which looked with scorn on this obscure fanatic who claimed
+to be a king! Pilate had satisfied himself of His harmlessness by a very
+cursory examination. This Galilean Prophet with His handful of
+followers, peasants and women, who had deserted Him at the first sign of
+danger, was hardly worth troubling about. The only ground for any action
+at all was the fear that the Jewish leaders might be disagreeable. Those
+Jewish leaders took a rather more serious view of the situation because
+they knew that through the purity of His teaching and His obvious power
+to perform miracles, a power but just now once more strikingly
+demonstrated in the raising of Lazarus, He had a powerful hold on the
+people. They, these Jewish leaders, declined a serious examination of
+the claims of such a man in their pride of place and knowledge of the
+Scriptures. They were concerned to sweep Him aside as a possible leader
+in a popular outbreak, not as one whose claim to the Messiahship needed
+a moment's examination.
+
+This intellectual pride is one of the very greatest sins to which
+humanity is tempted. It goes very deep in its destructive force because
+it is a sin, preeminently, of the spiritual nature, of that in us which
+is akin to God, His very image. It is, you will remember, the sin on
+which our Lord centres His chief denunciation. And common as it has
+always been, it has never been so common as it is to-day. Pilate and the
+chief priests are duplicated in every community in the thousands who
+reject Christianity without any adequate examination as incredible in
+view of what they actually hold, or as inconvenient in view of what they
+desire to practice. We have only to read very superficially in the
+current literature of the day, we have only to examine the teaching in
+colleges, to be completely convinced of the vast extent of the revolt
+against the Christian Religion. This revolt is for the most part a
+revolt without adequate examination. It assumes that the Christian
+Religion is contrary to science, or to something else that is
+established as true. It looks at Christianity superficially through the
+eyes of those who reject it and are ignorant of it. The fact is that
+Christianity cannot be understood in any complete sense of the word by
+those who do not practice it. Its "evidence" is no doubt of great force;
+of sufficient force to lead men to experiment; but the actual
+comprehension of Christ as the Saviour of man is an experience. The
+operation of the Holy Spirit in life is necessarily proved, and only
+completely proved, by the action of the Spirit Himself.
+
+Another demonstration of the same pride is seen in the refusal, without
+adequate examination, to accept the Catholic Religion, and the picking
+and choosing among articles of belief and sacraments and practices as to
+what we will use or observe. Men do not like this or that, and they
+therefore decline it. The whole attitude is one of self-will and pride.
+Whatsoever comes to us with a great weight of Christian experience back
+of it certainly deserves careful consideration; it demands of us that we
+treat it as other than a matter of taste. Pride is the commonest of sins
+and the most dangerous for it attacks the very heart of the spiritual
+life. It runs, to be sure, through a broad range of experience and not
+all manifestations of pride are mortal sin; but all manifestations of it
+are subtle and insidious and capable of expansion to an indefinite
+degree. For there is no difference in nature between the spiritual
+attitude of the person who says, "I do not see any sense in that and
+will not do it," when the matter in question may be the Church's rule of
+fasting, and that of the man who before Pilate's Judgment Seat cried
+out, "We have no king but Caesar."
+
+It was in fact because they found their own power and place threatened
+that the Jewish authorities were so determined on our Lord's death.
+Their sin from this point of view was the sin of covetousness. This sin
+reaches its highest point when it is greed for power over other men's
+lives and destinies, when it is ready to sacrifice the lives of others
+in order to gain or maintain its ends. In this broad sense it is the
+most socially destructive of sins. The wars of the world for these many
+years have been wars for commercial supremacy. The world is being
+continually exploited by commercial enterprises which will stop at
+nothing to gain their ends. Some day a history of the last two hundred
+years will be written which will tell the story of the commercial
+expansion of the world we call civilised, and it will be the most
+horrible book that has ever been written. It will contain the story of
+the Spanish colonisation of America. It will contain the history of the
+slave trade. It will contain the history of the Belgian Congo, and of
+the rubber industry in South America. It will contain the history of the
+American Indian and of the opium trade of India--and of many
+like things.
+
+But while we shudder at the world-torturing ways of the pursuit of
+wealth, of the world-wide seeking of money and power, we need not forget
+that the sin of covetousness is as common as any sin can be. It is so
+common and so subtle that it is almost impossible to know how far one is
+a victim of it. It is deliberately taught to us as children under the
+guise of thrift, which if it be a virtue is certainly one that the
+saints have overlooked. We are constantly called on to strike a balance
+between what are the proper needs of life and what is an improper
+concentration of attention upon ourselves. Waste of money, like waste of
+any other energy, is a sin; but it is a very nice question as to what is
+waste. I think it a pretty safe rule to give expenditure the benefit of
+the doubt when it is for others, and to deny it when it is for self.
+
+However, I imagine that those who are conscientiously trying to conduct
+their lives as the children of God will have little difficulty in this
+matter. The real trouble is not in the matter of expenditure but in the
+matter of gain. The ethics of business are very far from being the
+ethics of the Gospel, and we are often frankly told by those engaged in
+business that it cannot be successfully conducted on the basis of the
+ethics of the Gospel, That it is not so conducted is sufficiently
+obvious from a cursory scanning of the advertising columns of any
+newspaper or magazine. The ideal of the business world is success.
+Naturally, one cannot carry on an unsuccessful business, but need it be
+success by all means and to all extents? Are there no limits to the
+methods by which business is to be pushed, except legal limits? If there
+is no room for Christian ethics in the business world there can be but
+one end; competitive business will lead the civilisation that it
+controls to inevitable disaster. Our Lord said: "Take heed and beware of
+covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the
+things that he possesseth." And He went on to speak a parable which has
+come to be known as the Parable of the Rich Fool. The "practical man"
+may be as angered as he likes by this teaching, but in his soul he knows
+that our Lord was right. When such things are pointed out from the
+pulpit the "practical man" says: "What would become of the Church were
+it not for the rich and the successful?" I think that the answer is that
+in that case the Church would no more represent the rich and would have
+a fair chance of once more representing Jesus Christ.
+
+It may seem at the first sight that of the mortal sins lust was not
+represented here upon the Sorrowful Way; but that, I think is but a
+superficial analysis of the nature of lust, thinking only of some
+manifestations of it. There is however one sin that has its roots deep
+in lust which psychologists tell us is one of its commonest
+manifestations, and that is cruelty. Lust is not always, but commonly,
+cruel; and the desire to inflict pain on others is a very common form of
+its expression. There are sights we have seen or incidents we have read
+of, it may be a boy torturing an animal or another child, it may be a
+shouting mass of men about a prize-ring, it may be soldiers sacking a
+town,--when the action seems so senseless that we are at a loss to
+account for it; but the account of it lies in the mystery of our
+sensual nature, in the ultimate animal that we are. The savage joy that
+is being expressed by the participants in such scenes is ultimately a
+sensual joy. These men who delighted in the torture of our Lord were
+sensualists; and there are few of us who if we will watch our selves
+closely will not find traces of the animal showing itself from time to
+time. Of this crowd about the Cross relatively few could have known
+anything about the case of our Lord; but they were fascinated by the
+spectacle of a man's torture. If the executions of criminals were public
+to-day there would undoubtedly be huge crowds to gaze upon them.
+
+It is one of the lessons we learn from the study of sin that what we had
+thought was the essence of the sin was in fact but one of the
+manifestations of it, and that we have to carry our study far before we
+arrive at the ideal, Know thyself. It is always dangerous to assume that
+we know when we have not been at the pains to look at a subject on all
+sides. Our sensual nature needs a very careful discipline, and the mere
+freedom from certain forms of the sin of lust is not the equivalent of
+that purity which is the medium of the Vision of God.
+
+It is the sin of gluttony which is the least obvious in the Way of the
+Cross. There are no doubt plenty of gluttons there, but that is not what
+we are trying to find; we are trying to see how each sin contributed to
+this final act in the drama of our Lord's life, how each sin contributed
+to put men in opposition to our Lord. It is not the actual sin of
+gluttony that we shall find in operation here but certain inevitable
+effects of it, What is the effect of gluttony on the soul of man?
+Absorption in the pursuit of the pleasures that spring from material
+things; the indulgence of the appetite, and the natural result of such
+indulgence which is to render the soul insensitive to the spiritual. The
+man whose motto is, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," puts
+himself out of touch with the spiritual realities of life. He is
+materialistic, whatever may be his philosophy. He wants immediate
+results from life. When he is confronted with our Lord, when he is told
+that our Lord makes demands upon life for self-restraint and
+self-discipline, that He demands that the appetites be curbed rather
+than indulged, he declines allegiance. One can have no doubt that in our
+Lord's time as to-day indifference to His teaching and failure even to
+take in what the Gospel means or how it can be a possible rule of life
+is largely due to the dull spiritual state, outcome of the indulgence of
+the appetite for meat and drink. Men whose brains are clogged by over
+eating, and whose faculties are in a deadened state through the use of
+alcohol, cannot well understand the Gospel of God.
+
+There is abundant evidence of anger all along the Way of the Cross. The
+constant thwarting of the purpose of the Jewish authorities by our Lord,
+His unsparing criticism of them before the people, had stirred them to
+fury. If our Lord had seemed to them to threaten their "place and
+nation" we can understand that they would show toward Him intense
+hostility. Their attitude toward the people whose religious interests
+they were supposed to have in charge was one of utter contempt: "This
+people which knoweth not the Law is cursed." Our Lord's attitude was
+the opposite of all this. It was not, to be sure, as to-day it is
+represented to be an appeal to the people. He was not bidding for
+popular support, but he showed unbounded sympathy with the people; He
+cast His teaching in a form that would appeal to them and draw them to
+him. He made a popular appeal in that He showed Himself understanding of
+the popular mind and without social prejudice of any sort. This setting
+aside of the arrogant authorities of Israel roused them to implacable
+wrath. They felt that our Lord was setting Himself to undermine their
+authority, and as they felt that their authority was "of God" their
+indignation translated itself into terms of zeal for God.
+
+This anger that manages to wear a cloak of virtue is peculiarly
+dangerous to the soul. When we are just ordinarily mad over some offence
+committed against us it is no doubt a sin; but it is not a sin of the
+same malignity as when we feel that we can go any lengths because we are
+not angry on our own behalf, then our anger almost becomes an act of
+religion in our eyes. We have become the defenders of a cause. No doubt
+there is such a thing as "righteous indignation," but it is not a virtue
+that we are compelled to practice, and we would do well to leave it
+alone as much as possible lest our indignation exceed our righteousness,
+and we indentify our personal interests with the cause of God.
+
+The worst feature of tempermental flare-ups is the testimony they bear
+to our lack of discipline. When we excuse ourselves or others on the
+ground that action is "temperamental" we are in fact no more than
+restating the fact that there is sore need of discipline; and there is
+no more ground for excusing one variety of temperament for its lack of
+discipline than an other. In fact, the more inclined a temperament is to
+certain sins, the more necessity there is for the appropriate sort of
+training. People without self-control, who are constantly losing their
+temper, are public nuisances and ought to be suppressed. There is the
+worst kind of arrogance in the assumption that I do not have to control
+myself and can speak and act as I like. No one, whatever his position,
+has the right to ignore the feelings of others; and the more the
+position is one of authority, exempting him from a certain kind of
+criticism, the more is he bound to criticise himself and examine himself
+as to this particular sin.
+
+There are sins under this caption which do not contain much malice but
+are disturbing to life, and they are especially disturbing to one's
+spiritual life. There are peevish, complaining people, who do not seem
+to mean much harm, but keep themselves in a state of dissatisfaction
+which renders their spiritual growth impossible. They grow old without
+any of the grace and beauty of character which should mark a Christian
+old age. One knows old people who have been in intimate contact with the
+Church and the sacraments for many years but do not show any signs of
+having reached our Lord through them. They are dissatisfied and
+complaining and critical and generally disagreeable so that the task of
+those who take care of them is rendered very disheartening. What is the
+trouble? Has there never been any true spiritual discipline, but only a
+certain superficial conformity to a spiritual rule? When old age comes
+the will is weakened and the sense of self-respect undermined, with the
+result that what the person has all along been in reality, now comes to
+the surface and is, perhaps for the first time, visible to every one.
+
+Envy is closely related to pride on the one hand and to covetousness on
+the other. It begins in the perception of another's superiority, and
+carries its victim through the feeling of hurt pride at the contrast
+with himself to desire for that which is not his own. The envious person
+covets the qualities of possessions of another, while vividly denying
+that they are in fact superior to his own, except, it may be, in certain
+apparent and not very valuable aspects. The contrast between the
+superior and the inferior has one of two results: either the inferior is
+stirred to admiration, or he is stirred to a greater or less degree
+of envy.
+
+It was thus that contact with our Lord _revealed_ the reality of men. It
+was a very true judgment to associate with him. His apostles were simple
+men who never thought of putting themselves in comparison with Him: the
+more they knew Him the more wonderful He seemed to them. We feel all
+through the Gospel story what an overwhelming impression His personality
+made upon men. There is no criticism raised on His character from any
+point of view. His enemies fell back on the accusation of blasphemy
+growing out of His claims, an accusation that would be true, if the
+claims were not true. What we really discover in those who oppose Him is
+envy, envy of the influence He exercises over others, envy stirred by
+His obvious superiority to themselves.
+
+Envy is one of the sins of which we are least conscious. When people
+affirm that they envy others this or that: their leisure, their beauty,
+or what not, they clearly do not envy them at all, but are mildly
+covetous of the things that they see others possess. Where envy does
+show its presence and where we do not recognise its nature, is in that
+horrible inclination to depreciate others which is visible in certain
+characters. They seem never to hear another mentioned but they try to
+think of something which limits the praise bestowed upon him, or
+altogether counteracts it. It seems to be an instinctive hostility to
+superiority as involving an implied criticism of one's own inferiority.
+It is that curious love of the worst that lies at the root of gossip.
+
+And what about the last of the deadly sins, the sin of sloth? One is
+almost tempted to say that it is at once the least obvious and the most
+destructive of all the deadly sins. That would no doubt be somewhat of
+an exaggeration, but it would not be very far off the truth. It is
+spiritual sloth that prevents us from considering as we should the
+spiritual problems that are presented to us, and therefore prevents us
+from gaining their promise. It is the quality in humanity that blocks
+the consideration of the new on the ground that we already know and can
+gain nothing by further exertion. The Jewish religious leaders declined
+the intellectual and spiritual effort of considering our Lord's claims;
+they just set them aside unconsidered. And is not that just what we are
+constantly doing, and what constitutes the most pressing danger of the
+spiritual life? We will not consider the future as the field of
+constantly new opportunity and therefore new stages of growth. We do not
+want to make the effort that is implied in that attitude.
+
+Our sloth binds us hand and foot and delivers us to the enemy. There are
+no doubt some who cry out: "But I am not at all slothful; I am busy from
+morning to night; of whatever else I may be guilty, it is not of sloth!"
+My friend, busy people are quite often the most slothful people that
+there are. They are busy dodging their rightful duties and the
+opportunities that God offers them, all day long. Have you never
+discovered that when you had something that you ought to do and do not
+want to do, that the easiest method by which you can still your
+conscience is to make yourself terribly busy about something else, and
+then to tell yourself that the reason why you have not done what you
+know that you ought to have done is that really you have not had time?
+Do you not know that being busy is one of the most effective screens
+that you can put between your conscience and your obligation? Do you not
+know that tens of thousands of men and women to-day are putting the
+screens of good works, of social service of some sort, between their
+souls and the worship of God and the practice of the sacraments? Beware
+lest while you wear yourself out with activity your besetting sin be
+found to be sloth!
+
+And shall we find there on the Way of Sorrow the virtues that are the
+opposite of the Seven Sins? Perhaps, if we had time to look, or had
+sufficient knowledge of the crowd that lines the way. There are certain
+women over there wailing and lamenting; perhaps they could help us. In
+any case we know that there is one woman who has succeeded in keeping
+near whose love of Jesus is so intense that it will enable her to
+overcome all obstacles and be near Him to the very last. Jesus as He
+staggers along the way and falls at length under the intolerable weight
+of the Cross is the embodiment of all virtues and of all spiritual
+accomplishment, and his blessed Mother through His grace has been kept
+pure from all sin. She will show the perfection of purely human
+accomplishment. She is the best that humanity in union with the
+Incarnate Son has brought forth. We have seen--we have caught glimpses
+of her life through what the Scriptures tell us of her--how completely
+she has responded to grace in all the actions of her life. Not much do
+the Scriptures say, but what they do say is like the opening of windows
+through which we catch passing aspects of her life which we feel are
+perfectly characteristic and revealing.
+
+And we have seen there, or we may see, may we not? the virtues which are
+the work of the Holy Spirit enabling us to overcome the deadly sins. We
+have seen the humility with which, without thought of self, she answered
+God's call to be the Mother of His Son. We have seen the liberality with
+which she places her whole life at God's disposal, withholding nothing
+from the divine service. Purity undefiled had been God's gift to her
+from the first moment of her existence. Hers too was that meekness
+which willingly accepted all that the appointment of God brought her,
+showing in her acceptance no withholding of the will, no trace of
+self-assertion. Hers was the great virtue of temperance, the power of
+self-restraint and self-discipline, which suppressed all movements of
+nature that would be contrary to God's will. There too was the love of
+the brother and of the neighbour which is the contrary of envy; and
+there was the eagerness in fulfilling the will of God which is the
+opposite of sloth.
+
+We have then two spotless examples,--how shall we not be stirred to
+follow them! There is Jesus manifesting the qualities of His sinless
+life, of the life of God's election, of humanity as God wills it to be,
+and as it ultimately will be when it gives itself to His will; and Mary
+in whom we see the work of God's grace perfectly accomplished by virtue
+of her perfect response to the love of her Sen. We look at these two
+lives and we see what is possible for us. We do not say, we cannot say,
+these things are too wonderful and great for me. We can only say,
+through the grace of God which is given me, "I can do all things." It is
+not my inevitable destiny that I should abide a sinner. I have the
+choice of being a sinner or a saint.
+
+     MARY: Ever I cried full piteously:
+     "Lordings, what have ye i-brought?
+     It is my Son I love so much:
+     For God's sake bury Him nought."
+     They would not stop though that I swooned,
+     Till that He in the grave were brought.
+     Rich clothes they around him wound:
+     And ever mercy I them besought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     They said there was no better way
+     But take and bury him full snel.
+     They looked on my cousin John
+     For sorrow both a-down we fell--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     By Him we fell that was My Child.
+     His sweet mouth well full oft I kissed.
+     John saw I was in point to spill,
+     That nigh mine heart did come to break.
+     He held his sorrow in his heart still
+     And mildly then to me did speak:
+     "Mary, if it be thy will
+     Go we hence; the Maudeleyn eke."
+     He led me to a chamber then
+     Where my Son was used to be,--
+     John and the Maudeleyn also;
+     For nothing would they from me flee.
+     I looked about me everywhere:
+     I could nowhere my Sonè see.
+     We sat us down in sorrow and woe
+     And 'gan to weep all three.
+
+     From St. Bernard's Lamentation on Christ's Passion. Engl. version,
+     probably 13th Cent, by Richard Maydestone.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+     THE CRUCIFIXION
+
+     And they crucified him.
+
+     S. Matt. XXVII, 35.
+
+     In as much as we have no confidence because of our many sins,
+     do thou, O Virgin Mother of God, beseech him who was born of
+     thee; for a Mother's supplication availeth much to gain the
+     benignity of the Master. Despise not the prayers of sinners,
+     O all-august, for merciful and mighty to save is he, who
+     vouchsafed to suffer for us.
+
+     BYZANTINE.
+
+We have followed the Way of Sorrows to the very end and now stand on
+Calvary watching by the Cross, waiting for the death of the Son of God.
+The mystery of iniquity is consummated here where man in open rebellion
+against his God crucifies the Incarnate Son. Here is fulfilled the
+saying: "He came unto His own and His own received Him not." All that
+man can do to prove his own degredation he has done. In the person of
+Pilate he has condemned to death a man whom he knows to be innocent. The
+representative of human justice has denied justice for the sake of his
+own personal ends. In the person of Herod he has permitted the insult
+and abuse of One of whom he knows no ill, and has displayed toward Him
+wanton and brutal cruelty. In the person of the Jewish authorities he
+has rejected the Messenger of the God whom he recognises as his God, and
+will not listen to the voice of prophecy because he finds his personal
+ends countered by the fulfilment of the promises of the religion whose
+subject he professes to be. In the person of the disciples he shows
+himself too cowardly and self-regarding to stand by his innocent Master
+and to throw in his lot with Him. In the person of the people he shows
+himself cruel, hardened, indifferent to suffering and to justice, ready
+to be made the tool of unscrupulous politicians, unstable and ignorant.
+As we look on, we succeed in retaining any shred of respect for
+humanity only through the contemplation of the exceptions--of S. John
+and the little group of women who are faithful to the end: above all in
+the sight of blessed Mary standing by the Cross of her Son.
+
+It is the will of God that our Lord should follow the human lot to the
+very depth of its possible sufferings. There are no doubt many
+sufferings of humanity that our Lord does not share, they are those
+which spring out of personal sin. He in Whom was no sin could not suffer
+those things which spring from one's own wrong doing. That is one broad
+distinction between the burdens of the crosses on Calvary, a distinction
+which the penitent thief caught easily when he said to his reviling
+fellow-criminal, "Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same
+condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our
+deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss." And in as much as a great
+part of what we suffer is plainly just, the pain we bear is intensified
+by the knowledge that what we are is the outcome of what we have been.
+But our Lord, while He does not suffer as the result of His own sin,
+does suffer as the result of sin in that He wills to bear the result of
+men's sin by putting Himself at their mercy. He bears the burden of sin
+to the uttermost, looking down from the Cross at the faces of these men
+whose salvation He is making possible if in the days to come they will
+associate themselves with Him. One wonders how many of those who saw Him
+crucified came, before they died, to accept Him as the Saviour and their
+God. There must have been many wonderful first Communions in the early
+Church when those who had rejected Jesus in His humility came to receive
+Him glorified.
+
+But as we look at this scene of the dying we feel that the powers of
+evil are working their uttermost, they are driving their slaves to
+incredible sins. One feels the tremendous power that evil is as one
+looks at these human beings who are body and soul wholly under its
+dominion. The Power of Darkness appears utterly in control of the world
+of humanity; but we know that this moment in which its triumph seems
+most complete is in fact the moment in which its defeat is at hand. The
+victory that is being won is the victory of the Vanquished: and the
+moment when the victory of evil seems assured by the dying of Jesus, is
+in fact the moment when the chains of the slaves of sin are broken, and
+men who will to be free are henceforth free indeed. From that moment a
+new freedom is within the reach of men, the freedom which comes to them
+through their participation in the redemption wrought for them by God.
+Presently S. John will announce the great message of freedom to the
+Church, a message that he will tell in his own wonderful simplicity, a
+simplicity which almost deceives us as to its unfathomable depth of love
+and mystery: "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and
+this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.... We
+know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not: but He that was begotten
+of God keepeth him, and the evil one toucheth him not. And we know that
+we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one. And we know
+that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we
+may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His
+Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life."
+
+This is what the dying of Jesus achieved for us, that we should be free
+as men had never been free, and that we should be strong as men had
+never been strong.
+
+On their crosses the thieves agonise in the realisation of the sin that
+has brought them there; but our Lord, Who is free from sin, looks out on
+the scene before Him in a wonderful detachment from His personal
+suffering. Being without sin our Lord is without egotism, and never
+treats life from that purely personal standpoint that we are constantly
+tempted to adopt. Our own needs, our own interests, occupy the
+foreground and determine the judgment; and we are rarely able to see in
+dealing with the concrete case that our own interests are ultimately
+indentical with the interests of the whole Body. The lesson that if one
+member suffer, all the members suffer with it, that we are partners in
+joy and sorrow alike, is almost impossible of assimilation by the
+radical individualists that we are. Our theories break down before the
+test of actuality. But our Lord was not an individualist. He, in His
+relations with men, is the Head of the Body; and He admits no division
+of interests between His members. He therefore can think of the needs of
+others while He Himself is undergoing the last torture of death. He can
+impartially judge the separate cases of His members; He can attend to
+the spiritual welfare of a needy soul; He can think of His own death as
+an act of sacrifice willed by God, and not as a matter concerning
+Himself alone; and in doing these things He teaches us a much-needed
+lesson of the handling of life.
+
+No lesson is to-day more needed because we are more and more being
+influenced to treat life as a private matter. I have spoken of this
+before and need not elaborate it now; but I do want to insist, at
+whatever risk of repetition, that a Christian must, if his religion mean
+anything at all, look on the interests of the Body, not as a separate
+group of interests to which he is privileged or obligated to contribute
+such help as seems to him from time to time appropriate, but as in fact
+his own primary interests because his true significance in the world is
+gained through his membership in the Body. His life is hid with Christ
+in God and his conversation is in heaven. The life that he now lives in
+the flesh he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him and
+gave Himself for him. To assert separate interests is to break the
+essential relation of his life. He is nothing apart from the Body but a
+dry and withered branch fit for the burning. No doubt our egotism rebels
+against this view of life, but it is certain that it is the view of the
+Christian Religion. If we would realise the ideals of the Religion we
+must act as those who are in constant relations with the other members
+of the Body and whose life gets its significance through those
+relations.
+
+There is no more outstanding lesson of our Lord's life than this. It is
+true from whichever angle you look at it. If you think of our Lord as a
+divine Person it is at once evident how much of His meaning is included
+in His relations to the other Persons of the Blessed Trinity. He claims
+no independent will; it is the will of the Father that He has come to
+do. He claims no original work: it is the work that the Father has given
+Him to do that He is straightened until He accomplish. He has no
+individual possession, but all things that the Father has are His.
+Considered as God, our Lord is One Person in the one divine nature, no
+Unitarian interpretation of Him is possible. On the other hand, if you
+look at Him as Incarnate, as having identified Himself with humanity, He
+is in that respect made one with His brethren. He has made their
+interests His, and as their new Head is opening for them the gate of the
+future. He is inviting them into union with Himself, that in the status
+of His "brethren" and "friends" they may be also the true children of
+the heavenly Father. There is no hint anywhere that these things may be
+accomplished apart from Him, in individual isolation: indeed, if they
+could be so accomplished the Incarnation would be meaningless. He is the
+Way and no one cometh to the Father but by Him. He is the Truth, and no
+one knows the Father but he to whom the Son reveals Him. He is the Life,
+and no one spiritually lives except through His self-impartation. "He
+that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life. He that
+eateth me, even he shall live by me." In this outlook from the Cross
+which we recognise in our Blessed Lord when, forgetting His own
+sufferings in His appreciation of the needs of others, we see Him still
+fulfilling His ministry of mercy and of sympathy, we are certain that
+His eyes would rest upon one group which could not fail to pierce His
+heart with its pathos and tragedy. Our Lord's love is not a general,
+impersonal love of humanity; it is always love of a person. He no doubt
+felt a special love for this thief who appealed to Him from the cross by
+His side. In the whole course of His life our Lord had shown His oneness
+with us in that He loved special people in a special way. He loved
+Lazarus and his sisters, He loved S. John. Above all others He loved His
+Blessed Mother. And now looking down from the Cross He sees that the
+disciple whom He loved was succeeded in leading His mother into the very
+shadow of the Cross. How S. Mary had made her way there we do not know:
+only love knows how it triumphs over its obstacles and comes forth
+victorious. There is Blessed Mary, looking up into the face so scarred
+and bleeding, and there is the Son, looking down through the blinding
+blood into the face of the mother. This is the supreme human tragedy of
+Calvary. We can only stand and watch the exchange of love.
+
+And then comes the word--the word, by the way, which when it was spoken
+years ago in Cana of Galilee, men have interpreted as a harsh and
+rebuking word, with how much truth this scene tells--then comes the
+word: "Woman, behold thy son." In His love He gives her that which He
+had so much loved, the friendship of S. John. He brings together those
+who had so supremely loved Him in an association which would support
+them both in the trial of their loss. "Woman, behold thy son; behold thy
+mother." Bitter as was their sorrow in this hour, we know that they were
+marvellously comforted by this power of love which is able to transcend
+suffering and death. We know, because we know how utterly our Lord is
+one with us, that it was much to Him to look on the face that bent over
+Him in the Manger in Bethlehem. We know, because we know the perfect
+woman that was Mary, that there was deep joy as well as deep agony in
+being able to stand there at the last beneath the Cross.
+
+Do you think that we are going too far when we see in S. Mary not simply
+the mother of our Lord, but when we also see in her a certain
+representative character? Does she not represent us in one way and S.
+John represent us in another, in this supreme exchange of love? Do we
+not feel that in S. John we have been recommended to the love and care
+of Mary who is our mother? Do we not feel that in S. John the mother has
+been committed to our love and care? Surely, because we are members of
+her Son we have a special relation to S. Mary, and a special claim upon
+her, if it be permitted to express it in that way. It is no empty form
+of words when we call her mother, no exaltation of sentimentalism. The
+title represents a very real relation of love. It brings home to us that
+the love of Mary is as near infinite as the love of a creature can be,
+and that like the love of her Son it is an unselfish love. She is
+necessarily interested in all the members of the Body, and their cares
+and joys and sorrows she is glad to make her own. She is very close to
+us in her love and sympathy; she is very ready to help us with her
+prayers. We never go to her for succour but she hears us. "Behold thy
+son," her divine Son said to her on the Cross in His agony, and all who
+are members of that Son are her sons too. Her place in heaven above all
+creatures, most highly favoured as she is, is a place to which our
+prayers penetrate, and never penetrate unheard. For that other Son,
+through whose merits she is what she is, whose Face she ever beholds as
+the Face alike of her Redeemer and her Child, is ever ready to hear her
+intercessions for us because they come to Him with the power and the
+insight that perfect purity and perfect sympathy alone can give. So for
+us there is intense personal consolation in this word: "Behold
+thy mother."
+
+But there is another side to this committal. It is mutual: "Behold thy
+son." If we can see ourselves in S. John, committed to the Blessed
+Mother, we can also see ourselves in S. John to whom the blessed mother
+is committed. "Behold thy mother." There is a sense in which the blessed
+mother is committed to us; to-day she is our care. We see the
+fulfillment of this trust in the love and reverence wherewith
+Christendom from the beginning has surrounded S. Mary. It has accepted
+the charge with a passionate devotion. The growth of devotion to her is
+recorded in the vast literature of Mariology which comes to us from all
+parts and all eras of the Catholic Church. The details of the expression
+of this devotion have been wrought out through the centuries with
+loving care, and the result is that wherever there is a Catholic
+conception of religion, either in East or West, there is a grateful
+response to our Lord's trust of His Blessed mother to His Church in the
+person of S. John.
+
+We feel, do we not? that it is one of the great privileges of our
+spiritual life that we have found a personal part in this trust, that it
+is permitted us to preserve and hand on this reverence for Blessed Mary,
+and in so doing to gain personal contact with her as a spiritual power
+in the Kingdom of God. It means much to us that we can have the love and
+sympathy which are blended with her intercession, that we can associate
+our prayers with hers in the time of our need. Much as we value the
+sympathy and prayers of our friends here, we cannot but feel that in
+Mary we have a friend whose helpfulness is stimulated by a great love
+and directed by deep spiritual insight into the reality of our needs. We
+turn therefore to her with the certainty of her co-operation.
+
+Our Lord on the Cross had now fulfilled His mission in the care of
+individual persons, had prayed for His tormentors, had forgiven the
+penitent thief, and had commended those who were the special objects of
+His love to one another, and could now turn His thoughts away from earth
+to the love of the Father. His last words are intimate words to Him.
+They express the agony that tears His soul as the Face of the Father is
+for a moment hidden, and the peace of an accomplished work as He
+surrenders Himself into the hands of the Father that sent Him. He who
+had been our example all His life, showing us how to meet life, is our
+example in death, showing us how to meet death.
+
+But just wherein does the dying of Christ become an example for us? This
+final surrender to the Father of a will that had never been separate
+from the Father,--what can we derive from all that? There are many lines
+of approach and application. I can only touch on one or two:--
+
+"I have glorified Thee on the earth," our Lord said in the last
+wonderful prayer, "I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do."
+And here on the Cross He repeats, "It is finished." When we think of
+this we are impressed with the steadiness with which our Lord pursued
+His purpose, with the way He concentrated His whole life upon His work.
+He declined to be drawn aside by anything irrelevant to it. People came
+to Him with all sorts of requests, from the request that He will settle
+a disputed inheritance to the request that He will become their king;
+and He puts them all aside as having no pertinence to His mission. It is
+interesting to go through the Gospel and note just what are the details
+of this winnowing process; mark what our Lord accepts as relevant to His
+mission and what not. He is never too occupied or tired to attend to
+what belongs to His work. An ill old woman or idiot child is important
+to Him and He attends to them; but He declines the sort of work that
+will involve Him and His mission in controversy and politics. He is not
+a reformer of society but a reformer of men. He knows that only by the
+reformation of men can society be reformed.
+
+There is no doubt much to be learned from the study of our Lord's method
+of the limits of the social and political activity of His Church. It has
+constantly fallen a victim to the temptation to undertake the reform of
+the world by some other means than the conversion of it. It has shown
+itself quite willing to be made "a judge and divider." It has not always
+declined the invitation it has received to assume the purple. "Your
+business is to reform this miserable world which so sadly and so
+obviously needs you," men say to it; "You are not living up to your
+principles and you are neglecting your duty by not supporting this great
+movement for the betterment of the race," others say. Still others urge,
+"You are losing great masses of men through your inexplicable failure to
+adopt their cause." And the Church in the whole course of its history
+has constantly yielded to this temptation, and has not seen until too
+late that in so doing it was making itself the tool or the cat's-paw of
+one interest or another whose sole interest in religion was the
+possibility of exploiting the influence of the Church. In the stupid
+hope of forwarding its spiritual interests the Church has entangled
+itself with the responsibilities of temporal power; it has made itself
+the backer of "the divine right of kings"; and it has found itself bound
+hand and foot in the character of a national or state Church; and with a
+curious incapacity to learn anything from experience is now
+enthusiastically cheering for democracy! Poor Church, whose leaders are
+so constantly misleaders.
+
+It is all due to the hoary temptation to try to get to one's end by some
+sort of a short cut: "All these things will I give you if you will fall
+down and worship me." Our Lord knew that Satan could not really give Him
+the ends He was seeking; but His followers are constantly confident that
+he can, and are therefore his constant and ready tools for this or that
+party or interest. They sell themselves to monarchy or democracy, to
+capital or labour, with the same guileless innocence of what is
+happening to them, with the same simple-minded incapacity to learn
+anything from the lessons of the past. There are no short cuts to
+spiritual ends, and those ends can never be accomplished by secular
+means. The interests of the Kingdom of God can never be forwarded by
+alliance with the powers of this world; the interests of particular
+persons or parties in the Church may be--but that is quite
+another thing.
+
+The lesson is one that is not without application to the individual
+life. There again the tendency to mind something other than one's own
+business is almost ineradicable. We have before us the work of building
+our spiritual house, of finishing the work that the Father has given us
+to do, of carrying to a successful conclusion the work of our
+sanctification. In view of the experience of nearly two thousand years
+of Christianity and of our own personal experience, that would seem a
+sufficiently difficult and obligatory work to occupy the undivided
+energies of a life-time. But we are accustomed to treat this primary
+business of life quite as though it were a parergon, a thing to play
+with in our unoccupied hours, the fad of a collector rather than the
+supreme interest of an immortal being. That spiritual results are no
+oftener achieved than they are can occasion no surprise when one
+understands the sort of spirit wherewith they are approached. If the
+average man adopted toward his business the attitude he adopts toward
+his religion he would be bankrupt within a week,--and he knows it. You
+know that the attention you are paying to religion and the sort of
+energy and sacrifice you are putting into it are insufficient to secure
+any sort of a result worth having. Spiritually speaking, your life is an
+example of misdirected and dissipated energy. There is no spiritual
+result because there is no continuous and energetic effort in a
+spiritual direction. You are not like a master-builder planning and
+erecting a house. You are like a child playing with a box of blocks who
+begins to build a house with them and, when it is half built, is
+attracted by something else and runs after that--not even waiting to put
+the blocks back into the box!
+
+Life, no doubt, this modern city life into which we are plunged, is
+terribly distracting. Concentration upon a single aim is hard to attain.
+So we plead in our excuse, but the excuse is a false one and we know it.
+We know it because we know many people who have achieved the sort of
+concentration and simplicity of aim that we complain of as so difficult.
+They to be sure have other ends than those we claim to be ours, but that
+would not seem to be important. By far the greater part of the male
+population of this city is intensely concentrated in money making. I do
+not believe that I have overheard during the last year two men talking
+in a car or on the street who were not talking about money. There is a
+good enough example of the possibility of concentrating on a single end
+under the conditions of our life. There are other people, you know some
+of them, whose lives are devoted in the most thorough manner to the
+pursuit of pleasure. They find no difficulty in such concentration, and
+they afford an even better example of what we are discussing than the
+money-makers. The money-maker says, "I have to live and my family has to
+live, and we cannot live unless I devote myself to business. It is all
+very well to talk about spiritual interests, but those are the plain
+common sense facts. A man who spends all his time on religion will find
+it pretty difficult to live in New York." Very well, that seems
+unanswerable. But go back to the men and women whose sole interest is
+amusement--how do they live? In some way they seem to have so succeeded
+in subordinating business to pleasure that they get what they want, and
+they somehow escape starvation!
+
+There, I fancy, is the explanation--they get what they want. In a broad
+way we all get what we want. We accomplish in some degree at least the
+ends which we make the supreme ends of life. We are back therefore where
+we started: What are our supreme ends? Are they in fact spiritual? Have
+we mastered the technique of the Christian life sufficiently to be
+single-eyed and pure-hearted in our pursuit of life's ends? Are we
+devoted to the aim of manifesting the glory of God and finishing the
+work that He has given us to do?
+
+This, once more, was the secret of our Lord's life, and it is the secret
+of all those who have at all succeeded in imitating Him. They have
+followed Him with singleness of purpose. They have felt life to be
+before all else a vocation to manifest the will of God and to finish a
+given work. That was the attitude of our Blessed Mother; she began on
+that note: "Behold the hand-maid of the Lord; be it unto me according to
+thy word." It was the Gospel that she preached: "Whatsoever he saith
+unto you, do it." Her whole life was a response--the response of love
+to love.
+
+That no doubt, goes to the heart of the spiritual problem. If we are to
+accomplish anything at all in the way of spiritual development, if we
+are to conduct life in simplicity toward spiritual ends, it will only be
+when the source of life's energy is found in love. He who does not love
+has no compelling motive toward God and no abiding principle to control
+life. If we conceive the Christian life as a task that is forced upon
+us, and which in some way we are bound to fulfil, we may be sure that
+the way in which we shall fulfil it will be weak and halting. We may be
+as conscientious as you please, but we shall not be able to concentrate
+on a work which is merely a work of duty and not the embodiment of a
+great love. Our primary activity should be devout meditation and study
+of our Lord's life, with prayer for guidance and help, till something
+of the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, till we feel our hearts
+burn within us and our spirits glow and we become able to offer
+ourselves, soul and body, a living sacrifice unto Him.
+
+     MARY:       I cried: "Maudeleyn, help now!
+                 My Son hath loved full well thee;
+                 Pray Him that I may die,
+                 That I not forgotten be!
+                 Seest thou, Maudeleyn, now
+                 My Son is hanged on a tree,
+                 Yet alive am I and thou,--
+                 And thou, thou prayest not for me!"
+
+     MAUDELEYN  said: "I know no red,
+                Care hath smitten my heart sore.
+                I stand, I see my Lord nigh dead;
+                And thy weeping grieveth me more.
+                Come with me; I will thee lead
+                Into the Temple here before
+                For thou hast now i-wept full yore."
+
+     MARY:      "I ask thee, Maudeleyn, where is that place,--
+                In plain or valley or in hill?
+                Where I may hide in any case
+                That no sorrow come me till.
+                For He that all my joy was,
+                Now death with Him will do its will;
+                For me no better solace is
+                Than just to weep, to weep my fill."
+                   The Maudeleyn comforted me tho.
+                   To lead me hence, she said, was best:
+                   But care had smitten my heart so
+                   That I might never have no rest.
+
+               "Sister, wherever that I go
+               The woe of Him is in my breast,
+               While my Sone hangeth so
+               His pains are in mine own heart fast.
+               Should I let Him hangen there
+               Let my Son alone then be?
+               Maudeleyn, think, unkind I were
+               If He should hang and I should flee."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+               I bade them go where was their will,
+               This Maudeleyn and everyone,
+               And by myself remain I will
+               For I will flee for no man.
+
+     From St. Bernard's "Lamentation On Christ's Passion."
+
+     Engl. version, 13th Cent., by Richard Maydestone.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE DESCENT AND BURIAL
+
+     And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean
+     linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had
+     hewn out in the rock.
+
+     S. Matt. XXVII, 59, 60.
+
+     It is meet in very truth to bless thee the Theotokos, the
+     ever-blessed and all-immaculate and Mother of our God.
+     Honoured above the Cherubim, incomparably more glorious than
+     the Seraphim, thou who without stain gavest birth to God the
+     Word, and art truly Mother of God, we magnify thee.
+
+     BYZANTINE.
+
+The end had come--so it must have seemed to those who had loved and
+followed our Lord. As they came back from the burial, those of them who
+had remained true to the end, as they came out of their hiding places,
+those others who forsook Him and fled, they met in that "Upper Room"
+which was already consecrated by so many experiences. They came back
+from Joseph's Garden, S. John leading the blessed Mother, the Magdalen
+and the other Mary following, S. Peter came from whatever obscure corner
+he had found safety in. The other Apostles came one by one, a
+frightened, disheartened group, shame-faced and doubtful as to what
+might next befall them. The thing that to us seems strangest of all is
+that no one seems to have taken in the meaning of our Lord's words about
+His resurrection. Not even S. Mary herself appears to have seen any
+light through the surrounding darkness. I suppose that so much of what
+our Lord taught them was unintelligible until after the coming of the
+Holy Spirit that they rarely felt sure that they understood His meaning;
+and when the meaning was so unprecedented as that involved in His
+sayings about the resurrection we can understand that they should have
+been so little influenced by them.
+
+S. Mary's grief would have been so deep, so overwhelming, that she would
+have been unable to think of the future at all save as a dreary waste
+of pain. She could only think that her Son who was all to her, was dead.
+She had stood by the Cross through all the agony of His dying: she had
+heard His last words. That final word to her had sunk very deep into her
+heart. She had once more felt His Body in her arms as it was taken down
+from the Cross; and she had followed to the place where was a Garden and
+a new tomb wherein man had never yet lain, there she had seen the Body
+placed and hastily cared for, as much as the shortness of the time on
+the Passover Eve would permit. And then she had gone away, not caring at
+all where she was taken, with but one thought monotonously beating in
+her brain,--He is dead, He is dead.
+
+It would not be possible in such moments calmly to recall what He
+Himself had taught about death. Death for the moment would mean what it
+had always meant to religious people of her time and circle. What that
+was we have very clearly presented to us in the talk with Martha that
+our Lord had near the place where Lazarus lay dead. There is a fuller
+knowledge than we find explicit in the Old Testament, showing a growth
+in the understanding of the Revelation in the years that fall between
+the close of the Old Testament canon and the coming of our Lord. There
+is a belief in survival to be followed by resurrection at the last day.
+That would no doubt be St. Mary's belief about death. That is still the
+belief of many Christians to-day. "I know that he shall rise again in
+the resurrection at the last day." There are still many who think that
+they have accepted the full Revelation of God in Christ who have not
+appreciated the vast difference that the triumph of Christ over death
+has made for us here and now.
+
+So we have no difficulty in understanding the gloom that fell on the
+Apostolic circle, accentuated as it was by the very vivid fear that at
+any moment they might hear the approaching feet of the Jewish and Roman
+officials and the knock of armed hands upon the door. What to do? How
+escape? Had they so utterly misunderstood and misinterpreted Christ that
+this is the natural outcome of His movement? Had they been the victims
+of foolish hopes and of a baseless ambition when they saw in Him the
+Christ, the one who should at this time restore again the Kingdom to
+Israel? They had persistently clung to this nationalistic interpretation
+of His work although He had never encouraged it; but it was the only
+meaning that they were able to see in it. And now all their expectations
+had collapsed, and they were left hopeless and leaderless to face the
+consequences of a series of acts that had ended in the death of their
+Master and would end, they knew not how, for them. Was it at all likely
+that the Jewish authorities having disposed of the leader in a dangerous
+movement would be content to let the followers go free? Would they not
+rather seek to wipe out the last traces of the movement in blood?
+
+So they would have thought, gathered in that Upper Room, while outside
+the Jewish authorities were keeping the Passover. What a Passover it was
+to them with this nightmare of a rebellion which threatened their whole
+place and power passed away. What mutual congratulations were theirs on
+the clever way in which the whole matter had been handled. There had
+been a moment when they were on the very point of failure, when Pilate
+was ready to let Jesus go free. That was their moment of greatest
+danger; and they took their courage in both hands and threw the
+challenge squarely in the face of the cowardly Governor: "If thou let
+this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend!" The chief priests knew their
+man, and they carried their plan against him with a determined hand,
+declining to accept any compromise, anything less than the death of
+Jesus. Great was the rejoicing; hearty were the mutual congratulations
+in the official circles of Jerusalem. It had been long since they had
+celebrated so wonderful a Passover as that!
+
+So limited, so mistaken, is the human outlook on life. They had but to
+await another night's passing and all would be changed. But in the
+meantime the position of the disciples was pitiful. They were in that
+state of dull, hopeless discouragement that is one of the most painful
+of human states. It is a state to which we who are Christians do from
+time to time fall victims with much less excuse. We are hopeless, we say
+and feel. We look at the future, at the problems with which we are
+fronted, and we see no ray of light, no suggestion of a solution. We
+have been robbed of what we most valued and life looks wholly blank to
+us. For those others there was this of excuse,--they did not know Jesus
+risen, they did not know the power of the resurrection life. For us
+there is no such excuse because we have a sure basis of hope in our
+knowledge of the meaning of the Lord.
+
+Hope is one of the great trilogy of Christian Virtues, the gift to
+Christians of God the Holy Ghost. As Christians we have the virtue of
+hope, the question is whether we will excercise it or no. It is one of
+the many fruits of our being in a state of grace. Many blunder when they
+think of hope in that they confound it with an optimistic feeling about
+the future. We hear of hopeful persons and we know that by the
+description is meant persons who are confident "that everything will be
+all right," when there seems no ground at all for thinking so. They have
+a "buoyant temperament," by which I suppose is meant a temperament which
+soars above facts. That not very intelligent attitude has nothing to do
+with the Christian virtue of hope. Hope is born of our relation to God.
+It is the conviction: "God is on my side; I will not fear what man can
+do unto me." It is the serene and untroubled trust of one who knows that
+he is safe in the hands of God, and that his life is really ordered by
+the will and Providence of God.
+
+This virtue, had they possessed it, would have carried the disciples
+through the crisis of our Lord's death. They had had sufficient
+experience of Him to know that they might utterly rely on Him in all the
+circumstances of their lives. He had always sustained them and carried
+them through all crises. They had often been puzzled by Him, no doubt;
+they had felt helpless to fathom much of His teaching, but they had
+slowly arrived at certain conclusions about Him which He Himself had
+confirmed. On that day at Caesarea Phillipi they had reached the
+conclusion of His Messiahship, a slumbering conviction had broken into
+flame and light in the great confession of S. Peter. The meaning of
+Messiahship was a part of their national religious tradition; and
+although in some important respects mistaken, they yet, one would think,
+have been led to perfect trust in our Lord when they acknowledged His
+Messianic claims. But death? They could not get over the apparent
+finality of death. But, again, perhaps we are not very far beyond this
+in our understanding of it. To us still death seems very final.
+
+But it was just that sense of its finality--of its constituting a
+hopeless break in the continuity of existence--that our Lord was engaged
+in removing during these days which to them were days of hopelessness
+and despair. When they came to know what in these days was taking place;
+and when the Church guided by the Holy Spirit came to meditate upon the
+meaning of our Lord's action it would see death in a changed light. The
+sense of a cataclysmic disaster in death would pass and be replaced by a
+sense of the continuity of life. Hitherto attention had been
+concentrated on this world, and death had been a disappearence from this
+world, the stopping of worldly loves and interests. Presently death
+would be seen to be the translation of the human being to a new sphere
+of activities, but involving no cessation of consciousness or failure of
+personal activities. Men had thought, naturally enough in their lack of
+knowledge, of the effect of death on the survivors, of the break in
+their relations with the dead. Now death would be viewed from the point
+of view of the interests of the person who is dead; and it would emerge
+that he continued under different conditions, and in the end it would
+come to be seen that even in the relations of the survivors with the
+dead there was no necessary and absolute break, but that the new
+conditions of life made possible renewed intercourse under altered
+circumstances.
+
+Our Lord, the disciples learned not long after, during these days went
+to preach to the spirits in prison, which the thought of the Church has
+interpreted to mean that He carried the news of the Redemption He had
+wrought through His dying, to the place of the dead, to the region where
+the souls of the faithful were patiently waiting the time of their
+perfecting. The doors of the heavenly world could not be opened till the
+time when He by His Cross and Passion, by His death and resurrection,
+opened them. The Heads of the Gates could not be lifted till they were
+lifted for the entrance of the King of Glory. But once lifted they were
+lifted forever; and when He ascended up on high He led His troop of
+captives redeemed from the bondage of death and hell.
+
+It is through these lifted Gates that the companies of the sanctified
+have been streaming ever since; and the difference that has been made in
+our view of death has been immense. If we have the faith of a Christian
+death has been transformed. There remains, of course, the natural grief
+which is ours when we part from those whom we love. This grief is
+natural and holy as it is in fact an expression of our love. It is not
+rebellion against the will of God, but is the expression of a feeling
+wherewith God has endowed us. But there is no longer in it the sting of
+hopelessness that we find, for instance, in the inscriptions on pagan
+tombs, nay, on tombs still, though created by Christians and found in
+Christian cemeteries. Rather it is the expression of a love which is
+learning to exercise itself under new conditions. We do not find it
+possible to reverse all our habits in a moment; and the new relation
+with the dead is one to which we have to learn to accustom ourselves. I
+remember a case where a mother and a son had never been separated for
+more than a day at a time, though he was far on in manhood. There came a
+time of indeterminate separation and the mother's grief was intense
+notwithstanding that there was no thought of a permanent separation. It
+took some time for her to accustom herself to the new mode of
+communication by letter. It is not far otherwise in death; it takes some
+time for us to accustom ourselves to the new mode of intercourse through
+prayer, but we succeed, and the new intercourse is very real and very
+precious. In a sense, too, it is a nearer, more intimate intercourse. It
+lacks the homely, daily touches, no doubt; but in compensation it
+reveals to us the spiritual values in life. We speedily learn, we learn
+almost by a spiritual instinct, what are the common grounds on which we
+can now meet. By our intercourse with our dead we get a new grasp on the
+truth of our common life in Christ: it is in and through Him that all
+our converse is now mediated. We have little difficulty in knowing what
+are the thoughts and interests which may be shared under the new
+conditions in which we find ourselves. Our perception of spiritual
+interests and spiritual values grows and deepens, and our communion with
+our dead becomes an indication of the extent of our own
+spiritual growth.
+
+There come times in the spiritual experience of most of us when we seem
+to have got to the end. There is a deepening sense of failure which is
+not, when we analyse it, so much a failure in this or that detail, as a
+general sense of the futility of the life of the Church as expressed in
+our individual lives. It came to those primitive congregations, you
+remember, to which S. Peter was writing; "Where is the promise of his
+coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they
+were from the beginning of creation." It is the weariness of continuous
+effort from which we conclude that we are getting quite
+insufficient results.
+
+No doubt that is true. The results are never what we expect, possibly
+because the effort is never what we imagine it to be. We continually
+underestimate the opposing force of evil, the difficulty of dealing with
+a humanity which falls so easily under the slightest temptation. It is
+not that sinners decline to hear the Word of God, but that those who
+profess themselves to be the servants of God, and who in fact intend to
+be such, are so lamentably weak and ineffective. We think of the effort
+of God in the Incarnation; we have been following that effort in some
+detail through the Passion. We are surprised, shocked, disheartened by
+the spectacle of the hatred that innocence stirs up, at the lengths men
+will go when they see their personal ends threatened. We are horrified
+by Caiphas, Pilate, Herod. But is that the really horrifying thing
+about the Passion of our Lord? To me the supreme example of human
+incomprehension is that all the disciples forsook Him and fled, that He
+was left to die almost alone. There we get the most disheartening
+failure in the tragedy.
+
+For we expect the antagonism of the world, especially that part of the
+world that has seen and rejected Christ. There we find Satanic
+activities. One of the outstanding features of the literature of to-day
+in the Western world, the world that had known from childhood the story
+of Jesus, is its utter hatred of Christianity; its revolt from all that
+Christianity stands for. This is markedly true in regard to the
+Christian teaching in the matter of purity. The contemporary English
+novel is perhaps the vilest thing that has yet appeared on this earth.
+There have been plenty of unclean books written in the course of the
+world's history--we have only to recall the literature of the
+Renaissance--but for the most part they have been written in careless or
+boastful disregard of moral sanctions which they still regarded as
+existing; but the novel of the present is an immoral propaganda--it is
+deliberately and of malice immoral, not out of careless levity, but out
+of deliberate intention. You do not feel that the modern author is just
+describing immoral actions which grow out of his story, but that he is
+constructing his story for the purpose of propagating immoral theory. He
+hates the whole teaching of the Christian Religion in the matter of
+purity. He has thrown it overboard on the ground that it is an
+"unnatural" restraint. To those who have studied the development of
+thought since the Renaissance there is nothing surprising in this.
+
+But what does still surprise those who are as yet capable of being
+surprised is the light way in which the mass of Christians take their
+religion. Occasionally, in moments of frankness, they admit that they
+are not getting anything out of it; but it is harder to get them to
+admit that the reason is that they are not putting anything into it. You
+do not expect to get returns from a business into which you are putting
+no capital, and you have no right to expect returns from a religion into
+which you are putting no energy. What is meant by that is that those
+Christians who are keeping the minimum routine of Christianity, who are
+going to High Mass on Sunday (or perhaps only to low Mass) and then
+making the rest of the day a time of self-indulgence and pleasure; who
+make their communions but rarely; who do not go to confession, or go
+only at Easter; who are giving no active support to the work of the
+Gospel as represented in parish and diocese have no right to be
+surprised if they find that they do not seem to get any results from
+their religion; that it is often rather a bore to do even so much as
+they do, and that they see no point in permitting it further to
+interfere with their customary amusements and avocations. I do not know
+what such persons expect from their religion, but I am sure that they
+will be disappointed if they are expecting any spiritual result.
+Naturally, they will be disappointed if they look in themselves for any
+evidence of the virtue of hope. The most that can be looked for under
+the circumstances is that mockery of hope, presumption.
+
+We are not to be discouraged in our estimate of the Christian Religion
+by this which seems to be the failure of God. We are not to echo the
+cry: "Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were
+from the beginning of the creation." S. Peter pointed out to those
+pessimists that all things do not continue the same, that there are
+times of crisis which are the judgments of God. Such a judgment was that
+of old which swept the wickedness of the world away, "whereby the world
+that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." He goes on to
+state that the present order likewise will issue in judgment: "The
+heavens and the earth which are now ... are kept in store, reserved unto
+fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." What
+renders men hopeless is the feeling of God's inactivity; but this
+declaration of impending judgment certifies the active interest of God.
+God's dealing with the world is a perpetual judgment of which we are apt
+to decline the evidence until the cataclysm reveals the final scene. But
+every society, every individual life, is being judged through the whole
+course of its existence, and there is no need that either society or
+individual should be blind to the fact that such a judgment is taking
+place. There is no failure of God. There is a failure on our part to
+understand the works of God.
+
+We may very well consider the problem an individual one and ask
+ourselves what ground of hope we have. On the basis of our present
+effort can we, ought we, to have more than we have? The spiritual life
+is not an accident that befalls certain people; it is an art that is
+acquired by such persons as are interested in it. It is attained through
+the careful training and exercise of the faculties wherewith we have
+been endowed. The answer to our question is itself a perfectly simple
+one, as simple as would be the answer to the question: "Do you speak
+French?" We speak French if we have taken the trouble to learn French;
+and we have gained results in the way of spiritual development and
+culture if we have taken the trouble to do so. I do not know why we
+should expect results on any other ground than that.
+
+But certain persons say: "I have tried, and have not attained any
+results." Well, I should want to know what the trying means in that
+case. It is well for a person who aspires to spiritual culture to think
+of his past history. What sort of character-development has so far been
+going on? Commonly it happens that there has been no spiritual effort
+that is worth thinking about; but that does not mean that nothing
+spiritual has been happening. It means on the contrary that there has
+been going on a spiritual atrophy, the spiritual powers have been
+without exercise and will be difficult to arouse to activity. In such a
+case as that spiritual awakening will be followed by a long period of
+spiritual struggle against habits of thought and action which we have
+already formed, a period in which unused and immature spiritual powers
+must be roused to action and disciplined to use. The simplest
+illustration of this is the difficulty experienced by the enthusiastic
+beginner in holding the attention fixed on spiritual acts such as the
+various forms of prayer. In all such attempts at spiritual activity
+there will be the constant drag of old habits, the recurrence of states
+of mind and imagination that had become habitual. These hindrances can
+be overcome, but only by steady and rather tedious labour. They call for
+the display of the virtue of patience which is not one of the virtues
+characteristic of spiritual immaturity. Hence reaction and the feeling
+that one is not getting on, the feeling that we have quite possibly made
+a mistake about the whole matter.
+
+This is the place for the exercise of hope; and hope will come if we
+look away from our not very encouraging acquirement to the ground that
+we have for expecting any acquirement at all. If we ask: "Why hope?" we
+shall see that our basis of hope is not in ourselves at all but in God.
+We hope because of the promises of God, because of His will for us as
+revealed in His Son. "He loved us and gave Himself for us"; and that
+giving will not be in vain. "He gave Himself for me," I tell myself,
+"and therefore I am justified in my expectation of spiritual success."
+So one tries to learn from the present failure as it seems; so one
+repents and pushes on; so one learns that it is through tenacity of
+purpose that one attains results.
+
+And again: I am sustained by hope because I see that the results that I
+covet are not imaginary. They exist. I see them in operation all about
+me. I learn of them as I study the lives of other Christians past and
+present. They are reality not theory, fact not dream. And what has been
+so richly and abundantly the outcome of spiritual living in others must
+be within my own reach. The results they attained were not miraculous
+gifts, but they were the working of God the Holy Spirit in lives yielded
+to Him and co-operating with Him.
+
+Once more: is it not true that after a period of honest labour I do find
+results? Perhaps not all that I would like but all that I am justified
+in expecting from the energy I have spent? I do not believe that any one
+can look back over a year's honest labour and not see that the labour
+has born fruit.
+
+In any case the fact that we do not see just what we are looking for
+does not mean that no spiritual work is going on. It may seem that our
+Lord is silent and that to our cries there is no voice nor any that
+answers; but that may mean that we are looking in the wrong place or
+listening for the wrong word. The disciples looked that the outcome of
+our Lord's life should be that the Kingdom should be restored to Israel;
+and when they turned away from the tomb in Joseph's Garden they felt
+that what they had looked for and prayed for was hopeless of
+accomplishment. But the important point was not their vision of the
+Kingdom at all, but that they had yielded themselves to our Lord and
+become His disciples and lovers. This is not what they intended to do,
+but it is what actually had happened: and when the grave yielded up the
+dead Whom they thought that they had lost forever, Jesus came back with
+a mission for them that was infinitely wider than their dream: the
+mission of founding not the old Kingdom of David, but the Kingdom of
+David's Son. All their aspirations and prayers were fulfilled by being
+transcended, and they found themselves in a position vastly more
+important than had been reached even in their dreams.
+
+Something like that not infrequently happens in our experience. We
+conceive a spiritual ambition and work for a spiritual end, and seem
+always to miss it; and then the day comes when God reveals to us what He
+has been doing, and we find that through the very discipline of our
+failure we have been being prepared for a success of which we had not
+thought: and when we raise our eyes from the path we thought so toilsome
+and uninteresting, it is to find ourselves at the very gate of the City
+of God. It will be with us as with the Apostles who in the darkest hour
+of their imagined failure, when they were gathered together in hiding
+from the Jews were startled by the appearence among them of the risen
+Jesus, and were filled with the unutterable joy of His message of peace.
+
+     "His body is wrappèd all in woe,
+     Hand and foot He may not go.
+     Thy Son, Lady, that thou lovest so
+     Naked is nailed upon a tree.
+
+     "The Blessèd Body that thou hast born,
+     To save mankind that was forlorn,
+     His body, Lady, the Jews have torn,
+     And hurt His Head, as ye may see."
+
+     When John his tale began to tell
+     Mary would not longer dwell
+     But hied her fast unto that hill
+     Where she might her own Son see.
+
+     "My sweete Son, Thou art me dear,
+     Oh why have men hanged thee here?
+     Thy head is closed with a brier,
+     O why have men so done to Thee?"
+
+     "John, this woman I thee betake;
+     Keep My Mother for My sake.
+     On Rood I hang for mannes sake
+     For sinful men as thou may see.
+
+     "This game alone I have to play,
+     For sinful souls that are to die.
+     Not one man goeth by the way
+     That on my pains will look and see.
+
+     "Father, my soul I thee betake,
+     My body dieth for mannes sake;
+     To hell I go withouten wake,
+     Mannes soul to maken free."
+
+     Pray we all that Blessed Son
+     That He help us when may no man
+     And bring to bliss each everyone
+     Amen, amen, amen for Charity.
+
+Early English Lyrics, p. 146. From an MS. in the Sloane collection.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE RESURRECTION
+
+And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted; ye seek Jesus of Nazareth,
+which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here.
+
+S. Mark XVI, 6.
+
+     O God, who wast pleased that thy Word, when the angel
+     delivered his message, should take flesh in the womb of the
+     blessed Virgin Mary, give ear to our humble petitions, and
+     grant that we who believe her truly to be the Mother of God,
+     may be helped by her prayers. Through.
+
+     O Almighty and merciful God, who hast wonderfully provided
+     perpetual succour for the defence of Christian people in the
+     most blessed Virgin Mary; mercifully grant that, contending
+     during life under the protection of such patronage, we may be
+     enabled to gain the victory, over the malignant enemy in
+     death. Through.
+
+     OLD CATHOLIC.
+
+Whatever may be our grief, however life may seem to have been emptied
+of all interest for us, nevertheless the routine of life reasserts
+itself and forces us back to the daily tasks no matter how savourless
+they may now seem. We speedily find that we are not isolated but units
+in a social order which claims us and calls on us to fulfil the duties
+of our place. Blessed Mary was led away from the tomb of her Son in the
+prostration of grief; but her very duty to Him would have forced her
+thought away from herself and led her to join in the preparations which
+were being made for the proper care of the Sacred Body. And in that sad
+duty she would find solace of a kind; there is an expression of love in
+the care we give our dead. This body now so helpless and unresponsive,
+has been the medium through which the soul expressed itself to us; it
+has been the instrument of love and the sacrament of our union. How well
+we know it! How well the mother knows every feature of her child, how
+she now lingers over the preparations for the burial feeling that the
+separation is not quite accomplished so long as her hands can touch and
+her eyes see the familiar features. In the pause that the Sabbath forced
+on the friends of Jesus we may be sure that they were making what
+preparations might be made under the restrictions of their religion, and
+that they looked eagerly for the passing of the Sabbath as giving them
+one more opportunity of service to the Master. There was the group of
+women who had followed Him and "ministered of their substance" who were
+faithful still. The Mother had no "substance"; she shared the poverty of
+her Son. Her support during the Sabbath would be the expectancy of
+looking once more upon His Face.
+
+But when the first day of the week dawned it proved to be a day of
+stupendous wonder. They, the Disciples and these faithful women, seemed
+to themselves, no doubt, to have passed into a new world where the
+presuppositions of the old world were upset and reversed. There were
+visions of angels, reported appearances of Jesus, an empty tomb. Through
+the incredible reports that came to them from various sources the light
+gradually broke for them. It was true then, that saying of Jesus, that
+He would rise again from the dead! It was not some mysterious bit of
+teaching, the exact bearing of which they did not catch, but a literal
+fact! And then while they still hesitated and doubted, while they still
+hid behind the closed doors, Jesus Himself came and stood in the midst
+with His message of peace. It is often so, is it not? While we are in
+perplexity and fear, while we think the next sound will be the knock of
+armed hands on the door, it is not the Jews that come, but Jesus with a
+message of peace. Our fears are so pathetic, so pitiful; we meet life
+and death with so little of the understanding and the courage that our
+Lord's promises ought to inspire in us! We stand so shudderingly before
+the vision of death, are so much appalled by the thought of the grave!
+We shudder and tremble as the hand of death is stretched out toward us
+and ours. One is often tempted to ask as one hears people talking of
+death: "Are these Christians? Do they believe in immortality? Have they
+heard the message of the first Easter morning, the angelic announcement
+of the resurrection of Christ? Have they never found the peace of
+believing, the utter quiet of the spirit in the confidence of a certain
+hope which belongs to those who have grasped the meaning of the
+resurrection of the dead?" Here in Jerusalem in a few days the whole
+point of view is changed. The frightened group of disciples is
+transformed by the resurrection experience into the group of glad and
+triumphant missionaries who will be ready when they are endowed with
+power from on high to go out and preach Jesus and the resurrection to
+the ends of the earth.
+
+What in these first days the resurrection meant to them was no doubt
+just the return of Jesus. He was with them once more, and they were
+going to take hope again in the old life, to resume the old mission
+which had been interrupted by the disaster of Calvary. All other feeling
+would have been swallowed up in the mere joy of the recovery. But it
+could not be many hours before it would be plain that if Jesus was
+restored to them He was restored with a difference. A new element had
+entered their intercourse which was due to some subtle change that had
+passed upon Him. We get the first note of it in that wonderful scene in
+Joseph's Garden when the Lord appears to the Magdalen. There is all the
+love and sympathy there had ever been; but when in response to her name
+uttered in the familiar voice the Magdalen throws herself at His Feet,
+there is a new word that marks a new phase in their relation: "Touch Me
+not, for I am not yet ascended."
+
+This new thing in our Lord which held them back with a new word that
+they had never experienced before must have become plainer each day. S.
+Mary feels no less love in her Son restored to her from; the grave, but
+she does not find just the same freedom of approach. S. John could no
+longer think of leaning on His Heart at supper as before. Jesus was the
+same as before. There was the same thoughtful sympathy; the same tender
+love; but it is now mediated through a nature that has undergone some
+profound change in the days between death and resurrection. The humanity
+has acquired new powers, the spirit is obviously more in control of the
+body. Our Lord appeared and disappeared abruptly. His control over
+matter was absolute. And in His intercourse with the disciples there was
+a difference. He did not linger with them but appeared briefly from time
+to time as though He were but a passing visitor to the world. There were
+no longer the confidential talks in the fading light after the day's
+work and teaching was over. There was no longer the common meal with its
+intimacy and friendliness. There was, and this was a striking change, no
+longer any attempt to approach those outside the apostolic circle, no
+demonstration of His resurrection to the world that had, as it thought,
+safely disposed of Him. He came for brief times and with brief
+messages, short, pregnant instructions, filled with meaning for the
+future into which they are soon to enter.
+
+What did it mean, this resurrection of Jesus? It meant the demonstration
+of the continuity of our nature in our Lord. The Son of God took upon
+Him our nature and lived and died in that nature. Our pressing question
+is, what difference has that made to us? How are _we_ affected? Has
+humanity been permanently affected by the resumption of it by God in the
+resurrection? If the assumption of humanity by our Lord was but a
+passing assumption; if He took flesh for a certain purpose, and that
+purpose fulfilled, laid it aside, and once more assumed His
+pre-incarnate state, we should have difficulty in seeing that our
+humanity was deeply affected by the Incarnation. There would have been
+exhibited a perfect human life, but what would have been left at the end
+of that life would have been just the story of it, a thing wholly of the
+past. It is not much better if it is assumed that the meaning of the
+resurrection is the revelation of the immortality of the human spirit,
+that in fact the resurrection means that the soul of Jesus is now in the
+world of the spirit, but that His Body returned to the dust. We are not
+very much interested in the bare fact of survival. What interests us is
+the mode of survival, the conditions under which we survive. We are
+interested, that is to say, in our survival as human beings and not in
+our survival as something else--souls.
+
+A soul is not a human being; a human being is a composite of soul and
+body. It is interesting to note that people who do not believe in the
+resurrection of our Lord, do not believe in our survival as human
+beings, consequently do not believe in a heaven that is of any human
+interest. But we feel, do we not? a certain lack of interest in a future
+in which we shall be something quite different in constitution from what
+we are now. We can think of a time between death and the resurrection in
+which we shall be incomplete, but that is tolerable because it is
+disciplinary and temporary and looks on to our restitution to full
+humanity in the resurrection at the Last Day. And we feel that the
+promise, the certainty of this is sealed by our Lord's resurrection from
+the dead. We are certain that that took place because it is needful to
+the completion of His Work.
+
+The Creed is one: and if one denies one article one speedily finds that
+there is an effect on others. The denial of the resurrection is part and
+parcel of the attempt to reduce Christianity to a history of something
+that once took place which is important to us to-day because it affords
+us a standard of life, a pattern after which we are to shape ourselves.
+Else should we be very much in the dark. We gain from the Christian
+Revelation a conception of God as a kindly Father Who desires His
+children to follow the example of His Son. That example, no doubt, must
+not be pressed too literally, must be adapted to modern conditions; but
+we can get some light and guidance from the study of it. Still, if you
+do not care to follow it nothing will happen to you. It is merely a
+pleasing occupation for those who are interested in such things. The
+affirmation of the resurrection, on the other hand, is the affirmation
+of the continuity of the work of God Incarnate; it is an assertion that
+Christianity is a supernatural action of God going on all the time, the
+essence of which is, not that it invites the believer to imitation of
+the life of Christ, so far as seems practical under modern conditions,
+but that it calls him to union with Christ; it makes it his life's
+meaning to recreate the Christ-experience, to be born and live and die
+through the experience of Incarnate God. It fixes his attention not on
+what Jesus did but on what Jesus is. It insists on a present vital
+organic relation to God, mediated by the humanity of Jesus; and if there
+be no humanity of Jesus, if at His death He ceased to be completely
+human, then there is no possibility of such a relation to God in Christ
+as the Catholic Religion has from the beginning postulated; and unless
+we are to continue human there seems no continuing basis for such a
+relation to one another in the future as would make the future of any
+interest to us. For us, as for S. Paul, all our hope hangs on the
+resurrection of Christ from the dead; and if Christ be not risen from
+the dead then is our faith vain.
+
+For us then, as for the men who wrote the Gospel, and for the men who
+planted the Church and watered it with their blood, the resurrection of
+Jesus means the return of His Spirit from the place whither it had gone
+to preach to the spirits in prison and its reunion with the Body which
+had been laid in the tomb in Joseph's Garden, and the issuing of
+perfect God and perfect man from that tomb on the first Easter morning.
+That humanity had, no doubt, undergone profound changes to fit it to be
+the perfect instrument of the spirit of Christ Jesus henceforward. It is
+now the resurrection body, the spiritual body of the new man. We
+understand that it is now a body fitted for the new conditions of the
+resurrection life, and we also understand that it is the exemplar of
+what our risen bodies will be. They will be endowed with new powers and
+capacities, but they will be human bodies, the medium of the spirit's
+expression and a recognisable means of intercourse with our friends. We
+lie down in the grave with a certainty of preserving our identity and of
+maintaining the capacity of intercourse with those we know and love.
+That is what really interests us in the future which would be
+uninteresting on other terms; and that is what our Lord's appearances
+after the resurrection seem to guarantee. He resumed a human intercourse
+with those whom He had gathered about Him. He continued His work of
+instruction and preparation for the future. And when at length He left
+them they were prepared to understand that His departure was but the
+beginning of a new relation. But also they would feel much less that
+there was an absolute break with the past than if He had not appeared to
+them after the Crucifixion, and they had been left with but a belief in
+His immortality. They would, too, now be able to look on to the future
+as containing a renewal of the relations now changed, to read a definite
+meaning into His promises that where He is there shall His servants be.
+
+It is much to know that we are immortal: it is much more to know that
+this immortality is a human immortality. One feels in studying the
+pre-Christian beliefs in immortality that they had very little
+effectiveness, and that the reason was that there was no real link
+connecting life in this world with life in the next. Death was a fearful
+catastrophe that man in some sense survived, but in a sense that
+separated his two modes of existence by a great gulf. Man survived, but
+his interests did not survive, and therefore he looked to the future
+with indifference or fear. This life seemed to him much preferable to
+the life which was on the other side of the grave. So far as the Old
+Testament writings touch on the future world, they touch upon it without
+enthusiasm. There is an immense difference between the attitude of the
+Old Testament saint toward death and that, for instance, of the early
+Christian martyr. And the difference is that the martyr does not feel
+that death will put an end to all he knows and loves and set him, alive
+it may be, but alive in a strange country. He feels that he is about to
+pass into a state of being in which he will find his finer interests not
+lost but intensified. At the center of his religious expression is a
+personal love of Jesus and a martyr's death would mean immediate
+admission to the presence and love of His Master. He would--of this he
+had no shadow of doubt--he would see Jesus, not the spirit of Jesus, but
+the Jesus Who is God Incarnate, whose earthly life he had gone over so
+many times, Whom he felt that he should recognise at once. Death was not
+the breaking off of all in which he was interested but was rather the
+fulfilment of all that he had dreamed. And this must be true always
+where our interests are truly Christian interests. It is no doubt true
+that we find in Christian congregations a large number of individuals
+whose attitude toward death and the future is purely heathen. They
+believe in survival, but they have no vital interest in it. I fancy that
+there are a good many people who would experience relief to be persuaded
+that death is the end of conscious existence, that they do not have to
+look forward to a continuous life under other conditions. And this not
+at all, as no doubt it would in some cases be, because it was the
+lifting of the weighty burden of responsibility for the sort of life one
+leads, because it was relief from the thought of a judgment to be one
+day faced, but because the world to come, as they have grasped its
+meaning, is a world in which they have no sort of interest. Our Lord in
+His Presentation of the future does actually point us to the natural
+human interest by which our affection will follow that which we do in
+fact value. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." But
+the class of whom I am thinking have no treasures. Notwithstanding some
+sort of conformity to the Christian Religion, conceived most likely
+under the aspect of a compulsory moral code, there is nothing in their
+experience that one can call a love of our Lord, no actually felt
+personal affection for Him that makes them long to see Him. There were
+those with whom they had intimately lived and whom they had loved and
+who have passed through the experience of death, but in the years that
+have passed they have become used to living without them and there is
+no passionate longing to be with them again. There are no interests in
+their lives which when they think of them they feel that they can carry
+with them to the world beyond. Whatever they have succeeded in
+accumulating in life is hardly to be regarded as heavenly treasure!
+
+There then is the vital centre of the Christian doctrine of the world to
+come,--that it is a life continuous with this life, not in bare
+existence, but in the persistence of relations and interests upon which
+we have entered here. At the center of that world as it is revealed to
+us, is Jesus Christ, God in our nature, and about Him ever the saints of
+His Kingdom, who are still human with human interests, and who look on
+to the time when the fulness of humanity will be restored to them by the
+resurrection of the body. The interests that are vital here are also the
+interests that are vital there, the interests of the Kingdom of God. As
+the Christian thinks of the life of the world to come he thinks of it as
+the sphere in which his ambitions can be and will be realised, where the
+ends of which he has so long and so earnestly striven will be attained.
+His life has been a life given to the service of our Lord and to his
+Kingdom, and it had, no doubt, often seemed to small purpose; it has
+often seemed that the Kingdom was not prospering and the work of God
+coming to naught. And then he looks on to the future and sees that the
+work that he knows is an insignificant fragment of the whole work; and
+he thinks with longing of the time when he shall see revealed all that
+has been accomplished. He feels like a colonist who in some outlying
+province of an empire is striving to promote the interests of his
+Homeland. His work is to build up peace and order and to civilise
+barbarous tribes. And there are days when the work seems very long and
+very hopeless; and then he comforts himself with the thought that this
+is but a corner of the empire and that one day he will be relieved and
+called home. There at the centre he will be able to see the whole fact,
+will be able to understand what this colony means, and will rejoice in
+the slight contribution to its upbuilding that it has been his mission
+to make. The heart of the Christian is really in the Homeland and he
+feels acutely that here he is on the Pilgrim Way. But he feels too that
+his present vocation is here and that he is here contributing the part
+that God has appointed him for the upbuilding of the Kingdom, and that
+the more he loves our Lord and the more he longs for Him the more
+faithfully and exactly will he strive to accomplish his appointed work.
+
+They are right, those who are continually reproaching Christians with
+having a centre of interest outside this world; but we do not mind the
+reproach because we are quite sure that only those will have an
+intelligent interest in this world who feel that it does not stand by
+itself as a final and complete fact, but is a single stage of the many
+stages of God's working. We no more think it a disgrace to be thinking
+of a future world and to have our centre of interest there than we think
+it a disgrace for the college lad to be looking forward to the career
+that lies beyond the college boundaries and for which his college is
+supposed to be preparing him. We do not consider that boy ideal whose
+whole time and energy is given to the present interests of a college,
+its athletics, its societies, and in the end is found to have paid so
+little attention to the intellectual work that he is sent there to
+perform that he fails to pass his examinations. Christians are
+interested in this world because it is a province of the Kingdom of God
+and that they are set here to work out certain problems, and that they
+are quite sure that the successful solution of these problems is the
+best and highest contribution that they can make to the development of
+life in this world. They do not believe that as a social contribution to
+the betterment of human life a saint is less valuable than an agnostic
+professor of sociology or an atheistic socialistic leader; nor does the
+Christian believe that strict attention to the affairs of the Kingdom of
+God renders him less valuable as a citizen than strict attention to a
+brewery or a bank. A whole-hearted Christian life which has in view all
+the relations of the Kingdom of God in this or in any other world, which
+loves God and loves its neighbour in God, is quite the best contribution
+that a human being can make to the cause of social progress. If it were
+possible to put in evidence anywhere a wholly Christian community I am
+quite convinced that we should see that our social problems were there
+solved. I think then we shall be right to insist that what is needed is
+not less otherworldliness but more: that more otherworldliness would
+work a social revolution of a beneficent character. The result might be
+that we should spend less of our national income on preparations for
+war and more in making the conditions of life tolerable for the poor;
+that we should begin to pay something of the same sort of care for the
+training of children that we now bestow on the nurture of pigs and
+calves. We might possibly look on those whom we curiously call the
+"inferior races" as less objects of commercial exploitation and more as
+objects of moral and spiritual interest.
+
+We shall no doubt do this when we have more fully grasped what the
+resurrection of Christ has done and made possible. It is no account of
+that resurrection to think of it as a demonstration of immortality. It
+only touches the fringes of its importance when we think of it as
+setting the seal of divine approval upon the teaching of Jesus. We get
+to the heart of the matter when we think of the risen humanity of our
+Lord as having become for us a source of energy. The truth of our Lord's
+life is not that He gave us an example of how we ought to live, but that
+He provided the power that enables us to live as He lived. Also He gave
+us the point of view from which to estimate life. The writer of the
+Epistles to the Hebrews uses a striking phrase when he speaks of "the
+power of an endless life." Is not that an illuminating phrase when we
+think of our relation to our Lord? His revelation of the meaning of
+human life has brought to us the vision of what that life may become and
+the power to attain that end. The fact of our endlessness at once puts a
+certain order into life. Things, interests, occupations fall into their
+right places. There are so many things which seem not worth while
+because of the revelation of the importance of our work. Other things
+there are which we should not have dared to undertake if we had but this
+life in which to accomplish them. But he who understands that he is
+building for eternity can build with all the care and all the
+deliberation that is needed for so vast a work. There is no haste if we
+select those things which have eternal value. We can undertake the
+development of the Christian qualities of character with entire
+hopefulness. The very conception of the beauty and perfectness of the
+fruits of the Spirit might discourage us if our time were limited. But
+if we feel that the work we have done on them, however elementary and
+fragmentary, as long as it is honest and heartfelt, will not be lost
+when death comes, then we can go securely on. We can go on in any
+spiritual work we have undertaken without that sense of feverish haste
+lest death overtake us and put an end to our labour which so affects men
+in purely secular things. To us death is not an interruption. Death does
+not destroy our human personality, nor does it destroy our interest in
+anything that like us is permanent. We feel perfectly secure when we
+have identified ourselves with the business of the Kingdom of God. Then
+we almost feel the throb of our immortality; the power of an endless
+life is now ours. We have not to wait for death and resurrection to
+endue us with that power because it is the gift of God to us here, that
+gift of enternal life which our Lord came to bestow upon us. Only the
+gift which we realise imperfectly or not at all at its bestowal we come
+to understand in something of its real power; and henceforth we live in
+the possession and fruition of it, growing up "into Him in all things,
+which is the Head, even Christ."
+
+     Hail, thou brightest Star of Ocean;
+     Hail, thou Mother of our God;
+     Hail, thou Ever-sinless Virgin,
+     Gateway of the blest abode.
+     Ave; 'tis an angel's greeting--
+     Thou didst hear his music sound,
+     Changing thus the name of Eva--
+     Shed the gifts of peace around.
+     Burst the sinner's bonds in sunder;
+     Pour the day on darkling eyes;
+     Chase our ills; invoke upon us
+     All the blessings of the skies.
+     Show thyself a watchful Mother;
+     And may He our pleadings hear,
+     Who for us a helpless Infant
+     Owned thee for His mother dear.
+     Maid, above all maids excelling,
+     Maid, above all maidens mild,
+     Freed from sin, oh, make our bosoms
+     Sweetly meek and undefiled.
+     Keep our lives all pure and stainless,
+     Guide us on our heavenly way,
+     'Till we see the face of Jesus,
+     And exult in endless day.
+     Glory to the Eternal Father;
+     Glory to the Eternal Son;
+     Glory to the Eternal Spirit:
+     Blest for ever, Three in One.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE FORTY DAYS
+
+     To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by
+     many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and
+     speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
+
+Acts I, 3.
+
+     Open unto us the door of thy loving kindness, O blessed
+     Mother of God; we have set our hope on thee, may we not be
+     disappointed, but through thee may we be delivered from
+     adversity, for thou art the saving help of all
+     Christian people.
+
+     O Mother of God, thou who art a deep well of infinite mercy,
+     bestow upon us thy compassion; look upon thy people who have
+     sinned, and continue to make manifest thy power. For thee do
+     we trust, and to thee do we cry, Hail! even as of old did
+     Gabriel, the chief of the angelic hosts.
+
+RUSSIAN.
+
+These Forty Days that intervened between our Lord's resurrection and
+ascension must have been utterly bewildering in the experience of the
+Apostles. Our Lord was once more with them; He had come back from the
+grave; that would have been the central experience. But in His
+intercourse with them He was so changed, the same and yet with a vast
+difference. We think of the perplexed group of the disciples gathered in
+the familiar place, going over the recent facts and trying to adjust
+themselves to them. Just what is the difference that death and
+resurrection have made, we hear them discussing. Is it that He appears
+and disappears so strangely, not coming any longer to be with them in
+the old way, with the old familiar intercourse? There is obviously no
+failure in Himself, no decline in love; but there is a decline in
+intimacy. They themselves feel a strange awe in His presence such as
+they had not been accustomed to feel in the past. They feel too that
+this restrained intercourse is but temporary, that at any moment it may
+end. The instructions He is giving them are so obviously final
+instructions, fitting them for a future in which He will not be
+with them.
+
+Amid all this perplexity we try to see Our Lady and to get at her mind.
+She was no doubt in the small group eagerly waiting our Lord's coming,
+dreading each time He left them that He would return no more. One
+thinks of her as less bewildered than the others because her interest
+was more concentrated. She had no problems to work out, no perplexities
+to absorb her; she had simply to love. Life to her was just love--love
+of the Son Whom she had brought forth and Whom she had followed so far.
+She lived in His appearings; and between them she lived in remembrance
+of them. One does not think of her as dwelling very much on what He
+says, but as dwelling upon Him. The thought of Him absorbs her. She has
+passed into that relation to our Lord that in the years to come many
+souls will strive to acquire--the state of absorbed contemplation, the
+state in which all things else for the time recede and one is alone with
+God. God so fills the soul that there is room there for nothing else.
+
+For the Apostles these were days of immense importance as days in which
+they were compelled to reconstruct their whole view of the meeting of
+our Lord's mission and of their relation to it. They came to these days
+with their settled notion about the renewed Kingdom of Israel and of our
+Lord's reign on earth which His teaching hitherto had not been able to
+expel; but now they are compelled to see that the Kingdom of God of
+which they are to be the missionaries is a Kingdom in another sense than
+they had so far conceived it. It differs vastly from their dream of an
+Israelite empire. It is no doubt true that this mental revolution is of
+slow operation, and that even when certain truths are grasped it will
+still take time to grasp them in all their implications. For long their
+Judaism will impede their full understanding of the meaning of the
+Kingdom of God. It will be years before they can see that it is a
+non-Jewish fact and that other nations will stand on an equality with
+them. But they will by the end of the Forty Days have grasped the fact
+that they are not engaged in a secular revolution and are not entering
+on a career of worldly power. They will be ready for their active
+ministry after Pentecost, a ministry of spiritual initiation into the
+Kingdom of God. When in response to their preaching men asked the
+question: "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" They were ready with
+their answer: "Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of
+Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of
+the Holy Ghost."
+
+So the Forty Days were filled with new meanings emerging from the old
+teaching, of suddenly grasped significance in some saying of our Lord
+that they had assumed that they understood but in reality had attributed
+little meaning to. It is one of the striking things about our relation
+to spiritual truth that we can go on for long thinking that we are
+attaching a meaning to something which in fact, it turns out, has meant
+almost nothing to us. Some day a phrase which we have often read or
+repeated suddenly is lighted up with a significance we had never dreamed
+of. We have long been looking some truth in the face, but in fact it has
+never laid hold of us; we have made no inferences from it, deduced no
+necessity of action, till on a day the significance of it emerges and
+we are overwhelmed by the revelation of our blunder, of our stupidity.
+The fact is that we assume that our conduct is quite right, and we
+interpret truth in the light of our conduct rather than interpret
+conduct in the light of truth. It is the explanation, I suppose, of the
+fact that so many people read their Bible regularly without, so far as
+one can see, the reading having any effect upon their conduct. The
+conduct is a settled affair and they are finding it reflected in the
+pages of the Gospel. Their minds are already definitely made up to the
+effect that they know what the Gospel means, and that is the meaning
+that they put into the Bible. One does not know otherwise how to account
+for the fact that it is precisely those who think themselves "Bible
+Christians" who are farthest from accepting the explicit teaching of the
+Bible. If there is anything plain in the New Testament it is that the
+whole teaching of our Lord is sacramental. If anything is taught there
+one would think it was the nature and obligation of baptism, the
+Presence of our Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar, the gift of
+Confirmation, the meaning of absolution. Yet it is to "Bible Christians"
+that sacraments appear to have no value, are things which can be
+dispensed with as mere ornaments of the Christian Religion.
+
+I wonder if we have wholly got beyond that point of view? I wonder if we
+have got a religious practice which is settled or one that is
+continually expanding? I wonder if we force our meaning on the Bible or
+if we are trying to find therein new stimulus to action? That in truth
+is the reason for reading the Holy Scriptures at all--to find therein
+stimulus, stimulus for life; that we may see how little or how much our
+conduct conforms to the ideal set out there. We do not read to learn a
+religion, but to learn to practice the religion that we already have.
+
+Now to take just one point in illustration. The commission of our Lord
+to His Church in the person of the Apostles was a commission to forgive
+sins. "He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy
+Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and
+whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." As to how in detail,
+this commission is to be exercised is a matter for the Church to order
+as the circumstances of its life require. As I read my Bible certain
+facts emerge: I am a sinner; Christ died for my sins; He left power in
+His Church for the forgiveness of sin--of my sin. And then the question
+arises: What is the bearing of all that on my personal practice? Have I
+settled a practice for myself to which I am subjecting the teaching of
+the Bible and the Church? Or am I alert to see a contrast or a
+contradiction between my practice and the teaching of the Bible and the
+Church, if such exist? Now there are many people in the Church who make
+no use of the sacrament of penance, and there are many others who make
+use of it very sparingly. It is clear that either they must be right, or
+the Bible and the Church must be right. It is clear that such persons,
+to press it no farther, are imposing the interpretation of their own
+conduct on the teaching of the Christian Religion and asserting by
+their constant practice that that interpretation is quite inadequate,
+notwithstanding the contrary practice of the entire Catholic world.
+That, to put it mildly, is a very peculiar intellectual and
+spiritual attitude.
+
+We can most of us, I have no doubt, find by searching somewhere in our
+religious practice parallel attitudes toward truth. We have settled many
+questions in a sense that is agreeable to us. We cannot tell just how we
+got them settled, but settled they are. Take a very familiar matter
+which greatly concerns us in this parish dedicated to the Blessed Virgin
+Mary, the question of the honour and reverence due to our Blessed
+Mother. We had got settled in our practice that certain things were
+right and certain wrong. I doubt if a very intelligent account of
+this--why they were right or wrong--could, in many cases have been
+given. But the settled opinion and practice was there.
+
+And then came the demand for a review; that we look our practice
+squarely in the face and ask, "What is the ground of this? Does it
+correspond with the teaching of Scripture and of the Catholic Church?
+And if it does not, what am I going to do about it? Have I only a
+collection of prejudices there where I supposed that I had a collection
+of settled truths? Do I see that it is quite possible that I may be
+wholly wrong, and that I am hindered by pride from reversing my
+attitude?" For there is a certain pride which operates in these matters
+of belief and practice as well as elsewhere. We are quite apt to pride
+ourselves on our consistency and think it an unworthy thing to change
+our minds. That is rather a foolish attitude; changing one's mind is
+commonly not a mark of fickleness but of intellectual advance. It means
+oftentimes the abandonment of prejudice or the giving up of an opinion
+which we have discovered to have no foundation. This is rather a large
+universe in which we live, and it is improbable that any man's thought
+of it at any time should be adequate. Intellectual progress means the
+assimilation of new truths. The Christian Religion is a large and
+complex phenomenon, and any individual's thought of it at any time must
+be, in the nature of things, an inadequate thought. Progress in religion
+means the constant assimilation of new truths--new, that is, to us.
+Surely it is a very peculiar attitude to be proud of never learning
+anything, making it a virtue to have precisely the same opinions this
+year as last! I should be very much ashamed of myself if a year were to
+pass in which I had learned nothing, had changed my mind about nothing.
+In religion, one knows that the articles of the Faith are expressed in
+the dogmatic definitions of the Church; but one will never know, seek as
+one will, all that these mean in detail, all that they demand in
+practice. And our only tolerable attitude is that of learners constantly
+seeking to fill up the _lacunae_ in our beliefs and practice.
+
+In fact, any living Christian experience is always in process of
+adjustment. Those who conceive a dogmatic religion as an immovable
+religion, as a collection of cut and dried formulae which each
+generation is expected to learn and repeat and to which it has no other
+relation, are quite right in condemning that conception, only that is
+not, in fact, what the Christian Religion is. The content of the
+Christian dogmas is so full and so complex that there is never any
+danger of intellectual sterility in those who are called to deal with
+them; and their application to life is so rich and so manifold that
+there is not the least danger that those who set out to apply them to
+the problems of daily existence will become mere formalists. The attempt
+to live a truly Christian life is a never-ending, inexhaustible
+adventure. Only those can miss this fact who have utterly misconceived
+Christianity as a barren set of prohibitions, warning its devotees off
+the field of great sections of human experience. There are those who
+appear to imagine that the primary business of Christianity is to deal
+with sin, and that in order to keep itself occupied it has to invent a
+large number of unreal sins. Unfortunately sin, as the deliberate
+rejection of the known will of God, exists; and, fortunately, the grace
+of our Lord Jesus Christ Who came into the world to save sinners also
+exists. We can be unendingly thankful for that. But it is also true that
+the action of Christianity is not exhausted in the negative work of
+dealing with sin. Christianity is primarily a positive action for the
+bringing about and development of the relation of the soul with God in
+the state of union. We may say that Christianity has to turn aside from
+this its proper business of developing the spiritual life to the
+preliminary work of dealing with sin which kills spirituality and
+hinders its development. But it is not necessary to make the blunder of
+assuming that this dealing with sin is the essential work of
+Christianity because it has so continually to be at it, any more than
+it is necessary to assume that the essential work of a farmer is the
+digging up of weeds. Surely it would be no adequate treatise on
+agriculture which would confine itself to description of the nature of
+weeds and of methods of dealing with them. There is a branch of theology
+which deals with sin, the methods of its treatment and its cure; but
+there are also other branches of theology: and the direction of the Holy
+Scripture is not to get rid of sin and stop; but having done that, to go
+on to perfection.
+
+Christian experience is a constant process of adjustment, a constantly
+growing experience. By the study of the Christian revelation it is
+always finding new meanings in old truths, new modes of application of
+familiar practices. This simply means that the Christian is alive and
+not a fossil. It means that his relation to our Lord is such that it
+opens to him inexhaustible depths of experience. It is easy to see this
+in the concrete by taking up the life of almost any saint. It is easy to
+trace the growth of S. John from the young fisherman, fiery, impatient,
+who wished to call down fire from heaven upon his adversaries as Elijah
+did, and gained the rebuke: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are
+of," to the mature and supremely calm and simple experience which is
+reflected in the Gospel and Epistles. It is easy to trace the
+development of the impulsive, zealous Pharisee that Paul of Tarsus was,
+through all the stages of spiritual growth that are reflected in his
+Letters, till he is Paul the aged waiting to depart and be with Christ
+"which is far better." You can study it in the confessions of S.
+Augustine in its first stage and follow it through its later stages in
+his letters and other writings, and in many another saint beside. If you
+have any spiritual experience at all you can trace it in your own case:
+you have grown, not through dealing with sin, but through the pursuit of
+ideal perfection, that perfection which is set before you by the
+Christian Religion. You may not feel that you have gone very far: that
+is not the point at present; you know that you have found a method by
+which you may go on indefinitely; that there is no need that you should
+stop anywhere short of the Beatific Vision. You do know that your
+religion is not the deadening repetition of dogmas which the unbeliever
+conceives it to be, but is the never ceasing attempt to master the
+inexhaustible truth that is contained in your relation to our Lord. You
+do know that however far you have gone you feel that you are still but
+on the threshold and that the path before your feet runs out into
+infinity. Let us go back again to our examination of the experience of
+the Apostles. When we examine their training we find there, I think, two
+quite distinct elements both of which must have had a formative
+influence upon their ministry. In the first place there was the element
+of dogmatic teaching. There is a class of persons who are accustomed to
+tell us that there is no dogma in the New Testament, by which they
+appear to mean that the particular dogmatic affirmations of the Creed
+are not formulated in the pages of the New Testament, but are of later
+production. That, no doubt, is true; but nevertheless it would be
+difficult to find a more dogmatic book than the New Testament, or a
+more dogmatic teacher than was our Lord. And our Lord taught the
+Apostles in a most definite way the expected acceptance of His teaching
+because He taught it. "He taught as one having authority, and not as the
+scribes," it was noted. The point about the teaching of the scribes was
+that it was traditional, wholly an interpretation of the meaning of the
+Old Testament. It made no claim to originality but rather based its
+claim on the fact it was not original. Our Lord, it was noticed, did not
+base His claim on tradition. In fact He often noticed the Jewish
+tradition for the purpose of marking the contrast between it and His own
+teaching. "Ye have heard that it hath been said of old time ... but I
+say unto you." He commonly refused to give an explanation of what He had
+said, but demanded acceptance on His authority. He brought discipleship
+to the test of hard sayings, and permitted the departure of those who
+could not accept them. He cut across popular prejudices and took small
+account of the "modern mind" as expressed by the Sadducees. He expected
+the same unhesitating submission from the Apostles whom He was training,
+though it was also a part of their training to be the future heralds of
+the Kingdom that they should have the "mysteries of the Kingdom"
+explained to them. But from the time when Jesus began to preach, saying
+"the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," He preached and taught with the same
+unhesitating note of certainty, and with the same demand for
+intellectual submission on the part of those who heard Him.
+
+And that continues to the end. During the Forty Days, the few sayings
+that have come to us have the same ring of authority, of dogmatic
+certainty. The result was that when the Apostles went out to teach they
+were equipped with a body of truth which they presented to the world in
+the same unhesitating way. Indeed, that is the only way in which the
+central truths of the Christian Faith can be presented. They are not the
+conclusions of argument, which may be taken up and argued over again to
+the end of the world,--they are the dicta of revelation. We either know
+them to be true because they have been revealed, or we do not know them
+to be true at all. They are mysteries, that is, truths beyond the
+possibility of human finding which have been made known to man by God
+Himself. They are the appropriate data of religion and what
+distinguishes it from philosophy. The presence of mystery in philosophy
+is annoying, and the aim is to get rid of it, but a religion without
+mystery is absurd. Religion deals with the fundamental relations between
+God and man and the light it brings us must be a supernatural light.
+Such a religion in its presentation naturally cut across the
+preconceptions of the traditionalists in Jerusalem to whom nothing new
+could be true, as across the preconceptions of the sophists of Athens,
+to whom nothing that was not new was interesting.
+
+This dogmatic equipment was but one side, however, of the Apostolic
+training for their future work, a training to which the finishing
+touches, so to say, were put during the Forty Days. The other side of
+the training was the impression upon them of the Personality of our
+Lord, the effect of their close association with Him. This has an
+importance that dwarfs all other influences of the time; and we feel all
+through the Gospel that it was what our Lord himself counted upon in
+forming them for their mission. In the beginning "He chose twelve to be
+with Him," and their day by day association with Him was constantly
+changing their point of view and reforming their character. It was not
+the teaching, the explanation of parables, or the sight of the miracles;
+it was the silent effect of a personality that was in contact with them
+constantly and was constantly presenting to them an ideal of life, an
+ideal of absolute submission to the will of the Father and of utter
+consecration to the, mission that had been committed to Him.
+
+We all know this silent pressure of life upon life. We have most of us,
+I suppose, experienced it either from our parents or from friends in
+later life; and we can through that experience of ours attempt the
+explanation of our Lord's influence on the Apostles. There were not only
+the hours of formal teaching--they, in a way, were perhaps the less
+important from our present point of view. We have more in mind the
+informal talks that would go on as they went from village to village in
+Galilee, or as they gathered about the door of some cottage in the
+evening or sat in the shelter of some grove during the noon-day heat. It
+was just talk arising naturally out of the incidents of the day, but it
+was always talk guided by Jesus--talk in which Jesus was constantly
+revealing Himself to them, impressing upon them His point of view,
+making plain his own judgment upon life. And when we turn to His formal
+teaching we realise how revolutionary was His point of view in regard to
+life, how He swept aside the customary conventions by which they were
+accustomed to guide life, and substituted the radical principles that
+they have left on record in the Sermon on the Mount for the perplexity
+of a world yet far from understanding them. Evidently the Apostles would
+find their accustomed values tossed aside and a wholly new set of values
+presented to them.
+
+I suppose we find it difficult to appreciate how utterly revolutionary
+the Gospel teaching continually is, not because we have become
+accustomed to follow it, but because we have got used to hearing it and
+evacuating it of most of its meaning by clever glossing. It was thus
+that the teaching classes in Jerusalem avoided the pressure of Old
+Testament ideals by a facile system of interpretation which made "void
+the Word of God by their traditions." Human nature has not altered; and
+we succeed by the same method in making the Gospel of none effect. We
+are so well accustomed to do this that we lose the point and pungency of
+much of our Lord's teaching. But we know that the apostles did not. We
+know that they presented that teaching in all its sharpness to would-be
+disciples. It could not be otherwise with those who for three years had
+been in day by day intimacy with our Lord and had assimilated His point
+of view and his judgment on life.
+
+One effect of their contact with our Lord in the days following the
+resurrection would be that whatever changes the passage to a new level
+of existence had wrought in Him, it had not changed either the tone of
+His teaching or the beauty and attractiveness of His Personality. The
+concluding charges that were given them, the great commission of
+proclaiming the Kingdom with which they were now definitely endued, the
+powers which were committed to them in the great words: "All power is
+given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all
+nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
+of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
+commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the
+world," would but confirm and strengthen all that had gone before in
+their experience of Him. The Jesus of the resurrection was no pale ghost
+returned from the grave, intermittently to appear to them to assure them
+of the fact of immortality. He was "the same Jesus" Whom they had known
+for three years, and whose return from the dead triumphant over the
+powers that had opposed Him, set quite plainly and definitely the seal
+of indisputable authority upon all the teaching and the example that had
+gone before. The period of their probation was over: The commission was
+theirs: It remained that they should abide in Jerusalem until they
+should be "endued with power from on high."
+
+     Proclaimed Queen and Mother of a God,
+       The Light of earth, the Sovereign of saints,
+     With pilgrim foot up tiring hills she trod,
+       And heavenly stile with handmaids' toil acquaints;
+         Her youth to age, her health to sick she lends;
+         Her heart to God, to neighbor hand she bends.
+
+     A Prince she is, and mightier Prince doth bear,
+       Yet pomp of princely train she would not have;
+     But doubtless, heavenly choirs attendant were,
+       Her Child from harm, herself from fall to save:
+         Word to the voice, song to the tune she brings,
+         The voice her word, the tune her ditty sings.
+
+     Eternal lights enclosèd in her breast
+       Shot out such piercing beams of burning love,
+     That when her voice her cousin's ears possessed
+       The force thereof did force her babe to move:
+         With secret signs the children greet each other;
+         But, open praise each leaveth to his mother.
+
+     Robert Southwell, S.J. 1560-1595.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE ASCENSION
+
+
+     And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted
+     from them, and carried up into heaven.
+
+                                S. Luke XXIV, 51.
+
+     O Mother of God, since we have obtained confidence in thee,
+     we shall not be put to shame, but we shall be saved.
+
+     And since we have obtained thy help and thy meditation, O,
+     thou holy, pure, and perfect one!
+
+     We fear not but that we shall put our enemies to flight and
+     scatter them.
+
+     We have taken unto us the shelter of thy mighty help in all
+     things like a shield.
+
+     And we pray, and beseech thee that we may call upon thee, O
+     Mother of God, so that thou deliver us through thy prayers.
+
+     And that thou mayest raise us up again from the sleep of
+     darkness, to offer praise through the might of God Who took
+     flesh in thee.
+
+     COPTIC.
+
+
+There would be no doubt of the finality of our Lord's physical
+withdrawal this time. As the group of disciples stood on the hilltop in
+Galilee and watched the clouds close about Him, they would feel that
+this was the end of the kind of intercourse to which they had been
+accustomed. The past Forty Days would have done much to prepare them for
+the separation. Their conception of our Lord's work as issuing in the
+establishment of an earthly Kingdom had been swept away; the changed
+terms of their intercourse with Him in the resurrection state had
+emphasised the change that had taken place; His teaching during these
+weeks which was centered on the work of the future in which they were to
+carry on the mission He had initiated; all these elements prepared them
+for the definite withdrawal of the ascension. Nevertheless we can
+understand the wrench that must have been involved in His actual
+withdrawal. We face the dying of some one we love. We know that it is a
+matter of weeks; the weeks shorten to days, and we are "prepared" for
+the death; but what we mean is that the death will not take us by
+surprise. However prepared we may be, the pain of parting will be a
+quite definite pain; there is no way of avoiding that.
+
+We know that there was no way for the disciples to avoid the pain of the
+going of Jesus. It was not the same sort of pain that they felt now, as
+they gazed up from the hill top to the cloud drifting into the
+distance, as the pain that had been theirs as they hurried trembling and
+affrighted through the streets of Jerusalem on the afternoon of the
+Crucifixion. This pain had no sting of remorse for a duty undone, or of
+fear for a danger to be met. It was the calm pain of love in the
+realisation that the parting is final.
+
+We know that among the group that watched the receding cloud the eyes
+that would linger longest and would find it hardest to turn away would
+be those of the Blessed Mother. Her mission about our Lord during all
+these past years had been a very characteristically womanly mission, a
+mission of silence and help and sympathy. She was with the women who
+ministered to Him, never obtrusive, never self-assertive; but always
+ready when need was. It was the silent service of a great love. That is
+the perfection of service. There are types of service which claim reward
+or recognition. We are not unfamiliar in the work of the Kingdom with
+people who have to be cajoled and petted and made much of because of
+what they do. Verily, they have their reward. But the type we are
+considering, of which the Blessed Mother is the highest expression, is
+without thought of self, being wholly lost in the wonder of being
+permitted to serve God at all. To be permitted to give one's time and
+personal ministry to our Lord in His Kingdom and in His members is so
+splendid a grace of God that all thought of self is lost in the joy of
+it. We know that S. Mary could have had no other thought than the
+offering of her love in whatever way it was permitted to express
+itself; and we know that the quality of that love was such that the
+moment of the ascension would have left her desolate, watching the cloud
+that veiled Him from her eyes.
+
+All of which does not mean that we are wrong when we speak of the
+ascension as one of the "Glorious Mysteries" of S. Mary. There we are
+viewing it in its wide bearing as S. Mary would come to view it in a
+short while. When the meaning of the ascension became plain, when under
+the guidance of the Holy Spirit, S. Mary was able to view her Son as
+"the One Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus," when she
+was able to think of the human nature that God had taken from her as
+permanently enthroned in heaven,--then would all this be to her creative
+of intense joy. We, seeing so clearly what the ascension essentially
+meant, can think of it as a mystery of intense joy, but as our Lord
+passed away from sight the passing would for the moment be one last stab
+of the sword through this so-often wounded heart.
+
+There would be no lingering upon the hill top. The angel messengers
+press the lesson that the life before them is a life of eager contest,
+of energetic action. Jesus had indeed gone in the clouds of heaven, but
+they were reminded that there would be a reappearance, a coming-again in
+the clouds of heaven, and in the meantime there was much to do, work
+that would require their self-expenditure even unto death. Back must
+they go to Jerusalem and there await the opening of the next act of the
+drama of the Kingdom of God.
+
+As we turn to the Epistles of the New Testament and to the slowly
+shaping theology of the early Church, we find set out for us the nature
+of our Lord's heavenly activity; we see the full meaning of His
+Incarnation. The human nature which the Son of God assumed from a pure
+Virgin, He assumed permanently. He took it from the tomb on the
+resurrection morning, he bore it with Him from the Galilean hill to the
+very presence of uncreated God. When the Gates lift and admit the
+Conqueror to heaven, what enters heaven is our nature, what is enthroned
+at the Right Hand of God is man, forever united to God. And when we ask,
+"What is the purpose of this?" The answer is that it is the continual
+purpose of the incarnation, the purpose of mediatorship between the
+created and the uncreated, between God and man. The constant purpose of
+the incarnation is mediation--of the need of mediation there is no end.
+Our Lord's work was not finished, though there are those who appear to
+believe that it was finished, when, as a Galilean Preacher He had taught
+men of the Father: nor was it finished when He bought redemption for us
+on the Cross, and triumphing over death in the resurrection, returned to
+heaven at the ascension. There is a very real sense in which we can say
+that all those acts were the preliminaries of His work, were what made
+the work possible. We then mean by His work the age-long work of
+building the Kingdom of Heaven, and through it bringing souls to the
+Father. To insist perhaps over-much: We are not saved by the memory of
+what our Lord did, we are saved by what He now does. We are saved by the
+present application to us of the work that was wrought in the years of
+His earthly life.
+
+We need to grasp this living and present character of our Lord's work if
+we will understand the meaning of His mediation. There is a gulf between
+the divine, the purely spiritual, and the human, which needs some bridge
+to enable the human to cross it. That bridge was thrown across in the
+incarnation when God and man became united in the Person of the second
+Person of the ever blessed Trinity. When God the Son became incarnate,
+God and man were forever united and the door of heaven was about to
+swing open. Henceforth from the demonstrated triumph of our Lord in the
+Ascension the Kingdom of Heaven is open to all believers, and there is
+an ever-ready way of approach to God the Blessed Trinity by the
+Incarnate Person of the Son Who is the One Mediator between God and man.
+Whoever approaches God, whoever would reach to the Divine, must approach
+by that path, the path of Jesus Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
+
+He is the Way to God: and that Way is one that we follow by
+participation in His nature, by being taken up into Him. We do not reach
+God by thinking about our Lord, or by believing about our Lord: thinking
+and believing are the preliminaries of action. There are wonderful
+riches in the King's Treasury, but you do not get them because you think
+of them or because you believe that they are there. You get them when
+you go after them. And you get the ends of the Christian Religion not
+because you believe them to exist, but because you go after them in the
+way in which Christ directed. Inasmuch as He is the Way to the Father,
+we reach the Father by being made one with the Son, by being made a
+member of Him, by being taken into Him in the life of union. "No man
+cometh unto the Father but by me," He says. And the process of coming is
+by believing all that He said and acting upon His Word to the uttermost.
+Those who by partaking of the Sacraments are in Christ have passed by
+His mediation to the knowledge of the Father.
+
+For a road can be travelled in either direction. Christ is the road by
+which we come to the Father, to participation in the life of the Blessed
+Trinity; but also we can think of Him as the road by which the Father
+comes to us. We can think of ourselves as drawing near to God in His
+Beloved Son: I love to think the other way of the road, of God drawing
+near to me, of God pouring of His riches into human life and elevating
+that life to His very Self. I like to think of the Christian life as a
+life to which God continually communicates Himself, till we are filled
+"with all the fulness of God." Can we imagine any more wonderful
+expression of the life of holiness to which we are called than that? We
+"grow up into Him in all things." That is the true account of the
+Christian life, not some thin and dull routine of moral duty, but the
+spiritual adventure of the road that travels out into the infinite
+pursuit of spiritual accomplishment till it is lost in the very heart
+of God.
+
+This was the starting point of Blessed Mary. She was filled with all
+the fulness of God from the moment of her conception, and was never
+separated from the joy of the great possession. We are born in sin and
+have to travel the road to the very end. Yet we, too, begin in union,
+because we are born of our baptism into Christ soon after our natural
+birth, and our problem is to achieve in experience the content of our
+birthright. In other words: our feet are set in the Way from the
+beginning, and our part is to keep to the Way and not wander to the
+right hand or to the left; that this may be possible for us Christ lived
+and died and to-day is at the Right Hand of the Father where He ever
+liveth to make intercession for us. We need never walk without Christ.
+The weariness of the journey is sustained by His constant and ready
+help. The way is lighted by the Truth which is Himself, and the life
+that we live is His communicated life. "I live, yet not I, but Christ
+liveth in me." There are those who find the road godward, the road of
+the Christ-life, wearisome because they keep their eyes fixed on the
+difficulties of the way and treat each step as though it were a separate
+thing and not one step in a wonderful journey. The way to avoid the
+weariness of the day's travel is to keep one's eye fixed on the end, to
+raise the eyes to the heavens where Jesus sitteth enthroned at the Right
+Hand of the Father. The day's song is the Sursum Corda,--"Lift up your
+hearts unto the Lord!"
+
+The mediatorial office of our Lord is exercised chiefly through His
+Sacrifice. He ever liveth to make intercession for us; and this
+intercession is the presentation of the Sacrifice that He Himself
+offered once for all in Blood upon the Cross, and forever presents to
+the Father in heaven "one unending sacrifice." This heavenly oblation of
+our Lord which is the means wherethrough we approach pure Divinity, is
+also the Sacrifice of the Church here on earth. The heavenly Altar and
+the earthly Altar are but one in that there is but one Priest and one
+Victim here and there. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the Church's
+presentation of her Head as her means of approach to God, as the ground
+of all her prayers. These prayers make their appeal through Jesus Who
+died and rose again for us and is on the Right Hand of Power. We know of
+no other way of approach, we plead no other merit as the hope of our
+acceptance. Let us be very clear about this centrality of our Lord's
+mediation because I shall presently have certain things to say which are
+often assumed to be in conflict with his Mediatorial Office, but which
+in reality do not so conflict, but exist at all because of the Office.
+
+We approach Divinity, then, through our Lord's humanity; and we at once
+see how that teaching, so common to-day, which denies the Resurrection
+of our Lord's Body, and believes simply in the survival of His human
+soul strikes at the very heart of the Catholic Religion. If Revelation
+be true, our approach to God is rendered possible because there is a
+Mediator between God and man, the MAN Christ Jesus. All our prayers
+have explicitly, or implicitly, this fact in view. All our Masses are a
+pleading of this fact.
+
+How great is our joy and confidence when we realise this! We come
+together, let us say, on Sunday morning at the High Mass. We are coming
+to offer the Blessed Sacrifice of our Lord's Body and Blood. But who,
+precisely, is to make the offering? When we ask what this congregation
+is, what is the answer? The congregation is the congregation of Christ's
+Flock: it is the Body of Christ gathered together for the worship of
+Almighty God. The act that is to be performed is the act of a Body, not
+primarily of individuals. Our participation in the act of worship in the
+full sense of participation is conditioned upon our being members of the
+Body. If we are not members of the Body we have no recognised status as
+worshippers. No doubt we each one have our individual aspirations and
+needs which we bring with us, but they are the needs and aspirations of
+a member of the Body of Christ, and our ability to unite them with the
+act that is to be performed grows out of our status as members of the
+Body; as such, we join our own intention to the sacrificial act and make
+our petitions through it. But we are here as offerers of the Sacrifice,
+and may not neglect our official significance, and attempt to turn the
+Mass into a private act of worship.
+
+We, then, the Body of Christ in this place, offer the Sacrifice of
+Christ. What is the status of the priest? He is a differentiated organ
+of the Body, not created by the Body, but created by God in the creation
+of the Body. He is not separate from the Body, an official imposed upon
+it from the outside, nor is he a creation of the Body set apart to act
+upon its behalf. He is one mode of the expression of the Body's
+life--the Body could not perfectly perform its functions without him
+any more than a physical body can perfectly function without a hand or
+an eye. But neither has the priest any existence apart from the Body of
+which he is a function. The Sacrifice that he offers is not his on
+behalf of the Body, but the Body's own Sacrifice which is made through
+his agency.
+
+But a complete body has a head; and of the Body which is the Church the
+Head is Christ. We, the members, have our life from Him, the Head; we
+are able at all to act spiritually because of our union with Him. He is
+our life; and the acts of the Body are ultimately the acts of the Head.
+The Sacrifice which the Body offers as the means of its approach to
+Divinity is One Sacrifice of the Head: and the priestly function of the
+Body has any vitality because it is Christ Who is its life, Who
+functions through the priest, Who is, in fact, the true Priest. He
+Himself is both Sacrifice and Priest; and that which is offered here is
+indentical with that which is offered there.
+
+Our life flows from our Head, is the life of Christ in us. So closely
+are we associated with Him that we are called His members, the
+instrument through which His life expresses itself, through which He
+acts. By virtue of the life of Christ of which all we are partakers, we
+are not only members of Christ, but members one of another. Our
+spiritual life is not our own affair, but we have duties one to another,
+and all the members of the Body are concerned in our exercise of our
+gifts, have, in fact, claims on the exercise of them.
+
+This mutual inherence of the members of the Body and these obligations
+to one another are in strict subordination to the Head; but they are
+very real duties and privileges which are ours to exercise. What we are
+concerned with at present is that from, this view of them that I have
+been presenting there results the possibility and obligation of
+intercession; the love and care of the members for one another is
+exercised in their prayers for one another. This privilege of
+intercession is one of the privileges most widely valued and most
+constantly exercised throughout the Church. Days of intercession,
+litanies, the offering of the Blessed Sacrifice with special intention,
+the constant requests for prayers for objects in which people are
+interested, all testify to the value we place on the privilege. Here is
+one action in regard to which there is no doubting voice in Christendom.
+
+But curiously, and for some reason to me wholly unintelligible, there
+are a great many who think of this right and duty of intercession
+between the members of the One Body as exclusively the right and duty of
+those who are living here on earth; or at least if it pertain to the
+"dead" it is in a way in which we can have no part. One would think--and
+so the Catholic Church has always thought--that those whom we call dead,
+but who are really "alive unto God" with a life more intense, a life
+more spiritually clear-visioned, than our own, would have a special
+power and earnestness in prayer, and that a share in their intercessions
+is a spiritual privilege much to be valued. They are members with us of
+the same Body; death has not cut them off from their membership,
+rather, if possible, it has intensified it, or at least their perception
+of what is involved in it. They remain under all the obligations of the
+life of the Body and consequently under the obligation to care for other
+members of the Body. The intercession of the saints for us is a fact
+that the Church has never doubted and cannot doubt except under penalty
+of denying at the same time the existence of the Body. That certain
+members of the Church have of late years doubted our right to invoke the
+saints, to call upon them for the aid of their prayers, is true; but
+there seems no ground for rejecting the tradition of invocation except
+the rather odd ground that we do not know the mode by which our requests
+reach them! As there are a good many other spiritual facts of which we
+do not know the mode, I do not think that we need be deterred from the
+practice of invocation on that ground: certainly the Church has never
+been so deterred.
+
+It is strange how little people attempt to think out their religion, and
+especially their obligation to religious practice. I have so often heard
+people say, when the practice of invocation of saints was urged: Why ask
+the saints? Why not go directly to God? And these same people are
+constantly asking the prayers of their fellow Christians here on earth!
+Suppose when some pious soul comes to me and asks me if I will not pray
+for a sick child, or a friend at sea, I were to reply: "Why come to me?
+Why not go directly to God?" I should be rightly thought unfeeling and
+unchristian. But that is precisely what the same person says when I
+suggest that the saints or the Blessed Mother of God be invoked for some
+cause that we have in hand! A person comes to me and asks my prayers,
+and I go to a saint and ask his prayers on precisely the same basis and
+for precisely the same reason, namely, that we are both members of the
+Body of Christ and of one another. We have the right to expect the
+interest and to count on the love of our fellow-members in Christ. We go
+to the saints with the same directness and the same simplicity with
+which we go to the living members of the Body, living, I mean in the
+Church on earth. If it be not possible to do that, then death has made a
+very disastrous break in the unity of the Body of Christ.
+
+And if we can count so without hesitation upon the love and sympathy and
+interest of the saints, surely we can count upon finding the same or
+greater love and sympathy in the greatest of all the saints, our blessed
+Mother, who is also the Mother of God. She in her spotless purity is the
+highest of creatures. She by her special privilege has boundless power
+of intercession; not power as I have explained before, because of any
+sort of favouritism, but power because her spiritual perfection gives
+her unique insight into the mind of God. Power in prayer really means
+that, through spiritual insight we are enabled to ask according to His
+will "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask
+anything according to his will, he heareth us." That is why
+righteousness is the ground of prevailing intercession, because
+righteousness means sympathetic understanding of the mind of God.
+
+And in none is there such sympathetic understanding because in none is
+there such nearness to God, as in Blessed Mary. To go to her in our
+prayers and to beg her to intercede for us is, of course, no more a
+trenching upon the unique mediatorship of our Lord than it is to ask my
+human friend to pray for me. We tend, do we not? to select from among
+the circle of our acquaintance those whom for some reason we feel to
+have what we call a special power in prayer when we seek for some one to
+pray for us in our need. Is it not wholly natural then that we should go
+to our Blessed Mother on whose sympathy we can unfailingly count and in
+whose spiritual understanding we can implicitly trust, when we want to
+interest those who are dear to our Lord in our special needs? We have
+every claim upon their sympathy because they are fellow-members of the
+same Body; and we know, too, that He Who has made us one in His Body
+wills that we should receive His graces through our mutual
+ministrations.
+
+     Mary, Maiden, mild and free,
+     Chamber of the Trinity,
+     A little while now list to me,
+      As greeting I thee give;
+     What though my heart unclean may be,
+      My offering yet receive.
+
+     Thou art the Queen of Paradise,
+     Of heaven, of earth, of all that is;
+     Thou bore in thee the King of Bliss
+      Without or spot or stain;
+     Thou didst put right what was amiss,
+      What man had lost, re-gain.
+
+     The gentle Dove of Noe thou art
+     The Branch of Olive-tree that brought,
+     In token that a peace was wrought,
+      And man to God was dear:
+     Sweet Ladye, be my Fort,
+      When the last fight draws near.
+
+     Thou art the Sling, thy Son the Stone
+     That David at Goliath flung;
+     Eke Aaron's rod, whence blossom sprung
+      Though bare it was, and dry:
+     'Tis known to all, who've looked upon
+      Thy childbirth wondrous high.
+
+     In thee has God become a Child,
+     The wretched foe in thee is foiled;
+     That Unicorn that was so wild
+      Is thrown by woman chaste;
+     Him hast thou tamed, and forced to yield,
+      With milk from Virgin breast.
+
+     Like as the sun full clear doth pass,
+     Without a break, through shining glass,
+     Thy Maidenhood unblemished was
+       For bearing of the Lord:
+     Now, sweetest Comfort of our race,
+       To sinners be thou good.
+
+     Take, Ladye dear, this little Song
+     That out of sinful heart has come;
+     Against the fiend now make me strong,
+       Guide well my wandering soul:
+     And though I once have done thee wrong,
+       Forgive, and make me whole.
+     Wm. De Shoreham's translation
+     from the Latin, or French of
+     Robt. Grosseteste; C. 1325.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
+
+     And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire,
+     and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with
+     the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the
+     Spirit gave them utterance.
+
+Acts II, 3.
+
+     Holy Mother of God, Virgin ever blessed, glorious and noble,
+     chaste and inviolate, O Mary Immaculate, chosen and beloved
+     of God, endowed win singular sanctity, worthy of all praise,
+     thou who art the Advocate for the sins of the whole world; O
+     listen, listen, listen to us, O holy Mary, Pray for us.
+     Intercede for us. Disdain not to help us. For we are
+     confident and know for certain that thou canst obtain all
+     that thou wiliest from thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, God
+     Almighty, the King of ages, Who liveth with the Father and
+     the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever.
+
+MS. Book of Cerne, belonging to Ethelwald, BP. of Sherbourne, 760.
+
+"When the Day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one
+accord in one place"--I suppose the "all" will be not merely the
+"twelve," but the "all" that were mentioned by S. Luke a few verses
+before. He mentions the Apostles by name and then adds, "These all
+continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women,
+and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren."
+
+We think of our Lady as sharing in the Pentecostal gift. This was the
+first act of her ascended Son, this sending forth of the Holy Spirit
+whom He had promised. It was the fulfilment of the prophecy: "I will
+pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters
+shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men
+shall dream dreams." I do not know of anything in the teaching of the
+Church to lead us to suppose that this gift was to the Apostles alone:
+rather the thought of the Church is that to all Christians is there a
+gift of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is imparted to the Church as such,
+and within the organisation He functions through appropriate organs.
+"There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." Whatever the
+operations of God through the Body of Christ, the same divine energy is
+making them possible. "All these worketh that one and selfsame Spirit,
+dividing to every man severally as he will."
+
+That the Holy Spirit should manifest Himself in her life was, of
+course, no new experience for S. Mary. Her conscious vocation to be the
+Mother of God had begun when the Holy Ghost had come upon her, and she
+had conceived that "Holy Thing" which was called the Son of God. And we
+cannot think that the Spirit Who is the Spirit of sanctity had ever been
+absent from her from the moment of her wonderful conception when by the
+creative act of the Spirit she was conceived without sin, that is, in
+union with God. But as there are diversities of gifts, so the coming of
+the Spirit on Pentecost would have meant to her some new or increased
+gift of God.
+
+For the Church as such this coming of the Spirit meant the entrance of
+the work of the Incarnation upon a new phase of its action. We may, I
+suppose, think of the work of our Lord during the years of His Ministry
+as intensive. It was the work of preparing the men to whom was to be
+committed the commission to preach the Kingdom of God. They had been
+chosen to be with Him, and their training had been essentially an
+experience of Him, an experience which was to be the essence of their
+Gospel and which their mission was to interpret to the world. "Who is
+this Jesus of Nazareth Whom ye preach? What does He mean?" was to be the
+question that they would have to answer in the coming years; and they
+would have to answer it to all sorts of men; to Jews who would find this
+conception of a suffering and rejected Messiah "a stumbling-block"; to
+the Greeks who would find "Jesus and the resurrection" "foolishness"; to
+all races of men who would have to be persuaded to leave their
+ancestral religions and revolutionise their lives, and before they would
+do so would wish to know what was the true meaning of Christ in whose
+name their whole past was challenged. As we watch the perplexity, the
+bewilderment, of these Apostles in the face of the collapse of all their
+hopes on the first Good Friday, as we see them struggling with the fact
+of the Resurrection, and attempting to adjust their lives to that; and
+then listen to their preaching and follow their action in the days
+succeeding Pentecost, we have brought home to us the nature of the
+action of the Holy Spirit when He came to them as the Spirit of Jesus to
+enable them to carry on the work that Jesus had committed to them.
+
+We understand that the work of the Spirit was first of all the work of
+interpreting the experience of the last three years. During these years
+they had been with Jesus, and the result was an experience which,
+however wonderful, or rather, just because it was wonderful, was in
+their consciousness at present little more than a chaotic mass of
+impressions and memories. It was the work of the Spirit to enkindle and
+illuminate their understanding so that they could put the experiences of
+the last three years in order, if one may put it in that way. He enabled
+them to draw out the meaning of what they had gone through. We are at
+once impressed with the reality of the work of the Spirit when we listen
+to the sermon of S. Peter to those who have witnessed the miracle of
+Pentecost. Here is another miracle of which we have, perhaps, missed
+something of the wonder. This man who in answer to the mockeries of the
+crowd--"these men are full of new wine"--stands forth to deliver this
+exposition of Jesus is the same man who but a few days before had denied
+his Lord through fear; he is the same man who even after the
+Resurrection was filled with such discouragement that he could think of
+nothing to do but to return to the old life of a fisherman, who had said
+on a day, "I go a-fishing." If we wish to understand the meaning of the
+coming of the Spirit, let us forget for the moment the tongues of fire,
+which are the symbol, and read over the words of S. Peter which are the
+true miracle of Pentecost.
+
+And this action of the Spirit is not sporadic or temporary. We follow
+the annals of the Church and we find the constant evidence of the
+Spirit's power and action in the Christian propaganda. The courage with
+which the Christians meet the opposition of Jews and Romans, in their
+resourcefulness in dealing with the utterly unprecedented problems they
+are called on to face, in the intellectual grip of the Apologists who
+have to meet the criticism of very diverse sets of opponents, in their
+rapidly growing comprehension of what the Incarnation means, and of all
+in the way of action that our Lord's directions involve,--all these,
+when we recall the antecedents of these men, lead us to a clearer
+apprehension of the nature of the Spirit's work in the Church. As our
+Lord had promised, He is bringing "all things to their remembrance" and
+"leading them into all the truth." If we need proof of the constant
+supernatural action of God in the Church, we get all we can ask in the
+preaching of Jesus by His followers in these opening years of
+their ministry.
+
+I said that our Lord's work in the time of His ministry was intensive,
+the preparing of instruments for the founding of the Kingdom. With
+Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit it passes into a new stage; it
+becomes _extensive_ in that it now reaches out to gather all men into
+the Kingdom. To this end there is now a vast development of the
+machinery (so to call it) of the Gospel, a calling into existence of the
+means whereby Christ is to continue His action in men's souls. For there
+must continue a direct action of Christ or the Gospel will sink to the
+condition of a twice-told tale: it will be the constant repetition of
+the story of Jesus of Nazareth Who went about doing good: and it will
+have less and less power to be of any help to men as it receeds into the
+past. Without the means which are called into existence to produce
+continual contact between the Redeemer and the Redeemed we cannot
+conceive of the Gospel continuing to exist as power.
+
+This is not a matter of pure theory: it is a thing that we have seen
+happen. We have seen the growth of a theory of Christianity which
+dispenses wholly or nearly wholly with the means of grace, and reduces
+the presentation of the Gospel to the presentation of the ideal of a
+good life as an object of imitation. When one asks: "Why should I
+imitate this life which, however good in an abstract way, is not very
+harmonious with the ideals of society at present?" one is told that it
+is the best life ever lived, the life that best interprets God, our
+heavenly Father to us. If one asks: "What is likely to happen if one
+does not imitate this life, but prefers some more modern type of
+usefulness?" the answer seems to be: "Nothing in particular will
+happen." In other words, the preaching of the Gospel divorced from the
+means of grace tends more and more to decline to the presentation of a
+humanitarian ideal of life which has little, and constantly less,
+driving power.
+
+We see then as we study the history of the early days of the Church the
+constant presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the mode and means by
+which the Gospel is presented. We see it particularly in the development
+of the ministry and the growth of the sacramental system. It seems to me
+not very important to find a detailed justification of all the things
+that were done or established in explicit words or acts in the New
+Testament. If we are dealing, as we believe that we are, with an
+organism of which the life is God the Holy Ghost Who is the Vicar of
+Christ in the building and administration of His Kingdom, I do not see
+why we should not find in the action of the Kingdom as much of
+inspiration as we find in its writings. I do not see why we should
+accept certain things on the authority of the action of the early
+Christian community, as the baptism of infants and the communion of
+women, and reject others, as the reservation of the Blessed Sacraments
+and prayers for the dead. Nor do I see why we should draw some sort of
+an artificial line through the history of the Church and declare all the
+things on one side of it primitive and desirable, and all on the other
+late and suspect! Especially as no one seems to be able to explain why
+the line should be drawn in one place rather than in another.
+
+If the Holy Spirit was sent by our Lord as His Vicar to preside in the
+Church, as I suppose we all believe, it was in fulfilment of our Lord's
+promise to be with it till the end of the world and that the gates of
+hell should not prevail against it. There is nothing anywhere in Holy
+Scripture indicating that the Holy Spirit was to be sent to the
+"primitive Church," even if any one could tell what the primitive Church
+is, or rather when the Church ceased to be primitive. The Holy Spirit is
+present as a guide to the Church to-day quite as fully as He was in the
+first century. His presence then was not a guarantee that all men should
+believe the truth or do the right, nor is it now. The state of
+Christendom is a sufficient evidence of the ability of men to defy the
+will of God, the Holy Spirit; but that does not mean that the Holy
+Spirit has withdrawn any more than the state of things at Corinth which
+called out S. Paul's two Epistles to that Church is a proof that God the
+Holy Ghost never came or did not stay with that primitive Christian
+community. The power of the Spirit is not an irresistible power, but a
+spiritual influence which will guide those who are willing to be guided,
+who will to be submissive to His will. But the will of God can always be
+resisted--and always is. Nevertheless the Holy Spirit is in the Church.
+He shaped and is shaping its beliefs and institutions: and to-day we
+trust that He is leading us back to His obedience that we may at length
+realize the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.
+
+The work of the Holy Spirit in the individual Christian is a
+constructive work; it has in view the growth of the child of God in
+holiness. He makes the soul of the baptised His dwelling-place and
+wishes to remain there as in His Temple, carrying on the work of its
+sanctification. The state of guiltlessness that follows absolution is
+not the equivalent of sanctity. Guiltlessness is a negative, sanctity is
+a positive state, and is acquired as the result of active correspondence
+with the will of God. In order that there may be this correspondence the
+will of God must be known, not merely as we know the things that we have
+learned by rote, but known in the sense of understood and appreciated.
+The will of God is knowable: that is, it has been revealed to man; but
+it needs to be effectively made known to the individual man. He must be
+convinced of the importance of divine truth to him. We know that just
+there is the supremely vital point in the teaching of the truth. Men
+assent to truth as true; but they are not thereby necessarily moved to
+act upon it: it may remain unassimilated. The vast majority of the
+people of this country, if they were questioned, would assert a belief
+in God; but a surprising number of them are unmoved by that belief, are
+led by it to no action. Or take the membership of any parish; they would
+all profess a belief in the efficacy of the sacraments: yet there is a
+surprisingly large number who do not frequent the sacraments. How many
+of you, for example, make your confessions and communions with the
+frequency and regularity that your theory about the sacraments implies?
+
+Now it is the work of the Holy Spirit to effect the passage in life
+from theory to practice, from profession to action. He illuminates the
+mind that we may understand; He stirs the will that we may act. He aids
+us to overcome the intellectual and physical sloth which is the
+arch-enemy of Christian practice. He intercedes for us, and He pleads
+with us that we may act as the children of God that we believe ourselves
+to be. But all He can do is to entice the will; if we remain unwilling,
+unmoved, He is ultimately grieved and leaves us. We may hope that that
+despair of the Holy Spirit of a soul rarely happens because it is a
+spiritual disaster awful to contemplate. In most men and women we can
+see enough impulse toward God, enough struggle with evil, to encourage
+us to think that the Holy Spirit has not utterly abandoned them. And it
+is never safe for us to judge definitely of another's spiritual case;
+but we do see lives that are so given over to malignancy that our hope
+for them is an optimism which has small basis on which to rest.
+
+In most we may be certain that there is going on a very active pleading
+of the Holy Spirit. He is interpreting the meaning of the truth we
+accept. He is present in a careful reading of the Bible, in meditation,
+in devotional study. He receives of Christ and shows it unto us. I am
+sure we ought to think more of this interpretative assistance of the
+Holy Spirit in the work of understanding the Christian Religion,
+especially in its application to the daily life. I am quite certain, and
+I have no doubt that the experience of some of you, at least, will bear
+me out, that it makes a vast difference in the results of our reading
+and study if we undertake it under the direct invocation of the Holy
+Spirit and with the conscious giving ourselves up to His guidance. We
+have to make a meditation, for example, and we begin with prayer to God
+the Holy Ghost for guidance and enlightenment. It is often well to let
+that prayer run on as long as it will. It may be in the end that instead
+of making the meditation we had planned we shall have spent the time in
+a prayer of union with the Holy Spirit and will find ourselves refreshed
+and enlightened as the result. There is need of that sort of yielding of
+self to the promptings of the Spirit. I think that it not infrequently
+happens that our rules get in the way of His action by destroying or
+checking in us a certain flexibility which is necessary if we are to
+respond quickly to the voice of the Spirit. As in the case just
+mentioned where the Spirit is leading us to communion with Him we are
+apt to think: "I must get on with my meditation or the time will be up
+and I shall not have made it," and we turn from the Spirit and stop the
+work that He was accomplishing.
+
+He has so much to do for us, so many things to show us, so many grounds
+to urge for our more earnest seeking of sanctity. The true point of our
+Bible reading is that it is the opportunity of the Holy Spirit to
+exhibit truth to us so that in us it will become energetic. We already
+are familiar with the incidents of our Lord's Passion. If it be a matter
+of knowledge there is no need to-night to take up the Gospel and read
+the chapters which tell of the Crucifixion. There is not much point in
+reading through a chapter as a matter of pious habit. It is
+extraordinary how many there are who speak with contempt of "mediæval
+prayers" such as the recitation of the Rosary, who yet "read a chapter"
+once a day in the shortest possible time and with the minimum of
+attention. We can think of all religious practices as opportunities that
+we offer to God the Holy Ghost. The few verses of Holy Scripture we read
+may well be the medium of His action upon us. He may give us new insight
+into their meaning, He may stir our wills to correspondence with their
+teaching, He may kindle our hearts by the evidence of the divine love
+that He presses home. Who does not remember moments when new meaning
+seemed to flash from the familiar pages, when we felt ourselves
+convicted of inadequate response to the knowledge we have, or when we
+felt our heart stir and send us to our knees in an act of
+thanksgiving and love?
+
+Our constant need is the clear knowledge of ourselves. We may, we often
+do, see clearly God's will, and then we deceive ourselves as to the
+nature of our response. We think we are seeking for God when in reality
+we are seeking our own ends. We make our own plans and then seek to
+impose them on the will of God. Self-seeking, which we mistake for
+something else, is at the root of much spiritual failure. We try to
+believe that God's will is our will, and we succeed in a measure. We
+need therefore to be constantly examining ourselves by the revealed
+standard of God's will, to let in the light of the Spirit on our
+judgments and acts. For the struggle of the Spirit for control is a
+struggle with a resisting and sluggish will. We see, but we do not
+move; we know, but we do not act. The horrible inertia of spiritual
+sloth paralyses us, and the call of the Spirit is heard in vain. Like
+the man in our Lord's parable we plead the lateness of the hour, and our
+unwillingness to disturb others as our excuse for not rising at the
+Spirit's summons. But the Spirit, like the Friend at midnight, still
+knocks at the door, and the sound of the summons penetrates the
+quietness of the house and breaks in upon our slumbers. Well is it for
+us if in the end we rise and open to Him.
+
+It is only as we thus become energetic by the yielding to God of our
+wills that He can go on to His desired work. The aim of God in dealing
+with our lives is creative. He wills that we bring forth fruit, and the
+fruit that He wills that we bring forth is the Fruit of the Spirit. The
+general notion of holiness analyses into these qualities which are the
+evidence of God's indwelling, of His actual possession of the soul. When
+the soul yields at last to the divine will and begins to follow the
+divinely indicated course of action, then it loses self and finds God,
+then the results begin to show in the growth of the character-qualities
+that we call fruits or virtues. The presence or the absence of these is
+infallible evidence of the Spirit's success or failure in His work in
+us. If we abide in Christ, then the natural results of such abiding must
+be forthcoming. "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in
+me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye
+can do nothing."
+
+A vine bears fruit because it assimilates the natural elements which
+are furnished it by the Providence of God through earth and air and
+water, and works them into the fruit which is the end, the meaning of
+its existence. Our Lord through the constant operation within us of the
+Holy Spirit gives us the spiritual power to work over the endowments of
+nature and the opportunities of life into the spiritual product which is
+holiness. We can just as well, and perhaps easier, work up the same
+natural elements into a quite different product. The result of our
+life's action may be that we can show the works of the flesh. But what
+is the will of the Spirit, S. Paul sets before us in these words: "For
+when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What
+fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the
+end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and
+become the servants of God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the
+end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God
+is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
+
+Any adequate self-examination, therefore, bears not only on our sins,
+our failures, but on our accomplishment. A tree is known by its fruits;
+and fruits are things which are evident to all men. If indeed the work
+of the Spirit in us is love, joy, peace and the rest of the fruits,
+these qualities cannot be hid. Certainly they cannot be hid from
+ourselves. They are the evidence to us of precisely where we stand in
+the way of spiritual accomplishment. And we must remember that they are
+supernatural qualities, and not be deceived by the existence in us of a
+set of human counterfeits. Love is not good-natured tolerance; joy is
+not superficial gaiety, peace is not clever dodging of difficulties. The
+fruits of the Spirit are not of easy growth, but come only at the end of
+a long period of cultivation, of energetic striving. But like all the
+gifts of God they do come if we want them to come. "If ye abide in me,
+and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be
+done unto you." But when we ask our Lord for gifts we must remember that
+the giving is not a mechanical giving. What our Lord gives is the Might
+of the Spirit to effect what we desire. If a man ask of God a good
+harvest the prayer is answered if there be given the conditions under
+which a good harvest can be produced; it will not be produced without
+the appropriate human labour. And when we ask of God the Fruits of the
+Spirit the prayer is granted if the conditions are given under which
+this Fruit may be brought forth. But neither here may we expect Fruit
+without appropriate action on our part. God gives, but He gives to those
+who want.
+
+I
+
+others do of grace bereave, When, in their mother's womb, they life
+receive, God, as his sole-borne Daughter, loved thee: To match thee like
+thy birth's nobility, He thee his Spirit for thy Spouse did leave, Of
+whom thou didst his only Son conceive; And so was linked to all the
+Trinity. Cease, then, O queens, who earthly crowns do wear, To glory in
+the pomp of worldly, things: If men such respect unto you bear Which
+daughters, wives and mothers are of kings; What honour should unto that
+Queen be done Who had your God for Father, Spouse and Son?
+
+II
+
+Sovereign of Queens, if vain ambition move My heart to seek an earthly
+prince's grace, Show me thy Son in his imperial place, Whose servants
+reign our kings and queens above: And, if alluring passions I do prove
+By pleasing sighs--show me thy lovely face, Whose beams the angels'
+beauty do deface, And even inflame the seraphins with love. So by
+ambition I shall humble be, When, in the presence of the highest King, I
+serve all his, that he may honour me; And love, my heart to chaste
+desires shall bring, When fairest Queen looks on me from her throne, And
+jealous, bids me love but her alone.
+
+III
+
+Why should I any love, O Queen, but thee, If favor past a thankful love
+should breed? Thy womb did bear, thy breast my Saviour feed, And thou
+didst never cease to succour me. If love do follow worth and dignity,
+Thou all in thy perfections dost exceed; If love be led by hope of
+future meed, What pleasure more than thee in heaven to see? An earthly
+sight doth only please the eye, And breeds desire, but doth not satisfy:
+Thy sight gives us possession of all joy; And with such full delights
+each sense shall fill, As heart shall wish but for to see thee still,
+And ever seeing, ever shall enjoy.
+
+IV
+
+Sweet Queen, although thy beauty raise up me From sight of baser
+beauties here below, Yet, let me not rest there; but, higher go To him,
+who took his shape from God and thee. And if thy form in him more fair I
+see, What pleasure from his deity shall flow, By whose fair beams his
+beauty shineth so, When I shall it behold eternally? Then, shall my love
+of pleasure have his fill, When beauty's self, in whom all pleasure is,
+Shall my enamoured soul embrace and kiss, And shall new loves and new
+delights distill, Which from my soul shall gush into my heart, And
+through my body flow to every part.
+
+HENRY CONSTABLE: 1562-1613.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE HOME OF S. JOHN
+
+And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.
+
+S. John XIX, 27.
+
+But now we unite to praise thee, O Pure and Immaculate One, blessed
+Virgin and sinless Mother of thy great Son and the God of all. O
+perfectly spotless and altogether holy, thou art the hope of despairing
+sinners. We bless thee as most full of grace, who didst give birth to
+Christ, God and Man. And we fall down before thee. We all invoke thee
+and implore thy help. Deliver us, O Virgin, holy and undefiled, from
+every pressing strait and from all temptations of the Evil One. Be thou
+our peacemaker in the hour of death and judgment. Do thou save us from
+the future unquenchable fire and from the outer darkness. Do thou render
+us worthy of the glory of thy Son, O Virgin and Mother, most sweet
+and clement.
+
+A PRAYER OF S. EPHREM THE SYRIAN.
+
+There is no scene in the whole range of Scripture narrative which is
+more full of pathos than this scene of the Cross. Two agonies meet: the
+agony of the nailing, the lifting, the dying; and the agony that looks
+on in silent helplessness. But while our Lord's physical agony was in
+some sort swallowed up in the intensity of the love which was the motive
+for enduring it, overpassed in the vision of the need of those for whom
+He was dying, S. Mary's agony was the pain of a love concentrated upon
+the Sufferer Who hangs dying before her eyes. If there be anything that
+can lighten the pain of such love it is that it feels itself answered,
+that its object is conscious of it and is helped by it. And S. Mary had
+that consolation: the love poured to her from the Cross, and revealed
+itself when the suffering Son turned His eyes upon her agony and,
+understanding what her desolation would be, committed her to His beloved
+disciple: "Behold thy Mother; behold thy son." These two great loves
+which had been our Lord's human consolation were thus committed to one
+another. And when the darkness fell, and death relieved the agony, and
+the Sacred Body had been cared for, then the mother found refuge with S.
+John: "and from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home."
+
+From the day of Pentecost on, S. Mary is no more heard of in the history
+of the Church. As so often, the Scriptures are silent and decline to
+answer our interested questions. They go on with the essentails of their
+story, the founding of the Church of God, and leave other things aside.
+So we do not know any of the last years of the life of Blessed Mary.
+Where did she live? How long did she live? The traditions, in any case
+of quite an untrustworthy nature, are contradictory. Jerusalem and
+Ephesus contend for the honour of our Lady's residence. Jerusalem must
+have been the site of that "home" to which S. John took her after the
+crucifixion. Did she remain there, or did she follow S. John, and at
+length come to live with him in Ephesus? Ephesus puts forward the claim,
+and we feel that it would be well founded in the nature of the relation
+between these two, if S. Mary lived until the settlement of the last of
+the apostles in the Asian city. Our Lord's committal of His Mother to
+the beloved disciple implies their personal association as long as S.
+Mary lived: if till S. John was settled in Ephesus, then we may be sure
+that she was there. She would be with S. John as long as she lived, but
+can we think of her as living long? Would not a great love draw her to
+another world and the presence of her triumphant Son?
+
+Let us, however think, as one tradition bids us, of our Lady as living
+some time with S. John at Ephesus. We can understand the situation
+because it is so much like our own. These Asia Minor cities of the
+imperial period were curiously like the great centers of population in
+the Western world of to-day--London, Paris, New York, Chicago. There was
+the same over-crowding of population, the same intense commercial
+activity, the same almost insane thirst for amusement and excitement,
+the same degeneracy of moral fibre. The sins that sapped the life of
+Ephesus are the same that degrade contemporary life. In some ways
+Ephesus was, possibly, more frankly corrupt; but on the other hand it
+had no daily press to advertise and promote sin and social corruption.
+There is more of Christianity and of Christian influence in the modern
+city, but even here there is a curious resemblance between the two. The
+Christian Religion had but recently been introduced into Ephesus, but
+already it had precisely that touch of ineffectiveness that seems to us
+so modern. The message of the risen Lord to the angel of the Church in
+Ephesus is: "Nevertheless I have this against thee, that thou hast left
+thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and
+repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly,
+and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent."
+
+The things that hearten us are sometimes strange; but I suppose that
+there is a feeling of encouragement in our present day distress and
+spiritual ineffectiveness in the thought that even under S. John the
+Church in Ephesus was not wholly ideal. The conditions which baffle us,
+baffled him. The converts who were so promising and enthusiastic
+declined in zeal and fell back under the spell of worldliness. Zeal is a
+quality which is maintained with great difficulty, and the pull of the
+world, whether social or business, is steadily exercised. Converts in
+Ephesus, like converts in New York, felt that their friends were right
+who declared that they were quite unnecessarily strict, and that in
+order to serve Christ it was not necessary to turn their backs
+absolutely on Diana.
+
+As one tries to reconstruct the situation in Ephesus, one feels that our
+Lady would have had no prominence in the Church in the way of an
+actively exercised influence. One thinks of her as living in retirement,
+as not even talking very much. If she lived long she would be an object
+of increasing interest and even of awe to the new converts, and an
+object of growing love to all those who were admitted to any sort of
+fellowship with her. But one cannot imagine a crowd about her, inquiring
+into her experiences and her memories of her divine Son. Once she told
+of her experience, for it was necessary that the Church should know of
+the circumstances of the coming of the Son of God into the world, but
+beyond that necessary communication of her experience we cannot think of
+her as speaking of her sacred memories. Silence and meditation, longing
+and waiting, would have filled the years till the hour of her release.
+
+But in the quiet hours spent with S. John it would be different. Between
+the Blessed Virgin and S. John there was perfect understanding and
+perfect sympathy, and we love to think of the hours that they would have
+spent together in deep spiritual intercourse. Those hours would not be
+hours of reminiscence merely; they would rather be hours in which these
+two would attempt with the aid of the Spirit Who ruled in them so fully
+to enter deeper and ever deeper into the meaning of Incarnate God.
+Jesus would be the continual object of their thought and their love, and
+meditation upon His words and acts would lead them to an ever increasing
+appreciation of their depth and meaning.
+
+We have all felt, in reading the pages of S. John, how vast is the
+difference both in attitude toward his subject and in his understanding
+of it from that of the other Evangelists. The earlier Evangelists seem
+deliberately to keep all feeling out of their story, to tell the life of
+our Lord in the most meagre outline, confining themselves to the
+essential facts. Anything like interpretation they decline. In S. John
+all this is changed. The Jesus whom he presents is the same Jesus, but
+seen through what different eyes! The same life is presented, but with
+what changes in selection of material! The Gospel of S. John seems
+almost a series of mediations upon selected facts of an already familiar
+life rather than an attempt to tell a life-story. And so indeed we think
+of it. When S. John wrote, the life of our Lord as a series of events
+was already before the Church. The Church had the synoptic Gospels, and
+it had a still living tradition to inform it. What it needed, and what
+the Holy Spirit led S. John to give it, was some glimpse of the inner
+meaning of the Incarnation, some unfolding of the spiritual depths of
+the teaching of Jesus.
+
+We know how it is that different people listening to the same words get
+different impressions and carry away with them quite different meanings.
+We hear what we are able to hear. And S. John was able to hear what the
+other disciples of our Lord seem not to have heard. What dwelt in his
+memory and was worked up in his meditations and was at length
+transmitted to us, was the meaning of such incidents as the interview
+with Nicodemus, and the talk with the woman of Samaria, the discourse on
+the Holy Eucharist and the great High-priestly prayer. Men have felt the
+contrast between S. John and the other Evangelists so intensely that
+they have said that this is another Christ who is presented by S. John,
+and the influences which have shaped the author of the Fourth Gospel are
+quite other than those which shaped the men of the inner circle of
+Jesus. But no: it is the instinctive, or rather the Spirit-guided,
+selection of the material afforded by those years of association with
+Jesus for the purpose of transmitting to the Church a spiritual depth
+and beauty, a spiritual significance in our Lord's teaching, that the
+earlier Gospel had hardly touched.
+
+Which perhaps they could not touch because when they wrote there was not
+yet in the Church the spiritual experience which could fully interpret
+our Lord. Through the life of union with the risen Jesus and all the
+spiritual experience, all the illumined intelligence that that life
+brought, S. John was enabled to understand and interpret as he did.
+Writing far on toward the end of the first century he was writing out of
+the personal experience of Christian living of many years, which brought
+with it year by year an increased power of spiritual vision opening to
+him the depth and wonder of the fact of God made man. It is to an
+experience of our Lord that he appeals as the basis of his teaching.
+"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have
+seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have
+handled, of the Word of life: (for the life was manifested, and we have
+seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which
+was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) that which we have
+seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship
+with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and His Son Jesus
+Christ." And as we read on in S. John's Epistles we cannot fail to see
+how deeply the years of meditation have influenced his understanding of
+our Lord and His teaching, and how much his past experience of our Lord
+has been illumined by the experience of the risen Jesus which has
+followed. At no time, we are certain, has S. John been out of touch with
+his Master.
+
+And can we for a moment think that the years of intercourse with our
+Lady meant nothing in the spiritual development of S. John? On the
+contrary, may we not think that much of the spiritual richness which is
+the outstanding feature of his writings was the outcome of his
+association with the blessed Mother? No one has ever shown the
+sympathetic understanding of our Lord, has been so well able
+convincingly to interpret Him, as the beloved disciple. I myself have no
+doubt that much of his understanding came by way of S. Mary. Her
+interpretative insight would have been deeper than any one else's, not
+only because of her long association with Jesus, but because of her
+sinlessness. No two lives ever touched so closely; and there was not
+between them the bar that so blocks our spiritual understanding and
+clouds our spiritual vision, the bar of sin. I suppose it is almost
+impossible for us to appreciate the effect of sin in clouding vision and
+dulling sympathy. Our every day familiarity with venial sin, our easy
+tolerance of it, the adjustment of our lives to habits that involve it,
+have resulted in a lack of spiritual sensitiveness. Much of the meaning
+of our Lord's life and words passes over us just because of this dimness
+of vision, this insensitiveness to suggestion. And therefore we find it
+difficult to imagine what would be the understanding, the insight, the
+response to our Lord, of one between whom and Him there was no shadow of
+sin. And such an one was the blessed Mother. With unclouded vision she
+looked into the face of her Son. As His life expanded she followed with
+perfect sympathy; indeed, sometimes, as at Cana, her understanding of
+what He was made her precipitate in concluding as to His necessary
+action. When He became a public teacher and unfolded largely in parable
+His doctrine, it was her sinless soul which would see clearest and
+deepest, and with the most ready response. And therefore I am sure that
+we cannot go astray in thinking that S. John's relation to S. Mary was
+not simply that of a guardian of her from the pressure of the world, but
+was indeed that of a son who listened and learned from the experience of
+his Mother. No doubt S. John himself was of a very subtle spiritual
+understanding; notwithstanding that, and notwithstanding his exceptional
+opportunities of learning, we may still believe that there are many
+touches in his Gospel which are the result of his association with his
+Lord's Mother.
+
+Is it not possible for us to have our share in that pure insight of
+blessed Mary? When we try to think out the lines of our own spiritual
+development and the influences that have contributed to shape it, do we
+not find that the presence or absence of devotion to our Lady has been a
+factor of considerable importance? Devotion to her injected an element
+into our religion which is of vast moment, an element of sympathy, of
+gentleness, of purity. You can if you like, in condemnatory accents,
+call that element sentimentalism, although it is not that but the
+exercise of those gentler elements of our nature without whose exercise
+our nature functions one-sidedly. You may call it the feminine element,
+if you like; you will still be indicating the same order of activity.
+Surely, an all around spiritual development will bring out the feminine
+as well as the masculine qualities. And it seems to be historically true
+that those systems of religion which represent a revolt against the
+cultus of our Lady and carefully exclude all traces of it from their
+worship, show as a consequence of this exclusion a hardness and a
+barrenness which makes their human appeal quite one-sided. And when
+those same systems have realised their limitations and their lack of
+human appeal, and have tried to supply what is lacking, they have again
+failed, because instead of reverting to historical Christianity they
+have taken the road of humanitarianism, basing themselves on our Lord's
+human life and consequent brotherhood with us, rather than upon His
+supernatural Personality as operative through His mystical Body. Stress
+is laid upon charitable helpfulness rather than upon the power of grace.
+The modern man tries to reform life rather than to regenerate it.
+
+And, I repeat, I cannot help associating with a repudiation of the
+cultus of the saints, and especially of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a
+consequent failure to understand the Christian life as a supernatural
+creation. If one leaves out of account the greater part of the Kingdom
+of Heaven, all the multitudes of the redeemed, and their activities, and
+fastens one's attention exclusively upon that small part of the Kingdom
+which is the Church on earth, one can hardly fail to miss the
+significance of the earthly Church itself. Religion understood in this
+limited way may well drift more and more toward Deism and
+Humanitarianism, and further and further from any supernatural
+implications. This is no theory; it is what has happened. It was the
+course of Protestantism from the Reformation to the eighteenth century;
+and, after a partial revival of supernaturalism, is once more the rapid
+course of Protestantism to-day. Protestantism has lost or is fast losing
+any grip on the Trinity or the Incarnation: to it God is more and more a
+barren unity, and Jesus a good man. And this largely because all
+interest in the world of the Redeemed has been abandoned and all
+intercourse with the inhabitants of that world denied.
+
+It is therefore of the last importance that we, infected as we are with
+Protestantism, should stress the revival of the cultus of the saints,
+and should insist upon our right and privilege to pay due honour to the
+Mother of God and ask our share in her prayers. We must do all we can to
+make her known to our brethren. We need her sympathy, her aid,
+her example.
+
+Above all, the example of her spotless purity. It is notorious that one
+of the most marked features of our time is the virulent assault on
+purity. We had long emphasised a certain quality of conduct which we
+called modesty; it was, perhaps, largely a convention, but it was one of
+those protective conventions which are valuable as preservative of
+qualities we prize. It was protective of purity; and however artificial
+it was, in some respects, it existed because we felt that purity was a
+thing too precious to be exposed to unnecessary risk. Well, modesty is
+gone now, whether in conduct or convention. One hears discussed at
+dinner-tables and in the presence of young girls matters which our
+mothers would have blushed to mention at all. The quality of modesty is
+declared Puritanical and hypocritical. "Hypocritical virtue" is a phrase
+one frequently meets; and we seem fast going on to the time when all
+virtue will be regarded as hypocrisy. Customary standards are falling
+all about us, overthrown in the name of personal liberty.
+
+And by liberty, one gathers, is meant freedom to do as one pleases, and
+especially as one sexually pleases. The assault is pushed hardest just
+now against the sanctity of the sacrament of matrimony and the morals of
+that sacrament as they have been developed by the Christian Church.
+Protestantism long ago assented to the overthrow of Christian standards
+in the marriage relation and has aided the sexual anarchy with which we
+are faced to-day. To-day the chief attack is on the purity of marriage
+in the interests, ostensibly, of humanity. A vigorous campaign in favour
+of what is called birth-control is being carried on, and is being
+supported in quarters which are professedly Christian. There are many
+grounds for opposing the movement, social, humanitarian and other. We
+are here concerned with it only as it is an attack on purity. From the
+Christian point of view the marriage relation has for its end the
+procreation of children for the upbuilding of the Kingdom of God. If
+circumstances are such, through reasons of health or economy, that
+children seem undesirable, the remedy is plain, self control. The theory
+that human beings have no more control over their appetites than beasts,
+while it has much to support it in contemporary life, cannot be admitted
+from the point of view of religion. Self-control is always possible, and
+is constantly exercised by many men and women who choose to be guided by
+principle rather than by passion. And in any case the Christian Religion
+can become no partner, not even a silent one, in a conspiracy to murder,
+or in the sort of compromise that turns marriage into a licensed sodomy.
+If indeed the economic status of the modern world is such that the
+average couple cannot support a family, then the Christian Church may
+well aid in the bringing about of an economic revolution; but it can
+hardly aid in the destruction of its own ideals of purity.
+
+What is ultimately at stake in the modern world is the whole conception
+of purity as a quality that is desirable. This attitude has become
+possible among us for one reason because we have consented to the
+suppression of ideals of life which were calculated to sustain it. To
+sustain any moral or spiritual conception there must be maintained
+certain appropriate ideals which, while out of the reach of the average
+man, create and sustain in him an admiration and respect for the ideal
+standard. So the standard of purity presented in Mary and protected by
+the belief in her Immaculate Conception and her assumption, has the
+effect, not only of commending the life of chastity in the sense of the
+vows of religion, but also in the broad sense of the restraint and
+discipline of appetite whether within or without the marriage relation.
+It impresses upon us the truth that purity is not only a human quality
+but a divinely created virtue, the result of the infusion of sanctifying
+grace into the soul. Is it not largely because the young are taught
+(when they are taught anything at all in the premises) that purity is a
+matter of the _will_, that they so often fail? If they were taught the
+nature of the _virtue_ and were led to rely more on the indwelling might
+of the Holy Spirit would they not have better success? And if there were
+held constantly before their eyes the example of the saints and
+especially of Blessed Mary ever-virgin, would not they have an increased
+sense of the value of purity?
+
+The life and example of S. Mary are an inestimable treasure of the
+Church of God, and her removal from the world has only enhanced that
+value. To-day her meaning is clearer to us than ever. The spirit-guided
+mind of the Church has through the centuries been meditating on the
+meaning of her office as Mother of God. The words in which she accepts
+her vocation, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, implying, as they do, an
+active co-operation with the divine purpose, a voluntary association of
+herself with it, imply, too, the perpetual continuance of that
+association, and contain in germ all Catholic teaching in regard to her
+office. She passed from this world silently, and to the world unknown;
+but to the Church of God she ever remains of all human beings the
+greatest spiritual force in the Kingdom of God.
+
+     Weep, living things, of life the Mother dies;
+       The world doth lose the sum of all her bliss,
+     The Queen of earth, the Empress of the skies;
+       By Mary's death mankind an orphan is.
+         Let Nature weep, yea, let all graces moan,
+         Their glory, grace and gifts die all in one.
+
+     It was no death to her, but to her woe,
+       By which her joys began, her griefs did end;
+     Death was to her a friend, to us a foe,
+       Life of whose lives did on her life depend:
+         Not prey of death, but praise to death she was.
+         Whose ugly shape seemed glorious in her face.
+
+     Her face a heaven; two planets were her eyes,
+       Whose gracious light did make our clearest day;
+     But one such heaven there was, and lo, it dies,
+       Death's dark eclipse hath dimmed every, ray:
+         Sun, hide thy light, thy beams untimely shine;
+         True light since we have lost, we crave not thine.
+     Robert Southwell, 1560-1595
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+     THE ASSUMPTION
+
+     Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with
+     me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast
+     given me.
+
+     S. John XVII, 24.
+
+     Hail! Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail! Our life, our
+     sweetness, our hope, all hail. To thee we cry, poor exiled
+     children of Eve. To thee we send up our cries, weeping and
+     mourning in this vale of tears. Turn, then, Most gracious
+     Advocate, thy merciful eyes upon us, and now, after this our
+     exile, show unto us the blessed Fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O
+     gracious, O merciful, O sweet Virgin Mary.
+     Anthem from the breviary. Attributed
+     to Hermann Contractus, 1013-54.
+
+There is nothing more wonderful or beautiful, nothing that brings to us
+a more perfect revelation of our Lord's mind, than this prayer which is
+recorded for us by S. John. There is in it a complete unfolding of that
+sympathy and love which we feel to underlie and explain our Lord's
+mission. As we come to know what God is only when we see Him revealed in
+Jesus; when we enter into our Lord's saying, "He that hath seen me, hath
+seen the Father," so in the revelation of Jesus we understand God's
+attitude toward us. In Jesus the love of God shows itself, not as an
+abstract quality, a philosophical conception, but as a burning,
+passionate eagerness to rescue, an outgoing of God to individual souls.
+There is a deep personal affection displayed in this final scene in the
+Upper Chamber. This is our Lord's real parting from His disciples. He
+will see them again, but under conditions of strain and tragedy, or
+under such changed circumstances that they cannot well enter into the
+old intimacy. But here there is no bar to the expression of love. Here
+He gives them the final evidence of His utter union with them in the
+humility of the foot-washing. Here He marvellously imparts Himself in
+the Breaking of the Bread, wherein is consummated His personal union
+with them. This is the demonstration, if one were needed, that having
+loved His own, He loved them unto the uttermost.
+
+It is inconceivable that passionate love such as this should ever end.
+It is a personal relation which must endure while personality endures.
+It is really the demands of love which more than anything else outside
+revelation are the evidence of immortality. We are certain that the love
+of God which in its fulness has been made known in Christ cannot be
+annihilated by death. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love;
+therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee." Love such as that
+must draw men, not only in this world, but in all worlds. If it can draw
+men out of sin to God, it must create an enduring bond. If it can draw
+God to men, it must be the revelation of a permanent attitude of God to
+man. It is a love that goes out beyond the world, that love of which S.
+Paul says: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor
+angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
+to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
+separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
+
+Our instinctive thought of the Judgment seems to be of it as
+condemnation, or, at best, as acquittal. But why not think of it as
+consummation? Why not think of it as setting the seal of God's approval
+upon our accomplishment of His will and purpose for us? The final
+Judgment is surely that,--the entrance of those who are saved into the
+full joy of their Lord. There once more will our humanity be complete
+because it is the whole man, not the soul only, but the soul clothed
+with the body of the resurrection, once more clothed upon with its
+"house from heaven," which is filled with the joy of the Beatific
+Vision. The thought of the particular judgment may fill us with dread;
+but if we are able to look beyond that to the general Judgment at the
+last day, we shall think only of our perfect bliss in the enjoyment
+of God.
+
+The belief in the Assumption of our Lady is a belief that in her case
+that which is the inheritance of all the saints, that they shall rise
+again with their bodies and be admitted to the Vision of God, has been
+anticipated. In her, that which we all look forward to and dream of for
+ourselves, has been attained. She to-day is in God's presence in her
+entire humanity, clothed with her body of glory.
+
+This teaching, one finds, still causes some searching of hearts among
+us, and is thought to raise many questions difficult to answer. And it
+may be admitted at the outset that it is not a truth taught in Holy
+Scripture but a truth arrived at by the mind of the Church after
+centuries of thought. Unless we can think of the Church as a divine
+organism with a continuous life from the day of Pentecost until now, as
+being the home of the Holy Spirit, and as being continuously guided by
+Him into all the truth; unless we can accept in their full sense our
+Lord's promises that He will be with the Church until the end of the
+world, we shall not find it possible to accept the assumption as a fact,
+but shall decline to believe that, and not only that but, if we are
+consistent, many another belief of the Christian Church. But if we have
+an adequate understanding of what is implied in the continuity of the
+Church as the organ of the present action of the Holy Spirit, we shall
+not find that the fact that a given doctrine is not explicitly contained
+in Holy Scripture is any bar to its acceptance. We shall have learned
+that the revelation of God in Christ, and our relation to God in Christ,
+are facts of such tremendous import and inexhaustible content that it
+would be absurd to suppose that all their meaning had been understood
+and explicitly stated in the first generation of the Christian Church.
+
+We shall not, then, find it any bar to the acceptance of belief in the
+assumption of our Lady that its formal statement came, as is said,
+"late." We simply want to know that when it came it came as the outcome
+of the mature thought of the Church, the Body of Christ, the Fulness of
+Him that filleth all in all.
+
+It is to be noted that the assumption is not a wholly isolated fact.
+There are several cases of assumption in the Old Testament though of a
+slightly different character in that they were assumptions directly from
+life without any interval of death. Such were the assumptions of Enoch
+and Elijah. Moses, too, it has been constantly believed, was assumed
+into heaven,--in his case after death and with his resurrection body. A
+case which is more strangely like what is believed to have taken place
+in the experience of blessed Mary is that closely connected with our
+Lord's resurrection and recorded by S. Matthew. "And the graves were
+opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of
+the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and
+appeared unto many." Although it is not asserted that these were assumed
+into heaven, it seems impossible to avoid the inference; and if "many
+saints which slept" were raised from the dead and assumed into the
+heavenly world, there can be no _a priori_ difficulty in believing the
+same thing to have taken place in the Blessed Mother of God. Nay if such
+a thing as an assumption is at all possible for any human being one
+would naturally conclude from the very relation of S. Mary to our Lord
+that the possibility would be realised in her.
+
+And there were elements in her case which were lacking in all the other
+cases which suggest a certain fitness, if not inevitability, in her
+assumption. She was conceived without sin,--never had any breath of sin
+tainted her. Was it then possible that she should be holden by death?
+Surely, in any case, it was impossible that her holy body should see
+corruption: we cannot think of the dissolution of that body which had no
+part in sin. If ever an assumption were possible, here it was
+inevitable--so the thought of the Church shaped itself. The compelling
+motives of the belief were theological rather than historical. The germ
+out of consideration of which was evolved the belief in the assumption
+was the relation of Blessed Mary to her Son. That unique relation might
+be expected to carry with it unique consequences, and among these the
+consequence that the body which was bound by no sin should be reunited
+to the soul which had needed no purgation, but had passed at once to the
+presence of its God and its Redeemer who was likewise Son. It is well to
+stress the fact that the assumption is not only a fact but a doctrine.
+Fact, of course, it was or there could be no doctrine; but the truth of
+the fact is certified by the growing conviction in the mind of the
+Church of the inevitability of the doctrine.
+
+What is implied in the word assumption is that the body of the Mother of
+our Lord was after her death and burial raised to heaven by the power of
+God. It differed therefore essentially from the ascension of our Lord
+which was accomplished by His Own inherent power. When this assumption
+took place we have no means of knowing. We do not certainly know where
+S. Mary lived, nor where and when she died. Jerusalem and Ephesus
+contend in tradition for the privilege of having sheltered her last days
+and reverently carried her body to its burial. There is no way of
+deciding between these two claims, although the fact that our Lord
+confided His Mother to S. John throws some little weight into the scale
+of Ephesus. And yet S. Mary may have died before S. John settled in
+Ephesus. We can only say that history gives us no reliable information
+on the matter.
+
+In the silence of Scripture we naturally turn to the other writings of
+the early Church for light and guidance on the matter; but there, too,
+there is little help. There is, to be sure, a group of Apocryphal
+writings which have a good deal to say about the life of S. Mary, where
+the Scriptures and tradition are silent. Among other things these
+Apocryphal writings have a good deal to say, and some very beautiful
+stories to tell, of S. Mary's last days, of her burial and assumption.
+Are we to think of these stories as containing any grain of truth? If
+they do, it is now impossible to sift it from the chaff. These stories
+are generally rejected as a basis of knowledge. And there has been, and
+still is in some quarters, a conviction that the belief of the Church in
+the assumption rests on nothing better or more stable than these
+Apocryphal stories; that the authors of these Apocrypha were inventing
+their stories out of nothing, and that in an uncritical age their
+legends came to be taken as history. Thus was a belief in the assumption
+foisted upon the Church, having no slightest ground in fact. The human
+tendency to fill in the silences of Scripture has resulted in many
+legends, that of the assumption among them.
+
+There is a good deal to be said for this position, yet I do not feel
+that it is convincing. That the incidents of the life of the Blessed
+Virgin Mary as narrated in the Apocrypha are historical, of course
+cannot be maintained. But neither is it at all probable that such
+stories grew up out of nothing: indeed, their existence implies that
+there were certain facts widely accepted in the Christian community that
+served as their starting point. While the Apocryphal stories of the life
+of our Lady cannot be accepted as history, they do presuppose certain
+beliefs as universally, or at least widely, held. Thus one may reject
+all the details of the story of the death and burial and assumption of
+our Lady, and yet feel that the story is evidence of a belief in the
+assumption among those for whom the story was written. What was new to
+them was not the fact of the assumption but the detailed incidents with
+which the Apocrypha embroidered it. I feel no doubt that these
+Apocryphal stories are not the source of belief in the assumption, but
+are our earliest witness to the existence of the belief. They actually
+presuppose its existence in the Church as the necessary condition of
+their own existence.
+
+Another fact that tells in the same direction is the absence of any
+physical relics of our Lady. At a time when great stress was laid upon
+relics, and there was little scruple in inventing them, if the authentic
+ones were not forthcoming, there were no relics produced which were
+alleged to be the physical relics of S. Mary. Why was this? Surely,
+unless there were some inhibiting circumstances, relics, real or forged,
+would have been produced. The only probable explanation is that the
+inhibiting circumstance was the established belief in the assumption. If
+the assumption were a fact, there would be no physical relics; if it
+were an established belief, there would be no fraud possible. Add to
+this that various relics of our Lady were alleged to exist; but they
+were not relics of her body.
+
+Again: by the seventh century the celebration of the feast of the
+assumption had spread throughout the whole church. This universal
+establishment of the feast implies a preceding history of considerable
+length, going well back into the past. The feast was kept in many
+places, and under a variety of names which seem to imply, not mere
+copying, but independent development. It is alleged, to be sure, that
+the names by which the feast was called do not imply belief in the
+assumption. The feast is called "the Sleeping," "the Repose," "the
+Passage" of the Virgin, as well as by the Western title, the assumption.
+But a study of the liturgies and of the sermons preached in honour of
+the feast will convince any one that the underlying tradition was that
+of our Lady's assumption.
+
+These quite separate and yet converging lines of evidence seem to me to
+show convincingly what was the wide-spread belief of the early Christian
+community as to the destiny of Blessed Mary. They imply a tradition
+going well back into the past, so far back, that in view of the
+theological expression of the mind of the Church they may well be
+regarded as apostolic. Our personal belief in the assumption will still
+rest primarily upon its theological expression in the mind of the
+Church, but having attained certainty as to the doctrine, which is of
+course at the same time certainty as to the fact, we shall have no
+difficulty in finding in the above sketched lines of historical
+development the evidence of the primitive character of the belief.
+
+It may not be amiss to give a few characteristic quotations as
+indicating the mind of the Church in this matter.
+
+S. Modestus, patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 614), preaching on the Falling
+Asleep of the Mother of God, said:--
+
+"The Lord of heaven and earth has to-day consecrated the human
+tabernacle in which He Himself, according to the flesh, was received,
+that it may enjoy with Him forever the gift of incorruptibility. O
+blessed sleep of the glorious, ever-virgin Mother of God, who has not
+known the corruption of the grave; for Christ, our all-powerful Saviour,
+has kept intact that flesh which gave Him His flesh.... Hail, most holy
+Mother of God: Jesus has willed to have you in His Kingdom with your
+body clothed in incorruptibility.... The most glorious Mother of Christ
+our Lord and Saviour, Who gave life and immortality, is raised by her
+Son, and forever possesses incorruptibility with Him Who called her from
+the tomb."
+
+S. Andrew, Archbishop of Crete (d. 676), also preaching on the Falling
+Asleep of the Mother of God, says:--"It is a wholly new sight, and one
+that surpasses the reason, that of a woman purer than the heavens
+entering heaven with her body. As she was born without corruption, so
+after death her flesh is restored to life."
+
+In one of his sermons at the same feast, S. Germanus of Constantinople
+(d. 733), speaks thus:--"It was impossible that the tomb should hold the
+body which had been the living temple of the Son of God. How should your
+flesh be reduced to dust and ashes who, by the Son born of you, have
+delivered the human race from the corruption of death?"
+
+Preaching on the same festival, S. John Damascene (d. 760) said:--"Your
+flesh has known no corruption. Your immaculate body, which knew no
+stain, was not left in the tomb. You remained virgin in your
+child-bearing; and in your death your body was not reduced to dust but
+has been placed in a better and celestial state."
+
+There are one or two practical consequences of this doctrine concerning
+which, perhaps, it may be well to say a few words. The first is as the
+result of such devotions to our Lady as are implied in, or have in fact
+followed, a belief in her assumption. It is objected to them that even
+granting the truth of the fact of the assumption, still the stress laid
+on the fact and the devotions to our Lady which are held to be
+appropriate to it, are unhealthy in their nature, and do, in fact, tend
+to obscure the worship of our Lord: that where devotions to our Lady are
+fostered, there devotion to our Lord declines. That therefore instead of
+trying to advance the cultus of our Lady, we should do much better to
+hold to the sanity and reserve which has characterised the Anglican
+Church since the Reformation.
+
+These and the like arguments seem to me to hang in the air and to be
+quite divorced from facts. They imply a state of things which does not
+exist. The assertion that where devotion to our Lady prevails devotion
+to our Lord declines is as far as possible from being true. Where to-day
+is the Deity of our Lord defended most ardently and devotion to Him most
+wide spread? Is it in Churches where devotion to our Lady is suppressed?
+On the contrary, do you not know with absolute certainty, that in any
+church where you find devotion to our Lady encouraged, there will you
+find the Deity of our Lord maintained? Has the Anglican "sanity and
+reserve" in regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary saved the Anglican Church
+from the inroads of unitarianism and rationalism? Is it not precisely in
+those circles where the very virginity of our Lady is denied that the
+divinity of our Lord is denied also? No, devotion to Mary is far indeed
+from detracting from the honour due to Mary's Son.
+
+And we cannot insist too much or too often that the doctrines of the
+Christian Church form a closely woven system such that none, even the
+seemingly least important, can be denied without injuring the whole. No
+article of Christian belief expresses an independent truth, but always a
+truth depending upon other truths, and in its turn lending others its
+support. To deny any truth that the mind of the Church has expressed is
+equivalent to the removal of an organ from a living body.
+
+And to-day we feel more than ever the need of the doctrine of the
+assumption. One of the bitterest attacks on the Christian Faith which is
+being made to-day, emanating principally from within the Christian
+community, and even from within the Christian ministry, is that which is
+being made on the truth of the resurrection of the body, whether the
+resurrection of our Lord, or our own resurrection. In place of the
+Christian doctrine believed and preached from the beginning, we are
+asked to lapse back into heathenism and a doctrine of immortality. Not
+many seem to realise the vastness of the difference that is made in our
+outlook to the future by a belief in the resurrection of the body as
+distinguished from immortality. But the character of the religions
+resulting from these two contrary beliefs is absolutely different. It
+needs only to study them as they actually exist to be convinced of
+this fact.
+
+And it is precisely the doctrine of the assumption of our Lady which
+contributes strong support to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection
+of the body. It teaches us that in her case the vision and hope of
+mankind at large has been anticipated and accomplished. The resurrection
+of our Lord is found, in fact, to extend (if one may so express it) to
+the members of His mystical body; and the promise which is fulfilled in
+Blessed Mary, is that hope of a joyful resurrection which is thus
+confirmed to us all. In its stress upon the assumption the mind of the
+Christian Church has not been led astray, has not been betrayed into
+fostering superstitions, but has been led by the Spirit of Christ which
+He promised it to the development of a truth not only revealing the
+present place of His glorious Mother in the Kingdom of her Son, but
+encouraging and heartening us in our following of the heavenly way.
+
+     Whoe is shee that assends so high
+       Next the heavenlye Kinge,
+     Round about whome angells flie
+       And her prayses singe?
+
+     Who is shee that adorned with light,
+       Makes the sunne her robe,
+     At whose feete the queene of night
+       Layes her changing globe?
+
+     To that crowne direct thine eye,
+       Which her heade attyres;
+     There thou mayst her name discrie
+       Wrytt in starry fires.
+
+     This is shee, in whose pure wombe
+       Heaven's Prince remained;
+     Therefore, in noe earthly tombe
+       Cann shee be contayned.
+
+     Heaven shee was, which held that fire
+       Whence the world tooke light,
+     And to heaven doth now aspire,
+       Fflames with fflames to unite.
+
+     Shee that did so clearly shyne
+       When our day begunne,
+     See, howe bright her beames decline
+       Nowe shee sytts with the sunne.
+
+     Sir John Beaumont, 1582-1628.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE CORONATION
+
+
+     And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed
+     with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head
+     a crown of twelve stars.
+
+     Rev. XII, I.
+
+     To-day the Angel Gabriel brought the palm and the crown to
+     the triumphant Virgin. To-day he introduced to the Lord of
+     all, her, who was the Temple of the Most High, and the
+     dwelling of the Holy Spirit.
+
+     FOR THE ASSUMPTION. ARMENIAN.
+
+The heaven which S. John the Evangelist shows us is the continuation of
+the earthly Church. As we read his pages we feel that entrance there
+would be a real home-coming for the earnest Christian. We are familiar
+enough with presentations of heaven which seem to us to be so detached
+from Christian reality as to lack any human appeal. We think of
+philosophic presentations of the future with entire indifference. It is
+possible, we say, that they may be true; but they are utterly
+uninteresting. It is not so in the visions of S. John. Here we have a
+heaven which is humanly interesting because it is continous with the
+present life, and its interests are the interests that it has been the
+object of our religion to foster. The qualities of character which the
+Christian religion has urged upon our attention are presented as finding
+their clear field of development in the world to come. There, too, are
+unveiled the objects of our adoration, the ever-blessed Three who yet
+are but one. Love which has striven for development under the conditions
+and limitations of our earthly life, which has tried to see God and has
+gone out to seek Him in the dimness of revelation, now sees and is
+satisfied. Whom now we see in a mirror, enigmatically, we shall then see
+face to face.
+
+And it is a heaven thronged with saints, with men and women who have
+gone through the same experiences as those to which we are subjected,
+and have come forth purified and triumphant. We sometimes in
+discouragement think of life as continuous struggle. It is perhaps
+natural and inevitable that we should thus concentrate attention upon
+the present, but if we lift our eyes so as to clear them from the mists
+of the present we see that it is far from a hopeless struggle, but
+rather the necessary discipline from which we emerge triumphant. Those
+saints whom we see rejoicing about the throne of God, those who go out
+to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, passed through the struggle
+of persecution to their triumphant attainment of the Vision. It is our
+eternal temptation to expect to triumph here; but it is only in a very
+limited sense that this can be true: our triumph is indeed here, but the
+enjoyment of it and all that is implied in it is elsewhere. Here even
+our most complete achievement is conditioned by the limitations of
+earth: there the limitations are done away and life expands in
+perfectness.
+
+So we look eagerly through the door that is opened in heaven as those
+who are looking into their future home. That is what we all are striving
+for--presumably. We are consciously selecting out of life precisely
+those elements, are centering on those interests, which have eternal
+significance and are imperishable values. As we travel along the Pilgrim
+Way it is with hearts uplifted and stimulated by the Vision of the end.
+We advance as seeing Him Who is invisible. We live by hope, knowing that
+we shall attain no enduring satisfaction until we pass through the gates
+into the City, and mingle with the throng of worshippers who sing the
+song of Moses and of the Lamb. Therefore our life is always
+forward-looking and optimistic: because we are sure of the end, we wait
+for it with patience and endurance, thankful for all the experience of
+the Way. As the years flow by we do not look back on them with regret as
+the unrenewable experiences of a vanished youth, but we think of them as
+the bearers of experiences by which we have profited, and of goods which
+we have safely garnered, waiting the time when their stored values can
+be fully realised.
+
+Over all the saints whom the Church has seen rejoicing in the heavenly
+life, rises the form of Mary, Mother of God. S. John's vision of the
+"great sign in heaven" in its primary meaning has, no doubt, reference
+to the Church itself; but the form of its symbolism would be impossible
+if there were not a secondary reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It
+is the thought of her and of her office as Mother of the Redeemer that
+has determined the form of the vision. The details are too clear to
+permit of doubt, and such has been the constant mind of Catholic
+interpreters.
+
+And how else than as Queen of the heavenly host should we expect her to
+be represented? What does the Church teaching as to sanctity imply?
+
+It implies the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision. The normal Christian
+life begins in the sacramental act by which the regenerate child is made
+one with God, being made a partaker of the divine nature, and develops
+through sacramental experience and constant response to the will of God
+to that spiritual capacity which is the medium of the Beatific Vision
+and which we call sanctity or purity. "The pure in heart shall see God."
+
+But the teaching of the Church also implies that there is a marvellous
+diversity in the sanctity of the members of the Body of Christ. Each
+saint retains his personal characteristics, and his sanctity is not the
+refashioning of his character in a common mould but the perfecting of
+his character on its own lines. We sometimes hear it said that the
+Christian conception of heaven is monotonous, but that is very far from
+being the fact. It is only those conceptions of heaven which have
+excluded the communion of saints, and have thought of heaven as the
+solitary communion of the soul with God; which have in other words,
+excluded the notion of human society from heaven, which have appeared
+monotonous. As we read any series of the lives of the saints, and
+realise that it is these men and women and multitudes of others like
+them, that make up the society of heaven, we get rid of any other notion
+than that of endless diversity. And thus studying individual saints we
+come to understand that not only is the sanctity of them diverse in
+experience but different in degree. All men have not the same capacity
+for sanctity, we infer; all cannot develop to the same level of
+attainment. We may perhaps say that while all partake of God, all do not
+reflect God in the same way or in the same degree.
+
+But if there be a hierachy of saints it is impossible that we should
+think of any other at its head than Blessed Mary. Whatsoever diversity
+there may be in the attainments of the saints, there is one saint who
+is pre-eminent in all things, who,--because in her case there has never
+been any moment in which she was separate from God, when the bond of
+union was so much as strained,--is the completest embodiment of the
+grace of God. That is, I think, essentially what is meant by the
+Coronation of our Lady,--that her supremacy in sanctity makes her the
+head of the heirarchy of saints, that in her the possibilities of the
+life of union have been developed to the highest degree through her
+unstained purity and unfailing response to the divine will.
+
+It is of the last importance, if the Catholic conceptions are to be
+influential in our lives, that we should gain such a hold on the life of
+heaven, the life that the saints, with Saint Mary at their head, are
+leading to-day, as shall make it a present reality to us, not a picture
+in some sort of dreamland. Our lives are shaped by their ideals; and
+although we may never attain to our ideals here, yet we shall never
+attain them anywhere unless we shape them here. Heaven must be grasped
+as the issue of a certain sort of life, as the necessary consequence of
+the application of Christian principles to daily living. It is wholly
+bad to conceive it as a vague future into which we shall be ushered at
+death, if only we are "good"; it must be understood as a state we win to
+by the use of the means placed at our disposal for the purpose. Those
+attain to heaven in the future who are interested in heaven in
+the present.
+
+And a study of the means is wholly possible for us because we have at
+hand in great detail the lives of those whom the Church, by raising
+them to her altars, has guaranteed to us as having achieved sanctity and
+been admitted to the Beatific Vision. They achieved sanctity here--that
+is, in the past. They achieved it under an infinite variety of
+circumstanies,--that is the encouragement. They now enjoy the fruits of
+it in the world of heaven,--that is the promise.
+
+And nowhere can we better turn for the purpose of our study than to the
+life of Blessed Mary. There is the consummate flower of sainthood; and
+therefore it it best there that we can study its meaning. And for two
+principal reasons can we best study it there. In the first place because
+of its completeness: nowhere else are all the elements of sanctity so
+well developed. And in the second place because of the riches of the
+material for understanding Blessed Mary that is placed at our disposal
+by the labour of many generations of saints and doctors. All that devout
+meditation can do to understand the sanctity of Blessed Mary has
+been done.
+
+Our limit is necessarily reduced, our selection partial and our
+accomplishment fragmentary. We cannot however miss our way if we follow
+in the steps of Holy Revelation in making love the central quality. S.
+Mary's greatness is ultimately the greatness of her love. It began as a
+love of the will of God. She appears as utterly selfless, as having
+devoted herself to the will of God as He shall manifest that will. And
+therefore when the time comes she makes the great sacrifice that is
+asked of her without hesitation and without effort: "Behold, the
+handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." And all her
+life henceforth is loving response to what is unfolded as the content of
+the accepted revelation. That is a noteworthy thing that I fancy is
+often missed. It is not uncommon for one to accept a vocation as a
+whole, and then subsequently, as it unfolds, shrink from this or that
+detail of it. But in the case of S. Mary the acceptance of the vocation
+meant the acceptance of _God_, and there was no holding back from the
+result of that.
+
+That must be our guide in the pursuit of the heavenly life: we must
+understand that we are not called to accept this or that belief or
+practice, but are called to accept God--God speaking to us through the
+revelation He has entrusted to His Catholic Church. We do not, when we
+make our act of acceptance, know all or very much of what God is going
+to mean; but whatever God turns out to mean in experience, there can be
+no holding back. The note of a true acceptance of vocation is precisely
+this limitless surrender, a surrender without reservation. S. Mary could
+by no means understand what was to be asked of her: she only knew it was
+God Who asked it. She could not foresee the years of the ministry when
+her Son would not have where to lay His head, followed by the anxiety of
+Holy Week and the watch by the Cross on Good Friday; but as these things
+came she could understand them as involved in her vocation, in her
+acceptance of God.
+
+And cannot we get the same attitude toward life? In the acceptance of
+the Christian Religion what we have accepted is God. We have
+acknowledged the supremacy of a will outside ourselves. We say, "we are
+not our own, we are bought with a price," the price of the Precious
+Blood. But if our acceptance is a reality and not a theory it will turn
+out to involve much more than we imagined at the first. The frequent and
+pathetic failures of those who have made profession of Christianity is
+largely accounted for by this,--that the demands of the Christian
+Religion on life turn out to be more searching and far-reaching than was
+supposed would be the case. Religion turns out to be not one interest to
+be adjusted to the other interests of life, but to be a demand that all
+life and action shall be controlled by supernatural motive. Those who
+would willingly give a part, find it impossible to surrender the whole.
+The world is full of Young Rulers who are willing "to contribute
+liberally to the support of religion," but shrink from the demand that
+they "sell all." "I seek not yours, but you," S. Paul writes to the
+Corinthians; and that is also the seeking of God--"Not yours but you."
+And because the limit of our willingness is reached in contribution and
+does not extend to sacrifice, we fail.
+
+But Blessed Mary did not fail because there was no limit to her
+willingness to sacrifice. Her will to sacrifice had the same limitless
+quality as her love; and because of the limitless quality of her
+self-giving her growth in the life of union was unlimited, or limited
+only by the limitations of creaturehood. When therefore we think of her
+to-day as Queen of Saints we are not thinking of an arbitrarily
+conferred position; we are thinking of a position which comes to her
+because she is what she is. She through the unstinting sacrifice of her
+love came into more intimate relations with God than is possible for any
+other, and through that relation came to know more of the mind of God
+than any other. The power of her intercession is the power of her
+understanding, of her sympathy with the thoughts of God. When we come to
+her with our request for her intercession we feel that we are sure of
+her sympathy and her understanding. Her experience of human life, we
+think, was not very wide: can she whose life was passed under such
+narrow conditions understand the complex needs of the modern man or
+woman? It is true that her actual experience of human life was not very
+wide; but her experience of God is very wide indeed, and she is able to
+understand our experience better than we can understand it ourselves
+because of her understanding of God's mind and will. It is seeing life
+through God's eyes that reveals the truth about it.
+
+Hence the blunder and the tragedy of those who seek to know life by
+experience, when they mean experience gained by participation in life's
+evil as well as in its good. They succeed in soiling life rather than in
+understanding it; for participation in evil effectually prevents our
+understandings of good. It is on the face of things that the farther a
+man goes into sin, the less is righteousness intelligible to him. Our
+Lord's rule "He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine" is not
+an arbitrary maxim, but embodies the deepest psychological truth. There
+is but one path to full understanding, and that is the path of
+sympathy. And therefore are we sure of our Lady's understanding and
+come to her unhesitatingly for the help of her intercession. She
+understands our case because she sees it revealed in the mind of
+her Son.
+
+It cannot be questioned that much of the weakness of religion to-day is
+due to the fact that Christian ideals make but faint appeal. By many
+they are frankly repudiated as impossible of attainment in a world such
+as this, and as weakening to human character so far as they are
+attained. Christians, of course, are unable to take this point of view,
+and, therefore, they treat the ideals with respect, but continue to
+govern their lives by motives which are not harmonious with them. It is
+tacitly assumed on all sides that a consistent pursuit of Christians
+ideals will assure failure in social or business life. This, of course,
+is tantamount to a confession that social and business life are
+unchristian, and raises the same sort of grave questions as to the duty
+of a Christian as were raised in the early days of the Church under the
+heathen empire. With that, however, we may not concern ourselves now. We
+are merely concerned to note and to emphasise the fact that, whatever
+may be true of society or business, our religion is lamentably
+ineffective because of its failure to emphasise the ideals of sanctity
+and to present those ideals as the ideals of _all_ Christian life, not
+as the ideals of a select few. While religious teachers asquiesce in the
+present set of compromises as an adequate expression of Christian
+character, we may expect a decline in the Church as a spiritual force,
+whatever may be true of it as a social force.
+
+If Christian ideals are to resume their appeal to the membership of the
+Church as a whole it is requisite that they be studied by the clergy and
+intelligently presented. But little is to be hoped in this direction so
+long as our theological training ignores religion and concentrates its
+attention on something that it takes for scholarship. The raw material
+that is sent by our parishes to the seminaries to be educated for Holy
+Orders is commonly turned out of the seminary with less religion that it
+entered. The outlook for the presentation of Christian ideals is not
+hopeful. We seem destined to drift on indefinitely in our habitual
+compromises.
+
+All the more is it necessary that we should lift our eyes to the heavens
+where humility and meekness, where sacrifice and obdience, are, in the
+person of Blessed Mary, crowned as the most perfect expression of
+sanctity, as the qualities that raise man nearest God. And what consoles
+us in the present depressing circumstances of the Church is that we are
+permitted to look through S. John's eyes into the world of heaven, and
+there see "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations,
+and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, before the throne and before the
+Lamb, clothed with white robes, and with palms in their hands." Somehow,
+we feel, under whatever distressing and discouraging circumstances, the
+work of God in the regeneration of souls goes on. No doubt it is a work
+that is largely hidden from our eyes, from those eyes which are blinded
+to the reality of spiritual things. Humility and meekness are the
+qualities of a hidden life; they do not flaunt themselves before men's
+eyes. But in their silence and obscurity great souls are growing up,
+growing to the spiritual status of the saints of God. In our estimate of
+values we shall do well to lay to heart the utterances of WISDOM: "Then
+shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such
+as have afflicted him, and made no account of his labours. When they see
+it, they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at
+the strangeness of his salvation, so far beyond all that they had looked
+for. And they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say
+among themselves, This is he, whom we had sometime in derision, and a
+proverb of reproach: we fools accounted his life madness, and his end
+without honour: how is he numbered among the children of God, and his
+lot is among the saints! Verily we went astray from the way of truth,
+and the light of righteousness shined not unto us, and the sun of
+righteousness rose not upon us."
+
+When we have attained to the point of view as to life's value which is
+expressed in the ideal of sanctity then we shall know how to estimate at
+their true worth the constant criticisms which are directed against
+those ideals and those who seek them. The saints, we are told, were no
+doubt estimable men and women, but they were weak, and for the purpose
+of the world's work, useless. But is this true, to keep to a specific
+example, of the Blessed Virgin Mary? What is there about her life that
+suggests weakness? And what can be the meaning of calling such a life
+useless to the world? Take but one aspect of it. It has for centuries
+furnished an ideal of womanhood. It is contended that the women who
+have taken Blessed Mary for their ideal have shown themselves weak and
+useless?--that those women are stronger in character and of more value
+to the world who have thrown over the ideals of sanctity and built their
+lives upon the social ideals prevalent at present? I no not care to
+attempt any characterisation of the feminine ideal which is commended to
+us at present; it is sufficient to say that it is difficult to
+understand how it can be considered socially valuable; still less how it
+can be considered an advance on the character qualities which
+distinguish the Christian ideal of sanctity.
+
+In the midst of the present confusion of values it is for us of vast
+significance that we have in this matter the mind of Christ. There need
+be no confusion in our minds. What Christ commended has proved to be
+practical of accomplishment, the evidence of which is the great
+multitude which no man can number who to-day sing about the throne of
+God and of the Lamb. What God approves is evidenced by the Coronation of
+the Blessed Mother over all the multitudes of the saints of God. Blessed
+Mary is the embodied thought of God for humanity, the realised ideal of
+a human life. He that is mighty hath magnified her, till she shines
+resplendent in spiritual qualities over all the hosts of the elect.
+
+But though so highly exalted she is not thereby removed to an
+inaccessible distance. She who is privileged to bear the incredible
+title, MOTHER OF GOD is our Mother as well. Upon the Cross our Lord
+said to us in the person of His beloved Disciple, "Behold thy Mother";
+and it is a mother's love that we find flowing to us from the heart of
+Mary. Have we been cold to her, and inappreciative of her love? Have we
+felt that we have no need of her in the conduct of our lives? If so,
+what we have been doing is to isolate ourselves from the divinely
+provided fount of human sympathy which ever flows from our star-crowned
+Mother. Is life so rich in sources of help and sympathy and love that we
+can afford to over-pass the eagerness of God's saints to help us, the
+willingness of the very Mother of God to intercede? Is not the life that
+shuts out from itself the society of heaven pitifully impoverished?
+
+Too many of us are like the man who owned the field wherein was the
+buried treasure. Limitless aid is at our disposal, but on condition that
+we want it and will seek it. Let us try to understand what it is to have
+at our disposal the love and sympathy of the saints of God,--that they
+are not remote inhabitants of a distant sphere whose present interests
+have led to forgetfulness of what they once were, whose present joy is
+so intense as to make them self-centred, but that their very attainment
+of perfection implies the perfection of their love and the completeness
+of their sympathy. The perfection of God's saints and their attainment
+of the end of their course in the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision, has
+but made them more sensitive of our needs and more eager to help.
+
+The spiritual wisdom and power of the Mother of God is at our disposal
+to-day. To the feebleness of our prayers may be added the spiritual
+wisdom and strength of her intercession. He Whose will it is that we
+should pray for one another, wills too that the prayers of His Blessed
+Mother should be at the disposal of all who call upon her. Let us take
+the fact of the intercession of the Queen of Saints seriously as a
+source of power ever open to us.
+
+Thou who art God's Mother and also ours, thou who lookst constantly into
+the Face of the Son, thou who art the fullest manifestation of the love
+of the Blessed Trinity, thou Mary, our Mother, pray for us now and in
+the hour of our death.
+
+     All hail, O Virgin crowned with stars
+       and moon under thy feet,
+     Obtain us pardon of our sins
+       of Christ, our Saviour sweet;
+     For though thou art Mother of any God,
+       yet thy humility
+     Disdaineth not this simple wretch
+       that flies for help to thee.
+     Thou knowest thou art more dear to me
+       than any can express,
+     And that I do congratulate
+       With joy thy happiness.
+     Thou who art the Queen of Heaven and Earth
+       thy helping hand me lend,
+     That I may love and praise my God
+       and have a happy end.
+     And though my sins me terrify,
+       yet hoping still in thee,
+     I find my soul refreshèd much
+       when to thee I do flee;
+     For thou most willingly to God
+       petitions dost present,
+     And dost obtain much grace for us
+       in this our banishment.
+     The honour and the glorious praise
+       by all be given to thee,
+     Which Jesus thy beloved Son,
+       ordained eternally;
+     For thee whom he exalts in heaven
+       above the angels all,
+     And whom we find a Patroness
+       when unto thee we call.
+     O Mater Dei, memento mei. Amen.
+
+     Dame Gertrude More, O.S.B.
+     Ob. 1633.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12624 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12624 ***</div>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Our Lady Saint Mary, by J. G. H. Barry</h1>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>Our Lady Saint Mary</h1>
+<br>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h3>J.G.H. BARRY, D.D.</h3>
+<center>Would that it might happen to me that I should<br>
+be called a fool by the unbelieving, in that I<br>
+have believed such things as these.<br>
+<br>
+--<i>Origen</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h5>1922</h5>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<center>TO THE MEMBERS<br>
+OF THE<br>
+LEAGUE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN<br>
+THIS VOLUME IS HOPEFULLY<br>
+DEDICATED</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+<br>
+<p>The two papers in Part I have been published in the American
+Church Magazine. Of Part II Chapter 1 has been published
+separately; Chapters 2, 4, 7, 9 and 12 have been published in the
+Holy Cross Magazine. The rest of the volume is here published for
+the first time.</p>
+<p>I would emphasise the fact that the contents of Part II is a
+series of sermons which were prepared as such, and were preached in
+the Church of S. Mary the Virgin, New York City, for the most part
+in the Winter of 1921-22. In preparing them for publication in this
+volume no attempt has been made to alter their sermon character. It
+is not a theological treatise on the Blessed Virgin that I have
+attempted, but a devotional presentation of her life.</p>
+<p>I have added to the text as originally prepared certain prayers
+and poems. The object of the selection of the prayers, almost
+exclusively from the Liturgies of the Catholic Church, is to
+illustrate the prevalence of the address of devotion to our Lady
+throughout Christendom. The poems are selected with much the same
+thought, and have been mostly gathered from mediaeval sources, and
+so far as possible, from British. I have no special knowledge of
+devotional poetry, but have selected such poems as I have from time
+to time copied into my note books. This fact has made it impossible
+for me to give credit for them to the extent that I should have
+liked. I trust that any one who is entitled to credit will accept
+this apology.</p>
+<p>Much of the difficulty felt by Anglicans at expressions commonly
+found in prayers and hymns addressed to our Lady is due to
+prevalent unfamiliarity with the devotional language of the
+Catholic Church throughout the ages. Those whose background of
+thought is the theology of the Catholic Church, not in any one
+period, but in the whole extent of its life, will have no
+difficulty in such language because the limitations which are
+implied in it will be clear to them. To others, I can only say that
+it is fair to assume that the great saints of the Church of God in
+all times and in all places did not habitually use language which
+was idolatrous, and our limitations are much more likely to be at
+fault than their meaning. It is not true in any degree that the
+teaching of Catholics as to the place of the Virgin intrudes on the
+prerogative of our Lord. It is, as matter of fact Catholics, and
+not those who oppose the Catholic Religion who are upholding that
+prerogative. This has been excellently expressed by a modern French
+theologian. "We are established in the friendship of God, in the
+divine adoption, in the heavenly inheritance, solely in virtue of
+the covenent by which our souls are bound to the Son of God, and by
+which the goods, the merits, and the rights of the Son of God are
+communicated to our souls, as in the natural order, the property of
+the husband becomes the property of the wife. Surely, one can say
+nothing more than we say here, and assuredly the sects opposed to
+the Church have never said more: indeed, they are far to-day from
+saying so much to maintain intact this truth, that Jesus Christ is
+our sole Redeemer, and to give that truth the entire extent that
+belongs to it."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<br>
+<h3><a href="#PART_ONE">PART I.</a></h3>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I_1">I. OF LOYALTY.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II_1">II. THE MEANING OF WORSHIP.</a></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3><a href="#PART_TWO">PART II.</a></h3>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I. MARY OF NAZARETH.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">II. THE ANNUNCIATION I.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">III. THE ANNUNCIATION II.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV. THE VISITATION I.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">V. THE VISITATION II.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI. S. JOSEPH.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII. THE NATIVITY.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII. THE MAGI.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX. THE PRESENTATION.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">X. EGYPT.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI. NAZARETH.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII. THE TEMPLE.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII. CANA I.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV. CANA II.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV. WHO IS MY MOTHER?</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI. HOLY WEEK I.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII. HOLY WEEK II.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII. THE CRUCIFIXION.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX. THE DESCENT AND BURIAL.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX. THE RESURRECTION.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI. THE FORTY DAYS.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII. THE ASCENSION.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII. THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY
+SPIRIT.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV. THE HOME OF S. JOHN.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV. THE ASSUMPTION.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI. THE CORONATION.</a></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="PART_ONE"></a>PART ONE</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I_1"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>OF LOYALTY</h3>
+<blockquote>O God, who causes us to rejoice in recalling the joys
+of the conception, the nativity, the annunciation, the visitation,
+the purification, and the assumption of the blessed and glorious
+virgin Mary; grant to us so worthily to devote ourselves to her
+praise and service, that we may be conscious of her presence and
+assistance in all our necessities and straits, and especially in
+the hour of death, and that after death we may be found worthy,
+through her and in her, to rejoice in heaven with thee. Through
+&amp;c.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">SARUM MISSAL.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he dream of the Middle Ages was of one Christian society of
+which the Church should be the embodiment of the spiritual, and the
+State of the temporal interests. As there is one humanity united to
+God in Incarnate God, all its interests should be capable of
+unification in institutions which should be based on that which is
+essential in humanity, and not on that which is accidental: men
+should be united because they are human and Christian, and not
+divided because of diversity of blood or color or language. The
+dream proved impossible of realization, and the struggle for human
+unity went to pieces on the rocks of the rapidly developing
+nationalism of the later Middle Ages.</p>
+<p>The Reformation was the triumph of nationalism and the defeat of
+Catholic idealism. It resulted in a shattered Christendom in which
+the interests of local and homogeneous groups became supreme over
+the purely human interests. In state and Church alike patriotism
+has tended more and more to become dominant over the interests that
+are supralocal and universal. The last few years have seen an
+intensification of localism. We have seen bitter scorn heaped on
+the few who have labored for internationalism in thought and
+feeling. We have seen the attempt of labor at internationalism
+utterly break down under the pressure of patriotic motive. We are
+finding that the same concentration on immediate and local
+interests is an insuperable bar to the realization of an ideal of
+internationalism which would effectively deal with questions
+arising between nations and put an end to war. The Church failed to
+establish a spiritual internationalism; the indications are that it
+will be long before humanitarian idealists will be able to effect a
+union among nations still infected with patriotic motive, such as
+shall bring about a subordination of local and immediate interests
+to the interests of humanity as such. That the general interests
+are also in the end the local interests is still far from the
+vision of the patriot.</p>
+<p>What the growth of nationalities with its consequent rise of
+international jealousies and hostilities has effected in civil
+society, has been brought about in matters spiritual by the
+divisions of Christendom. The various bodies into which Christendom
+has been split up are infected with the same sort of localism as
+infects the state. They dwell with pride upon their own
+peculiarities, and treat with suspicion if not with contempt the
+peculiarities of other bodies. The effort to induce the members of
+any body of Christians to appreciate what belongs to others, or to
+try to construe Christianity in terms of a true Catholicity, is
+almost hopeless. All attempts at the restoration of the visible
+unity of the Church have been wrecked, and seem destined for long
+to be wrecked, on the rocks of local pride and local interests. The
+motives which in secular affairs lead a man to put, not only his
+body and his goods, as he ought, at the disposal of his country;
+but also induce him to surrender his mind to the prevailing party
+and shout, "My country, right or wrong," in matters ecclesiastical
+lead him to cry, "My Church, right or wrong." It is only by
+transcending this localism that we can hope for progress in Church
+or State--can hope to conquer the wars and fightings among our
+members that make peace impossible.</p>
+<p>This infection of localism is not peculiar to any body of
+Christians. The Oriental Churches have been largely state-bound for
+centuries, and, in addition, have been mentally immobile. The Roman
+Church with its claims to exclusive ownership of the Christian
+Religion has lost the vision it once had and subordinated the
+Catholic interests of the Church to the local interests of the
+Papacy. The fragments of Protestantism are too small any longer to
+claim the universalism claimed by the East and West, and perforce
+acknowledge their partial character; but it is only to indulge in a
+more acute patriotism, and assertion of rights of division, and the
+supremacy of the local over the general. The Churches of the
+Anglican Rite are less bound, perhaps, than others. They are
+restless under the limitations of localism and are haunted by a
+vision of an unrealized Catholicity; but they are torn by internal
+divisions and find their attempts at movement in any direction
+thwarted by the pull of opposing parties.</p>
+<p>One result of the mental attitude generated by the conditions
+indicated above is that any attempt to deal with subjects other
+than those which are authorized because they are customary, or
+tolerated because they are familiar, is liable to be greeted with
+cries of reproach and accusations of disloyalty. Such and such
+teachings we are told, without much effort at proof, are contrary
+to the teachings of the Anglican Church, or are not in harmony with
+that teaching, or are illegitimate attempts to bring in doctrines
+or practices which were definitely rejected by our fathers at the
+Reformation. Those who are implicated in such attempts are told
+that they are disturbers of the peace of the Church and are invited
+to go elsewhere.</p>
+<p>As one who is not guiltless of such attempts, and as one who is
+becoming accustomed to be charged with novelty in teaching, and
+disloyalty in practice to that which is undoubtedly and
+historically Anglican, I have been compelled to ask myself, "What
+is loyalty to the Anglican Church? Is there, in fact, some peculiar
+and limited form of Christianity to which I owe allegiance?" I had
+got accustomed to think of myself as a Catholic Christian whose lot
+was cast in a certain province of the Catholic Church which was
+administratively separated from other parts of that Church. This I
+felt--this separation--to be unfortunate; but I was not responsible
+for it, and would be glad to do anything that I could to end it. I
+had not thought that this administrative separation from other
+provinces of the Catholic Church meant that I was pledged to a
+different religion; I had not thought of there being an Anglican
+Religion. I have all my life, in intention and as far as I know,
+accepted the whole Catholic Faith of which it is said in a Creed
+accepted by the Anglican Church that "except a man believe
+faithfully he cannot be saved." I do not intend to believe any
+other Faith than that, and I intend to believe all of that; and I
+have not thought of myself as other than a loyal Anglican in so
+doing.</p>
+<p>But criticism has led me to go back over the whole question and
+ask whether there is any indication anywhere in the approved
+documents of the Anglican Communion of an intention at all to
+depart from the Faith of Christendom as it was held by the whole
+Catholic Church, East and West, at the time when an administrative
+separation from Rome was effected. Was a new faith at any time
+introduced? Has there at any time been any official action of the
+Anglican Church to limit my acceptance of the historic Faith? That
+many Anglican writers have denied many articles of the Catholic
+Faith I of course knew to be true. That some Anglican writer could
+be found who had denied every article of the Catholic Faith I
+thought quite possible. But I was not interested in the beliefs or
+practices of individuals. I am not at all interested in what
+opinions may or may not have been held by Cranmer at various stages
+of his career, or what opinions may be unearthed from the writings
+of Bale by experts in immoral literature; I am interested solely in
+the official utterances of the Anglican Communion.</p>
+<p>In following out this line of investigation I have spent many
+weeks in the reading of many dreary documents: but fortunately
+documents are not important in proportion to the element of
+excitement they contain. I have read the documents contained in the
+collection of Gee and Hardy entitled "Documents Illustrative of
+English Church History." I have read the "Formularies of Faith Put
+Forth by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII." I have read
+Cardwell's "Synodalia." And I have also read "Certain Sermons or
+Homilies Appointed to be read in Churches at the time of Queen
+Elizabeth of Famous Memory." I doubt whether any other extant human
+being has read them.</p>
+<p>And the upshot of the whole matter is that in none of these
+documents have I found any expressed intention to depart from the
+Faith of the Catholic Church of the past as that Faith had been set
+forth by authority. No doubt in the Homilies there are things said
+which cannot be reconciled with the Faith of Catholic Christendom.
+But the Homilies are of no binding authority, and I have included
+them in my investigation only because I wanted their point of view.
+That is harmonious with the rest of the authoritative
+documents--the intention is to hold the Faith: unfortunately the
+knowledge of some of the writers was not as pure as their
+intention.</p>
+<p>The point that I am concerned with is this: there is no
+intention anywhere shown in the authoritative documents of the
+Anglican Church to effect a change in religion, or to break with
+the religion which had been from the beginning taught and practised
+in England. The Reformation did not mean the introduction of a new
+religion, but was simply a declaration of governmental
+independence. I will quote somewhat at length from the documents
+for the purpose of showing that there is no indication of an
+intention to set up a new Church.</p>
+<p>One or two quotations from pre-reformation documents will make
+clear the customary phraseology in England during the Middle Ages.
+King John's Ecclesiastical Charter of 1214 uses the terms "Church
+of England" and "English Church." The Magna Charta of 1215 grants
+that the "Church of England shall be free and have her rights
+intact, and her liberties uninjured." The Articuli Cleri of 1316
+speak of the "English Church." The Second Statute of Provisors of
+1390 uses the title "The Holy Church of England." "The English
+Church" is the form used in the Act "De H&aelig;retico Comburendo"
+of 1401, as it is also in "the Remonstrance against the Legatine
+Powers of Cardinal Beaufort" of 1428<a name=
+"FNanchor1"></a><a href="#_1">[1]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> Documents
+in Gee &amp; Hardy.</blockquote>
+<p>These quotations will suffice to show the customary way of
+speaking of the Church in England. If this customary way of
+speaking went on during and after the Reformation the inference is
+that there had no change taken place in the way of men's thinking
+about the Church; that they were unconscious of having created a
+new or a different Church. We know that the Protestant bodies on
+the Continent and the later Protestant bodies in England did change
+their way of thinking about the Church from that of their fathers
+and consequently their way of speaking of it. But the formal
+documents of the Church of England show no change. "The Answer of
+the Ordinaries" of 1532 appeals as authoritative to the
+"determination of Scripture and Holy Church," and to the
+determination of "Christ's Catholic Church." The "Conditional
+Restraint of Annates" of 1532 protests that the English "as well
+spiritual as temporal, be as obedient, devout, catholic, and humble
+children of God and Holy Church, as any people be within any realm
+christened." In the Act for "The Restraint of Appeals" of 1533,
+which is the act embodying the legal principle of the English
+Reformation, it is the "English Church" which acts. The statement
+in the "Act Forbidding Papal Dispensations and the Payment of
+Peter's Pence" of 1534 is entirely explicit as to the intention of
+the English authorities. It declares that nothing in this Act
+"shall be hereafter interpreted or expounded that your grace, your
+nobles and subjects intend, by the same, to decline or vary from
+the congregation of Christ's Church in any things concerning the
+very articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom<a name=
+"FNanchor2"></a><a href="#_2">[2]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> Gee &amp;
+Hardy.</blockquote>
+<p>These documents date from the reign of Henry VIII. In the same
+reign another series of authoritative documents was put forth which
+contains the same teaching as to the Church. "The Institution of a
+Christian Man" set forth in 1536, in the article on the Church has
+this: "I believe assuredly--that there is and hath been from the
+beginning of the world, and so shall endure and continue forever,
+one certain number, society, communion, or company of the elect and
+faithful people of God.... And I believe assuredly that this
+congregation ... is, in very deed the city of heavenly Jerusalem
+... the holy catholic church, the temple or habitacle of God, the
+pure and undefiled espouse of Christ, the very mystical body of
+Christ," "The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian
+Man" of 1543 in treating of the faith declares that "all those
+things which were taught by the apostles, and have been by an whole
+universal consent of the church of Christ ever sith that time
+taught continually, ought to be received, accepted, and kept, as a
+perfect doctrine apostolic." It is further taught in the same
+document in the eighth article, that on "The Holy Catholic Church,"
+that the Church is "catholic, that is to say, not limited to any
+one place or region of the world, but is in every place universally
+through the world where it pleaseth God to call people to him in
+the profession of Christ's name and faith, be it in Europe, Africa,
+or Asia. And all these churches in divers countries severally
+called, although for the knowledge of the one from the other among
+them they have divers additions of names, and for their most
+necessary government, as they be distinct in places, so they have
+distinct ministers and divers heads in earth, governors and rulers,
+yet be all these holy churches but one holy church catholic,
+invited and called by one God the Father to enjoy the benefit of
+redemption wrought by our Lord and Saviour Jesu Christ, and
+governed by one Holy Spirit, which teacheth this foresaid one truth
+of God's holy word in one faith and baptism<a name=
+"FNanchor3"></a><a href="#_3">[3]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a>
+Formularies of Faith in the Reign of Henry VIII.</blockquote>
+<p>With the accession of Edward VI. the Protestant element in the
+Reformation gained increased influence. Our question is, Did it
+succeed in imprinting a new theory of the nature and authority of
+the Church on the formal and authoritative utterances of the Church
+in England? The first "Act of Uniformity" of 1549 contains the now
+familiar appeal to Scripture and to the primitive Church, and the
+Book set forth is called "The Book of Common Prayer and
+Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of
+the Church, after the Use of the Church of England." The "Second
+Act of Uniformity," 1552, uses the same language about the Church
+of England and the primitive Church. Passing on to the reign of
+Elizabeth, in the "Injunctions" of 1559 there is set forth "a form
+of bidding the prayers," which begins: "Ye shall pray for Christ's
+Holy Catholic Church, that is for the whole congregation of
+Christian people dispersed throughout the whole world, and
+especially for the Church of England and Ireland." In the "Act of
+Supremacy" of the same year it is provided that an opinion shall
+"be ordered, or adjudged to be heresy, by the authority of the
+canonical Scriptures, or by the first four general Councils, or any
+of them, or by any other general Council wherein the same was
+declared heresy by the express and plain words of the said
+canonical Scriptures." This test of doctrine is repeated in Canon
+VI of the Canons of 1571. "Preachers shall ... see to it that they
+teach nothing in the way of a sermon ... save what is agreeable to
+the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic
+fathers and ancient bishops have collected from this self-same
+doctrine<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#_4">[4]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a> Documents
+in Gee &amp; Hardy.</blockquote>
+<p>It is hardly worth while to spend much time on the Homilies. I
+will simply note that they continue the appeal to the primitive
+Church which is asserted to have been holy, godly, pure and
+uncorrupt; and to the "old holy fathers and most ancient learned
+doctors" which are quoted as authoritative against later
+innovations. They still speak of the Church of England as
+continuous with the past. I do not find that they treat the
+contemporary reformers as of authority or quote them as against the
+traditional teaching of the Church.</p>
+<p>We will go on to one more stage, that is, to the Canons of 1604
+which represent the mind of the Church of England at the time of
+the accession of James I. They declare that "whosoever shall
+hereafter affirm, That the Church of England, by law established
+under the King's majesty, is not a true and an apostolical church,
+teaching and maintaining the doctrine of the apostles; let him be
+excommunicated." (III) They appeal to the "Ancient fathers of the
+Church, led by the example of the apostles." (XXXI) In treating of
+the use of the sign of the Cross in baptism they assert that its
+use follows the "rules of Scripture and the practice of the
+primitive Church." And further, "This use of the sign of the Cross
+in baptism was held in the primitive Church, as well by the Greeks
+as the Latins, with one consent and great applause." And replying
+to the argument from abuse the canon goes on: "But the abuse of a
+thing doth not take away the lawful use of it. Nay, so far was it
+from the purpose of the Church of England to forsake and reject the
+Churches of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any such like
+Churches, in all things that they held and practised, that, as the
+Apology of the Church of England confesseth, it doth with reverence
+retain those ceremonies, which do neither endanger the Church of
+God, nor offend the minds of sober men." (XXX)</p>
+<p>It appears clear from a study of the passages quoted and of many
+others of kindred nature that the Anglican Church did not start out
+upon its separate career with any intention of becoming a sect; it
+did not complain of the corruption of the existing religion and
+declare its purpose to show to the world what true and pure
+religion is. It did not put forward as the basis of its action the
+existing corruption of doctrine, but the corruption of
+administration. Its claim was a claim to manage its own local
+affairs, and was put into execution when the Convocation of
+Canterbury voted in the negative on the question submitted to it,
+viz., "Whether the Roman pontiff has any greater jurisdiction
+bestowed on him by God in Holy Scripture in this realm of England,
+than any other foreign bishop?"</p>
+<p>The attitude indicated is one that has been characteristic of
+the Anglican Church ever since. It has always been restless in the
+presence of a divided Christendom; the sin of the broken unity has
+always haunted it. It never has taken the smug attitude of
+sectarianism, a placid self-satisfaction with its own perfection.
+It has felt the constant pull of the Catholic ideal and has been
+inspired by it to make effort after effort for the union of
+Christendom. It has never lost the sense that it was in itself not
+complete but a part of a greater whole. It has never seen in the
+existing shattered state of the Christian Church anything but the
+evidences of sin. Its appeal has constantly been, not to its own
+sufficiency for the determination of all questions, but to the
+Scriptures as interpreted by the undivided Church. If it has at
+times been prone to overstress the authority of some ideal and
+undefined primitive Church, it was because it thought that there
+and there only could the Catholic Church be found speaking in its
+ideal unity.</p>
+<p>This the attitude of the Anglican Church of the past is its
+attitude to-day. The Lambeth Conference of 1920 gave voice to
+it:</p>
+<blockquote>"The Conference urges on every branch of the Anglican
+Communion that it should prepare its members for taking their part
+in the universal fellowship of the re-united Church, by setting
+before them the loyalty which they owe to the universal Church, and
+the charity and understanding which are required of the members of
+so inclusive a society."</blockquote>
+<p>Commenting upon this utterance of the Lambeth Conference the
+three bishops who are the joint authors of "Lambeth and Reunion"
+say:</p>
+<blockquote>The bishops at Lambeth "beg for loyalty to the
+universal Church. The doctrinal standards of the undivided Church
+must not be ignored. Nor must modern developments, consistent with
+the past, be ruled out merely because they are modern. Men must
+hold strongly what they have received; but they must forsake the
+policy of denying one another's positive presentment of truth. That
+only must be forbidden which the universal fellowship cannot
+conceivably accept within any one of its groups<a name=
+"FNanchor5"></a><a href="#_5">[5]</a>."</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a> Lambeth
+and Rennion. By the bishops of Peterborough, Zanzibar and
+Hereford.</blockquote>
+<p>The bishops just quoted add: "We rejoice indeed at this new mind
+of the Lambeth Conference." Whether it is a new mind in Lambeth
+Conferences we need not consider; it is certainly no new mind in
+the Anglican Church, but is precisely its characteristic attitude
+of not claiming perfection or finality for itself, but of looking
+beyond itself to Catholic Christendom, and longing for the time
+when reunion of the churches which now make up its "broken unity"
+will enable it to speak with the same voice of authority with which
+it did in its primitive and undivided state.</p>
+<p>In attempting to decide what as a priest of the Anglican
+Communion one may or may not teach or practice, one is bound to
+have regard, not to what is asserted by anyone, even by any bishop,
+to be "disloyal" or "unanglican," but to the principles expressed
+or implied in the utterances of the Church itself. From those
+utterances as I have reviewed them, it appears to me that a number
+of general principles may be deduced for the guidance of
+conduct.</p>
+<p>I. The Churches of the Anglican Communion are bound by the
+entire body of Catholic dogma formulated and accepted universally
+in the pre-Reformation Church.</p>
+<p>The Anglican documents, to be sure, speak constantly of the
+"Primitive Church," but they do not anywhere define what they mean
+by that; and frequently, by their appeal to the "undivided Church,"
+and to "general Councils," they seem to include in their undefined
+term much more than is commonly understood. In any case, the Church
+has no special authority because it is <i>primitive</i>: its
+authority results not from its being primitive but from its being
+<i>Church</i>. The only point of the Anglican appeal would be the
+universal acceptance of a given doctrine. Such universal acceptance
+must be taken as proof of its primitiveness, that is, of its being
+contained, explicitly or implicitly, in the original deposit of
+faith. The Anglican Church was content with the summing up of this
+Faith in the Three Creeds, and attempted to formulate no new Greed
+of her own--the XXXIX Articles are not strictly a Creed: they are
+not articles of Faith but of Religion. But the very history of the
+Creeds implies that they are not final, that is, complete, but that
+they are a summing up of the Catholic Religion to date. There are
+truths which the circumstances of the Church in the Conciliar
+period had not brought into prominence which later events compelled
+the Church to express its mind upon. Such a truth is that of the
+Real Presence of our Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar. This truth
+had attained explicit acceptance throughout the Church before the
+Reformation, sufficiently witnessed by the liturgies in use. It is
+also embodied in the Anglican liturgy. If anyone thinks the
+language of the Anglican Church doubtful on this point, the
+principles enunciated by the Church compel interpretation in accord
+with the mind of the universal Church. There are other truths which
+are binding on us on the same basis of universal consent, but I am
+not seeking to apply the principle in every case but only to
+illustrate it.</p>
+<p>II. There is another class of truths or doctrines widely held in
+Christendom, which yet cannot be classed as dogmas of the faith.
+Such a doctrine is that of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed
+Virgin Mary. This doctrine has been made of faith in the Roman
+communion, but has not yet ecumenical acceptance, and therefore may
+be doubted without sin by members of the Greek or Anglican
+Churches. What we need to avoid, as the Lambeth Conference has
+reminded us, is a purely insular and provincial attitude in
+relation to doctrines which have not been formally set forth by
+Anglican authority. The Anglican Church has tried its best to
+impress upon us that there is no such thing as an Anglican
+Religion; there is but one Religion--the Religion of God's Catholic
+Church. What we are to seek to know is not the mind "of the
+Anglican reformers," or the mind "of the Caroline divines," but the
+mind of the Catholic Church. Wherever we shall find that mind
+expressed, though in terms unfamiliar to us, we are bound to treat
+it with respect. We are to seek to know the truth that the truth
+may make us free--from all pride and prejudice, as well as from
+heresy and blasphemy. And we shall best come at this mind in its
+widest meaning by the study of the writings of the saints of all
+ages and of all parts of the Church. It may fairly be inferred that
+those who have attained great perfection in the Catholic life have
+achieved it by the application of Catholic truth to every day
+living.</p>
+<p>III. The members of the Anglican Church have the same freedom as
+other Catholics in the matter of theological speculation. What was
+done at the Reformation was not final in the sense that we are
+never to believe or to teach anything that is not found in Anglican
+formularies. The fact that a certain doctrine like that of the
+Invocation of Saints was omitted from the Anglican formularies is
+not fatal to its practice. The grounds of its omission in practice
+may or may not have been well judged. But the theory of it was
+never denied, it is indeed contained in the Creeds themselves, and
+change in circumstances may justify its revival in practice.</p>
+<p>Moreover, the theology of the Christian Church is not a body of
+static doctrine, but is the expression of the ceaseless meditation
+of the saints upon the truths revealed to us by God. To suppose
+that any age whatever has exhausted the meaning of the Revealed
+Truth would be absurd. It is inexhaustible. So long as the mind of
+the Church is pondering it, it brings out from it things old and
+new. Among ourselves it is perhaps at present more desirable that
+we should bring out the old things than seek to find the new. The
+historic circumstances of the Anglican Church have been such as to
+lead to the practical disuse of much that is of great spiritual
+value in the treasury of the Church. It is largely in the attempt
+to bring into use the riches that have been abandoned that some are
+to-day incurring the charge of disloyalty--a charge that they are
+not careful to answer, if they may be permitted to minister to a
+larger spiritual life in the Church they love.</p>
+<p>At the same time the development of doctrine is a real mode of
+enrichment of the theology of the Church. The devout mind pondering
+divine truth will ever penetrate deeper into its meaning. Thus it
+was that in the course of centuries the Church arrived at a
+complete statement of the doctrine of our Lord's person. And what
+it could rightly do in the supreme case, it surely can rightly do
+in cases of lesser moment. We need not be afraid of this movement
+of thought, for the mind of the united Church may be trusted not to
+sanction any error. Our Lord has promised that the gates of hell
+shall not prevail against the Church. We can trust Him to fulfil
+His promise. He has also promised us that the Holy Spirit shall
+lead us into all the truth. Can He trust us not to thwart the work
+of the Spirit by a provincial attitude as of those who already in
+the utterances of the Anglican formularies claim to possess all
+truth?</p>
+<p>IV. There is one other inference to be drawn from what I
+conceive to be the Anglican position, and that is one that relates,
+not primarily to doctrine but to practice. For many years now the
+Anglican Churches have been greatly disturbed by varieties of
+practice, though it is difficult to see why varieties of practice
+should be in themselves disturbing. But without going into that
+matter, which would carry us far afield, I would simply state that
+the principle already laid down in regard to doctrine seems to
+apply here in the matter of practice: that is, the Anglican has the
+right to use any practice which has not been explicitly forbidden
+by the authorities of the local Church. The Churches of the
+Anglican Communion have never set forth any competent guide for the
+conduct of worship, and by refraining from so doing have left the
+matter in the hands of those who have to conduct services and
+provide for the spiritual needs of those over whom they have been
+given cure of souls. There is nothing more absurd than to assume
+that nothing rightly can be done in these matters except what has
+been directed by authority; that no services can be held but such
+as have formal authorization; that no ceremonies can be introduced
+but such as the custom of the time since the Reformation has made
+familiar to many.</p>
+<p>In such matters authority naturally and necessarily goes along
+with the cure of souls; the priest of the parish must perforce
+provide for the spiritual needs of his parish. If he finds those
+needs satisfied with the rendering of Morning and Evening
+Prayer--well and good; but those who do not find the needs of their
+parish so satisfied must seek to satisfy them by the providing of
+other spiritual means. And in seeking thus to provide for the
+spiritual growth of souls committed to his care, the priest, on the
+principles of the Anglican formularies, is justified and entitled
+to make use of the means in use throughout Catholic Christendom. He
+is quite justified in calling his people together for a prayer
+meeting, if in his judgment that will be for their spiritual good;
+or if his judgment is different, he is equally justified in
+inviting them to join him in saying the rosary. He may incite to
+greater devotion by a shortened form of Evening Prayer or by
+popular Vespers. I do not think that there is anything in the
+Christian Religion or in the formularies of the Anglican Church
+that forbids him to have moving pictures or special musical
+services. Nor is there any reason why, if it be in his judgment
+promotive of holiness, he should not provide for his parish such
+services as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. There can be no
+legitimate criticism of a service on the ground of its
+<i>provenance</i>.</p>
+<p>It is a common reproach against the Anglican Communion that is
+"does not know its own mind." It would be much truer to say that
+there are many members of it who have been at no pains to ascertain
+whether it have a mind or what that mind is: who have been content
+to confound the mind of the Church with the mind of the party to
+which they are attached by the accident of birth or of preference.
+I do not for a moment contend that the party (to use an ugly but
+necessary word) to which I am attached stands, in all things, in
+perfect alignment with the Anglican Formularies. There are
+circumstances in which it appears to me to be necessary to appeal
+from Anglican action to the mind of that larger Body, the whole
+Church of Christ throughout the world, to which the Anglican Church
+points me as its own final authority. In so doing I do not feel
+that I am disloyal, but that I am actually doing what authority
+tells me to do. These are cases in point. I do not believe that a
+local Church can suppress and permanently disuse sacraments of the
+universal Church. The Anglican Church by its suppression of the
+sacraments of Unction and by its almost universal disuse for
+centuries of the sacrament of Penance, compelled those who would be
+loyal to the Catholic Church to which it appealed to act on their
+own initiative in the revival of the use of those sacraments. I do
+not believe that the local Church has the right or the power to
+forbid or permanently disuse customs which are of universal
+currency in the Catholic Church. I do not believe that it has the
+right to neglect and fail to enforce the Catholic custom of
+fasting, and especially of fasting before communion. I do not
+believe that any Christian who is informed on these things has the
+right to neglect them on the ground that the Anglican Church has
+not enforced them. On the basis of its own declarations the
+ecumenical overrides the local; and if it be said, "What is a
+priest, that he should undertake to set the practice of his Church
+right?" the answer is that he is a man having cure of souls for
+whose progress in holiness he is responsible before God, and if
+those who claim authority in such matters will not act, he must
+act, though it be at the risk of his immortal soul.</p>
+<p>These things seem to be true with the truth of self-evidence.
+And because they seem to be true, I have not hesitated to preach,
+and now to print, the sermons on the life and words of our Lady
+contained in this volume. I am told by many that such teaching is
+dangerous, but I am not told by any of any danger that is
+intelligible to me. That such devotions to our Lady as are here
+commended trench on the prerogative of God, and exalt our Lady
+above the place of a creature is sufficiently answered by the fact
+that the very act of asking the prayers of Blessed Mary is an
+assertion of her creaturehood--one does not ask the prayers of God.
+And when it is said that devotion to her takes away from devotion
+to her Son, one has only to ask in reply, who as a matter of fact
+have maintained and do maintain unflinchingly the divinity of our
+Lord? Certainly the denials of the divinity of our Lord are found
+where there is also a denial that any honor is due or may rightly
+be given to His Blessed Mother; and where that Mother receives the
+highest honor, there we never for a moment doubt that the full
+Godhead of Jesus will be unflinchingly and unhesitatingly
+maintained.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Wherefore in praise, the worthiest that I may,<br>
+Jesu! of thee, and the white Lily-flower<br>
+Which did thee bear, and is a Maid for aye,<br>
+To tell a story I will use my power;<br>
+Not that I may increase her honour's dower,<br>
+For she herself is honour, and the root<br>
+Of goodness, next her Son, our soul's best boot.<br>
+<br>
+O Mother Maid! O Maid and Mother free!<br>
+O bush unburnt; burning in Moses' sight!<br>
+That down didst ravish from the Deity,<br>
+Through humbleness, the spirit that did alight<br>
+Upon thy heart, whence, through that glory's might,<br>
+Conceived was the Father's sapience,<br>
+Help me to tell it in thy reverence.<br>
+<br>
+Lady! thy goodness, thy magnificance,<br>
+Thy virtue, and thy great humility,<br>
+Surpass all science and all utterance;<br>
+For sometimes, Lady, ere men pray to thee<br>
+Thou goest before in thy benignity,<br>
+The light to us vouchsafing of thy prayer,<br>
+To be our guide unto thy Son so dear.<br>
+<br>
+My knowledge is so weak, O blissful Queen!<br>
+To tell abroad thy mighty worthiness,<br>
+That I the weight of it may not sustain;<br>
+But as a child of twelve months old or less,<br>
+Even so fare I; and therefore, I thee pray,<br>
+Guide thou my song which I of thee shall say.<br>
+<br>
+Chaucer. The Prioress' Tale.<br>
+Version by Wordsworth.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART ONE</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II_1"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE MEANING OF WORSHIP</h3>
+<blockquote>O Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all holy thoughts do
+come; who hast taught thy servants to honour thy glorious mother;
+mercifully grant us so to celebrate her on earth with the solemn
+sacrifice of praise and with due devotion, that by her intercession
+we may be found worthy to reign in joy in heaven. Who livest
+&amp;c.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">SARUM MISSAL.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>here are thoughts and actions which so enter the daily conduct
+of our lives that we take them for granted and never pause to
+analyse them. If perchance something occurs to make us ask what
+these thoughts and actions truly and deeply mean we are surprised
+to find that we have, in fact, no adequate understanding of them.
+We have a feeling about them and we are quite sure that this
+feeling is a good and right one. We have ends that we are seeking
+and we are satisfied that the ends are in all ways desirable. But
+suddenly confronted with the question why, unexpectedly asked to
+explain, to justify ourselves, we find ourselves dumb. We cannot
+find adequate exposition for what we nevertheless know that we are
+justified in. It is so with much that we admire; we have never
+tried to justify our admiration, have never thought that it needed
+an explanation; and then, unexpectedly, we find ourselves
+challenged, we find our taste criticised, and in our efforts at
+self-defence we blunder and stumble and hesitate about what we
+still feel that we are quite right in holding fast.</p>
+<p>It is common things that we thus take for granted; it is daily
+activities that we thus assume need no explanation. For us who
+habitually gather to the services of the Church there is no more
+taken-for-granted act than worship. Worship is a part of our daily
+experience. At certain times each day we offer to God stated and
+formal acts of worship. Many times a day most likely we pause and
+for a moment lift our thought to our blessed Lord for a brief
+communion with Him. It is a part of our settled experience thus to
+draw strength from the inexhaustible source which at all times is
+at our disposal. We know how the tasks of the day are lightened and
+our strength to meet them renewed by these momentary invasions of
+the supernatural. There are also special times in each week when we
+meet with other members of the One Body of Christ in the offering
+of the unbloody Sacrifice. We know that in that act heaven and
+earth join, and that not only our brethren who are kneeling beside
+us are uniting with us in the offering of the Sacrifice, not only
+are we one with all those other members of the Body who on this
+same morning are kneeling at the numberless altars of Christendom,
+but that all those who are in Christ are with us partakers of the
+same Sacrifice, and that in its offering we are joined with all the
+holy dead, and by our partaking of Christ are brought close to one
+another. We therefore lovingly take their names upon our lips, and
+enkindle their memory in our hearts; and find that death, which we
+had thought of as a separation, has but broken the barriers to the
+deepest and most blessed communion, and that we are now, as never
+before, united to those whom we find in Christ Jesus our Lord.</p>
+<p>And then comes the unexpected challenge: "what does all this
+mean: these repeated and diverse acts that you are accustomed to
+speak of and to think of as acts of worship? What, ultimately, do
+you mean by worship, and can there possibly be found any common
+feature in these so diverse acts which can justify you in regarding
+them as essentially one? This act which is in truth presenting
+yourself before the majesty of God in humble adoration, in the
+guise of a suppliant child depending upon the love of the Father
+for the supply of the daily needs; or this other act which is of
+such deepest mystery that we approach any attempted statement of it
+with awe, which is in fact the representation of the sacrifice of
+Calvary; and then these invocations by which we ask the loving
+co-operation of our fellow members of Christ that they may
+associate themselves with us in the work of prayer and mutual
+intercession--how can all these acts be brought together under a
+common rubric, how can they all be designated as worship? What in
+fact is it that you mean by worship?"</p>
+<p>So are we challenged. So are we thrown back, and in the end
+thrown back most beneficially, to the analysis of our acts.
+Worship, we tell ourselves, is <i>worth</i>-ship; it is the
+attribution of worth or honor to whom these are properly due.
+"Honour to whom honour is due," we hear the Apostle saying. Worship
+is therefore not an absolute value but a varying value, the content
+of any act of which will be determined by the nature of the object
+toward which it is directed. It is greatly like love in this
+respect; its nature is always the same, but its present value is
+determined by the object to which it is directed. We are to love
+the Lord our God, and we are also to love our neighbour; the nature
+of the love is in each case the same; and yet we are not to love
+our neighbour with the limitless self-surrender with which we love
+God. The love of God is the passionate giving of ourselves to Him
+with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and
+with all our strength. The love of the neighbour is measured and
+restrained, having in view his good that we are seeking, the
+promotion of his salvation as our fellow member in the Body of
+Christ. In the same way worship will take its colour, its
+significance, its tone, its intensity, not from some abstract
+conception, but from the end it seeks. This is made plain, too,
+when we look at our Bibles and Prayer Books for the actual use of
+the word. There we find much of the worship of God: but we also
+find a limited use of the word. "Then shalt thou have worship in
+the presence of them that sit at meat with thee." (S. Luke, XIV,
+10.) And in the marriage service of the English Prayer Book we
+read: "With this ring I thee wed, and with my body I thee worship."
+The same limited content of the word is found in the old title of
+respect--"Your Worship."</p>
+<p>But so thoroughly has the word worship become associated with
+our approach to God, that we still, many of us, no doubt, feel the
+shock of the unaccustomed when we hear the worship of the Blessed
+Virgin or of the saints spoken of. It does not help us much to fall
+back on the Latin word, <i>Cultus</i>, for we understand that the
+meaning is the same.</p>
+<p>We are helped, I think, if we substitute the parallel word
+honour for worship in the places of its use. We meet in the Church
+to honour God, and we offer the Blessed Sacrifice as the act of
+supreme honour which is due to Him alone; but in connection with
+the supreme honour offered to God we also honour the saints of God
+by the observance of their anniversaries with special services
+including the Holy Sacrifice. The word honour does not sound so ill
+to ears unaccustomed to a certain type of Catholic expression as
+the word worship: but the meaning is untouched.</p>
+<p>Let us go on then to the analysis of the notion of worship. In
+the writings of theologians we find an analysis of the notion of
+worship into three degrees. There is, first of all, that supreme
+degree of worship which is called <i>latria</i> and which is the
+worship due to God alone. If we ask what essentially it is that
+differentiates <i>latria</i> from all other degrees of worship or
+honour we find that it is the element of sacrifice that it
+contains. Sacrifice is the supreme act of self-surrender to
+another, of utter self-immolation, and it can have no other
+legitimate object than God Himself. The central notion of sacrifice
+is the surrender of self. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant were
+of value because they were the representatives of the nation and of
+the individuals who offered them; because of the
+self-identification of nation or individual with the thing offered,
+which must therefore be in some sense the offerer's, must, so to
+say, <i>contain him</i>: must be that in which he merges himself.
+So the one Sacrifice of the New Covenant gets its essential value
+in that it is the surrender of the Son to the will of the Father.
+"I am come to do Thy will, O God." Christ's sacrifice is
+self-sacrifice: the voluntary surrender of the whole life to the
+divine purpose.</p>
+<p>And when we actually worship God, worship Him with the worship
+of <i>latria</i>, our act must be of the same essential nature; it
+must be an act of sacrifice, of self-giving; the offering of
+ourselves to the will of the Father. So it is in our participation
+in the offering of the Blessed Sacrifice. The full meaning of our
+joining in that act is that we are uniting ourselves with our
+Lord's offering of Himself, and as members of His Body share in the
+sacrifice of the Body which is the supreme act of worship. And our
+other acts of worship lay hold on and proceed from this which is
+the ground of their efficacy. All our subordinate acts of worship,
+so to call them, have their character and vitality as Christian
+acts of the worship of God because of the relation of the
+worshipper to God as a member of the Body of His Son. They are
+offered through the Son and derive their potency from their
+association with Him and His sacrifice. They reach God through the
+sacrifice of the One Mediator.</p>
+<p>Worship, then, in this complete sense, is due to God alone; and
+it is separated by a whole heaven from any worship, that is,
+honour, which can be offered to any creature, however exalted. No
+instructed person would for a moment imagine that the prayers which
+we address to the saints are in any degree such worship as is
+offered to God; but in as much as those who are unfamiliar with the
+forms of the Catholic Religion in its devotional expression may
+easily be led astray, it seems needful to stress this fact of the
+difference between simple petition and such acts and prayers as
+involve the highest degree of worship.</p>
+<p>One of the chief sources of confusion in this matter is the
+failure to distinguish between the nature of the act of worship,
+which is determined by the person to whom it is directed, and the
+mere adjuncts of the act. But an act of <i>latria</i> is not
+constituted such by the fact that it is aided in its expression by
+such circumstances as banners, lights, incense and so on. These are
+quite appropriate to any act of honour, and have been customarily
+so used in relation to human beings. There was a certain hesitation
+in the Church for some time in the matter of incense which under
+the older Covenant had been especially appropriated to God, because
+in the experience of the early Church it was demanded, and
+necessarily refused, as an acknowledgment of the divinity of the
+Emperor. But with the passing of the pagan empire incense as the
+universal symbol of prayer came into use in all manner of services
+wherein intercession was a part.</p>
+<p>Such adjuncts therefore are not foreign to those subordinate
+acts of worship or honour which are technically known as <i>dulia.
+Dulia</i>--this word means service--is such honour as may be
+rightly rendered to creatures without at all encroaching upon the
+majesty of God. It is <i>that</i> degree of worship that we have in
+mind when we speak of the worship of the saints. That <i>dulia</i>
+of the saints is expressed when we ask for the intercession of this
+or that saint, and is not essentially different from the asking for
+the prayers of any other human beings. We commonly ask for one
+another's prayers and feel that in doing so we are exercising our
+brotherhood in the Body of Christ in calling into action its mutual
+love and sympathy. We should be beyond measure astonished if we
+were told that such requests for the prayers of our brethren were
+encroachments upon the honour of God and the sin of idolatry! But
+if in this case our surprise is justified, it is difficult to see
+how the case is at all altered by the fact that the fellow members
+of the Body whose prayers we are asking happen to be <i>dead</i>,
+that is, as we believe and imply in our request for their
+intercession, have passed into a new and closer relation to our
+Blessed Lord. Nor, again, does the case seem to be at all altered,
+if the brother whose prayers we ask has been dead a long time, and
+has, by the common consent of Catholic Christendom, been received
+into the number of the saints. The ways in which the human mind
+works under the influence of prejudice are always interesting.
+There are many devout persons who feel that it is a valuable
+element in their religion to have the privilege of following the
+Kalendar of the Church and to keep the saints' days therein
+indicated by attendance at divine service; who yet would be
+horrified if it were suggested that a prayer should be offered to
+the saint whose day is being observed, and that the saint should be
+made the object of an act of worship. But what essentially
+<i>is</i> the keeping of a saint's day, with a celebration of the
+Holy Communion with special collect, epistle and gospel, but an act
+of worship <i>(dulia)</i> of the saint? The nature of the act would
+be in no way changed if in addition to our accustomed collects
+there were added one which plainly asked for the prayers of the
+saint in whose honour we are keeping the feast.</p>
+<p>In the worship of the Church of God a place apart is assigned to
+the honour to be paid to the blessed Mother of our Lord. As the
+highest of all creatures, as highly favoured above all, as she whom
+God chose to be the Mother of His Son, the devout thought of
+generations of Christians has felt that their recognition of her
+relation to God in the Incarnation called for a special degree of
+honour rightly to express it. The thought of the faithful lingers
+about all that was in any degree associated with the coming of God
+in the flesh: so great was the deliverance thereby wrought for man
+that man's gratitude ever seeks new means of expression and ever
+finds the means inadequate to his love. Many of the expressions
+that are found in devotional writers associated with the cultus of
+the Blessed Virgin Mary are an outcome of this attitude of mind. To
+those who are unused to them they seem exaggerated; in the vast
+mass of the devotional writings of Catholic Christendom there is no
+difficulty in finding expressions which <i>are</i> exaggerated; but
+it is well to remember when thinking of this that the exaggeration
+is the exaggeration of love. The tendency of love <i>is</i> to
+exaggerate the forms of its expression. It is, however, we feel on
+reflection, an error to judge by the exaggeration rather than by
+the love. It is perhaps well to ask ourselves whether we are saved
+from exaggeration by greater sanity or by lesser love.</p>
+<p>But exaggeration apart, this feeling of the unique position of
+the blessed Mother in relation to the Incarnate Son, as calling
+forth a special honour for her is embodied in the designation of
+the honour to be rendered her as <i>hyperdulia</i>--a specially
+devoted service. It is hardly necessary after what has been said to
+point out that even here in the highest honour rendered to any
+saint there is no passing of the infinite gulf which separates
+Creator from creature, any infringement upon the honour of God. No
+Catholic could dream that blessed Mary would be in any wise
+honoured by the attribution to her of what belongs to her Son.
+These are no doubt commonplaces, but it is better to be commonplace
+than to be misunderstood. The intercession that is asked of the
+blessed Mother is the intercession of one who by God's election is
+more closely associated with God than any other human being is or
+can be. Her power of prayer is felt to proceed from the depth of
+her sanctity; from, in other words, the perfection of her relation
+to her blessed Son Who is the only Mediator and the Saviour of us
+all.</p>
+<p>Let me say in conclusion that this giving of honour to our Lord,
+and to all His saints as united to Him, and the celebration of
+their days according to the Church's year, and the asking of the
+help of their intercession in all the needs of our lives, is not
+simply a thing to be tolerated in those who are inclined to it, is
+not simply a privilege which we are entitled to if we care for it,
+but is a duty which all Christians ought to fulfil because
+otherwise they are failing to make real to them a very important
+article of the Christian Creed. The Communion of Saints, like all
+other articles of the Creed, needs to be put into active use, and
+will be when we believe it as distinguished from assent to it. When
+we believe that all who live unto God in the Body of His dear Son
+are inspired with active love one toward another, we shall
+ourselves feel the impulse of that love, and be compelled both to
+seek an outlet for it toward all other members of the Body, and
+also will equally feel compelled to seek our own share in the
+action of that love by asking for the prayers of the saints for
+ourselves and for all in whom we are interested. Then will we find
+in the "worship of the saints" one great means whereby we can
+worship the God of the saints by the devout recognition of the
+greatness of His work in them, May God be praised and glorified in
+all His saints.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Lowly, and higher than all creatures raised,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Term by eternal council fixed upon,<br>
+Thou art she who didst ennoble man,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;That even He who had created him<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To be Himself His creature disdained not.<br>
+Within thy womb rekindled was the love,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;By virtue of whose heat this flower thus<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Is blossoming in the eternal peace.<br>
+Here thou art unto us a noon-day torch<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Of charity, and among mortal men<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Below, thou art a living fount of hope.<br>
+Lady, thou art so great and so prevailest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;That who seeks grace without recourse to thee,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Would have his wish fly upward without wings.<br>
+Thy loving-kindness succors not alone<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Him who is seeking it, but many times<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Freely anticipates the very prayer.<br>
+In thee is mercy, pity is in thee,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;In thee magnificence, whatever good<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Is in created being joins in thee.<br>
+<br>
+Dante, Par. XXXIII, 1-21. (Trans. H. Johnson.)</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="PART_TWO"></a>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>MARY OF NAZARETH</h3>
+<center>Mary, of whom was born Jesus.</center>
+<center>S. Matt. I. 16.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>My Maker and Redeemer, Christ the Lord, O Immaculate,
+coming forth from thy womb, having taken my nature upon him, hath
+delivered Adam from the primal curse; wherefore, to thee,
+Immaculate, the Mother of God and Virgin in very sooth, we cry
+aloud unceasingly the Ave of the Angel, "Hail, O Lady, protection
+and shelter and salvation of our souls!"</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">BYZANTINE.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he silences of the Holy Scriptures have always provoked
+speculation as to what is left untold. The devout imagination has
+played about the hints we receive and woven them into stories which
+far outrun any true implication of the facts. Thus has much
+legendary matter gathered about the childhood of our Lord,
+containing the stories, not always very edifying according to our
+taste, which are set down in the Apocryphal Gospels. The same
+eagerness to know more than we are told has produced the developed
+legend of the childhood of our Lady. We can of course place no
+reliance on most of the statements that are there made; perhaps the
+most that we can lay hold of is the fact that S. Mary's father was
+Joachim and her mother Anna. The rest may be left to silence.</p>
+<p>But if the facts of the external life of Mary of Nazareth cannot
+be hoped for, certain general truths evidently follow from God's
+plan for her and from her relation to our Blessed Lord. There are
+certain inferences from her vocation which are irresistible and
+which the theologians of the Church did not fail to make as they
+thought of her function in relation to the Incarnation. We know
+that the work of Redemption by which it was God's purpose to lead
+back a sinful world to Himself was a purpose that worked from the
+very beginning of man's fatal separation from the source of his
+life and happiness. The essential meaning of Holy Scripture is that
+it is a history of the origin of God's purpose and of His bringing
+it to a successful issue in the mission of our Lord. In the
+Scriptures we are permitted to see the unfolding of the divine
+purpose and the preparation of the instruments by which the purpose
+is to be effected. We see the divine will struggling with the human
+will, and in appearance baffled again and again by the selfishness
+and the stupidity of man. We see too that the divine will is in the
+long run successful in securing a point of action in humanity, in
+winning the allegiance of men of good will to co-operation with the
+purpose of God. We see spiritual ideals assimilated, and sympathy
+with the work of God generated, until we feel that that work has
+gained a firm and enduring ground in humanity from which it can
+act. God is able to consummate His purpose, and men begin to
+understand in some measure the nature of the future deliverance and
+to look forward to the coming of One Who should be the embodiment
+of the divine action and the Representative of God Himself with a
+completeness which no previous messenger of God had ever
+attained.</p>
+<p>It we would understand the Old Testament we must find that its
+intimate note is preparation, just as the intimate note of the New
+Testament is accomplishment. God is working to a foreseen end, and
+is working as fast as men will consent to co-operate and become the
+instruments of His purpose. The purpose is not one that can be
+achieved by the exercise of power; it is a purpose of love and can
+be effected only through co-operating love. And as we watch the
+final unfolding of that purpose in the Incarnation of God, we more
+and more become conscious of the preparation of all the instruments
+of the purpose which are working in harmony for the revelation of
+the meaning of God.</p>
+<p>Of all the instruments of this divine purpose, one figure has
+preeminently fascinated the devout imagination because of her
+unique beauty, and has been the object of profound speculation
+because of the intimacy of her relation to God,--Mary of Nazareth.
+The vocabulary of love and reverence has exhausted itself in the
+attempt to express our estimate of her. The literature of Mariology
+is immense. And no one who has at all entered into the meaning of
+the Incarnation, of what is involved in eternal God taking human
+flesh, can wonder at this. Here at the crisis of the divine
+redeeming action, when the crowning mystery which angels desire to
+look into is being accomplished, we find the figure of a village
+maiden of Israel as the surprising instrument of the advent of God.
+We wonder: and we instinctively feel, that as all the other steps
+and instruments in God's redemption of man had from the beginning
+been carefully prepared, so shall we find preparation here. We
+understand that as God could not come in the flesh at any time, but
+only when the "fulness of time" had come; so He could not come of
+any woman, but only of such an one as He had prepared to be the
+instrument of His Incarnation.</p>
+<p>It is involved in the very intimacy of the relation which exists
+between our Lord and His blessed Mother that she should be unique
+in the human race. We feel that we are right in saying that the
+Incarnation which waited for the preparation of the world socially
+and spiritually, must also be thought of as waiting for the coming
+of the woman who would so completely surrender herself to the
+divine will that in her obedience could be founded the antidote to
+the disobedience which was founded in Eve. The race waited for the
+coming of the new mother who should be the instrument in the
+abolishing of the evil of which the first mother was the
+instrument. And from the very beginning of the thought of the
+Church about blessed Mary there was no doubt that it was implied in
+her office in bearing the God-Man that she should be without
+sin--sinless in the sense of never having in any least degree
+consented to evil the thought of the Church has ever held her to
+be. It was held incredible that she who by God's election bore in
+the sanctuary of her womb during the months of her child-bearing
+Him who was Lord and Creator and was come to save the world from
+all the stain and penalty of sin should herself be a sinner.
+Without actual sin, therefore, was Mary held to be from the time
+that the thought of the Church was turned upon her relation to our
+Blessed Lord<a name="FNanchor6"></a><a href="#_6">[6]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor6">[6]</a> It is
+true that a few writers among the Fathers see in blessed Mary
+traces of venial sin; who think of her intervention at Cana as
+presumptuous &amp;c. But such notices are not of sufficient
+frequency or importance to break the general
+tradition.</blockquote>
+<p>For some time this seemed enough. It was not felt that any
+further thought about her sinlessness was needed. But as the
+uniqueness of Mary forced itself more and more upon the brooding
+thought of theologians and saints they were compelled to face the
+fact that her freedom from actual sin was not a full appreciation
+of her purity, was not an exhaustive treatment of her relation to
+our Lord. The doctrine of the nature of sin itself had been
+becoming clearer to the minds of Christian thinkers. All men are
+conceived and born in sin, it was seen. After S. Paul's teaching,
+the problem of <i>sin</i> was not the problem of sins but the
+problem of sinfulness. The matter could not be left with the
+statement that all men do sin; the reason of their sinning must be
+traced out. And it was traced out, under S. Paul's guidance, to a
+ground of sin in nature itself, to a defect in man as he is born
+into the world. He does not become a sinner when he commits his
+first sin: he is born a sinner. In other words, the problem of
+man's sinfulness is the problem of original sin.</p>
+<p>What then do we mean by original sin? Briefly, we mean this. At
+his creation man was not only created innocent, but he was created
+in union with God, a union which conferred on him many supernatural
+gifts, gifts, that is, which were not a part of his nature, but
+were in the way of an addition to his nature. "By created nature
+man is endowed with moral sense, and is thus made responsible for
+righteousness; but he is unequal to its fulfilment. The
+all-righteous Creator could be trusted to complete His work. He
+endowed primitive man with superadded gifts of grace, especially
+the supernatural gift, <i>donum supernaturale</i>, of the Holy
+Spirit<a name="FNanchor7"></a><a href="#_7">[7]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor7">[7]</a> Hall,
+Dogmatic Theology, V, 263.</blockquote>
+<p>Our purpose does not require us further to particularize these
+gifts and our time does not permit it. We are concerned with this:
+the effect of man's sin was, what the effect of sin always is, to
+separate man from God. To sin, man has to put his will in
+opposition to the will of God. This our first parents did; and the
+result of their act was the destruction of their union with God and
+the loss of their supernatural endowments. They lapsed into a state
+of nature, only it was a state in which they had forfeited what had
+been conferred upon them at their creation. This state of man, with
+only his natural endowments, is the state into which all men, the
+descendants of Adam, have been born. This is the state of original
+sin. "Original sin means in Catholic theology a state inherited
+from our first human parents in which we are deprived of the
+supernatural grace and original righteousness with which they were
+endowed before they sinned, and are naturally prone to sin." (Hall,
+Dogmatic Theology, Vol. V, p. 281.) We can state the same fact
+otherwise, and more simply for our present purposes, by saying that
+by sin was forfeited the grace of union or sanctifying grace; and
+when we say that a child is born in sin we mean that it is born out
+of union with God, or without the supernatural gift of sanctifying
+grace. You will note here no implication of original sin as an
+active poison handed on from generation to generation. It will be
+important to remember this presently.</p>
+<p>When, therefore, the thought of the Church began to follow out
+what was involved in its belief in the actual sinlessness of
+blessed Mary, in its holding to the fact that her relation to God
+was of such a close and indeed unique character that her actual
+sinfulness would be incomprehensible; it was at length compelled to
+ask, What, in that case are we to think of original sin? If the
+first Eve was created in innocence and endowed with supernatural
+gifts, are we to think that she whom the Fathers of the Church from
+the earliest times have constantly called the second Eve, she whom
+God chose to be the Mother of His Son, should be less endowed? Is
+it a fact any more conceivable that the virgin Mother of God should
+be born in original sin than that she should be the victim of
+actual sin? If by the special grace of God she was kept from sin
+from the time that she was able to know good and evil, is it not
+probable that the freedom from sin goes further back than that, and
+is a freedom from original as well as from actual sin? What is the
+meaning of the Angelic Salutation, "Hail, thou that art <i>full of
+grace</i>," unless it refer to a superadded grace, to such <i>donum
+supernaturale</i> as the first Eve received? There is indeed no
+precedent to guide in the case: the prophet Jeremiah and S. John
+Baptist had been preserved from sin from the womb, but this did not
+involve freedom from original sin. Still the fact that there was no
+precedent was not in anywise fatal; the point of the situation was
+just that there was no precedent for the relation to God into which
+Blessed Mary had been called. It was precisely this uniqueness of
+vocation which was leading theological thought to the conclusion of
+the uniqueness of her privilege: and this uniqueness of privilege
+seemed to call for nothing less than an exemption from sin in any
+and all forms. So a belief in the Immaculate Conception grew up
+despite a good deal of opposition while its implications were being
+thought out, but was found more and more congenial to the mind of
+the Church. She whose wonderful title for centuries had been Mother
+of God could never at any moment of her existence have been
+separate from God. She must, so it was felt, have been united to
+God from the very first moment of her existence.</p>
+<p>But what does this exemption from the common lot of men actually
+mean? I think that the simplest way of getting at it is to ask
+ourselves what it is that happens to a child at baptism. Every
+human child that is born into the world is born in original sin,
+that is, is born out of union with God, without sanctifying grace.
+It is then brought to the font and by baptism regenerated, born
+again, put in a relation to God that we describe as union, made a
+partaker of the divine nature. This varying description of the
+effect of baptism means that the soul of the child has become a
+partaker of sanctifying grace, the grace of union with God.
+Original sin, we say, is forgiven: that is, the soul is placed in
+the relation to God that it would have had had sin not come into
+existence, save that there remains a certain weakness of nature due
+to its sinful heredity. This that happens to children when they are
+baptised is what is held to have happened to Blessed Mary at her
+creation. Her soul instead of being restored to God by grace after
+her birth, was by God's special grace or favour created in union
+with Him, and in that union always continued. The uniqueness of S.
+Mary's privilege was that she never had to be restored to union
+with God because from the moment of her existence she had been one
+with Him. This would have been the common lot of all men if sin had
+not come into the world.</p>
+<p>In view of much criticism of this belief it is perhaps necessary
+to emphasize the fact that a belief in Mary's exemption from
+original sin does not imply a belief that she was exempt from the
+need of redemption. She is a creature of God, only the highest of
+His creatures: and like all human beings she needed to be redeemed
+by the Blood of Christ. The privileges which are our Lord's
+Mother's, are her's through the foreseen merits of her Son--she, as
+all others, is redeemed by the sacrifice and death of Christ. There
+is in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception no shadow of
+encroachment on the doctrine of universal redemption in Christ;
+there is simply the belief that for the merits of the Son the
+Mother was spared any moment of separation from the Father.</p>
+<p>It will, of course, be said that this doctrine is but the
+relatively late and newly formulated doctrine of the Latin Church
+and is of no obligation elsewhere; that we are in no wise bound to
+receive it. In regard to which there are one or two things to be
+said. That we are not formally bound to believe a doctrine is not
+at all the same thing as to say that we are formally bound not to
+believe it. I am afraid that the latter is a not uncommon attitude.
+There is no obligation upon us to disbelieve the Immaculate
+Conception of blessed Mary; there is an obligation upon us to
+understand it and to appreciate its meaning and value. We must
+remember that a doctrine that is not embodied in our Creed may
+nevertheless have the authority of the Church back of it. The
+doctrine of the Real Presence is not stated in the Creed; yet it is
+and always has been the teaching of the Church everywhere in all
+its liturgies. Though any particular statement of the Real Presence
+is not binding, the fact itself is binding on all Christians, and
+may not be doubted.</p>
+<p>In much the same way it will be found that theological doctrines
+of relatively late creedal formulation yet have behind the
+formulation a long history of actual acceptance in the teaching of
+the Church. They are theologically certain long before they are
+embodied in authoritative formulae. What the individual Christian
+has to do is to try to assimilate the meaning of theological
+teaching and to find a place for it in his devotional practice and
+experience. His best attitude is not one of doubt and scepticism,
+but of meditation and experiment. It is through this latter
+attitude that each one is helping to form the mind of the Church,
+and aiding its progressive appreciation of revealed truth.</p>
+<p>I do not see how any one who has entered into the meaning of the
+Incarnation can feel otherwise than that the uniqueness of the
+event carries with it the uniqueness of the instrument. It can of
+course be said that truth is not a matter of feeling but of
+revelation. But is it not true that God reveals Himself in many
+ways, and that our feelings as well as our intellects are involved
+in our perception of the truth revealed? Do we not often feel that
+something must be true far in advance of our ability to prove it
+so? And in truths of a certain order is there not an intuitive
+perception, a perception growing out of a sense of fitness, of
+congruity, which outruns the slow advance of the intellect? Love
+and sympathy often far outrun intellectual process. This is not to
+say that feeling is all; that a sense of fitness and conformity is
+a sufficient basis of doctrine. There is always need of the
+verification of the conclusions of the affections by the intellect;
+and the intellect in the last resort will have to be the
+determining factor.</p>
+<p>And I think it can be said without hesitation that the
+intellectual work of theological students has quite justified the
+course that the affections of Christendom have taken in their
+spontaneous appreciation of Mary, the Ever-Virgin Mother of Our
+Lord. What the heart of Christendom has discovered, the mind of
+Christendom has justified. But here more than in any other
+doctrinal development it is love that has led the way, often with
+an eagerness, an <i>&eacute;lan</i>, with which theology has found
+it difficult to keep up.</p>
+<p>And as we to-day try to appreciate the place of Blessed Mary in
+the life of the Church of God must we not feel it to be our
+misfortune that our past has been so wrapped in clouds of
+controversy that we have been unable to see her meaning at all
+clearly? Must we not feel deep sadness at the thought that the very
+mention of Mary's name, so often stirs, not love and gratitude, but
+the spirit of suspicion and dislike? We no doubt have passed beyond
+such feelings, but the traces of their evil work through the
+centuries still persist. They persist in certain feelings of
+reserve and hesitation when we find that our convictions are
+leading us to the adoption of the attitude toward her which is the
+common attitude of all Catholicity, both East and West. When we
+feel that the time has actually come to abandon the narrowness and
+barrenness of devotional practice which is a part of our tradition,
+we nevertheless feel as though we were launching out on strange
+seas and that our next sight of land might be of strange regions
+where we should not feel at home. If such be our instinctive
+attitude, it is well to remember that progress, spiritual as well
+as other, is conquest of the (to us) new; but that the acquisition
+of the new does not necessarily mean the abandonment of the old. We
+shall in fact lose nothing of our hold on the unique work of our
+Lord because we recognise that His Blessed Mother's association
+with it implies a certain preparation on her part, a certain
+uniqueness of privilege. There is one God, and one Mediator between
+God and man, the Man Christ Jesus; and all who come to God, come
+through Him. But they come also in the unity of the Body of many
+members and of many offices. And the office of her who in God's
+providence was called to be the Mother of the Incarnate is surely
+as unique as is her vocation. She surely is entitled to receive
+from us the deep affection of our hearts and the highest honour
+that may be given to any creature.</p>
+<br>
+<p>THE GARLAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARIE.</p>
+<blockquote>Here are five letters in this blessed name,<br>
+Which, changed, a five-fold mystery design,<br>
+The M the Myrtle, A the Almonds claim,<br>
+R Rose, I Ivy, E sweet Eglantine.<br>
+<br>
+These form thy garland, when of Myrtle green<br>
+The gladdest ground to all the numbered five,<br>
+Is so implex&eacute;d fine and laid in, between,<br>
+As love here studied to keep grace alive.<br>
+<br>
+Thy second string is the sweet Almond bloom<br>
+Mounted high upon Selines' crest:<br>
+As it alone (and only it) had room,<br>
+To knit thy crown, and glorify the rest.<br>
+<br>
+The third is from the garden culled, the Rose,<br>
+The eye of flowers, worthy for her scent,<br>
+To top the fairest lily now, that grows<br>
+With wonder on the thorny regiment.<br>
+<br>
+The fourth is the humble Ivy intersert<br>
+But lowly laid, as on the earth asleep,<br>
+Preserved in her antique bed of vert,<br>
+No faiths more firm or flat, then, where't doth creep.<br>
+<br>
+But that, which sums all, is the Eglantine,<br>
+Which of the field is cleped the sweetest briar,<br>
+Inflamed with ardour to that mystic shine,<br>
+In Moses' bush unwasted in the fire.<br>
+<br>
+Thus love, and hope, and burning charity,<br>
+(Divinest graces) are so intermixt<br>
+With odorous sweets and soft humility,<br>
+As if they adored the head, whereon they are fixed.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE ANNUNCIATION I</h3>
+<center>And the angel came in unto her, and said,<br>
+Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is<br>
+with thee; blessed art thou among women.<br>
+S. Luke, I. 28</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Oh God, whose will it was that thy Word should take
+flesh, at the message of the Angel, in the womb of the blessed
+Virgin Mary, grant to us thy suppliants that, we who believe her to
+be truly the Mother of God, may be assisted by her intercession
+with thee. Through &amp;c.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">ROMAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hen we attempt to reconstruct imaginatively any scene of Holy
+Scripture it is almost inevitable that we see it through the eyes
+of some great artist of the past. The Crucifixion comes to us as
+D&uuml;rer or Guido Reni saw it; the Presentation or the Visitation
+presents itself to us in terms of the imagination of Raphael; we
+see the Nativity as a composition of Corregio. So the Annunciation
+rises before us when we close our eyes and attempt to make "the
+composition of place" in a familiar grouping of the actors: a
+startled maiden who has arisen hurriedly from work or prayer,
+looking with wonder at the apparition of an angel who has all the
+eagerness of one who has come hastily upon an urgent mission. The
+surroundings differ, but artists of the Renaissance like to think
+of a sumptuous background as a worthy setting for so great an
+event.</p>
+<p>We keep close to the meaning of Scripture if we set the
+Annunciation in a room in a cottage of a Palestinian working man.
+And I like to think of S. Mary at her accustomed work when Gabriel
+appeared, not with a rush of wings, but as a silent and hardly felt
+presence standing before her whom the Lord has chosen to be the
+instrument of His coming. Wonder there would have been, the kind of
+awe-struck wonder with which the supernatural always fills men; and
+yet only for a moment, for how could she who was daily living so
+close to God fear the messenger of God? The thought of angels and
+divine messengers would be wholly familiar to her. They had been
+the frequent agents of God in many a crisis of her people's
+history, and appeared again and again in the story of her ancestors
+on whose details she had often meditated. Yet in her humility she
+could but think it strange that an angel should have any message to
+bear to her.</p>
+<p>It is a striking enough scene, as the artists have felt when
+they tried to put it before us. But no artist has ever been able to
+go below the surface and by any hint lead us to an appreciation of
+the vast implications of the moment. This moment of the
+Annunciation is in fact the central moment of the world's history.
+No moment before or since has equalled it in its unspeakable
+wonder, in its revelation of the meaning of God. Not the moment of
+the creation when all the Sons of God sang together at the vision
+of the unfolding purpose of God; not the morning of the
+Resurrection when the empty tomb told of the accomplished overthrow
+of death and hell. This is the moment toward which all preceding
+time had moved, and to which all succeeding ages will look
+back--the moment of the Incarnation of God.</p>
+<p>It is well to ask ourselves at this point what the Incarnation
+means, because our estimate of Blessed Mary as the chosen
+instrument of God's grace will be influenced by our estimate of
+that which she was chosen to do. One feels the failure to grasp her
+position in the work of our redemption often displays a weak hold
+upon that which is the very heart of God's work--the fact of God
+made man. The moment of the Annunciation is the moment of the
+Incarnation: God in His infinite love for mankind is sending forth
+His Son to be born of a woman in the likeness of our flesh. God the
+Son, the second Person of the ever adorable Trinity, is entering
+the womb of this maiden, there to wrap Himself in her flesh and to
+pass through the common course of a human child's development till
+He shall reach the hour of the Nativity. When we try to grasp the
+reach of the divine Love, its depth, its self-forgetfulness, we
+must stand in the cottage in Nazareth and hear the angelic
+salutation. And then surely our own hearts cannot fail to respond
+to the revelation of the divine love; and something of our love
+that goes out to our hidden Lord, goes out too to the maiden-mother
+who so willingly became God's instrument in His work for our
+redemption. In imagination I see S. Gabriel kneeling before her who
+has become a living Tabernacle of God Most High, and repeating his
+"Hail, thou that art highly favoured," with the deepest
+reverence.</p>
+<p>"Hail, thou that art full of grace." We linger over this Ave of
+S. Gabriel, and often it rises to our lips. Perhaps it is with S.
+Luke's narrative, almost naked in its simplicity, in our hands as
+we try once more to push our thought deep into the meaning of the
+scene, that we may understand a little better what has resulted in
+our experience from the Incarnation of God, and our thought turns
+to S. Mary whom God chose and brought so near to Himself. Perhaps
+it is when, with chaplet in hand, we try to imagine S. Mary's
+feelings at this first of the Joyful Mysteries when the meaning of
+her vocation comes clearly before her. Hail! thou that art full of
+grace, of the Living Grace, the very Presence of the divinity
+itself. The plummet of our thought fails always to reach the depth
+of that mystery of Mary's Child. It was indeed centuries before the
+Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit thought out and fully
+stated the meaning of this Child; it was centuries before it fully
+grasped the meaning of Mary herself in her relation to her divine
+Son: and after all the centuries of Spirit-guided statement and
+saintly meditation it still remains that many fail to understand
+and to make energetic in life the fact of the Incarnation of God in
+the womb of the Virgin Mary.</p>
+<p>And what was S. Mary's own attitude toward the announcement of
+the Angel? Her first instinctive word--the word called out by her
+imperfect grasp of the meaning of the message of S. Gabriel, is:
+How can this be seeing I know not a man? Are we to infer from these
+words, as many have inferred, that in her secret thoughts S. Mary
+had resolved always to remain a virgin, that she had so offered
+herself to God in the virgin state? Possibly when we remember that
+such was God's will for her it is not going too far to assume that
+she had been prompted thus to meet and offer herself to the divine
+will. Be that as it may there is an obvious and instantaneous
+assumption that the child-bearing which is predicted to her lies
+outside the normal and accustomed way of marriage. She clearly does
+not think that the archangel's words look to her approaching union
+with S. Joseph, even if the nominal nature of that marriage were
+not agreed upon. It is clear that her instantaneous feeling is that
+as the message is supernatural in character, so will its fulfilment
+be, and the wondering <i>how</i> arises to her lips.</p>
+<p>The answer to the how is that what is worked in her is by the
+power of the Holy Spirit: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and
+the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that
+holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of
+God."</p>
+<p>As so often in the dealing of God with us, that which is put
+forward as an explanation actually deepens the mystery. It was no
+abatement of Mary's wonder, nor did it really put away her
+<i>how</i> when she was told that the Holy Ghost should come upon
+her and that the child should be the Son of the Highest. And yet
+this was the only answer to such a question that was possible. Our
+questions may be met in two ways: either by a detailed explanation,
+or by the answer that the only explanation is God--that what we are
+concerned with is a direct working of God outside the accustomed
+order of nature and therefore outside the reach of our
+understanding. Such acts have no doubt their laws, but they are not
+the laws in terms of which we are wont to think.</p>
+<p>The question of S. Mary was not a question which implied doubt.
+It is therefore the proper question with which to approach all
+God's works. There is a stress with which such questions may be
+asked which implies on our part unbelief or at least hesitation in
+belief. It is a not uncommon accent to hear to-day in questions as
+to divine mysteries. Our recitation of the creed is not rarely
+invaded by restlessness, shadows of doubt, which perhaps we brush
+aside, or perhaps let linger in our minds with the feeling that it
+is safer for our religion not to follow these out. I am afraid that
+there are not a few who still adhere to the Church who do so with
+the feeling that it is better for them to go on repeating words
+that they have become used to rather than to raise questions as to
+their actual truth; who feel that the faith of the Church rests on
+foundations which in the course of the centuries have been badly
+shaken, but that it is safer not to disturb them lest they
+incontinently fall to pieces.</p>
+<p>In other words there is a wide-spread feeling that such stories
+as this of the Annunciation and of the Virgin birth of our Lord are
+fables. When we ask, why is there such a feeling? the only answer
+is that the modern man has become suspicious of the supernatural.
+Has there anything been found in the way of evidence, we ask, which
+reflects upon the truth of the story in S. Luke? No, we are told;
+the story stands where it always did, its evidence is what it
+always was. What has changed is not the story or the evidence for
+it but the human attitude toward that and all such stories. The
+modern mind does not attempt to disprove them, it just disapproves
+of them, and therefore declines to believe them. It sets them aside
+as belonging to an order of ideas with which it no longer has any
+sympathy.</p>
+<p>It is no doubt true that we reach many of our conclusions,
+especially those which govern our practical attitude towards life,
+from the ground of certain hardly recognised presuppositions,
+rather than from the basis of thought out principles. The thought
+of to-day is pervaded by the denial of the supernatural. It insists
+that all that we know or can know is the natural world about us. It
+rules out the possibility of any invasions of the natural order and
+declines to accept such on any evidence whatsoever. All that one
+has time to say now of such an attitude is that it makes all
+religion impossible, and sets aside as untrustworthy all the
+deepest experiences of the human soul. If I were going to argue
+against this attitude (as I am not able to now) I should simply
+oppose to it the past experience of the race as embodied in its
+best religious thought. I should stress the fact that what is
+noblest and best in the past of humanity is wholly meaningless
+unless humanity's supposition of a life beyond this life, and of
+the existence of spiritual powers and beings to whom we are
+related, holds good. No nation has ever conducted its life on the
+basis of pure materialism, save in those last stages of its
+decadence which preluded its downfall.</p>
+<p>But without going so far as to reject the supernatural and
+reject the truth of the immediate intervention of God in life,
+there are multitudes of men and women whose whole life never moves
+beyond the natural order. They have no materialistic theory; if you
+ask them, they think that they are, in some sense not very well
+defined, Christians. But they have no Christian interests, no
+spiritual activities of any sort. For all practical purposes God
+and the spiritual order do not exist for them. They are not for the
+most part what any one would call bad people; though there seems no
+intelligible meaning of the word in which they can be called
+<i>good</i>. The best that one can say of them is that they have a
+certain usefulness in the present social order though they are not
+missed when they fall out of it. They can be replaced in the social
+machine much as a lost or broken part can in an engine. And just as
+the part of an engine which has become useless where it is, can
+have no possible usefulness elsewhere, so we are unable to imagine
+them as capable of adaptation to any other place than that which
+they have filled here. Perhaps that is what we mean by
+hell--incapacity to adapt oneself to the life of the future.</p>
+<p>All this implies a temper of mind and soul that has rendered
+itself incapable of vision. For just as our ordinary vision of the
+beauty of this world depends not only on the existence of the world
+but on a certain capacity in us to see it, so that the beauty of
+the world does not at all exist for the man whose optic nerve is
+paralysed; so the meaning and beauty, nay, the very existence of
+the supernatural order depends for us upon a capacity in us which
+we may call the capacity of vision. The sceptic waves aside our
+stories of supernatural happenings with the brusque statement,
+"Nobody to-day sees angels. They only appear in an atmosphere of
+primitive or medi&aelig;val superstition, not in the broad
+intellectual light of the twentieth century." But it may be that
+the fact (if it be a fact) that nobody sees angels in the twentieth
+century is due to some other cause than the non-existence of the
+angels. After all, in any century you see what you are prepared to
+see, what in other words, you are looking for. It is a common
+enough phenomenon that the man who lives in the country misses most
+of the beauty of it. In his search for the potato bug he misses the
+sunset, and disposes of the primrose on the river's brim as a
+common weed. It is true that in order to see we need something
+beside eyes, and to hear we need something beside ears. When on an
+occasion the Father spoke from heaven to the Son many heard the
+sound, and some said, "It thundered"; others got so far as to say,
+"An Angel spake to him."</p>
+<p>Let us then in the presence of narratives of supernatural
+happenings ask our <i>how</i> with a good deal of reverence and a
+good deal of modesty, not as implying a sceptical doubt on our
+part, but as a wish that we may be admitted deeper into the meaning
+of the event. Scepticism simply closes the door through which we
+might pass to fuller knowledge. The questioning of faith holds the
+door open. To those who have not closed the door upon the
+supernatural it is evident that it is permeated with forces and
+influences which are not material in their origin or their effects;
+that God acts upon the world now as He has ever acted upon it. If
+we cannot believe this I do not see that we can believe in God at
+all in any intelligible sense. There is to me one attitude toward
+the supernatural that is even more hopeless than the attitude of
+materialistic scepticism which says, "Miracles do not happen"; and
+that is the attitude which says, "Miracles happened in Bible times,
+but have never happened since." As the one attitude seems to imply
+that God made the world, but after He had made it left it to go on
+by itself and no more expresses any interest in it; so the other
+implies that after God put the Christian religion in the world He
+left that to go on by itself and no longer pays any attention to
+it. Either to me is wholly unintelligible and inconceivable.</p>
+<p>And what is worse, is wholly out of touch with the revelation of
+God made in Holy Scripture. That displays God working in and
+through the material universe, and it displays God working in and
+through the spirit of man; and it in no place implies that either
+the material world or the human order is so perfect as to need no
+further divine action. Revelation implies the constant presence and
+action of God in nature and in the Church; it implies that both
+have a forward look and are not ends in themselves but are moving
+on toward some ultimate perfection. "The whole creation groaneth
+and travaileth ... waiting for the adoption, that is, the
+redemption of our body." We look for a new heaven and a new earth;
+and human society looks to a perfect consummation in the fellowship
+of the saints in light.</p>
+<p>Looking out on life from the spiritual point of vantage, we may
+hopefully ask our <i>how</i>, and there will be an answer. To
+blessed Mary S. Gabriel replied: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon
+thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore
+also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called
+the Son of God."--An answer that was full of light and of deepest
+mystery. The immediate question--the mode of her conception--was
+cleared up; it would be through the direct action of God the Holy
+Spirit: but the nature of the Child to be born is filled with
+mystery. We can imagine S. Mary in the days to come finding her
+child-bearing quite intelligible in comparison with the mystery
+that brooded over His nature.</p>
+<p>This is the common fact in our dealing with God. We express it
+when we say that we never get beyond the need of faith. We pray
+that one thing may be made clear, and the result of the clearing is
+the deepened sense of the mystery of the things beyond, just as any
+increase in the power of the telescope clears up certain questions
+which had been puzzling the astronomers only to carry their vision
+into vaster depths of space, opening new questions to tantalize the
+imagination. We find it so always. The solution of any question of
+our spiritual lives does not lead as perhaps we thought it would
+lead to there being no longer any questions to perplex us and to
+draw on our time and our energy; rather such solution puts us in
+the presence of new and, it may well be, deeper and more perplexing
+questions. "Are there no limits to the demands of God upon us," we
+sometimes despairingly ask? And the answer is, "No: there are no
+limits because the end of the road that we are travelling is in
+infinity." The limit that is set to our perfecting is the
+perfection of God, and if we grow through all the years of eternity
+we shall still have attained only a relative perfection.</p>
+<p>So the successful passing of one test cannot be expected to
+relieve us from all tests in the future. It is the dream of the
+child that manhood will set it free; and he reaches manhood only to
+find that it imposes obligations which are so pressing that he
+reverses his dream and speaks of his childhood as the time of his
+true freedom. The meeting of spiritual tests is but the proving of
+spiritual capacity to meet other tests. To our Lady it might well
+seem that the acceptance of the conditions of the Incarnation was
+the severest test that God could assign her; that in the light of
+the promise she could look on to joy. But the future concealed a
+sword which should pierce her very heart. The promise contained no
+doubt wonderful things--this wonder of God's blessing that she was
+now experiencing in the coming of the Holy Ghost, in the very
+embrace of God Himself: this is but the first of the Joyful
+Mysteries which were God's great gifts to her. But her life was not
+to be a succession of Joyful Mysteries, ultimately crowned with the
+Mysteries of Glory. There were the Sorrowful Mysteries as well.
+They were as true, and shall we not say, as necessary, as valuable,
+a part of her spiritual training as the others. She, our Mother,
+was now near God, with a nearness that was possible for no other
+human being, and it is one of the traditional sayings of our Lord:
+"He that is near Me is near fire." And fire burns as well as warms
+and lights. She is wonderful, the Virgin of Nazareth, in this
+moment when she becomes Mother of God: and we share in the rapture
+of the moment when in the fulness of her joy she hardly notices S.
+Gabriel's departure: but we feel, too, a great pity for her as we
+think of the coming days. So we kneel to her who is our Mother, as
+well as Mother of God, and say our <i>Ave</i>, and ask her
+priceless intercession.</p>
+<blockquote>Gabriel, that angel bright,<br>
+Brighter than the sun is light,<br>
+From heaven to earth he took his flight,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Letare.<br>
+<br>
+In Nazareth, that great city,<br>
+Before a maiden he kneeled on knee,<br>
+And said, "Mary, God is with thee,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Letare."<br>
+<br>
+"Hail Mary, full of grace,<br>
+God is with thee, and ever was;<br>
+He hath in thee chosen a place.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Letare."<br>
+<br>
+Mary was afraid of that sight,<br>
+That came to her with so great light,<br>
+Then said the angel that was so bright,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;"Letare."<br>
+<br>
+"Be not aghast of least nor most,<br>
+In thee is conceived of the Holy Ghost,<br>
+To save the souls that were for-lost.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Letare."<br>
+<br>
+Fifteenth Century.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE ANNUNCIATION II</h3>
+<center>And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto
+me according to thy word.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke I. 38</center>
+<blockquote>O God, who through the fruitful virginity of blessed
+Mary didst bestow on mankind the rewards of eternal salvation:
+grant, we beseech thee, that we may experience her intercession for
+us through whom we were made worthy to receive the author of life,
+even Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">Roman.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-s.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>Mary's momentary hesitation had been due to the surprise that
+she felt at the nature of the angelic message and the difficulty
+that there was in relating it to her state of life. That she, a
+virgin, should bear a son was vastly perplexing; but the answer of
+S. Gabriel speedily cleared away the difficulty: "The Holy Ghost
+shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow
+thee."</p>
+<p>Blessed Mary had no difficulty about the supernatural; she was
+not afflicted with the modern disease that there are no things in
+heaven and earth save such as are contained in our philosophy. She
+was not of those who "cannot believe what they do not understand,"
+It was enough for her that a message had come from God: and no
+matter how little she was able to understand the mode of God's
+proposed action within her, she was willing to offer herself to be
+the instrument of the will of God. No doubt that was an habitual
+attitude and not one taken up on the spur of the moment. It is
+indeed very rarely that what seem spontaneous actions are really
+such; and S. Mary's first word was nearer spontaneity than the
+second. Her exclamation in answer to the angelic <i>Ave</i> was the
+natural expression of her surprise at so unexpected a message: its
+variance from all her thought about her life was the thing that
+struck her; and therefore her instinctive, "How can this be?"</p>
+<p>In this second word we have a quite different attitude. Here is
+revealed to us the profound and perfect humility of the Blessed
+Virgin. This answer comes from the experience of her whole life. It
+is of such utterances that we say that they are revealing. What we
+at any time say, does in fact reveal what we are--what we have come
+to be through the experience of our past life. And no doubt it is
+these instinctive utterances which are called out by some
+unexpected occurrence that reveal more of us than our weighed and
+guarded words. Back of every word we utter is a life we have lived.
+We have been spending years in preparing for that word. Perhaps
+when the time comes to speak it, it is not the word we thought we
+were going to speak, it was not the prelude to the action we
+thought that we were going to perform; it reveals a character other
+than the character that we thought we had. How often the Gospel
+brings that before us! We see the young Ruler come running with his
+brave and perfectly sincere words about inheriting eternal life;
+and then we see him going away when the testing of our Lord
+demonstrated that he only partly meant what he said. It was not S.
+Peter's brave words, "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not
+deny thee," that revealed the truth about the Apostle; but the
+words that were called out by the accusation that he was of the
+company of Jesus: "Then began he to curse and swear, saying, I know
+not the man." We have no doubt that he knows himself better when he
+catches the eye of the Master turned upon him and goes and weeps
+bitterly. And it is true, is it not, that it is through words
+called out and thoughts stirred by the unexpected that we often get
+new insight into our real state. A sudden temptation reveals a
+hidden weakness, and we go away shamed and crushed, saying, "I did
+not suppose that I was capable of that."</p>
+<p>But, thank God, the revelation is sometimes the other way; the
+testing uncovers unexpected strength. Of many a man, after some
+strong trial, we say, "I did not know that he had so much courage,
+or so much patience." The quiet unassuming exterior was the mask of
+an heroic will of which very likely not even the possessor
+suspected the true quality. The annals of martyrdom are full of
+these revelations of unsuspected strength. Here in the case of
+Blessed Mary the quality revealed is that of humility so perfect
+that it dreams not of revolt from the most searching trial. It
+reveals the character of our Mother better than pages of
+description can do. What we see in response to the bewildering
+messages brought by S. Gabriel is the instinctive movement of the
+soul toward God. There is utter absence of any thought of self or
+of how she may be affected by the purpose of God; it is enough that
+that purpose is made plain.</p>
+<p>It seems well to insist on this instinctive movement of the soul
+in Blessed Mary because it is one item of the evidence that the
+Catholic Church has to offer for its belief in her sinlesssness.
+Any momentary rebellion, no matter how soon recovered from, or how
+sincerely regretted, against the will of God, would be evidence of
+the existence of sin. But where sin is not, where there is an
+unstained soul, there the knowledge of the will of God will send
+one running to its acceptance; there will be active acceptance and
+not just submission to God's will. Submission implies a certain
+effort to place ourselves in line with the will of God; it often
+seems to imply that we are accepting it because we cannot do
+anything else. But with Blessed Mary there is a glad going forth to
+meet God; the word "Behold" springs out to meet the will of God
+half-way. It is as though she had been holding herself ready,
+expectant, in the certainty of the coming of some message, and now
+she offers herself without the shadow of hesitation, as to a
+purpose which was a welcome vocation: "Behold the Handmaid of the
+Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." How wonderful is the
+humility of obedience!</p>
+<p>And humility--we must stress this--is not a virtue of youth; it
+is not one of the virtues which ripen quickly, but is of slow
+development and delayed maturity. Modesty we should expect in a
+maiden, and lack of self-assertion; and perhaps obedience of a
+sort. But those do not constitute the virtue of humility. We are
+humble when we have lost self; and Mary's wondering answer reveals
+the fact that she is not thinking of herself at all, but only of
+the nature of the divine purpose. That that purpose being known she
+should at all resist it would seem to her a thing incredible, for
+all her life she had had no other motive of action. Her will had
+never been separated from the will of God.</p>
+<p>This state of union which was hers by divine election and
+privilege, we achieve, if we achieve it at all, by virtue of great
+spiritual discipline. We are, to be sure, brought into union with
+God through the sacraments, but the union so achieved is, if one
+may so express it, an unstable union; it is union that we have to
+maintain by daily spiritual action and which suffers many a
+weakening through our infidelity, even if it escape the disaster of
+mortal sin. We sway to and fro in our struggle to attain the
+equilibrium of perfection which belonged to Blessed Mary by virtue
+of the first embrace of God which had freed her from sin. Our
+tragedy is that we have almost universally lost the first
+engagements of the Spiritual Combat before we have at all
+understood that there is any combat. The circumstances of life of
+child and youth are such that we become familiar with sin before we
+have the intelligence to understand the need of resisting, even if
+we are fortunate enough to have such an education as to awaken a
+sense of sin as opposition to God. There is nothing more appalling
+than the tragedy of life thus defiled and broken and put at a
+disadvantage before it even understands the ideals that should
+govern its course. When the vision of perfection comes and we face
+life as the field where we are to acquire eternal values, we face
+it with a poisoned imagination and a depleted strength. Our battle
+is not only to maintain what we have, but to win back what we have
+lost.</p>
+<p>Under such conditions there is much consolation in learning that
+we do not fight alone but have the constant help and sympathy of
+those who are endued with the strength of perfect purity. Their
+likeness to us in that they have lived the life of the flesh
+assures us of their understanding, and it assures us too of their
+active co-operation. We cannot understand the saints standing
+outside human life and from the vantage point of their achievement
+looking on as indolent spectators. The spectacle offorded by the
+Church Militant must call out the active intercession of all the
+saints; but especially do we look for helpful sympathy from her who
+is our all-pure Mother, whose very purity gives her intercession
+unmeasured power. She is not removed from us through her
+spotlessness, but by virtue of her clearer understanding of the
+meaning of sin and of separation from God that it brings her, she
+is ready to fly to the help of all sinners by her ceaseless
+intercession.</p>
+<p>The difficulty of our spiritual lives rises chiefly out of the
+clash of wills. A disordered nature, a tainted inheritance, a
+corrupt environment conspire to make the life of grace tremendously
+difficult. It is only in a very limited sense that we can be said
+to be free, and there is no possibility at all of overcoming the
+handicap of sin, except firm and careful reliance on the grace of
+God. That grace, no doubt, is always at our disposal as far as we
+will use it. Grace moves us, but it does not compel us; and we are
+free always to reject the offer of God. We have only to open our
+eyes upon the world about us to see how rarely is the grace of God
+accepted in any effective way. Even in convinced Christians the
+attempt to live the divided life is the commonest thing possible.
+It sometimes seems as though the prevalent conception of the
+Christian life were that it is sufficient to offer God a certain
+limited allegiance and that the remainder of the life will be
+thereby ransomed and placed at our disposal to use as we will. We
+find the theory well worked out in the current attitude of
+Christians toward the observance of the Lord's Day. It appears to
+be held that an attendance at Mass or Matins is a sufficient
+recognition of the interests of religion and that the rest of the
+day may be regarded, not as the Lord's Day, but as man's--as a day
+of unlimited amusement and self-indulgence. The notion of
+consecration is abandoned. The only possible outcome of such
+theories of life is what we already experience, spiritual
+lawlessness and moral degradation. I suppose that it will only be
+through social disaster that society will come (as usual, too late)
+to any comprehension that the will of God is what it is because it
+is only by following the road that it indicates that human life can
+reach a successful development. God's laws are not arbitrary
+inflictions; they are the expression of the highest wisdom in the
+guidance of human life.</p>
+<p>Our elementary duty therefore as sane persons is to find what is
+the will of God in any given circumstances; there should be no
+action until there has been an effort to ascertain that will. It
+were as sensible to set about building a house without ascertaining
+what strength of foundation would be needful, or without knowing
+the sort of material we were going to use. One has heard of a house
+being built in which it turned out that there was a room with no
+doorway, or floor to which no stair led up; but we do not commend
+such exploits as the last word in architecture, nor would we
+commend a farmer who planted his crops without attention to the
+nature of the soil. There are certain elementary principles of
+common sense which we pretty uniformly hold to in every matter with
+the exception of religion; that seems to be held to be a separate
+department of human activity with laws of its own, and in which the
+principles which govern life elsewhere do not hold. We do not
+profess this theory, of course, but we commonly act upon it, while
+we still profess to respect the will of God. It is strange too that
+after having habitually neglected that will, we are greatly
+disappointed, not to say indignant, when after a life of
+disobedience and scorn of God's thought for us we do not find
+ourselves in possession of the fruits of righteousness. If it were
+not so tragic it would be amusing to hear men declaim against the
+justice of a God whose existence they have habitually
+disregarded.</p>
+<p>But, it is often said, it is not by any means easy to find out
+God's will. You talk about it as though it were as easy to know
+God's will as it is to know the multiplication table. Well, at
+least it can be said that one does not get to know the
+multiplication table without effort! What objections as to the
+obscurity of the will of God will seem to mean is that it does take
+effort to ascertain it. I do not know of any reason for regarding
+that as unjust. If the will of God is what religion maintains that
+it is, of primary importance to our lives, we might well be glad
+that it is ascertainable at all, at the expense of whatever
+effort.</p>
+<p>An Almighty God has implanted within every human heart the
+knowledge that His will exists and is important; that is, He has
+endowed every man with a conscience which is the certainty of the
+difference between right and wrong, and the conviction that we are
+responsible for our conduct to some power outside ourselves; that
+we are not at liberty to conduct life on any lines we will. Having
+so much certainty, it surely becomes us to set about ascertaining
+the nature of the power and the details of the will. The very
+nature of conscience, as a sense of obligation, rather than a
+source of information, should create a desire for a knowledge of
+what God's will is in detail, that is, what is the content of the
+notion of right and wrong.</p>
+<p>And while it is true that such content can only be ascertained
+by work, it is not true that the work is a specially difficult one.
+The Revelation of God's mind made through Holy Scripture and
+through the life of His Incarnate Son is an open book that any one
+can study; and to any objection that such study has led chiefly to
+difference of opinion and darkness rather than light, the answer is
+that such disaster follows for the most part only when the guidance
+of the Catholic Church is repudiated; when, that is, we pursue a
+course in this study which we should not pursue in relation to any
+other. If we were studying geology we should not regard it as the
+best course to scorn all that preceding students have done, and
+betake our unprepared selves to field work! But that is the "Bible
+and the Bible only" theory of spiritual knowledge. If we want to
+know the meaning of the Biblical teaching, we must make use of the
+helps which the experience of the Church has richly provided.</p>
+<p>But the nature of the divine will and the particulars of our
+obligation are not merely, perhaps one ought to say, not chiefly,
+to be assimilated through our brains. The best preparation for the
+doing of the will of God and the progressive entering into His
+mind, is an obedient life. Purity of character will carry us
+farther on this path than cleverness of brains. Our Lord's own rule
+is: <i>He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine.</i> In
+other words, we understand the mind of God and attain to the
+illumination of the conscience, through sympathetic response to the
+will so far as we have seen it. And each new response, in its turn,
+carries us to a deeper and clearer understanding of the will. That
+is to say, our conscience, by habitual response to God's will, so
+far as it knows it, is so illumined as to be able to make
+trustworthy judgments on new material submitted to it.</p>
+<p>This is, of course, to be otherwise described as the working of
+God the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit that dwelleth in us and
+directs us to right judgments if we will listen. Our danger is that
+self-will constantly crops up and complicates the case by
+representing that the line suggested by the Holy Spirit is not in
+reality in accord with our interests. This opposition between the
+seeming interests suggested by self-will, which indeed often
+contribute to our immediate gratification, and our true interests
+as indicated by the monitions of the Holy Spirit, constitutes the
+real struggle of the life during the period of probation. The will
+of God in every circumstance is usually plain enough; but it is
+silenced by the clamour of the passions and desires demanding
+immediate gratification: and we are all more or less children in
+our insistence on the immediate and our incapacity to wait. But I
+must insist again that it is not knowledge that is wanting but
+sympathy with the course that knowledge directs. We pursuade
+ourselves that we do not know, when the real trouble is that we
+know only too well. One feels that much that is put forward as
+inability to understand religion is at bottom merely disinclination
+to obey it.</p>
+<p>Not that there is not room for genuine perplexity. Often it
+happens that we are not at all certain in this or that detail of
+conduct. In that case it is well to consider whether it is
+necessary to act before we can attain certainty through study or
+advice. But if act we must, we can at least act with honesty, not
+making our will the accomplice of our passions or interests.</p>
+<p>I do not believe that there are many cases in which we shall go
+wrong if we make use of all the means at our disposal. A diligent
+doing of the will of God does undoubtedly bring light on unknown
+problems and unexpected situations in which we from time to time
+find ourselves. If our constant attitude has been one of free and
+glad obedience we need not fear to go astray. "Behold the handmaid
+of the Lord," Blessed Mary said; and such an attitude has never
+failed to meet the divine approval and call out the help of God.
+Just to put ourselves utterly at God's disposal is the clearing of
+all life. "Into Thy hands," is the solution of all
+difficulties.</p>
+<blockquote>I sing a maiden<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;That is matchless;<br>
+King of all kings<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To her Son she ches.<br>
+<br>
+He came all so still<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To His Mother's bower,<br>
+As dew in April<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;That falleth on the flower.<br>
+<br>
+Mother and maiden<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Was never none but she;<br>
+Well might such a lady<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;God's Mother be.<br>
+<br>
+English, Fifteenth Century.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h3>THE VISITATION I</h3>
+<br>
+<center>And Mary arose in those days, and went into<br>
+the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah;<br>
+and entered into the house of Zacharias, and<br>
+saluted Elizabeth.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke I. 39, 40.</center>
+<blockquote>Grant, we beseech thee, O Lord God, to us thy servants,
+that we may evermore enjoy health of mind and body, and by the
+glorious intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be delivered
+from present sorrows and enjoy everlasting gladness.
+Through.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p class="loc">ROMAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hose who were faithful in Israel and were looking forward to the
+fulfilment of God's promises would be drawn together by close bonds
+of sympathy. It oftentimes proves that the bonds of a common ideal
+are stronger than the bonds of blood. It was to prove so many times
+in the history of Christianity when in accordance with our Lord's
+words the closest blood relation would be broken through fidelity
+to Him, and a man's foes be found to be those of his own household.
+But also it is true that the possession of common ideals becomes
+the basis of relations which are stronger than race or family. We
+may be sure that the members of that little group of which we catch
+glimpses now and then in the progress of the Gospel story found in
+their expectation of the Lord's deliverance of Israel such a bond.
+We feel that S. Mary and S. Joseph must have been members of this
+group and that they were filled with the hope of God's
+manifestation. Another family which shared the same hope was that
+of the priest Zacharias whose wife Elizabeth was the cousin of Mary
+of Nazareth. It is to their house in the hill country of Judah we
+now turn our thoughts.</p>
+<p>It was a part of the angelic message to S. Mary that her cousin
+Elizabeth had "conceived a son in her old age; and this is the
+sixth month with her who was called barren." Overwhelmed as S. Mary
+was by the vocation which had come to her, perplexed as to what
+should be her next step, she may well have seized upon the words of
+the angel as a hint as to her present course. She must confide in
+some one, and that some one, we instantly feel, must be a woman. In
+her own great joy she would need some one with whom to share it. In
+her unprecedented case she would need a counselor, and who better
+could afford aid than her cousin whose case was in so many respects
+like her own, who was already cherishing a child whose conception
+was due to the intervention of God? We understand therefore, why it
+is that without waiting for the further development of events, Mary
+arises, and goes "with haste" to the home of her cousin.</p>
+<p>It is just now a house full of joy. For many years there had
+been happiness there, but a happiness over which a cloud rested.
+The affliction of barrenness was their sorrow. To the Hebrew there
+was no true family until the love of the father and the mother was
+incarnated in the child; and through many weary days Zacharias and
+Elizabeth had waited until hope quite failed as they found
+themselves beyond the possibility of bearing a child to cheer them
+and to hand on their name. We may be sure that they were reconciled
+to the will of God, for it is written of them that they were
+righteous, and the central feature of righteousness is the
+acceptance of the divine will. But though one cheerfully accepts
+the divine will there may still remain a consciousness of a vacancy
+in life; and therefore we can understand the joy that came to
+Zacharias when the angel appeared to him in the temple when he was
+exercising the priest's office and offering the incense of the
+daily sacrifice with the message that he should have a son. It was
+a joy that would be unclouded by the God-sent dumbness which was at
+once a punishment for his lack of immediate faith and a sign of the
+faithfulness of God. It was a joy that would hasten his steps
+homeward with the glad tidings, a joy that would fill the heart of
+Elizabeth when she heard the message of God. Soon the consciousness
+of the babe in her womb would be a growing wonder and a growing
+happiness. There would be a new brightness in the house where the
+aged mother waits through the months and the dumb father with his
+writing tablet at his side meditates upon the meaning of the
+providence of God and upon the prophecies of the angel as to his
+child's future. But what that future would be he could hardly
+expect to witness; he was too old to live to the day of his child's
+showing unto Israel.</p>
+<p>It is to this house that we see S. Mary hastening, sure of
+finding there a heart in which she can confide. She "entered into
+the house of Zacharias and saluted Elizabeth." We are not told what
+the words of her salutation were, but no doubt it was the customary
+Jewish salutation of peace. There could have been no more
+appropriate salutation exchanged between these two in whose souls
+was abiding the peace of a perfect possession of God. The will of
+God to which they had been accustomed to offer themselves all their
+lives was being accomplished through them in unexpected ways; but
+it found them as ready of acceptance as they had been in any of the
+ordinary duties of life wherein they had been accustomed to wait
+upon God. We may seem sometimes to go beyond Holy Scripture in our
+interpretations of feelings and thoughts which we are sure must
+have been those of the actors in the drama of salvation unfolded to
+us in the Scriptures; but are we not entitled to infer from God's
+actions a good deal of the nature of the instruments He uses? Are
+we not quite safe in the case of S. Mary in the deduction from the
+nature of her vocation of the spiritual perfection to attribute to
+her? Does not God's use of a person imply qualities in the person
+used? It is on this ground that I feel that we are quite safe in
+inferring the spiritual attitude of S. Mary and of S. Elizabeth
+from the choice God made of them to be the instruments of His
+purpose of redemption.</p>
+<p>But we are not inferring, we have the record with us, when we
+think of the joy of the mothers transcended in the joy of the
+children. The unborn Forerunner becomes conscious of the approach
+of Him of whom he is to say later: "Behold the Lamb of God that
+taketh away the sin of the world"; and there is an instantaneous
+movement that can only be that of recognition and worship. The
+movement of the child is at once understood and translated by S.
+Elizabeth: "And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed
+art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And
+whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
+For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine
+ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy."</p>
+<p>In the presence of such joy and such sanctity we feel that our
+proper attitude is the attitude of adoring wonder that S. Elizabeth
+expresses. We worship our hidden Lord as the unborn prophet
+worships Him. We have no question to ask, nor curiosity at the mode
+of God's action. We are quite content to accept His action as it is
+revealed to us in Scripture; a revelation of the divine presense in
+humanity which has been abundantly verified in all the history of
+the Church. That verification in experience--a verification that we
+ourselves can repeat--is worth infinitely more than all the
+argument that the centuries have seen.</p>
+<p>"Blessed art thou among women," S. Elizabeth cries; and in doing
+so she is but repeating the words of the angel of the Annunciation.
+This word, too, we presently hear S. Mary taking up, and under the
+inspiration of the Holy Ghost saying: "From henceforth all
+generations shall call me blessed."</p>
+<p>And so they have. All generations, that is, that have been
+faithful to the Gospel teaching and have assimilated in any degree
+the consequences of S. Mary's nearness to God. When we speak of
+"Blessed" Mary we are but doing what angels and holy women have
+done, and it is great pity if in doing so we have to make a
+conscious effort, if the words do not spring spontaneously from our
+lips. Surely, we have not gone far toward the mastery of God's
+coming in the Incarnation if we have not felt the purity of the
+instrument through whom God enters our nature. The outward and
+visible sign of our understanding is found in our ability to
+complete the <i>Ave</i> as the Holy Spirit has taught the Church to
+complete it: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and
+in the hour of our death."</p>
+<p>This reiterated attribution of blessedness to Mary our Mother
+calls us to pause and ask just what blessedness means. It is of
+course the characteristic Scripture locution for those who in some
+way enjoy the special favour of God. Blessedness is the state of
+those who have received special divine gifts of favour. A
+characteristic scriptural description of the blessedness of the
+righteous in contrast with the disaster of the unrighteous may be
+studied in the first Psalm. In the New Testament we naturally turn
+to the Sermon on the Mount where the Beatitudes give us our Lord's
+thought about blessedness. I think that we can describe the notion
+of blessedness there presented as being the state of those who have
+taken God at His word and chosen Him, and by that act of choice,
+while they have forfeited the world and the world's favour, have
+attained to the spiritual riches of the Kingdom of God. They are
+those to whom God is the Supreme Good, in whose possession they
+gladly count all things but loss. These are they who here in the
+pilgrim state have already attained to the enjoyment of God because
+they want nothing other or beside Him.</p>
+<p>Supremely blessed, therefore, is Mary our Mother, who never for
+a moment even in thought was separate from God. From the earliest
+moment of her existence she could say, "My beloved is mine and I am
+His." We try to think out what such a fact may mean when translated
+into terms of spiritual energy, and it seems to mean more than
+anything else boundless power of intercession such as the Church
+has attributed to S. Mary from the earliest times. We see no other
+way of estimating spiritual power save as the power of prayer. It
+is through prayer that we approach God--for we remember that
+sacrifice is but the highest form of prayer. The blessedness of S.
+Mary, that peculiar degree of blessedness which seems signalized by
+the reiterated attribution of the quality to her, must for our
+purposes to be understood as "power with God," power of
+intercession. It means that our Lord has chosen her to be a special
+medium of approval to Him, and that through her prayers He wills to
+bestow upon men many of His choicest gifts. Naturally, her prayers,
+like our prayers, are mediated by the merits of her divine Son;
+nevertheless they have a peculiar power which is related to her
+peculiar blessedness in that she is the mother of Incarnate God,
+and by special privilege is herself without sin. Of all those to
+whom we are privileged to turn in the joys and tragedies of our
+lives for the sympathy which helps through enlightened, loving
+prayer, we most naturally resort to her who is all love and all
+sympathy, Mary, the Mother of Jesus, blessed among women
+forever.</p>
+<p>Although we are told nothing of these days that S. Mary spent
+with her cousin Elizabeth, we do gather that she remained with her
+until her child was born and that she saw S. John in his mother's
+arms, and was a partaker in the joy of the aged parents. She was
+present when Zacharias, his speech restored, uttered the
+<i>Benedictus</i> in thanksgiving for the birth of his son. It was
+then, having seen her own Son's Forerunner that S. Mary went back
+to Nazareth filled more than ever with the sense that God's hand
+was in the events that were taking place, and of the approach of
+some crisis in her nation's history. It must have been that she
+talked intimately with Zacharias and Elizabeth and with them tried
+to imagine what was the future in which these two children were so
+closely concerned. When we consider the <i>Magnificat</i> and the
+<i>Benedictus</i> not as the "Gospel Canticles" to be sung in
+Church but as the utterances of pious Israelites under the
+inspiration of the Holy Ghost, we feel how very vivid must have
+been their expectation of God's action in the immediate future, and
+with what intense love and interest they thought of the parts to be
+taken by their children in the deliverance God was preparing. How
+often they must have pondered the God-inspired saying: "He shall be
+great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God
+shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall
+reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there
+shall be no end." "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of
+the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to
+prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by
+the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God;
+whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light
+to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to
+guide our feet into the way of peace."</p>
+<p>We think too of a more intimate sympathy that there would have
+been between these two women, drawn now so close together, not only
+by the blood bond, but by the bond of a common experience. What
+wonderful hours of communing during these three months! The peace
+of the hills of Judah is all about them and the peace of God is in
+their souls. What ecstatic joy, what ineffable love was theirs in
+these moments as they thought of the children who were God's
+precious gift to them. I fancy that there were many hours when they
+ceased to think of the mystery that hung over these children's
+destiny, and became just mothers lost in love of the coming
+sons.</p>
+<p>As we try to think out their relation to each other it presents
+itself to us as a relation of sympathy. Sympathy is community of
+feeling; it is maimed and thwarted when there is feeling only on
+one side. We speak of our sympathy in their affliction for others
+whom we do not know and who do not know us, but that is a very
+imperfect rendering of the perfect thing. No more than love does
+sympathy reach its perfection in solitude. But here in this village
+of Judah we know that we have the perfect thing--sympathy in its
+most exquisite form.</p>
+<p>This capacity for sympathy is one of the greatest of human
+endowments, and, one is glad to think, not like many human
+endowments, rare in its manifestation. In its ordinary
+manifestation it is instinctive, is roused by the spectacle of need
+calling us to its aid. There come to our knowledge from time to
+time instances of what seem to us very grievous failures in
+sympathy, but investigation shows that ignorance is very commonly
+at the bottom of them. When human beings are convinced of a need
+they are quite ready to respond. Indeed this readiness to respond
+makes them the easy victims of all sorts of impostures, of baseless
+appeals which play upon sentiment rather than convince the
+understanding. And just there lies the weakness of sympathy in that
+it is so easily turned to sentimentality. But the sentimentalist
+who gushes over ills, real or imaginary, can commonly be brought to
+book easily enough. For one thing the sentimentalist is devoted to
+publicity. He loves to conduct campaigns and drives, to "get up" a
+demonstration or an entertainment. I do not mean that he is a
+hypocrite but only that he loves the lime-light. When any tragedy
+befalls man his impulse is to organise a dance in aid of it. It is
+extraordinary how many people there are who will aid a charity by
+dancing to whom one would feel it quite hopeless to appeal for the
+amount of the dance tickets. And yet they are not wholly selfish
+people; there does lie back of the dance a certain sympathetic
+impulse. We easily deceive ourselves about ourselves, and it is
+well to be sure that we have true sympathy and not just sentiment.
+It is not so difficult to find out. We can test ourselves quickly
+enough by examining our giving. Do we give only when we are asked?
+Do we yield to spectacular appeals or only to those that we have
+examined and found good? Do we put the spiritual interests of
+humanity first? Is there any appreciable amount of quiet
+spontaneous giving which is known to no one? Do we prefer to be
+anonymous? Such tests soon reveal what we are like. One who never
+gives spontaneously, without being asked, we may be sure is lacking
+in sympathy.</p>
+<p>But of course one does not mean that sympathy is so closely
+related to what we call charity as what I have just said, if left
+by itself, would seem to imply. That is indeed the common form
+assumed by sympathy which has to be called out. But the best type
+of sympathy is the expression of our knowledge of one another; it
+is based on our knowledge of human nature and our interest in human
+beings. Because it is based on knowledge it is not subject to be
+swept away by the sweet breezes of sentimentalism. To its perfect
+exercise it is needful to know individuals not merely to know about
+them. The ordinary limitations of sympathy come from this, that we
+do not want to take time and pains to know one another. That, for
+example, is where the Church falls short in its mission to
+constitute a real brotherhood among its members--they have no time
+nor inclination really to know one another, or they find the
+artificial walls that society has erected impassable. It is, in
+fact, not very easy to know one another, and it is impossible to
+develop the complete type of sympathy with a crowd. For one must
+insist that this highest type of sympathy requires, what the word
+actually does mean, mutual sharing in life, the participation in
+the lives of our fellows and their partaking in our lives.</p>
+<p>So we understand why perfect sympathy is conditioned on
+spirituality. Unless we are spiritually developed and spiritually
+at one we cannot share in one another's lives fully. Where there
+are lives separated by a gulf of spiritual differences the
+completest sympathy is impossible. And we understand why Incarnate
+seems so much nearer to us than God unincarnate. It is true that
+"the Father Himself loveth you"; it is true that it is the love of
+the Blessed Trinity that is expressed in the Incarnation. The
+Incarnation did not create God's love and sympathy, it only reveals
+it. Yet it is precisely the Incarnation that enables us to lay hold
+on God's sympathy with a certainty and sureness of grasp that we
+would not otherwise have. The sight of "God in Christ reconciling
+the world unto Himself" is more to us in the way of proof than any
+amount of declaration can be. To be told of the sympathy of God is
+one thing, to see how it works is another.</p>
+<p>Our personal need in this matter is to find the sympathy that
+will help us in something outside ourselves, outside the
+limitations of human nature. Much as we value human sympathy,
+precious as we find its expression, yet we do find that it has for
+the higher purposes of life serious limitations. It has very little
+power to execute what it finds needs to be done. A man may
+understand another's weakness and may utterly sympathise with it;
+he may advise and console, but in the end he finds that he cannot
+adequately help. The case is hopeless unless he can point the
+sufferer to some source outside himself on which he can draw,
+unless he can lead him to the sympathy of God. God can offer not
+only consolation, not only the spectacle of another life which has
+triumphed under analogous circumstances, but He can give the power
+to this present weak and discouraged life to triumph in the place
+where it is. He can "make a way of escape."</p>
+<p>But there is another form of sympathy which we crave and need
+which is just the communion of soul with soul. We are not asking
+anything more or other than to show ourselves. We are overwhelmed
+with the loneliness of life. It comes upon us in the most crowded
+places, this sense of separation from all about us. Oh, that I
+might flee away and be at rest, is our feeling. It is here that we
+specially need our Lord. Blessed are we if we have learned to find
+in Him the rest we need for our souls, if we have learned to open
+the door that leads always to Him; or, perhaps to knock appealingly
+at that door which He will never fail to open. It is then that we
+find the joy of the invitation "Come unto me all ye that are weary
+and heavy laden and I will give you rest."</p>
+<p>But Christ, the perfect Sympathiser, has associated others with
+Himself. If we can go to him, so can others; the Way is open to
+all. And those who go and are associated with Him are gathered into
+a family. Here among those who have followed the interests which
+are ours, and have pursued the ends that we are pursuing, and
+cultivated the qualities which we value, we feel sure of that
+sympathetic understanding of life which we seek. And especially
+among those members of the Body who have gone on to the end in
+fidelity to the ideals of the life which is hid with Christ in God
+shall we look for understanding and help. It is from this point of
+view that the Communion of Saints will mean so much to us. We value
+the strength of mutual support which inevitably grows out of
+associated life. We cannot think of the saints of God as having
+passed beyond us into some place of rest where they are content to
+forget the problems of earth: rather we are compelled to think of
+them as still actively sharing in those interests which are still
+the interests of their divine Head. Until, Jesus Himself cease to
+think of us who are still in the Pilgrim Way, and cease to offer
+Himself on our behalf, we cannot think of any who are in Him as
+other than intensely interested in us of the earthly Church, or as
+doing other than helping by prayer for us that we with them may
+attain our end. And especially shall we feel sure that at any
+moment of our lives we may turn to the Mother in confident
+expectancy of finding most helpful sympathy and most ready aid. Her
+life to-day is a life of intercession, of intercession which has
+all the power of perfect understanding and perfect sympathy. Let us
+learn to go to her; let us learn that as God is praised and
+honoured in His saints, as our Lord choses to work through those
+who are united to Him, so it is His will that great power of prayer
+shall be hers of whom He assumed our nature, that nature through
+which He still distributes the riches of His grace.</p>
+<blockquote>As I lay upon a night,<br>
+My thought was on a Lady bright<br>
+That men callen Mary of might,<br>
+Redemptoris Mater.<br>
+<br>
+To her came Gabriel so bright<br>
+And said, "Hail, Mary, full of might,<br>
+To be called thou art adight;"<br>
+Redemptoris Mater.<br>
+<br>
+Right as the sun shineth in glass,<br>
+So Jesus in His Mother was,<br>
+And thereby wit men that she was<br>
+Redemptoris Mater.<br>
+<br>
+Now is born that Babe of bliss,<br>
+And Queen of Heaven His Mother is,<br>
+And therefore think me that she is<br>
+Redemptoris Mater.<br>
+<br>
+After to heaven He took His flight,<br>
+And there He sits with His Father of might,<br>
+With Him is crowned that Lady bright,<br>
+Redemptoris Mater.<br>
+<br>
+English, Fifteenth Century.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE VISITATION II</h3>
+<center>And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit
+hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke I. 46, 47.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Forasmuch as we have no excuse, because of the
+multitude of our sins, we plead through thee, O Virgin Mother of
+God, with Him whom thou didst bear.<br>
+<br>
+Lo, great is thine intercession, strong and acceptable with our
+Saviour.<br>
+<br>
+O Stainless Mother, reject not us sinners in thine intercession
+with Him Whom thou didst bear.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">COPTIC.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>onderful was this day in the little town of Judah where these
+two women, each in her way an instrument of God in the upbuilding
+of His Kingdom, met and rejoiced together. There is revealed to us
+something of the possibilities of our religion when we try to
+follow the thought of these two women. They are so utterly devoted
+to God that God can speak to them. I think that it is well for us
+to dwell on this fact for a moment. We are apt to look upon
+inspiration, what is described as being filled with the Holy Ghost,
+as somewhat of a mechanical mode of God's operation. Our mistaken
+view is that God takes control of the faculties of a human being
+and uses them for His own purposes.</p>
+<p>But that is quite to misunderstand God's method. God uses the
+faculties of a man in proportion as the man yields himself to Him;
+and one who is living a sincere religion becomes in a degree the
+medium of God's self-expression. This possibility of expressing God
+increases as we increase in sanctity. Those who have completely
+yielded themselves to God in a life of sanctity become in a deep
+sense the representatives of God: they have, in S. Paul's
+phraseology, His mind. To be capable of so becoming the divine
+instrument it is necessary, not only to offer no opposition to
+God's purposes, but to make ourselves the active executants of
+them. Our Christian vocation is thus to be the instrument of God,
+to be the visible demonstrations of His power and presence. There
+is a true inspiration, a true speaking for God to-day, no doubt, as
+true as at any time in the Church's history, wherever there is
+sanctity. What is lacking to present day utterances of sanctity is
+not the action of the Holy Spirit, but authentication by the
+Church: that is given only under certain special circumstances and
+for special purposes. But there is no need to limit the inspiring
+action of the Holy Spirit to such utterances as for special reasons
+have received official recognition.</p>
+<p>What we need to feel is the constant action of the Holy
+Spirit--that He wants to speak through every man. And it helps to
+clear our minds if we go to our Bibles with the expectation of
+finding here, not exceptions to all rules which obtain in common
+life, but types of the divine action. The isolation of Bible
+history has done much to create a feeling of its unreality. What
+has happened only in the Bible can, we are apt to feel, safely be
+disregarded in daily life in the twentieth century. But if what we
+find there is customary modes of divine action in life, exceptional
+in detail rather than in principle, the attitude we shall take will
+be wholly different. We shall then study them with the feeling
+expressed in S. Paul's saying, "These things are written for our
+learning," and we shall expect to find in us and about us the same
+order of divine action, we shall learn to look on our lives as
+having their chief meaning in the fact that they are possible
+instruments of God; we shall learn to regard failure as failure to
+show forth God to the world.</p>
+<p>In a way we can read our facts backward: the fact that
+"Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost," and the fact that Mary
+under the same divine impulse gave utterance to the words of the
+Magnificat, is a revelation of the character of these two women
+which would satisfy us of their sanctity had we no other evidence
+of it. The choice of them by God to be His instruments is evidence
+of the divine approval; and that approval can never be false to the
+facts; what God treats as holy must be holy.</p>
+<p>So we come to holy Mary's Song with the feeling that in studying
+it we shall find in it a revelation of S. Mary herself. She is not
+an instrument on which the Holy Spirit plays, but an intelligent
+being through whom He acts. She, like S. Elizabeth, is filled with
+the Holy Spirit--she had never been in the slightest degree out of
+union with God--but still the Magnificat is her utterance; it
+represents her thought; it is the measure, if one may so put it, in
+modern terminology, of her degree of spiritual culture. Much that
+we say about S. Mary, her simplicity, her social place, and so on,
+seems to carry with it the implication of the ignorance and
+spiritual dullness that we associate with the type of poverty we
+are accustomed to to-day. But the poor folk whom we meet in
+association with our Lord are neither ignorant nor spiritually
+dull; and it would be a vast mistake to think of Blessed Mary as
+other than of great intelligence and spiritual receptivity, or as
+deficient in understanding of the details of her ancestral
+religion. We have no reason to be surprised that she should sing
+Magnificat, or to think that the Holy Spirit was speaking through
+her thoughts which were quite beyond her comprehension. Inspired
+she was, but inspired, no doubt, to utter thoughts that had many
+times filled her mind.</p>
+<p>Her spiritual attitude as revealed in the Magnificat is but the
+attitude which must have been hers habitually--the attitude that
+exalts God and not self. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my
+spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." That is the starting-place
+of all holy souls--the adoration of God. True humility is never
+self-conscious because self is lost in the vision of God. S. Mary
+was bearing in her pure body the very Son of God. Admit, if you
+will, that as yet she did not understand the full reach of her
+vocation; but she did know that she had been chosen by God in a
+most signal manner to be the instrument of His purpose. That which
+S. Elizabeth spoke under divine impulse,--"Whence is this that the
+mother of my Lord should come to me?"--must have had clear meaning
+for her. But the wonder of all that God is accomplishing through
+her only brings her to God's feet. That "He that is mighty hath
+done me great things," is but the evidence of His sanctity, not of
+her greatness.</p>
+<p>One never gets through wondering at the beauty of humility; and
+it is one of the marks of how far we are from spiritual
+apprehension when we find this splendid virtue unattractive. It
+does indeed cut across many of the instinctive impulses of our
+nature; it can hardly be said to have dawned on humanity as a
+virtue until the Incarnation of God. Therein it has revealed to us
+God's attitude in His work and, by consequence, the natural
+attitude of all such as would associate themselves with God. It is
+not so much a self-denying as a self-forgetting virtue. It is
+ruined by the very consciousness of it. Such phrases as "practicing
+humility" seem self-contradictory--when one begins to practice
+humility it becomes something else. We do not conceive of our Lady
+as setting out to be humble, of thinking of what a humble person
+would do under such and such circumstances. She does not, as I was
+saying, think of herself at all, but thinks of God. The "great
+things" she has are His gift. That He has looked upon her low
+estate, and that in consequence of His visitation "all generations
+shall call her blessed," is a manifestation of the divine glory and
+goodness, not an occasion of pride to the recipient of God's
+gifts.</p>
+<p>We who are so self-seeking, who are so greedy of praise, who are
+constantly wanting what we feel is our due, who hunger to be
+"appreciated," who are full of proud boasting about our
+accomplishment, will do well to meditate upon this point of view.
+We acknowledge the supremacy of God with our lips, but in our acts
+we are quite prone to assume that we are independent actors in the
+universe where whatever we have is due to our own creative powers.
+We claim a certain lordship over life, a certain independent use of
+it. We resent the pressure of religious principle as setting up a
+sort of counter-claim to control that which it is ours to dispose
+of as we will. Most of our difficulties come from this godless
+attitude which claims independence of life. It results in a
+religion which is willing to pay God tribute, but is not willing to
+belong to God. But the humble person has nothing of his own and
+moreover wants nothing; he wants simply that God shall use him,
+that he shall be found a ready instrument in God's hands.</p>
+<p>It is this readiness that we find in Blessed Mary when she
+answered the astonishing announcement of the angel with her,
+"Behold the Handmaid of the Lord." It is that quality which we find
+in her here when she construes God's purpose in terms which go out
+far beyond her individual life and sees in her experience but one
+item in God's dealing with humanity in His age-long work of
+"bringing His wanderers home." We should have far less difficulty
+and find our lives far more significant if we could get rid of our
+wretched egotism and find it possible to lose ourselves in the work
+of God. We should then find the work important because it is God's
+work and not because we are associated with it. We should also find
+it less easy to be discouraged because we should not understand our
+failure to be the failure of God. Discouragement is but one of the
+aspects of egotism, and not the most attractive.</p>
+<p>We cannot rise to anything like a passion of holiness unless we
+have found God to be all in all. Only so can we lose ourselves in
+God. And I must, at whatever risk of over-dwelling, stress the fact
+that we can only attain this point of view by dwelling on God and
+not on self. Let God be the foreground of our thought. Let our
+souls magnify the Lord. Let us dwell upon the "great things" God
+has done for us. In every life there is such a wonderful
+manifestation of the divine goodness--only we do not take time to
+look for it. It is well to take the time: to write out, if need be,
+our spiritual history. We shall then find abundant evidence of the
+goodness of God. It may be that it is a goodness that is seen
+chiefly in offers, in opportunities to be something which we have
+declined or have only imperfectly realized. Be that as it may,
+there is no life, I am quite convinced, that has not a spiritual
+history which is a marvellous history of what God at least wanted
+to do for it. It is also a history of what He actually has done: a
+history of graces, of rich gifts, of deliverances. It matters not
+that we have been so heedless as to miss most of what God has done.
+The facts stand and are discoverable whenever we care to pay enough
+attention to them to ascertain their true meaning. When we do that,
+then surely we shall be compelled to do, what blessed Mary never
+needed to do, fall at God's feet in an act of penitence, seeing
+ourselves, perhaps for the first time, in the light of God's
+mind.</p>
+<p>The Magnificat, if we consider it as a personal expression, is a
+wonderful expression of selfless devotion, where the perception of
+the glory and majesty of God excludes all other thoughts. It is,
+too, a thanksgiving for the personal gift which is her vocation to
+be the Mother of the Saviour. Out of her lowliness she has been
+exalted--how highly she herself cannot at the time have dreamed. We
+can see what was necessarily involved in God's choice of her, and
+to-day we think of her as in her perfect purity exalted in heaven
+far above all other creatures. Mother of God most holy we call her,
+and in the words of her canticle ever repeat her thanksgiving as
+our thanksgiving, too, for the vocation that God sent her and for
+the gift which through her has come to us.</p>
+<p>But there is a more universal aspect of the Magnificat.
+Essentially it is the presentation of the constant antithesis which
+runs through all revelation between the flesh and the spirit,
+between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this world. It
+embodies the conception of God striving to save a world which has
+revolted from Him, and now at last entering upon that stage of His
+work which is the beginning of a triumph over all the powers of the
+adversary. In Mary's song the contrasted powers are still presented
+under the Old Testament terminology which was the natural form of
+her thought. The adversaries of God are the proud, the mighty, the
+rich; while those who are on God's side are the humble, the
+god-fearers, the hungry. The form of the thought and its essential
+meaning remain the same through the centuries, though our
+terminology changes somewhat. Presently in the pages of the New
+Testament we shall get the presentation as the contrast between the
+children of this world and the sons of God. We shall find the
+briefest expression of the latter to be the saints.</p>
+<p>We no longer feel that rich and poor express a spiritual
+contrast. Nor do we, who are quite accustomed to the action of
+labour leaders, regard social position as being the exclusive seat
+of arrogancy. But we know that the spiritual values which are
+expressed in the varying terminology are constant; we know that the
+warfare between God and not-God is still the most important
+phenomenon in the universe. And it happens as we look out on the
+battlefield where the forces of good and evil contend, where before
+our eyes they seem to sway back and forth on the field of human
+life with every varying fortunes, that we not seldom feel that the
+battle is not obviously falling to the side of righteousness. There
+come moments when we are oppressed by what seems to us the lack of
+power in the ideals of righteousness. The appeal of the proud and
+of the rich is so dazzling; the splendour of the visible kingdom of
+the world is so intoxicating, the contagion of the crowd which
+follows the uplifted banner of Satan is so penetrating, that we
+hardly wonder to see the new generations carried away in the sweep
+of popular enthusiasm. Here is excitement, exhilarating enjoyment,
+the throb and sting of the flesh, the breathless whirl of gaiety,
+the physical quiet of satisfied desires. What is there to appeal on
+the other side? As the crowds troop past to the sound of music and
+dancing they for a moment raise their eyes, and above them rises a
+hill whereon is a Cross and on the Cross an emaciated Victim is
+nailed, and at the foot of the Cross a small group of discouraged
+folk--S. John, The blessed Mother, the other Mary--stunned by the
+grief born of the death of Son and Friend.</p>
+<p>These two utterances stand in eternal contrast: "All these
+things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me":
+and, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." As yet the
+appeal made from an "exceeding high mountain" visibly seems to
+prevail against that made from "the place which is called
+Calvary."</p>
+<p>And what have we to counteract the depression which is the
+natural reaction from the spectacle of the world-rejection of
+Christ? We have the truth which is embodied in Mary's Magnificat,
+we have the fact of Mary's vocation to be the Mother of God. The
+revelation of God's meaning and purpose is a basis of optimism
+which no promise of Satan can overthrow. When all is said, the view
+from the exceeding high mountain is a view of the Kingdom of this
+world only; from the place called Calvary you can see the Kingdom
+of God as well. From this point of vantage alone the permanent
+values of life are visible; and to the taunt flung at us, the taunt
+so terrifying to the young, "You are losing life," the enigmatic
+reply from the Cross is that you have to lose life to gain it; that
+permanent and eternal values are acquired by those who have the
+self-restraint and the foresight not to sacrifice the substance to
+the shadow, nor to mistake the toys of childhood for the riches of
+manhood. "In the meantime life is passing and the shadows draw in
+and you have not attained" so they say. True: we count not
+ourselves to have yet attained; but we press on toward the mark of
+our high calling in Christ Jesus our Lord. We are not in a hurry,
+because the crown we are seeking is amaranthine, unfading. We are
+not compelled to compress our enjoyment within a given time; we do
+not awake each morning with the thought that we may not outlast the
+daylight; we are not hurried and fevered with the sense of our
+fragility. The kingdoms of the world and the glory of them must be
+seized now: Satan cannot afford to wait because his kingdom has an
+end. But God can afford to wait because of His Kingdom there is no
+end.</p>
+<p>We are content then with <i>promises</i> and with such partial
+fulfilment as we find on our pilgrim-way. We are content because we
+see the end in the beginning. To those who in the first days of the
+Church objected that though the promises were wonderful and
+abundant the fulfilment was small; to those who said we do not yet
+see the perfection of the kingdom; the answer of inspiration was:
+True, we do not yet see the accomplishment of all of God's
+promises, but we do see Jesus. And there is where we stand to-day.
+The work that God has to do in the spiritualising of the human race
+is tremendous; but we actually see its beginning in Jesus, and we
+are content to wait with God for the perfect accomplishment.</p>
+<p>And we must remember when we think of the work of God in terms
+of time, that the length of time that is required to accomplish the
+spiritualisation of the human race is not to be estimated in terms
+of the divine will but in terms of the human will. It is not divine
+power but human resistance which is the determining factor, for God
+will not compel us to obey Him, nor would compelled obedience have
+any spiritual value. And we can estimate something of the human
+resistance that has to be overcome by concentrating attention upon
+one unit of that resistance. That is, we can learn from the study
+of our own life what is the resistance of one human being to the
+triumph of the will of God; and, taking oneself as a fair sample of
+the race can multiply our resistance to God's will by the numbers
+of the race. We are perfectly certain of the will of God: God wills
+that all men shall come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved.
+"This is the will of God, even your sanctification." So far as we
+are thwarting that will we are playing into the hands of the power
+of evil. But that power is of limited existence; it draws to its
+end. Its death knell was struck when the noon-day darkness lifted
+from Calvary.</p>
+<p>Therefore the rejoicing of blessed Mary, whose Song reads the
+necessary end in the beginning, is well considered; and we rejoice
+with her and in her. It is our privilege--and it is a vast
+privilege--to rejoice in blessed Mary as the instrument of God in
+bringing the triumph of His Kingdom one stage nearer its
+accomplishment. And in especial we rejoice because we see in her
+one more, and the most marked, illustration of the divine method.
+"He hath regarded the low estate of His Handmaiden." "He hath
+exalted them of low degree." "He hath filled the hungry." The
+method of God is to work to His results through those who are
+spiritually receptive. The less of self there is in us the more
+room there is for God. "The Kingdom of God is within you," that is,
+the starting-point of God's work in the building of the Kingdom is
+within the soul of man. He must master the inner man, must win the
+allegiance of our souls, before His work can make any progress at
+all. The Kingdom of God cometh not "with observation," that is,
+from the outside in an exhibition of power; it must of necessity
+come from the inside in demonstration of the Spirit. "As many as
+are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."</p>
+<p>In blessed Mary we see the new starting-point in this last stage
+of the work of God. For the foreseen merits of her Son she is
+brought into union with God and spared the taint of sin, and
+becomes the second Eve, the Mother of the new race. Acting upon her
+pure humanity, the Holy Spirit produces that humanity which joined
+to the divinity in the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity becomes
+the Christ, the Son of the Living God. In Mary's rejoicing in this
+so great fact, the bringing of human redemption, we rightly share.
+It is with a right understanding of her Song that the Church
+throughout the ages has embodied it in its worship and through it
+constantly rejoices in God its Saviour. The actual detailed
+accomplishment of God's work in man's redemption is going on under
+our eyes. It is regrettable that human stupidity seems to prefer
+dwelling upon what seem God's failures, and are actually our own,
+rather than upon the constant triumphs of grace. But God reigns;
+and we can always find grounds of optimism if we can find that He
+is day by day reigning more perfectly in us. When we pray "Thy
+Kingdom Come," the field to examine for the fulfilment of our
+prayers is the field of our own souls.</p>
+<blockquote>Our Lady took the road<br>
+To Zachary's abode;<br>
+O'er mountain, vale and lea,<br>
+Full many a league sped she<br>
+Toward Hebron's holy hill,<br>
+By God's command and will.<br>
+<br>
+Full light did Mary, make<br>
+Of trouble for his sake.<br>
+God's Very Son of yore<br>
+Within her breast she bore;<br>
+And angels bright and fair,<br>
+Unseen, her fellows were.<br>
+<br>
+She, ere she took her way,<br>
+An orison would say,<br>
+That God her steps might tend<br>
+Safe to their journey's end;<br>
+And there, in manner meet,<br>
+Her cousin she 'gan greet.<br>
+<br>
+Elizabeth full fain<br>
+Eft bowed her head again;<br>
+She wist 'twas God's own Bride,<br>
+As, worshipful she cried:<br>
+'O Lady, Full of Grace,<br>
+Whence do I see thy face?'<br>
+<br>
+O House and Home of bliss,<br>
+O earthly Paradis--<br>
+Nay, Heaven itself on ground<br>
+Wherein the Lord is found,<br>
+The Lord of Glory bright,<br>
+In goodness great and might--<br>
+<br>
+Clean Maiden thou that art,<br>
+Come, visit this my heart;<br>
+And bring me chief my Good,<br>
+God's Son in Flesh and Blood;<br>
+Bless body, soul; and bide<br>
+For ever by my side.<br>
+<br>
+From the K&ouml;ln Gesang-Buch. XVI Cent.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>S. JOSEPH</h3>
+<center>Joseph, her husband, being a just man--<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. I. 19.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>O God, our refuge and our strength, look down in mercy
+upon thy people who cry to thee; and by the intercession of the
+glorious and immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God, of St. Joseph
+her spouse, and of thy blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and of all
+saints, in mercy and goodness hear our prayers for the conversion
+of sinners, and for the liberty and exaltation of our holy mother
+the church. Through.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">ROMAN.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hen we read the Gospels, not simply as a record of events but as
+revelation of the method of God, we are constantly impressed with
+what we cannot otherwise describe than as the care of God for
+detail. There is a curious type of mind which finds it possible to
+think of God as Creator and Ruler of the universe, but impossible
+to conceive Him as interested in or concerning Himself with the
+minutiae of human life; who can conceive God as caring for a solar
+system or a planet, but not as caring for a baby. Surely it is a
+strange notion of God that thinks of Him as estimating values in
+terms of weight and measure: surely much more intelligible is the
+Gospel presentation of Him as concerned with spritual values and
+exercising that minute care over human life which is best expressed
+by the word <i>Father</i>. It is very significant that as the
+volume of revelation unrolls, the earlier notions of God as Ruler,
+Governor, King, give way to the notion of Father, until in our
+Lord's presentation of the character of God it is His Fatherhood
+which stands in the forefront. What our Lord emphasises in the
+character of God are precisely the qualities of love and care and
+sympathy which the word Father connotes.</p>
+<p>And nowhere do we see this loving care of God which we call His
+Providence better set out for our study than in the detailed
+preparation which preceded and attended the birth of His Son into
+this world. There was that preparation of the Mother who was to be
+the source of the humanity of the Child Jesus which we have been
+dwelling upon; there was also the preparation for the proper
+guardianship of both Mother and Child during the years of Jesus'
+immaturity. There are certain things which are self-evident when
+once we turn our minds to them; and it is thus self-evident that
+the care of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother would require the
+preparation of the man to whom they should be committed. In the
+state of society into which our Lord was born, He and His Mother
+would need active guardianship of a peculiar nature. The man who
+should provide for our Lord's infancy must be a man, in the nature
+of the case, who was receptive of spiritual monitions and devoted
+to the will of God. It was a delicate matter to live before the
+world as the husband of Mary of Nazareth, and to live before God as
+the guardian of her virginity and as the foster-father of her
+divine Son. Only a very choice nature could respond to the demands
+thus made upon it, a nature which had been habitually responsive to
+the will of God and long nurtured by the richness of His grace.</p>
+<p>We know very little of St. Joseph; but God's choice of him for
+the office he was to fulfil near the blessed Virgin Mary and her
+Son reveals the nature of the man. He is described to us as "a just
+man," one whose judgment would not be swayed by prejudices, but who
+would be open to the consideration of any case upon its merits: a
+man who would not view events in the light of their effect upon
+himself and his plans, but who can calmly consider what in given
+circumstances is due to others. Such men are rare at any time for
+their production is a matter of slow discipline.</p>
+<p>We gather that both S. Joseph and S. Mary were of the same
+lineage, were descended from the same ancestor, David. We gather
+also that S. Joseph was much older than his bethrothed wife, for he
+had been already married and had a family. All the notices of these
+brothers and sisters of the Lord imply that they were considerably
+older than the Child of Mary, and that they felt that they had the
+sort of authority over Him which commonly belongs to the elder
+children of a family; the sort of doubt and criticism of His course
+which would be the instinctive attitudes of elders toward the
+unprecedented course of a younger. We have, I think, a right to
+infer from the terms of the narrative, that S. Joseph would have
+been well acquainted with S. Mary and was not taking a wife who was
+a stranger to him. Indeed, considering the actual development of
+the situation, I myself feel quite certain that those are right who
+maintain that the proposed marriage was intended to be merely a
+nominal union, the ultimate design of which was the protection of
+the virginity of Mary. I find it impossible to think of that
+virginity as other than of deliberate purpose from the beginning,
+and prompted by the Spirit of God for the purposes of God for which
+it served. There is, to be sure, no revelation of this in Holy
+Scripture, but there are facts which suggest themselves to the
+devout meditations of saints which we feel that we may safely take
+on the authority of their spiritual intuitions. Such a fact is this
+of Mary's purposed virginity which I am content to accept on the
+basis of its congruity with S. Mary's life and vocation. Of the
+fact of her perpetual virginity there can be no dispute among
+Catholic Christians.</p>
+<p>To S. Joseph thus preparing himself to be the guardian of the
+blessed Virgin it could only come as a tremendous shock that she
+should be found with a child. Our character comes out at such times
+of trial as when something that we had taken quite for granted
+fails us, and we are left breathless and bewildered in in the face
+of what would have seemed impossible even had we thought of it.
+What was S. Joseph's attitude? The beauty and sanity of his
+character at once shows itself. Grieved and disheartened as he must
+have been, disappointed as he could not but be, he yet thinks at
+once of his bethrothed, not of himself. How far could he save
+her?--that was his first thought. He would at least avoid
+publicity. "Being a just man, and not willing to make her a public
+example, he was minded to put her away privily." It is the quality
+that we express by the word benevolence--the quality of mature and
+deliberate wisdom. We feel that such a man could be trusted under
+any circumstances of life.</p>
+<p>We feel, too, that God would not leave S. Joseph in doubt as to
+the course he was to pursue, or as to the character of Mary
+herself. There could no shade of suspicion be permitted to rest
+upon her. Hence "while he thought on these things, behold, the
+angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph,
+thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for
+that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall
+bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall
+save his people from their sins."</p>
+<p>It is not difficult to imagine the joy of S. Joseph at this
+angelic message. We all know the sense of relief which comes when,
+after facing a most trying situation, and being forced to make up
+our minds to act when action either way is almost equally painful,
+we find that we are delivered from the necessity of acting at all,
+that the whole state of things has been utterly misunderstood. It
+was so with S. Joseph; and in his case there was the added joy
+which springs from the nature of the coming Child as the angel
+explains it to him. He who had accepted the charge of Mary was now
+to add to that charge the charge of her Child: and the Child is the
+very Saviour whom his soul and the souls of all pious Israelites
+had longed for. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save
+his people from their sins." We cannot expect that S. Joseph would
+have taken in the full meaning of this message, but he would have
+understood that he was called to a wondrous co-operation with God
+in the work of the redemption of Israel.</p>
+<p>As we think of S. Joseph it is this co-operation which is the
+significant thing in his life. As we study human life in the only
+way in which it is much worth while to study it, in the light of
+revelation, it becomes clear to us that there is purpose in all
+human life. Often we observe a purpose that we are not able to
+grasp, but in the light of what we know from revelation we do not
+doubt of its presence. Even lives that seem obscure and
+insignificant we feel sure must have a divine meaning; and the
+pathetic thing about most human life is that it never dreams of its
+own significance. We are consumed with the notion that God's
+instruments must be great, while it is on the face of revelation
+that they are commonly humble and of seeming insignificance. It is
+the work that is important, and the instrument becomes important
+through its relation to the work. We all at least have the common
+vocation of the Christian, and it would be difficult to exaggerate
+the spiritual significance of that. S. Joseph seems to us at once
+set apart by his vocation to be the guardian of the divine Child,
+to protect and to nurture the years of His human immaturity. This
+is no doubt a unique vocation, but is it quite so far separated
+from ordinary Christian experience as we assume? You and I are also
+constituted guardians of the divine Presence. This very morning, it
+may be, we have received within the Tabernacle of our breast the
+same Presence that S. Joseph guarded--the Presence of Incarnate
+God. In that Presence of His humanity our Lord abode with us but a
+few minutes and then the Presence withdrew: but He left behind Him
+a real gift, the gift of an increase in sacramental grace.</p>
+<p>Was that a light thing: Was it indeed so much less than the
+vocation of S. Joseph? And how have we guarded this Presence? Those
+few moments after the reception of our Incarnate Lord at the
+altar--how do we habitually spend them? Do we spend them in
+guarding the Presence? There is much to be learned about the
+meaning and the value of guarding the Eucharistic Gift. Our
+thanksgiving after Communion is fully as important as our
+preparation for receiving it. I am more and more inclined to think
+that much of the fruitlessness of communions which is so sad a side
+of the life of the Church is due to careless reception and
+inadequate thanksgiving. It is the adoration of our Lord within the
+Tabernacle of our body and thanksgiving to Him for having come to
+us that is the <i>appropriation</i> of the Gift of the Sacrament.
+He comes to us and offers Himself to us with all the benefits of
+His life and death; and then having offered Himself "He makes as
+though he would go farther," and he does actually go, unless we are
+awake to our spiritual opportunity, and constrain Him, saying,
+"abide with us, for it is toward evening and the day is far
+spent."</p>
+<p>We think of S. Joseph then, as with a relieved and rejoicing
+heart he enters upon his new realised vocation as the head of the
+Holy Family. The marriage which he had been upon the point of
+abandoning he now enters that he may give S. Mary and her coming
+Child his full protection.</p>
+<p>So S. Joseph "took unto him his wife; and knew her not till she
+had brought forth her first-born Son." These words have been so
+misunderstood as to imply that the marriage of S. Joseph and S.
+Mary was consummated after the birth of our Lord. Grammatically
+they convey no such implication; the mode of expression is
+perfectly simple and well known by which a fact is affirmed to
+exist up to a certain time without any implication as to what
+happens after. And the meaning of the passage which is not at all
+necessitated by its grammatical construction is utterly intolerable
+in Catholic teaching. The constant teaching of the Church is the
+perpetual virginity of Mary--that she was a virgin "before and in
+and after her child-bearing." There was to be sure an heretic named
+Helvidius who taught otherwise, but he was promptly repudiated by
+all Catholic teachers and but served to emphasize the depth and
+clearness of the Catholic tradition. Upon this point there has
+never been any wavering in the mind of the Church, and to hold
+otherwise shows a lamentable lack of a Catholic perception of
+values and but a superficial grasp upon what is involved in the
+Incarnation.</p>
+<p>The impression we get of S. Joseph is that of a man of great
+simplicity and gentleness of character--that childlikeness which
+was later praised by his foster Son. Such qualities do not produce
+much impression on the superficial observer, but they are of great
+spiritual value. They are the concomitants of a special type of
+open-mindedness. Open-mindedness is a quality much praised and
+little practiced. But the open-mindedness which is commonly praised
+is not the open-mindedness which is praiseworthy. What is at
+present meant by open-mindedness is in reality failure to have any
+mind at all upon a given subject. It is the attitude of doubt which
+never proceeds so far as to arrive at a solution. To have an open
+mind means to the contemporary man to hold all conclusions loosely,
+to consider all things open to question, to be ready to abandon
+what now appears to be true in favour of something which to-morrow
+may appear to be more true. In other words, we are invited to base
+life on pure scepticism.</p>
+<p>Now no life can be so conducted. We live by a faith of some
+sort, whether it be a faith in God or no. The most sceptical mind
+has to believe something to act at all. It cannot even doubt
+without affirming a belief in its own intellectual processes. The
+open mind that never reaches any certainty to fill it is a very
+poor possession indeed. And it is not at all what we mean when we
+say of S. Joseph that he was open-minded. We mean that he was
+receptive of new spiritual impressions and capable of further
+spiritual development. There are minds, and they are not unusual
+among people of a certain degree of spiritual development, which we
+can best describe as having reached a given stage of growth and
+then shut up. Or, to vary the figure, they impress one as having a
+certain capacity, and when that has been reached, being able to
+contain nothing further. They come to a stop. From that point they
+try to maintain the position they have acquired. But that is
+impossible: they inevitably fall away unless they are going
+forward. When the power of spiritual assimilation is dead, we are
+spiritually in a dying condition.</p>
+<p>What we mean by having an open and childlike mind, then, is that
+one has this power of spiritual assimilation and, consequently, a
+power of growth. The sceptic is afflicted with spiritual
+indigestion; he is an invalid who is quite certain that any food
+that is offered him is indigestible. His soul withers away through
+its incapacity to believe. The open-minded saint has a healthy
+spiritual digestion. This does not mean that, in vulgar parlance,
+he can, "swallow anything"; it does mean a power of discrimination
+between food offered him,--that he assimilates what is wholesome
+and rejects the rest. The sceptic is pessimistic as to the
+existence of any wholesome food at all; he starves his soul for
+fear that he should believe something that is not true. The saint,
+with the test of faith, sorts the food proposed to him, and grows
+in grace, and consequently in the knowledge and the love of
+God.</p>
+<p>Open-mindedness is sensitiveness to spiritual impressions,
+readiness for spiritual advance, even when such impressions cut
+across much that has seemed to us well settled, and such advance
+involves the upset of his established ways of thought. What
+distinguishes the evolution in the thought of the sceptic from that
+in the thought of the saint is that in the one case the result is
+destructive and in the other constructive. The sceptic is like a
+man who starts to build a house, and then periodically tears down
+what he has so far built and begins again on a new plan; the saint
+is like the house builder who broadens his plan in the course of
+construction, and who finds that within the limits of his general
+scheme there is room for indefinite improvement. The one never gets
+any building at all; the other gets a palace of which the last
+stages are of a more highly decorated school of architecture than
+he had conceived, or indeed, could conceive, when he began his
+work.</p>
+<p>In S. Joseph's case nothing could be more revolutionary in
+appearance than the truth he was asked to accept. He was asked to
+believe in the virgin-motherhood of his bethrothed, and in the fact
+that the Child soon to be born was He Who was to save Israel from
+his sins. He was asked to accept these incredible statements and to
+act upon them by taking Mary to wife as he had proposed. And he did
+not hesitate to accept the evidence of a dream and act in
+accordance with it. How could he do this? Because the required
+action which seemed so revolutionary of all his previous notions
+was, in fact, quite in accordance with his knowledge of God and of
+the promises of God. Though a simple man, perhaps because he was a
+simple man, he would know something of the teaching of the
+prophets. That teaching would have given him thoughts about God
+which would have, unconsciously, prepared him for these new acts of
+God. Though we cannot see before how a prophecy is to be fulfiled,
+after the event we can see that this is what is intended by it. We
+were actually being prepared by the prophecy for what was to take
+place. And thus, no doubt, S. Joseph's mind, being filled with the
+teaching of the Scriptures which he had heard read in the Synagogue
+every Sabbath day, would find that this new act of God on which he
+was asked to rely was, in fact, but a new step in the unfolding of
+that Providence which had for centuries been shaping the history of
+his nation.</p>
+<p>It is a quality to cultivate, this simple open-mindedness which
+is ready to respond to new spiritual impulses. It is precisely what
+prevents that deadly attitude of soul which proceeds as though
+religion were for us exhausted: as though we had reached the limit
+of expectancy. But to expect nothing is to receive nothing, because
+it is only expectancy that perceives what is offered. We move in a
+world which is thronged with spirtual impulses and energetic with
+spiritual powers. God is trying to lead us on to new spiritual
+experiences by which we may attain to a better understanding of
+Him. There is no assignable limit to our possible growth. But we
+fix a limit when we close our souls to further experiences by the
+practical denial that they exist. If we are childlike, we are
+always expecting new things of our Father; if we are open-minded we
+are alive to the activities of the spiritual world. We are
+conscious of possessing a growing religion, a religion truly
+evolutionary, constantly bringing to our knowledge unsuspected
+riches stored in the very principles whose meaning we had assumed
+that we had exhausted.</p>
+<p>Perhaps one of the treasures of our religion of which we have
+not achieved full consciousness is God's choice of us to be the
+guardians of His revelation. It is our charge "to keep the faith."
+I suppose that this responsibility is commonly regarded as
+belonging to some vaguely imagined Church which hands it on from
+generation to generation, to us among others, but without imposing
+on us an obligation of any active sort. But we are the
+Church--members in particular of the Body of Christ. And in the
+dissemination of the faith the last appeal is to us, not to some
+outside tribunal. When the Church wishes to discover its faith and
+make it articulate, its place of search is in the minds and hearts
+of the faithful. Our responsibility is to testify to the Catholic
+Faith, not so much by positively asserting it as by making it
+active and vivid in our lives so that its presence and power can by
+no means be mistaken. You, for instance, in common with the rest of
+the faithful, are the custodians of this truth of the perpetual
+virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It may seem a small matter,
+but it is not. That it is not is readily seen from this fact, that
+when the perpetual virginity of our Blessed Mother is denied then
+also the Incarnation of her Son is denied or is held only in a
+half-hearted way. The Church stresses such facts, not only because
+they are facts, but because by their character they form a hedge
+about the truth of the Incarnation of our Lord. And we who are
+Catholic Christians must feel an obligation to hold fast this fact.
+We ought actively to show our firm adherence to it. How? Chiefly by
+our attitude towards Blessed Mary herself, by the devotion that we
+show her. If we are quite indifferent to devotion to Blessed Mary,
+if we show her no honour, if we likewise fail in honour to her
+guardian, S. Joseph, is it not to be expected that our grasp upon
+the truths which are enshrined in such devotion will be feeble, and
+that we shall hold them as of small moment? The whole system of
+Catholic thought is so nicely articulated, so consistently held
+together, that failure to hold even the smallest constituent
+indicates a faulty conception of the whole. Catholics are
+constantly accused of over-stressing devotion to blessed Mary and
+the saints and thereby encroaching upon the honour due to our Lord.
+The answer to the reproach is to be found in the question: Who
+to-day are defending to the very death the truth of our Lord's
+Incarnation and the truths that hang upon it? Are they those who
+deny the legitimacy of invocation, or those in whose religious
+practise it holds an important and vital place?</p>
+<br>
+<p>A PANEGYRICK ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.</p>
+<blockquote>I do not tremble, when I write<br>
+A Mistress' praise, but with delight<br>
+Can dive for pearls into the flood,<br>
+Fly through every garden, wood,<br>
+Stealing the choice of flow'rs and wind,<br>
+To dress her body or her mind;<br>
+Nay the Saints and Angels are<br>
+Nor safe in Heaven, till she be fair,<br>
+And rich as they; nor will this do,<br>
+Until she be my idol too.<br>
+With this sacrilege I dispense,<br>
+No fright is in my conscience,<br>
+My hand starts not, nor do I then<br>
+Find any quakings in my pen;<br>
+Whose every drop of ink within<br>
+Dwells, as in me my parent's sin,<br>
+And praises on the paper wrot<br>
+Have but conspired to make a blot:<br>
+Why should such fears invade me now<br>
+That writes on her? to whom do bow<br>
+The souls of all the just, whose place<br>
+Is next to God's, and in his face<br>
+All creatures and delights doth see<br>
+As darling of the Trinity;<br>
+To whom the Hierarchy doth throng,<br>
+And for whom Heaven is all one song.<br>
+Joys should possess my spirit here,<br>
+But pious joys are mixed with fear:<br>
+Put off thy shoe, 'tis holy ground,<br>
+For here the flaming Bush is found,<br>
+The mystic rose, the Ivory Tower,<br>
+The morning Star and David's bower,<br>
+The rod of Moses and of Jesse,<br>
+The fountain seal&egrave;d, Gideon's fleece,<br>
+A woman cloth&egrave;d with the Sun,<br>
+The beauteous throne of Salomon,<br>
+The garden shut, the living spring,<br>
+The Tabernacle of the King,<br>
+The Altar breathing sacred fume,<br>
+The Heaven distilling honeycomb,<br>
+The untouched lily, full of dew,<br>
+A Mother, yet a Virgin too,<br>
+Before and after she brought forth<br>
+(Our ransom of eternal worth)<br>
+Both God and man. What voice can sing<br>
+This mystery, or Cherub's wing<br>
+Lend from his golden stock a pen<br>
+To write, how Heaven came down to men?<br>
+Here fear and wonder so advance<br>
+My soul, it must obey a trance.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE NATIVITY</h3>
+<center>She brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped<br>
+him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger;<br>
+because there was no room for them in the inn.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke II. 7.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>It is very meet to bless thee who bore the Christ, O
+ever Blessed and Immaculate Mother of God. More wondrous than the
+Cherubim and of greater glory than the Seraphim art thou who
+remaining Virgin didst give birth to God the Word. Verily, do we
+magnify thee, O Mother of God. In thee, O full of grace, all
+creation exults, the hierarchy of angels and the race of men. In
+thee sanctified temple, spiritual paradise, glory of virgins, of
+whom God took flesh, through whom our God Who was before the world
+became a Child. Of thy womb He made a throne, and its dominion is
+more extensive than the heavens. In thee, O full of grace, all
+creation exults: glory to thee.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">RUSSIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>e see a man and a woman on the road to Bethlehem where they are
+going to be taxed according to the decree of Augustus. Bethlehem
+would be known to them as the home of their ancestors, for they
+were both of the lineage of David. It was a painful journey for
+them for Mary was near the time of her delivery. We follow them
+along the road and into the village, as the twilight fades, and see
+them seeking shelter for the night. Bethlehem is a small place and
+the inn is crowded with those who have come on the errand with
+them, and the only place where they can find refuge for the night
+is a stable. But they are not used to luxury, and the stable serves
+their purpose.</p>
+<p>It also serves God's purpose. One understands as one reads this
+narrative of the Nativity what is meant by the Providential
+government of the world. We see how various lines of action, each
+free and independent, yet converge to the production of a given
+event. The different characters in the drama are all pursuing their
+own courses and yet the result is a true drama, not an unrelated
+series of events. Caesar's action, Joseph's lineage, our Lord's
+conception, all working together, bring about the fulfilment of
+prophecy by the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem. There is in the
+universe an over-ruling will which works to its ends by
+co-operating with human freedom, and not destroying it. We are not
+the sport of chance, not the slaves of fate, but free men; and yet
+through our freedom, through our blunders and rebellions and sins
+as well as through our obedience, the work of God is moving to its
+conclusion. Man did all that he could to defeat the ends of God and
+to thwart God's purpose of redemption. Yet on a certain night in
+Bethlehem of Judea the light of God overcame the human darkness,
+and the voices of God's angels pierced the human tumult, and Jesus
+Christ was born. "God of the substance of his Father begotten
+before all worlds, man of the substance of his mother, born in the
+world; perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human
+flesh subsisting."</p>
+<p>The manifestation came to certain shepherds watching their
+flocks in the fields about Bethlehem; simple men, quite unable to
+take in the meaning of what they see and hear. One cannot help
+thinking of what it would have meant in the way of an intellectual
+revolution if to some Greek or Roman philosopher, speculating on
+the destiny of humanity, the truth could have come that the future
+of the world was not in the court of Augustus, that it was not
+dependent on the Roman armies or Greek learning, but that it was
+bound up in the career and teaching of a Baby that night born in a
+stable in an obscure village in Judea. As we imagine such a case we
+see in the concrete the meaning of the revolution set in motion by
+this single event; and we are led to adore the ways of God in that
+He has chosen for the final approach to man for the purpose of
+redemption, this way of simplicity and humbleness. Man would not
+have thought of this as the best path for God to follow in this
+purpose of rescue, but we can be wise after the event and see that
+this Child born in poverty and obscurity would have fewer
+entanglements to break through, fewer obstacles to overcome.</p>
+<p>But these thoughts are far away from the night in Bethlehem. In
+the stable there where a Baby is lying in Mary's arms and Joseph
+stands looking on, there is no speculation about the
+world-consequences of the event. There is rather the splendour of
+love: the love of the mother in the new found mystery of this her
+Child; the love of God who has given her the Child. And all is a
+part of the great mystery of love, of the love wherewith God loves
+the world. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
+Son." Here is the Son, lying in Mary's arms, wrapped in swaddling
+clothes, and Mary looks into His face as any human mother looks
+into the face of her child. But through the eyes that smile up into
+Mary's face, God is looking out on a world of sorrow and pain and
+sin that He has come to redeem, and for which, in redeeming it, to
+die. Presently, the shepherds come in and complete the group, the
+representatives of universal humanity at the birth of their King,
+We have the whole world-problem in small, but here there is no
+consciousness of it. No echo of world-politics or of movements of
+thought break in here. But we know that here is the beginning of
+that which will set at naught world-politics and revolutionise
+movements of thought, that here is the centre about which humanity
+will move in the coming time. Here is that which is fundamental and
+abiding because here is the one invincible power of the
+universe--love. All else will fail: prophecies, systems of
+philosophy, religions, political and social structures; each in the
+time of its flourishing, proclaiming itself the last word of human
+wisdom,--these in bewildering succession have arisen and passed
+away. But love has survived them all. Love never faileth; through
+the slow succession of the centuries it is winning the world to
+God.</p>
+<p>It were well if we could learn to look on the happenings of this
+world as the miracles of divine love. We think of the power, the
+justice, the judgment of God as visible in this world's history;
+but these are but the instruments of love, and all that He does has
+its foundation in love and receives its impulse from love. This
+Nativity is the divine love coming into the world on its last
+adventure, determined to win man, all other means failing, by the
+extremity of sacrifice. The final word about this Child will be
+that having loved his own He loved them unto the uttermost, he
+loved them without stinting, with the uttermost capacity of love.
+Understanding this meaning of the love of God, we are prepared for
+the further fact that God uses all sorts of instruments as the
+instruments of His love. He shares Himself. He pours Himself into
+human life. He takes men into partnership in the work of
+redemption. Whenever a soul is mastered by love, it becomes a tool
+in God's hands. The progress of the Church--of God's Kingdom--might
+be described as the accumulation of these tools wherewith God
+works--souls who are so devoted to Him as to be the medium of
+bringing His power, the power of love, to bear on the souls of
+their brethren.</p>
+<p>To be the highest, the most perfect, of all the instruments of
+redemption God chose Mary of Nazareth to be the Mother of His Son.
+She is the most complete human embodiment of God's love. She, in
+her perfect purity, can transmit that love as power with the least
+loss of energy in the process of transmission. When we think of the
+saints as the means of God's action, we think of blessed Mary as
+the highest of the saints and the means most perfectly adapted to
+God's ends. Here at Bethlehem she holds God in her arms and looks
+into the human face that He has taken for this present work and all
+her being is absorbed in love. Oblivious, we think her, of her mean
+surroundings, of the animals that share with her their stable, of
+the shepherds who come in and look on in wonder, of S. Joseph
+standing by in sympathy. Love is all. Love is a passion consuming
+her being--what can the attendant circumstances matter? And to-day,
+after all these centuries: to-day the Child is the Ascended and
+Enthroned Redeemer, His risen and glorified humanity, transmitting
+something of the divine glory, seated at the right hand of the
+Majesty of God. And Mary, the Mother? Can we have any other thought
+than that she who on the first Christmas morning looks into the
+face of her Baby, still, to-day, looks up into the face of her
+divine Son, and the look is the same look of love? And can we think
+of the look that comes back to her from eyes that are human, taken
+from her body, though they be in very truth the eyes of God--can we
+think, I say, of the eyes of her Child and her God bringing
+anything else than the message of love? Can we think that when in
+answer to our invocation she presents our prayers in union with her
+own, that love will fail?</p>
+<p>But let us come back to earth--to Bethlehem--on that first
+Christmas eve and listen to the songs of the angels as they sing
+over the star-lit fields. How near heaven seems! How real is God!
+How joyful is this season of peace to men of good will! The message
+is of peace, but that peace will need to have its nature explained
+in the coming years if men's hearts are not to fail them and their
+faith wither away. It is not a general peace to the world that is
+being proclaimed. Later on our Lord will say: "My peace I give unto
+you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you." It is such a gift
+as can be enjoyed only by men of good will; converted men, that is
+to say, men whose will is close set with the will of God. For how
+should there be peace in any world on any other terms? How can
+there be peace for those who are in rebellion against God? Our Lord
+can promise peace, and can fulfil His promise because He is
+bringing a new potency into human life. He is a new way of approach
+to God, a new way into the Holiest of all. Through His humanity God
+is united to man, and through it man, any man, can be united to
+God. And one of the results of that union is this gift of peace,
+and the fact that it arises from the union explains its new
+character, why our Lord calls it His peace.</p>
+<p>This peace is the Christmas gift of the divine child to us. This
+is the method of God's work, from the inside out; from the
+spiritual fact to its external result. We do not begin by finding
+peace with this world: "in the world ye shall have tribulation."
+And most of the failure to attain peace, and much of men's loss of
+faith is due to repudiation of the divine method. We live in a
+disordered and pain-stricken world where human life is uniformly a
+life of trial and struggle, and our easy yielding to temptation is
+an attempt at some sort of an adjustment with the world such as we
+think will produce peace and quiet. We constantly demand of
+religion that it should effect this for us. So far as one can see
+much of the revolt against religion to-day has its ground in the
+failure of religion to meet the demands made upon it for a better
+world. Men look out on a world seething with unrest and filled with
+injustice, and they turn upon the Church and ask, "Why have you not
+changed all this? Are you not, in fact, neglecting your duty in not
+changing it? Or if you are not neglecting your duty, you must at
+least confess to your impotence. Your self-confessed business is to
+make a better world."</p>
+<p>True; but only on the conditions which love imposes. Religion
+does not propose to improve the world by a more skilful application
+of the principles of worldliness. It does not propose to turn
+stones into bread at the demand of any devils whatsoever. It does
+not say, "If you will support me and give me a certain superficial
+honour, I will bless your efforts and increase the success of your
+undertakings." Religion proposes to improve the world on the
+condition that the principles of religion shall be accepted as the
+working principles of life; on condition, that is, that love shall
+be made the ground of human association. Religion can make a better
+world, it can make the kingdoms of God and of His Christ; but it
+can only do so on the condition that it is whole-heartedly accepted
+and thoroughly applied. The proof that it can do this is in the
+fact that it can and does make better individuals. Wherever men and
+women have lived by the principles of the Gospel they have brought
+forth the fruits of the Gospel. It has done this, not under some
+specially favourable circumstances, but it has done it under all
+circumstances of life and in all nations of men. What has been done
+in unnumbered individual cases, can be done in whole communities
+when the communities want it done. It is quite pointless in times
+of great social distress to ask passionately, "why does not God
+make a better world?" The only question which is at all to the
+point is, "why has God not made <i>me</i> better?" The problem of
+God's dealing with the world is, in essence, the problem of God's
+dealing with me. If He has not reformed me, if I do not, in my
+self-examination, find that I am responding to the ideals of God,
+as far as I know them, there is small point in declamations about
+the state of society. Society that is godless, is just a mass of
+godless individuals; and I can understand why God does not reform
+the world perfectly well from the study of my own case. What in me
+prevents the full control of God is the same that prevents that
+control over the whole of society: and I know that that is not lack
+of knowledge, but lack of love. Men ignore the primary obligation
+of life: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... and thy neighbour as
+thyself." As long as they ignore that, there can be no reformed
+world, no world reflecting the divine purpose, no
+society,--whatever may be its widely multiplied
+legislation,--securing to men conditions of life which are sane and
+satisfactory.</p>
+<p>Therefore the Child who is born of Mary in Bethlehem while the
+angels are singing their carols over the fields where the shepherds
+watch, the Child Who brings peace to men of good will, still, after
+nearly two thousand years, finds His gift ignored and His longing
+to lift men to God unsatisfied. "He came unto His own and His own
+received Him not"--and the conditions are not vitally changed
+to-day. When we think of a world of fifteen hundred million human
+beings, the number of those who profess and call themselves
+Christians is comparatively small; the number of actually
+practicing Christians, of men and women who do live by the Gospel,
+without reserve and without compromise, is vastly smaller. The
+resistance of the principles of the Gospel is to-day intense; the
+demand for compromise is insistent. We are asked to throw over a
+system which has obviously failed, and to accept as the equivalent
+and to permit to pass under the same name a system which is
+fundamentally different; a system whose end is man and not God,
+whose means are natural and not supernatural, which seek to produce
+an adjustment with this world that means comfort, rather than an
+adjustment with the spiritual world which means sanctity.</p>
+<p>The ideal achievement of peace is here in Bethlehem where the
+mother holds the Holy Child to her breast, while her spirit is
+utterly in union with Him Who is both man and God. There is never
+any break in the pure peace of S. Mary because there is never any
+moment when her will is separated from the will of God, when her
+union with Him fails. This peace of perfect union has, through the
+merits of her Son, been hers always; she has never known the wrench
+of the will that separates itself from God. She has always been
+poor; she has been perplexed with life; she has suffered and will
+suffer intensely, suffer most where she loves most; but peace she
+has never lost, because her will has never wavered in its
+allegiance. What visibly she is doing in these moments of her great
+joy, holding God to her breast in a passion of love, she in fact is
+doing always--always is she one with God.</p>
+<p>That undisturbed peace of a never broken union is never possible
+for us. We have known what it is to reject the will of God and go
+our own way and indulge the appetites of our nature in violation of
+our recognised standards of life. If we are to come to peace it
+must be along the rough road of repentance. And it is wholly just
+that it should be so; that we should win back to God at the expense
+of shame and suffering; that we should retrace the road that we
+have travelled, with weary feet and bleeding heart. This after all
+does not much matter: what does matter immensely is that there is a
+road back to God and that we find it. What matters is that we
+discover that repentance and reformation are the only road to
+peace. We are offered many other roads alleged to lead to the same
+place; but not even a child should be deceived by the modern
+substitutes for repentance, by the shallow teaching whereby it is
+attempted to persuade men of the innocence of sin. They are never
+worth discussing, these modern substitutes for repentance. Men
+accept them, not because they are rational or convincing, but
+because they offer a justification for going the way that they have
+already made up their minds to go. But it is plain that whatever
+else they do they do not afford a basis for peace. They are no rock
+foundation for eternity. Other foundation for peace can no man lay
+or has laid than the acceptance of the salvation offered in Jesus
+Christ. He is our peace; and when we discover that, He makes peace
+in us by the application to our souls of the Blood of His Cross.
+This is the peace He came to bring. This the peace that the angels
+announced as they sang over Bethlehem. This is the peace which is
+ceaselessly proclaimed from the altars of the Christian Church, the
+peace of God which passeth understanding, the peace which is
+offered to all men of good will.</p>
+<p>How shall we attain it? By being men of good will, plainly. But
+what constitutes good will in a man? That which I have already
+discussed, perhaps abundantly, simplicity and childlike obedience
+of character. S. Joseph, the guardian of Mary and her Child here in
+Bethlehem, is the best example we can have of a man of good will, a
+man who under the most difficult circumstances responded with
+perfect readiness and complete obedience to the heavenly message
+that came to him. This is to be his course through the few years
+that he will live, to give himself to the will of God in the care
+of Jesus. We are men of good will if we do whatsoever our Lord says
+to us, if we are seeking first of all the Kingdom of God and its
+righteousness, if our estimate of values corresponds to our
+Lord's.</p>
+<p>There is our trouble--that old trouble of feebly trying to live
+the life of the Kingdom when what we actually want is the offer of
+this world. There is, there can be, no peace in a divided life.
+There is a certain spiritual sloth which has the exterior look of
+peace, as a corpse looks peaceful, but it has no relation to the
+peace which God gives. It is in fact the wages of sin, wages easily
+earned and long enjoyed. But so long as we are spiritually alive,
+so long we cannot enjoy whole-heartedly even the most fascinating
+of sins because there is lurking in the background the sense of the
+transitoriness of our sin and of the imminence of death and
+judgment. There is the skeleton in every man's closet until he
+finally makes choice on one side or the other. For we are not
+ignorant of the spiritual obligations of life. We always know more
+than we have achieved. When we talk about our ignorance and
+perplexity, we are not meaning ignorance and perplexity about the
+obligation to live in a certain way, and to perform certain duties,
+on this particular day: rather we are making this alleged ignorance
+of the future an excuse for not taking action in the present,
+action which we know to be obligatory.</p>
+<p>And peace is so wonderful a gift! To feel oneself in harmony
+with God, to know that one is carefully seeking His will and making
+it one's first and highest duty to perform it. To have found the
+peace of the forgiven soul as the result of absolution, at the
+expense of much shame and repugnance, it may be, but with what
+marvellous compensations when we go away with a sense of restored
+purity and the friendship of God--life looks so different when we
+look at it through purified eyes! The old life has held us so
+tightly, the old sins have clung so close; and then there was a day
+when we gave up self and turned to God and the Gift of God in Jesus
+Christ; and then we saw how miserable and vile and naked we had
+been all through the time of our boasted freedom; and we came as
+children to Mary's Child and offered ourselves to Him for
+cleansing. We kneel and offer to Him our wills and ask that they
+may be made good, and kept good in union with His most holy will.
+Then we find how true this word is: "In Me ye shall have peace: in
+the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have
+overcome the world." It is true, is it not? not only as we commonly
+interpret, that the disciples of Christ shall have tribulation in
+this world; but that much that we, giving ourselves to the world,
+counted joy, was in reality tribulation, and we are glad to be rid
+of it.</p>
+<blockquote>A babe is born to bliss us bring.<br>
+I heard a maid lulley and sing.<br>
+She said: "Dear Son, leave Thy weeping:<br>
+Thy, Father is the King of bliss."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"Lulley," she said and sung also,<br>
+"My own dear Son, why are Thou wo?<br>
+Have I not done as I should do?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"Nay, dear mother, for thee weep I nought,<br>
+But for the woe that shall be wrought<br>
+To Me ere I mankind have bought.<br>
+Was never sorrow like it i-wis."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"Peace, dear Son! Thou grievest me sore:<br>
+Thou art my child, I have no more.<br>
+Should I see men mine own Son slay?<br>
+Alas, my dear Son, what means all this?"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"My hands, Mother, that ye now see,<br>
+Shall be nailed to a tree;<br>
+My feet also fast shall be,<br>
+Men shall weep that shall see this."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"Ah, dear Son, hard is my happe<br>
+To see my child that lay in my lap,--<br>
+His hands, His feet that I did wrappe,--<br>
+Be so nailed; they never did amisse."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"Ah, dear Mother, yet shall a spear<br>
+My heart asunder all but tear:<br>
+No wonder if I care-ful were<br>
+And wept full sore to think on this."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE MAGI</h3>
+<center>Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days
+of Herod the king, Behold,<br>
+there came Magi from the East to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he
+that is born king of the Jews?<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. II, i.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, which hath borne for
+us God the Word. We give thee salutation with the Angel Gabriel,
+saying, Hail, thou that art full of grace; the Lord is with
+thee.<br>
+<br>
+Hail to thee, O Virgin, the very and true Queen; hail, glory of our
+race. Thou hast borne for us Emmanuel.<br>
+<br>
+We pray thee, remember us, O thou our faithful advocate with our
+Lord Jesus Christ, that He may forgive us our sins.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">COPTIC.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-o.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>ut of the East, over the desert, we see coming to Bethlehem the
+train of the star-led Magi. The devout imagination of the Church,
+dwelling upon the <i>significance</i> rather than the bare
+historical statements of the Gospel, have seen them as the
+representatives of the whole Gentile world. We often think of the
+treatment of the sacred story by the teachers and preachers of the
+Church as embroidering the original narratives with legendary
+material. We can look at it in that way; and by so doing, I think,
+miss the meaning of the facts. What we call ecclesiastical legend
+will often turn out on examination to be but the unfolding of the
+meaning of an event in terms of the creative imagination. The
+object is to present vividly what the event actually means when the
+meaning is of such widely reaching significance as far to overpass
+the simple facts. It is thus, I take it, that we must understand
+the story of the Magi as it takes shape in pious story. That the
+Magi were kings, and that they were three in number, emphasises the
+felt importance of their coming to the cradle of our Lord.
+Actually, they were understood to represent the Gentile world
+offering its allegiance to our blessed Lord, and therefore they
+would naturally represent the three branches of the Gentile world
+as it was understood at the time. The importance of their mission
+was reflected in the presentation of them as kings--no less persons
+were required to fill the dignity of the part. There was, too, a
+whole mass of prophecy to be reckoned with and interpreted in its
+relation to the event, the most obvious of which was that of
+Isaiah: "And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the
+brightness of thy rising."</p>
+<p>The Church story is essentially true, is but a dramatic
+rendering of the Gospel story. We may however content ourselves
+with the more simple rendering. We can hardly think of the stable
+as the setting of the reception of the Eastern Sages. Just when
+they came we cannot tell; but we seem compelled to put the Epiphany
+where the Church puts it in her year, somewhere between the
+Nativity and the Presentation, and the scene of it will still be,
+the Gospel implies, Bethlehem. "Now when Jesus was born in
+Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Behold, there
+came Magi from the East to Jerusalem." And at the direction of
+Herod, and guided by the Star they came to Bethlehem and offered
+their gifts and their worship. "They saw the young child with Mary
+his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had
+opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and
+frankincense, and myrrh."</p>
+<p>We try to get before us what would have been the mind of S. Mary
+through all these happenings which attended the birth of her Child.
+What is written of her here is no doubt characteristic: "Mary kept
+all these and pondered them in her heart." Wonder at the ways of
+God had been hers for so many months now--wonder, with devout
+meditation upon their meaning. Where there is no resistance to
+God's will but only the desire to know it more fully there is
+always the gradual assimilation of the truth. S. Mary moves in a
+realm of mystery from the moment of the Annunciation to the very
+end of her life. It is so difficult to understand what is the
+meaning of God in this unspeakable gift of a Son conceived by the
+power of the Holy Spirit, and in the constant accompaniment of pain
+and disaster and disappointment which is the unfolding experience
+of her life in relation to Him. But we feel in her no speculation,
+no rebellion, no insistence on knowing more; but we feel that there
+must have been a growing appreciation of the work of God,
+unhesitating acceptance of His will. Just to keep things in one's
+heart is so often the best way of arriving at an understanding of
+them; is the best way, at least, of arriving at the conviction that
+what we in fact need to understand is not so much what God does as
+that it is God Who does it. Our true aim in life is to understand
+God, and through that understanding we shall sufficiently
+understand life. Failure in human life is commonly due to an
+attempt to understand life without any attempt to understand it in
+relation to God. It is like an attempt to understand a work of art
+without an attempt to understand the artist, to estimate in terms
+of mechanical effort, rather than in terms of mind. A work of art
+means what the artist means when he creates it: life means what God
+means in His creation and government of it, and it is hopeless to
+expect to understand it without reference to the mind of God.</p>
+<p>Therefore Mary's way is the right way--the way of acceptance and
+meditation. So she sought to follow the mind of God. We are told
+little of her, but we are told quite enough to understand this. We
+know well her method, that she kept things in her heart. And we
+have one splendid example of the result of the method in the
+Magnificat. There the results of her communion with God break forth
+in that Canticle which ever since has been one of the priceless
+treasures of the Church. The Gospels never tell us very much; but
+if we will follow Mary's method they tell us enough to let us see
+the very hand of God in the working out of our salvation; they give
+us sample events from which we easily infer God's meaning
+otherwhere.</p>
+<p>And we may be sure that the months that followed the
+Annunciation would have been months of ever-deepening spiritual
+communion, resulting in a rapidly advancing spiritual maturity. One
+necessary result would have been to prepare the blessed Mother to
+receive new manifestations of God's Providence, and to fit them
+into the whole body of her experience. She would not at any time be
+lost in helpless surprise before a new development of the purpose
+of God. Surprised as she must have been when the Eastern Sages came
+to kneel before the Child she carried at her breast, and hail Him
+as born King of the Jews, she would have set to work to fit this
+new experience into what her acquired knowledge of the divine
+meaning had become. And one can have no doubt that these visitors
+from afar would have told her enough of the grounds of their action
+to illumine for her the prophecies concerning her Son.</p>
+<p>The special incidents that the Gospel select for record leave us
+always conscious that they <i>are</i> a selection and therefore
+must have special significance. That we are told that the Magi
+offered certain gifts, rather than told the words of homage
+wherewith they presented them turns our attention to the nature of
+the gifts as presumably having a significance in themselves rather
+than because of any actual value. In the gifts of these Gentiles
+come from afar to kneel before Him Whom they recognise as King of
+the Jews, we are compelled to see a certain attitude of humanity
+toward Him Who is revealed to be not only the King of the Jews, but
+Lord of Heaven and earth; they give what humanity needs must always
+give--the gold of a perfect oblation, the incense of perpetual
+intercession, the myrrh of a humble self-abandonment.</p>
+<p>These which are offered as the ideal tribute of humanity by the
+star-led Magi are found in their highest human perfection
+exemplified in the Mother of the Child to Whom the tribute is made.
+Perfect are they in our Lord; and she who is nearest Him in nature
+is nearest Him in the perfection of nature. We turn from God's
+ideal as set out in our blessed Lord to see it reflected as in a
+glass in the life of her whose perfection is the perfect rendering
+of His grace. Mary is so perfect because, by God's election, she is
+"full of grace."</p>
+<p>We, alas! limp after the ideal at a long distance. One pictures
+the life of sanctity under the familiar symbol of the race course,
+where many start in the race, and many, one by one, fall out by the
+wayside. Those who go on the race's end, go on because of certain
+qualities of endurance that we discover in them. In those who run
+the spiritual race for the amaranthine crown these qualities of
+endurance are not natural, but supernatural: they come not of birth
+but of rebirth. They are qualities which we draw from God. "It is
+not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
+showeth mercy." The hand that sets the race confers the gifts that
+enable one to win it. "So run that ye may obtain."</p>
+<p>And perhaps the chiefest of all those gifts is that which makes
+us, the children of God, capable of the adoration of our Father.
+Worship is no other than the utter giving of ourselves, giving as
+Christ gave, "Who being originally in the form of God, thought it
+not a thing to be grasped at to be equal with God, but emptied
+Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in
+the likeness of men"; giving as the blessed Virgin gave when she
+gave, as she must have thought and have been willing to give, her
+whole reputation among men in response to the call of God; giving
+complete, in which there is no withholding. That is worship,
+sacrifice, the pure gold of self-oblation.</p>
+<p>But it is possible to think of the power of worship from another
+point of view. God never takes but He gives. What He appears to
+take He gives back with His blessing, and we find the restored gift
+multiplied manifold. So in the very act of our worship God confers
+on us power.</p>
+<p>For it is true, is it not, that in the very act of worship we
+experience, not exhaustion but exhilaration. In the very act of
+giving ourselves to God, God gives Himself to us, and in
+overflowing abundance. That is what we find to be true in our
+highest act of worship, the blessed Eucharist. Here God and man
+meet in a perfect communion. Here we offer ourselves in
+sacrifice--ourselves, our souls and bodies--in union with the
+sacrifice of our Lord; and here our Lord, Who is the sacrifice
+itself, not only offers Himself, but also He imparts Himself to
+those who are united with Him. And out of this sacrifice, thus
+issuing in an act of union, there flows the perpetual renewing of
+the vitality of the spiritual life. We are sustained from day to
+day by this sacrificial feeding; our strength which is continually
+being drawn upon by the demands of life, by the temptations we have
+to resist, by the exertion that is called for in all spiritual
+exercise, is renewed by our participation in the Body and Blood of
+our Lord. I am sure that all those who are accustomed to frequent
+communion feel the drain upon their strength when at any time they
+are deprived of their great privilege. I am also sure that many who
+feel that their spiritual life is but languid, or those other many
+who seem only dimly to feel that there are spiritual problems to be
+met, and spiritual strength needed for the meeting of them, would
+find themselves immensely helped, would find their minds illumined
+and their strength sustained in more frequent participation in the
+sacrificial worship and feasting of the Church. The attitude of
+vast numbers of those who are regarded as quite sincere Christians
+is wholly incomprehensible. The life of God is day by day poured
+out at the altars of the Church, and they go their way in seeming
+unconsciousness of its presence, of its appeal, of its virtue, or
+of their own sore need of it. The Magi come from a far distance on
+a hazardous journey into an unknown country that they may offer the
+gold of their adoration to an infant King; and the Christian feebly
+considers whether he is not too tired to get up of a morning and go
+a short distance to receive the Body and Blood of the Redeemer of
+his soul!</p>
+<p>The Magi came also bringing the incense of their intercession.
+Their privilege was that they were admitted to the very Presence
+Chamber of the great King. That the Infant in Mary's arms did not
+show any sign of kingship, the humble room where they were received
+bore no resemblance to the presence chamber of such kings as they
+were accustomed to wait upon, was to them of no consequence. They
+were endowed with the gift of faith, and believed the supernatural
+guiding rather than the outward seeming. The faith that had
+followed the star from so great a distance was not likely to be
+quenched by the antithesis of what must have been their imagination
+of the reality, of all the pictures that had been filling their
+minds as they pushed on across the desert. It was no more
+incredible that the King Whom they were seeking should be found in
+humble guise in a peasant's cottage than that they should have been
+guided to Him by a heavenly star. The gift of God to them was that
+they should be permitted to enter the presence of the King.</p>
+<p>This right of admission to the divine Presence is the precious
+gift of God to us. Since the heavens received the ascending Lord
+the Kingdom of heaven has been open to all believers. Prayer is a
+very simple and common thing in our experience; and yet when we try
+to think out its implications we are overwhelmed with the wonder of
+it. It implies a God Who waits upon our pleasure: it reveals to us
+a Father Who is ever ready to listen to the voice of His children.
+No broken hearted sinner, overwhelmed with the conviction of his
+vileness, cries out in the agony of his repentance but God is ready
+to hear. "He is more ready to hear than we to pray." No man pours
+out his thanksgivings for the abundant blessings he discovers in
+his life but the heart of God is glad in his gladness. No child
+kneels at night to repeat his simple prayer but God bends over him
+and blesses him. The wonder of it is summed up in our Lord's words:
+"The Father Himself loveth you," which are as an open door into the
+inner sanctuary, an invitation to enter to those who are hesitating
+on the threshold of the Holy of Holies.</p>
+<p>And there is no danger of tiring God: we come ceaselessly,
+endlessly. The cries of earth go up to Him, pitiful, ignorant,
+foolish cries; but they find God ready to hear and answer,
+fortunately not according to our ignorance but according to His
+great mercy. We think of the clouds of prayer in all ages, from all
+nations, in all tongues, and the very vastness of them gives us an
+index of the divine love.</p>
+<p>And it is not simply for ourselves that we pray, nor do we pray
+by ourselves; it is of God's love that in the work of prayer we are
+associated with one another. There is nothing further from the
+divine plan of life than our present individualism. Our temptation
+is to be egotistic and self-centred; to want to approach God alone
+with our private needs and wishes. We incline to travel the
+spiritual way by ourselves; we want no company; we want no one
+between our souls and God. But that precisely is not the divine
+method. We come to God through Christ; we come in association with
+the members of the Body. Our standing as Christians before Him is
+dependent upon our corporate relation to one another in His
+Son.</p>
+<p>Important issues are involved. We attain through this associated
+life of the Christian the power of mutual intercession. We find
+that it is our privilege to share our prayers with others, and to
+be interested in one another's lives. We have common interests and
+we work them out in common. Therefore when we try to put before us
+an ideal picture of the power of prayer, it will not be the
+solitary individual offering his personal supplications to the
+Father, but it will be the community of the faithful assembled for
+the offering of the divine Sacrifice. It is the praying Body that
+best satisfies our ideal of prayer, where we are conscious of
+helping one another in the work of intercession. We remember, too,
+when we think of prayer as prayer of the Body of Christ, that it is
+not just the visible congregation that is participating in it, but
+that all the Body share in the intercessions, wherever they may
+individually be. Our thoughts go up from the little assembly in the
+humble church and lose themselves in the splendour of the heavenly
+intercession where we are associated with prophets and apostles and
+martyrs, and with Mary the Mother of God.</p>
+<p>There was a third gift that the Magi brought to Him Whom they
+hailed King, a gift that is more perplexing as a gift to royalty
+than the other two. That gold and incense should be offered a King
+is clearly His royal right; but what has he to do with the
+bitterness of myrrh? But to this King myrrh is a peculiarly
+appropriate gift, for it is the symbol of complete
+self-abandonment. He who came to do not His own will but the will
+of Him that sent Him; Who laid aside the robes of His glory,
+issuing from the uncreated light that He might clothe Himself with
+the humility of the flesh, is properly honoured with the gift of
+myrrh.</p>
+<p>And as it was the symbol of His humility, so is it the symbol of
+our humanity in relation to Him. It suggests to us that uttermost
+of Christian virtues, the virtue of entire abandonment to the will
+of God. This is a most difficult virtue to acquire. We cling to
+self. We are devoted to our own wills. We rely on our own judgment
+and wisdom. We are impatient of all that gets in the way of our
+self-determination. We have in these last days made a veritable
+religion out of devotion to self, a cult of the ego.</p>
+<p>But he who will enter into the sanctuary of the divine life, he
+who will seek union with God, he who will be one with the Father in
+the Son, must abandon self. He must lose his life in order to save
+it. He must let go the world to cling to the Lord of life. This
+will of the man which is so insistent, so persistent, so assertive,
+so tenacious, must be laid aside and the Will of Another adopted in
+its place. Often this is bitter. Very true of us it is that when we
+were young we girded ourselves and walked whither we would; but it
+must be in the end, if we make life a spiritual success, that when
+we are old another shall gird us and carry us whither we would
+not.</p>
+<p>The secret of life is found when the bitterness of myrrh is
+turned to sweetness in the discovery that the outcome of the
+sacrificial life is not that it be narrowed but enlarged; and that
+for the life which we have entrusted to Him God will do more than
+we ask or think. When our will becomes one with the will of God we
+are surprised to find that we have ceased to think of what we once
+called our sacrifices, because life in Christ reveals itself to us
+as of infinite joy and richness, so that we forget the things that
+are behind and gladly press on.</p>
+<blockquote>Queen of heaven, blessed may thou be<br>
+For Godes Son born He was of thee,<br>
+For to make us free.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria Tibi, Domine.<br>
+<br>
+Jesu, Godes Son, born He was<br>
+In a crib with hay and grass,<br>
+And died for us upon the cross.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gloria Tibi, Dominie.<br>
+<br>
+To our Lady make we our moan,<br>
+That she may pray to her dear Son,<br>
+That we may to His bliss come.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria Tibi, Dominie.<br>
+<br>
+Sixteenth Century.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE PRESENTATION</h3>
+<center>And when the days of her purification according to the law
+of Moses were accomplished, they<br>
+brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke II. 22.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>O come let us worship the Holy Trinity, the Father, the
+Son, and the Holy Ghost,--we the Christian nations, for He is our
+true God.<br>
+<br>
+And we hope in Holy Mary, that God will have mercy upon us through
+her prayers.<br>
+<br>
+Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, who hath borne for us God the
+Word.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">COPTIC</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he reading of a story in the Gospels is often like looking
+through a window down some long arcade; there is in the foreground
+the group of actors in whom we are presently interested, and beyond
+them is the whole background of contemporary life to which they
+belong, of which they are a part. If we have time to think out the
+meaning of this surrounding life we gain added insight into the
+meaning of our principal characters. It is so now as we watch this
+group of humble peasant folk coming up to the temple to fulfil the
+demands of the law of Moses. In the precincts of the temple they
+are merged in a larger group whose interests are clearly identical
+with their own, and whom we easily see to be the local
+representatives of a party--the name, no doubt, suggests an
+organisation which they had not--scattered throughout Judea. Their
+interest was the redemption of Israel. They were the true heirs of
+the prophets, and among them the prophecies which concerned the
+Lord's Christ were the subject of constant study and meditation.
+Amid the movements and intrigues of political and religious
+parties, they abode quietly in the temple, as Simeon and Anna, or
+in their homes, as Zacharias and Elizabeth, <i>waiting</i>. Their
+power was the silent power of sanctity, the power that flows from
+lives steeped in meditation and prayer. They constitute that
+remnant which is the depository of the hopes of Israel and the
+saving salt which prevents the utter putrefaction of the body of
+the nation.</p>
+<p>We cannot for a moment doubt that Mary and Joseph were of this
+remnant, and that they were in complete sympathy with those whom
+they found here in the temple when the Child Jesus was brought in
+"to do for him after the custom of the law." The actual ceremony of
+the purification was soon over, the demands of the law satisfied.
+Neither Jesus nor Mary had any inner need of these observances;
+their value in their case was that by submission to them they
+associated themselves closely with their brethren, our Lord thus
+continuing that divine self-emptying which he had begun at the
+Incarnation. We are impressed with the completeness of this
+stooping of God when we see the offering that Mary brings, "A pair
+of turtle doves," the offering of the very poor. Our Lord has
+accepted life on its lowest economic terms in order that nothing in
+His mission shall flow from adventitious aids. He must owe all in
+the accomplishment of His work to the Father Who gave it Him to do.
+It will be the essence of the temptation that He must soon undergo
+that He shall consent to call to His aid earthly and material
+supports and base His hopes of success on something other than
+God.</p>
+<p>Accidentally, there is this further demonstration contained in
+the poverty of the Holy Family, that, namely, the completest
+spiritual privilege, the fullest spiritual development, is
+independent of "possessions." It is no doubt true that "great
+possessions" do not of necessity create a bar in all cases to
+spiritual accomplishment; but to many of us it is a consolation to
+know that the completest sanctity humanity has known has been
+wrought out in utter poverty of life. We shall have occasion to
+speak more of this later; we now only note the fact that those whom
+we meet in the pages of the New Testament as waiting hopefully for
+the redemption of Israel are waiting in poverty and hard work.</p>
+<p>What we find in S. Mary as she passes through the ceremony of
+her purification from a child-bearing which had in no circumstance
+of it anything impure, is the spirit of sacrifice which submission
+to the law implies. She has caught the spirit of her Son, the
+spirit of selfless offering to the will of God. It is the central
+accomplishment of the life of sanctity. The life of sanctity must
+be wrought out from the centre, from our contact with God. No one
+becomes holy by works, whatever may be the nature of the works.
+Works, the external life, are the expression of what we are, they
+are the externalization of our character. If they be not the
+expression of a life hid with Christ in God they can have no
+spiritual value, whatever may be their social value. The kind of
+works which "are done to be seen of men" "have their reward," that
+is, the sort of reward they seek, human approval; they have no
+value in the realm of the spirit.</p>
+<p>But the life that is lived as sacrifice, as a thing perfectly
+offered to God, is a life growing up in God day by day. It is our
+Lord's life, summed up from this point of view in the "I come to do
+thy will, O God." Its most perfect reflection is caught by blessed
+Mary with her acceptance of God's will: "Behold, the handmaid of
+the Lord." But it is the life expression of all sanctity; for the
+saint is such chiefly by virtue of his sacrificial attitude. It is
+the completest account of the life of sanctity that it "leaves all"
+to follow a divine call. It is the response of the Apostles who, as
+James and John, leave their father Zebedee and the boats and the
+nets and the hired servants, to follow Jesus. It is the answer of
+Matthew who rises from the receipt of custom at the Master's word.
+It is the answer of all saints in all times. Sanctity means the
+abandonment of all for Christ: it means the embracing of the
+poverty of Jesus and Mary.</p>
+<p>Is sanctity then, or the possibility of it, shut within the
+narrow limits of a poor life? Well, even if it were, the limits
+would not be so very narrow. By far the greater part of the human
+race at any time has been poor, as poor as the Holy Family.
+Unfortunately, Christianity is forgetting its vocation of poverty
+and becoming a matter of well-to-do-ness. But we need not forget
+that the poor are the majority. However, the fact is not that
+economical poverty is automatically productive of spirituality, but
+that accepted and offered poverty is the road to the heart of God.
+It is not denied that the rich man may consecrate and offer his
+goods to God and make them instruments of God's service; but in the
+process he runs great risk of deceiving himself and of attempting
+to deceive God--the risk of quietly substituting for the spirit of
+sacrifice the spirit of commercial bargaining, and attempting to
+buy the favour of God, and of ransoming his great possessions by a
+well-calculated tribute. It is not so much our possessions as the
+way we hold them that is in question; it is a question whether the
+inner motive of our life is the will to sacrifice or the will to be
+rich. "They that desire to be rich fall into temptation and a
+snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in
+destruction and perdition,"</p>
+<p>These dangers S. Paul noted as the besetting dangers of riches
+are counteracted by the possession of the spirit of sacrifice which
+holds all things at the disposal of God, and views life as
+opportunity for the service of God. And in so estimating life, we
+must remember that money is not the only thing that human beings
+possess. As I pointed out the vast majority of the human race have
+no money: it by no means follows that they have no capacity or
+field for the exercise of the spirit of sacrifice. There is, for
+instance, an abundant opportunity for the exercise of that spirit
+in the glad acceptance of the narrow lot that may be ours. Probably
+many, indeed most, poor are only economically poor; they fall under
+S. Paul's criticism in that "they desire to be rich," and are
+therefore devoid of the spirit of sacrifice that would transform
+their actual poverty into a spiritual value. But all the powers and
+energies of life do in fact constitute life's capital. A poor boy
+has great possessions in the gifts of nature that God has granted
+him. He may use this capital as he will. He may be governed by "the
+desire to be rich," or by the desire to consecrate himself to the
+will and service of God--and the working out of life will be
+accordingly. He may become very rich economically, or he may devote
+his life to the service of his fellows as physician, teacher,
+missionary, or in numberless other paths. Once more, the meaning of
+life is in its voluntary direction, and whatever may be his
+economic state, he may, if he will, be "rich toward God."</p>
+<p>If what we are seeking is to follow the Gospel-life, if we are
+seeking to express toward man the spirit of the Master, we find
+abundant field for the exercise of this spirit of sacrifice in our
+daily relations with others. S. Paul's rule of life: "Look not
+every man to his own things, but every man also to the things of
+others," is the practical rule of the sacrificed will. It seeks to
+fulfil the service of the Master by taking the spirit of the
+Master--His helpfulness, His consideration, His sympathy--with one
+into the detail of the day's work. It is one of the peculiarities
+of human nature that it finds it quite possible to work itself up
+to an occasional accomplishment, especially in a spectacular
+setting, of spiritual works, which it finds itself quite impotent
+to do under the commonplace routine of life. The race experience is
+accurately enough summed up in the cynical proverb: "No man is a
+hero to his valet." It expresses the fact that in ordinary
+circumstances, and under commonplace temptations, we do not succeed
+in holding life to the accomplishment which is ours when we are, as
+it were, on dress parade. In other words, we respond to the
+opinions we desire to create in others; and the spirit of sanctity
+is a response not to public opinion, but to the mind and thought of
+God. When we seek the mind of Christ, and seek to reproduce that
+mind in our own lives, seek to be possessed by it, then we shall
+gladly render back to God all life's riches which we have received
+from Him, and acknowledge in the true spirit of poverty that "all
+things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we given
+Thee."</p>
+<p>The world has got into a very ill way of thinking of God as
+<i>force</i>. Force seems in the popular mind to be the synonym of
+<i>power</i>. The only power that we understand is the power that
+<i>compels</i>, that secures the execution of its will by physical
+or moral constraint. With this conception of power in mind men are
+continually asking: "Why does not God do this or that? If he be God
+and wills goodness, why does He not execute goodness, use power to
+accomplish it?"</p>
+<p>It ought to be unnecessary to point out that such a conception
+of power is quite foreign to the Christian conception of God.
+Goodness that is compulsory is not goodness. Human legislation, in
+its enforcement of law, looks not to the production of goodness but
+to the production of order, a quite different thing. But God's
+heart is set upon the sanctification of His children and is
+satisfied with nothing less than that. "This is the will of God,
+even your sanctification." But sanctification cannot be compelled.
+The divine method is, that "when the fulness of time was come, God
+sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem
+them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of
+sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son
+into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Through this method we
+"were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." The result is not
+that we are compelled to obey, but that "the love of Christ
+constraineth us." The account of the apostolic authority is not
+that it is a commission to rule the universal Church, but "now then
+we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us;
+we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."</p>
+<p>The study of this divine method should put us on the right track
+in the attempt to estimate the nature of sanctity and the results
+we may expect from it. We shall expect nothing of spiritual value
+from force. We shall be quite prepared to turn away from the
+governing parties in Jerusalem as from those who have repudiated
+the divine method and are therefore useless for the divine ends. We
+shall turn rather to those who gather about the temple and there,
+in a life of prayer and meditation, wait for the redemption. It is
+to these, who are the real temple of the Lord, that the Lord "shall
+come suddenly," that the manifestation of God will be made. And
+their hearts will overflow with joy as they behold the fulfilment
+of the promises of God.</p>
+<p>The power of God is the power of love; and it is that love, and
+that love alone, that has won the victories of God. It is a very
+slow method, men say. No doubt. But it is the only method that has
+any success. The method of force seems effective; but its triumphs
+are illusory. Force cannot make men love, it can only make them
+hate. The world is being won to God by the love of God manifested
+in Christ Jesus our Lord. And it is as well to remember, when we
+are tempted to complain of the slowness of the process, that the
+slowness is ours, not God's. The process is slow because men will
+not consent to become the instruments of God's love for the world,
+will not transmit the crucified love of God's Son to their fellows.
+They continually, in their impatience, revert to force of some
+sort, for the attainment of spiritual ends. They become the tools
+of all sorts of secular ambitions which promise support in return
+for their co-operation. And the result may be read by any one not
+blinded by prejudice in the futility and incompetence of modern
+religions of all sorts. It is seen perhaps most of all in the pride
+of opinion which keeps the Christian world in a fragmentary
+condition, and which approaches the undoing of the sin of a divided
+Christendom with the preliminary announcement that no separated
+body must be required to admit that it has been in the wrong. Human
+disregard of the divine method of love and humility can hardly go
+farther; and the only practical result that can be expected to
+follow is such as followed from the negotiations of Herod and
+Pontius Pilate--a new Crucifixion of the Ever-sacrificed
+Christ.</p>
+<p>We have risen to the divine method when we have learned to rely
+for spiritual results upon God alone. Then is revealed to us the
+power of sanctity. We turn over the pages of the lives of the
+saints, of those who have been great in the Kingdom of God, and we
+are struck by the growing influence of these men and women. They
+are simple men and women whose life's energy is concentrated on
+some special work; they are confessors or directors; they work
+among the very poor; they lead lives of retirement in Religious
+Houses; they are preachers of the Gospel; they are missionaries.
+The one thing that they appear to have in common is utter
+consecration to the work in hand. And we see, it may be with some
+wonder, that as they become more and more absorbed in their special
+work, they become more and more centres of influence. Without at
+all willing it they draw people about them, become centres of
+influences, arouse interest, become widely known. In short, they
+are, without willing it, centres of energy. Of what energy?
+Obviously, of the energy of love: the love of God manifested in
+them draws men to God. The man at whose disposal is unlimited force
+compels men to do his will; but he draws no one to him except the
+hypocrite and the sycophant who expect to gain something by their
+servility. The saint draws men, not to himself, but to God; for
+obviously it is not his power but God's power that is being
+manifested through him.</p>
+<p>Unless we are very unfortunate we all know people whose
+attractiveness is the attractiveness of simple goodness. They are
+not learned nor influential nor witty nor clever, but we like to be
+with them. When we are asked why, we can only explain it by the
+attractiveness of their Christlikeness. What we gain from
+intercourse with them is spiritual insight and power. Their
+influence might be described as sacramental: they are means our
+Blessed Lord uses to impart Himself. They are so filled with the
+mind of Christ that they easily show Him to the world; and withal,
+quite unconsciously. For great love is possible only where there is
+great humility.</p>
+<p>And this power of sanctity which is the outcome of union with
+God is a permanent acquisition to the Kingdom of God. God's Kingdom
+is ultimately a Kingdom of saints. The sphere of God's
+self-manifestation in human life increases ever as the saints
+increase; and the power of sanctity necessarily remains while the
+saint remains, that is, forever. The saint remains a permanent
+organ of the Body of Christ, a perdurable instrument of the divine
+love. To speak humanly, the more saints there are, the more the
+love of God can manifest itself; the wider its influence on
+humanity. And the greater the Saint, that is, the nearer the Saint
+approaches the perfection of God, to which he is called--Be ye
+therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect--the more
+influential he must be; that is the more perfectly he will show the
+divine likeness and transmit the divine influence. When we think of
+the power of the saints as intercessors that is what actually we
+are thinking of,--the perfection of their understanding of the mind
+of Christ.</p>
+<p>But to return to this world and to the gathering in the temple
+on the day of the Purification. These are they in whom the hope of
+Israel rests. Israel is not a failure because it has brought forth
+these. God's work through the centuries has not come to naught
+because in these there is the possibility of a new beginning. The
+consummate flower of Israel's life is the Blessed Mother through
+whom God becomes man; and these who meet her in the temple are the
+representatives of those hidden ones in Israel who will be the
+field wherein the seed of the Word can be sown and where it will
+bring forth fruit an hundredfold. Jesus, this Child, is God made
+man; and these around Him to-day, Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna,
+are those who will receive His love and will show its power in the
+universe forever.</p>
+<p>And so it will remain always; the good ground wherein the seed
+may be sown and bring forth unto eternal life is the spiritual
+nature of man, made ready by humility and love,--"In quietness and
+confidence shall be your strength." In the quietness that waits for
+God to act, the confidence that knows that He will act when the
+time comes. It is well if our aspiration is to be of the number of
+those who live lives hid with Christ in God; who are seeking
+nothing but that the love of God may be shed abroad in their
+hearts; who are "constrained" by nothing but the love of Jesus. It
+is true that this simplicity of motive and aim will bring it about
+that our lives will be hidden lives, lives of which the world will
+take no note. We may be quite sure that none of the rulers of
+Israel thought much about old Simeon who passed his time praying in
+the temple. And if we want to be known of rulers it is doubtless a
+mistake to take the road that Simeon followed. But the reward of
+that way was that he saw "the Lord's Christ," that it was permitted
+him to take in his arms Incarnate God, and then, in his rapture, to
+sing <i>Nunc Dimittis</i>. We cannot travel two roads at once. When
+the Holy Family goes out from the temple it can go, if it will, to
+the palace of Herod, or it can go back to Bethlehem. It cannot go
+both ways and we know the way that it took. And we in our
+self-examination to-night can see two roads stretching out before
+us. We can go the way of the world, the way that seeks (whether it
+finds or no) popularity and prominence, or we can join the Holy
+Family and in company with Jesus and Mary and Joseph go back to the
+quietness and hiddenness of the House of Bread where the saints
+dwell. With them, sheltered by the Sacrifice of Jesus and the
+prayers of Mary and Joseph we can wait for the Redemption in the
+full manifestation of the life of God in us, and for the time when
+the love of God shall be fully "shed abroad in our hearts by the
+Holy Ghost which is given us."</p>
+<blockquote>O Sion, ope thy temple-gates;<br>
+See, Christ, the Priest and Victim, waits--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let lifeless shadows flee:<br>
+No more to heaven shall vainly rise<br>
+The ancient rites--a sacrifice<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All pure and perfect, see.<br>
+<br>
+Behold, the Maiden knowing well<br>
+The hidden Godhead that doth dwell<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In him her infant Son:<br>
+And with her Infant, see her bring<br>
+The doves, the humble offering<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For Christ, the Holy One.<br>
+<br>
+Here, all who for his coming sighed<br>
+Behold him, and are satisfied--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Their faith the prize hath won:<br>
+While Mary, in her breast conceals<br>
+The holy joys her Lord reveals,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And ponders them alone.<br>
+<br>
+Come, let us tune our hearts to sing<br>
+The glory of our God and King,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The blessed One and Three:<br>
+Be everlasting praise and love<br>
+To him who reigns in heaven above,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through all eternity.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>EGYPT</h3>
+<center>The angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream,
+saying,<br>
+Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into
+Egypt.<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. II, 13.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Deliver us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, from all evils
+past, present, and to come: and at the intercession for us of
+Blessed Mary who brought forth God and our Lord, Jesus Christ; and
+of the holy apostles Peter, and Paul, and Andrew; and of blessed
+Ambrose Thy confessor, and bishop, together with all Thy saints,
+favorably give peace in our days, that, assisted by the help of Thy
+mercy, we may ever be both delivered from sin, and safe from all
+turmoil. Fulfil this, by Him, with Whom Thou livest blessed, and
+reignest God, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for ever and
+ever.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">AMBROSIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hose who live in intimate union with God, the peace of whose
+lives is untroubled by the constant irruption of sin, are
+peculiarly sensitive to that mode of the divine action that we call
+supernatural. I suppose that it is not that God wishes to reveal
+Himself to souls only at crises of their experience or under
+exceptional conditions, but that only souls of an exceptional
+spiritual sensitivity are capable of this sort of approach.
+Communications of the divine will through dream or vision of inner
+voice are the accompaniment of sanctity; one may almost say that
+they are the normal means in the case of advanced sanctity. Most of
+us are too much immersed in the world, are too much the slaves of
+material things, to be open to this still, small voice of
+revelation. Our eyes are dimned by the garish light of the world,
+and our ears dulled by its clamour, so that our powers of spiritual
+perception are of the slightest. This is quite intelligible; and we
+ought not to fall into the mistake of assuming that our undeveloped
+spirituality is normal, and that what does not happen to us is
+inconceivable as having happened at all. If we want to know the
+truth about spiritual phenomena we shall put ourselves to school to
+those whose spiritual natures have attained the highest development
+and in whose experience spiritual phenomena are of almost daily
+happening.</p>
+<p>To the man "whose talk is of oxen," whose whole life is absorbed
+in the study of material things, a purely spiritual manifestation
+comes as a surprise. His instinctive impulse is to deny its reality
+as a thing obviously impertinent to his understanding of life. But
+one whose life is based on spiritual postulates, who is, however
+feebly, attempting to shape life in accordance with spiritual
+principles, though he may never have attained anything that can be
+interpreted as a distinct revelation from God by vision or voice or
+otherwise, yet must he by the very basic assumptions of his life be
+ready to regard such manifestations of God as intelligible, and
+indeed to be expected. So far from regarding divine interventions
+in life as impossible, we shall regard the Christian life which has
+no experience of them as abnormal, as not having realised its
+inheritance. The degree and kind of such intervention in life will
+vary; but it is the fact of the intervention that is important: the
+mode in a special case will be determined by the needs of that
+case. As we think along these lines we reach the conclusion that
+what we call the supernatural is not the unnatural or the abnormal,
+but is a higher mode of the natural.</p>
+<p>We are not surprised therefore to find that those whose
+spiritual development was such as to make it possible for God to
+choose them to fulfil special offices in relation to the
+Incarnation; who could be chosen to be, in the one case, the Mother
+of God-incarnate, and in the other, to be the guardian of the
+divine Child and His Blessed Mother, have the divine will in regard
+to the details of the trust committed to them, imparted to them in
+vision and in dream. So far from such vision and dream suggesting
+to us "a mythical element" in the Gospel narratives, they rather
+confirm our faith in that they harmonize with our instinctive
+conclusions as to what would be natural under the circumstances. We
+are prepared to be told that at this crisis in the Holy Child's
+life "the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying,
+Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into
+Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will
+seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the
+young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt."</p>
+<p>Thus early in our Lord's life is the element of tragedy
+introduced. The Incarnation of God stirs the diabolic powers, the
+rulers of "this darkness" to excited activity. The companion
+picture of the Nativity, of the Holy Child lying in Mary's arms, of
+the wondering shepherds, of the Magi from a far country,--the
+shadow of all this idyllic beauty is the massacre of the Innocents,
+the wailing of Rachel for her children. It is, as it were, the
+opening of a new stage in the world-old conflict where the powers
+of evil appear to have the advantage and can show the bodies of
+murdered infants as the trophies of their victory.</p>
+<p>But are we to think of the death of a child as a disaster? Has
+any actual victory redounded to the Prince of Power of the Air? One
+understands of course the grief and sense of loss that attends the
+death of any child, the breaking of the dreams which had gathered
+about its future. What the father and the mother dreamed over the
+cradle and planned for the future does not come to pass--all that
+is true. But in a consideration of the broader interests involved,
+does not the death of a baby have a meaning far deeper than a
+disappointment of hopes and dreams? It is true, is it not? that the
+coming of the child brought enrichment into the life of its
+parents? There was a new love born for this one child which is not
+the common property of all the children of the family, but is the
+peculiar possession of this child and its parents. Life--the life
+of the parents--is better and nobler by virtue of this love. They
+understand this, because when they stand by the side of the child's
+coffin they never feel that it had been better that this child had
+not come into existence. And more than that: as they commit this
+fragile body to the grave they know that there is no real sense in
+which they can say that they have lost this child. Rather, the
+child is a perpetual treasure, for the moment contemplated through
+tears, but presently to be thought of with unclouded joy. It is so
+wonderful a thing to think of this pure soul caught back to God; to
+think of it growing to spiritual maturity in God's very presence;
+to think of it following the Lamb withersoever He goeth. Yes: to
+think of it also as our child still, with our love in its heart,
+knowing that it has a father and a mother on earth, and, that, just
+because of its early death, it can be to them, what otherwise they
+would have been to it--the guard and helper of their Jives. In
+God's presence are the souls of children as perpetual intercessors
+for those whom they have left on earth; and they may well rejoice
+before God in that what appeared the tragedy of their death was in
+fact a recall from the field of battle before the testing of their
+life was made. We wept as over an irreparable loss,</p>
+<blockquote>While into nothingness crept back a host<br>
+Of shadows unexplored, of sins unsinned.</blockquote>
+<p>The artists have imagined the souls of those who first died for
+Jesus attending Him on the way to Egypt as a celestial guard. In
+any case we are certain that the angels who watched about Him so
+closely all His life were with the Holy Family as they set out upon
+the way of exile. It would have been a wearisome march but that
+Jesus was there. His presence lightened all the toils of the desert
+way. Egypt, their place of refuge, would not have seemed to them
+what it seems to us, a land of wonder, of marvellous creations of
+human skill and intelligence, but a place of banishment from all
+that was dear, from the ties of home and religion. The religion
+which lay wrapped in the Holy Child was to break down barriers and
+hindrances to the worship of God; but the time was not yet. For
+them still the Holy Land, Jerusalem, the Temple, were the place of
+God's manifestation, and all else the dwelling place of idols. They
+must have shuddered in abhorrence at those strange forms of gods
+which rose about them on every hand. We cannot ourselves fail to
+draw the contrast between the statues which filled the Egyptian
+sanctuaries and before which all Egypt, rich and poor, mighty and
+humble, prostrated themselves, and this Child sleeping on Mary's
+breast. The imagination of the Christian community later caught
+this contrast and embodied it in the legend that when Jesus crossed
+the border of Egypt, all the idols of the land of Egypt fell
+down.</p>
+<p>We cannot follow the thought of the Blessed Mother through these
+strange scenes and the experiences of these days. No doubt in the
+Jewish communities already flourishing in Egypt there would be
+welcome and the means of livelihood. But there would be perplexing
+questions to one whose habit it was to keep all things which
+concerned her strange Child hidden in her heart, the subject of
+constant meditation. Why, after the divine action which had been so
+constant from His conception to His birth, and in the circumstances
+which attended His birth, this reversal, this defeat and flight?
+Why after Bethlehem, Egypt? Why after Gabriel, Herod?</p>
+<p>It brings us back again to the primary fact that the Incarnation
+is essentially a stage in a battle, and that the nature of God's
+battles is such that He constantly appears to lose them. He "goes
+forth as a giant to run His course"; but the eyes of man cannot see
+the giant--they see only a Babe laid in a manger. We are tricked by
+our notion of what is powerful.</p>
+<blockquote>"They all were looking for a king<br>
+To slay their foes and lift them high;<br>
+Thou cam'st, a little baby thing<br>
+That made a woman cry."</blockquote>
+<p>The battle presents itself to us as a demand that we choose,
+that we take sides. The demand of Christ is that we associate
+ourselves with Him, or that we define our position as on the other
+side. "The friendship of the world is enmity with God" is a saying
+that is true when reversed: The friendship of God is enmity with
+the world. An open disclosure of the friendship of God sets all the
+powers of the world against us. This may be uncomfortable; but
+there does not appear to be any way of avoiding the opposition.</p>
+<p>Our Lord, in His Incarnation, not only stripped Himself of His
+glory, took the servant form, and in doing so deliberately deprived
+Himself of certain means which would have been vastly influential
+in dealing with men, but He also declined, in assuming human
+nature, to assume it under conditions which would have conferred
+upon Him any adventitious advantage in the prosecution of His work.
+He would display to men neither divine nor human glory: He would
+have no aid from power or position, from wealth or learning. He
+undertook His work in the strength of a pure humanity united with
+God. He declined all else. And He found that almost the first event
+of His life was to be driven into exile.</p>
+<p>And they who are associated with Him necessarily share His
+fortunes. Unless they will abandon the Child, Mary and Joseph must
+set out on the desert way. They had no doubt much to learn; but
+what is important is not the size or amount of what we learn, but
+the learning of it. When we are called, as they were, to leave all
+for Christ, it often turns out as hard, oftentimes harder, to leave
+property as riches; and the reason is that what we ultimately are
+leaving is neither poverty nor riches, but self: and self to us is
+always a "great possession."</p>
+<p>Therein, I suppose, lies the solution of the problem of the
+relation of property and Christianity in the common life. Idleness
+is sin; every one is bound to some useful labour, no matter what
+his material resources may be. And if we work for our living, if
+our labour is to be such as will support us, then there at once
+arises the problem of possessions. Useful, steady labour will
+ordinarily produce more than "food and raiment." Under present
+social arrangments accumulated property is handed on to heirs. A
+man naturally wants to make some provision for his family. Or he
+finds himself in possession of considerable wealth and the impulse
+is to spend in luxuries of one sort or another,--modern invention
+has put endless means of ministering to physical or aesthetic
+comfort within his reach. He can have a motor car, a country house,
+an expensive library; he can have beautiful works of art. And then
+he is confronted with the picture of the Holy Family which can
+never have lived much beyond the poverty line. He realises the
+nature of our Lord's life of poverty and ministry. And though the
+plain man may not feel that he can go very far in imitating this
+life, he does feel that there is a splendour of achievement in
+those who take our Lord at His word and sell all to follow Him.</p>
+<p>But the literal abandonment of life to the ideal of poverty is
+clearly not what our Lord contemplated for the universal practice
+of His followers. He nowhere indicates that all gainful labour is
+to be abandoned, or that having gained enough for food and raiment
+we are to idle thereafter, or even give ourselves to some ungainful
+work. The Kingdom of heaven does not appear to be society organised
+on the lines of socialism or otherwise. Our Lord contemplated life
+going on as it is, only governed by a new set of motives. It has as
+the result of the acceptance of the Gospel a new Orientation; and
+as a result of that it will view "possessions" in a new way. The
+acceptance of the Gospel means the self surrendered utterly to the
+will of God, and all that self possesses held at the disposal of
+that will. We may expect that God's will for us will be manifested
+in the events of life and its opportunities, and we shall hold
+ourselves alert and ready to embrace that will. It may be that the
+call will come to sell all, and we need to beware lest the
+thoroughness of the demand terrify us into the repudiation of our
+Lord's service; lest the thought of the sacrificed possessions send
+us away sorrowing. Ordinarily the call is less searching than that;
+or perhaps the mercy of God spares us from demands that would be
+beyond our strength. In any case, the truly consecrated self will
+regard luxury as a dangerous thing, replete with entanglements of
+all kinds, that it were well to avoid at the expense of any
+sacrifice. One does well to hold "possessions" in a very loose
+grip, lest the hold be reversed, and we become their servants
+rather than they ours. And it is well to emphasise again that the
+mere size of possessions is of small importance. There is a not
+very rational tendency to think of this as being a matter of
+millions, for the man of moderate income to think that there is no
+problem for him. The problem is as pressing for him as for any man.
+His minimum of comfort may be as tightly grasped as the other man's
+maximum. The only solution of the problem will be found in the
+converted self. Those who have really given themselves to God hold
+all things at His disposal. They are not thinking how they can
+indulge self but how they can glorify God.</p>
+<p>Egypt to many will stand for another sort of abandonment which
+much perplexes the immature Christian: that is, the sort of
+isolation in which the new Christian is quite likely to find
+himself when first he attempts to put Christian principles into
+practice. We imagine one brought up in the ordinary mixed circles
+of society, where there are unbelievers and lax Christians mingled
+together, and where there are no principles firmly enough held to
+interfere with any sort of enjoyment of life which offers. Such an
+one--a young woman, let us suppose--in the Providence of God
+becomes converted to our Lord, and comes to see that the lax and
+indifferent Christian life she had been leading was a mere mockery
+of Christian living. Speedily does she find when she attempts to
+put into action the principles of living which she now understands
+to be the meaning of the Gospel that a breach of sympathy has been
+opened between her and her accustomed companions; that many things
+which she was accustomed to do in their society and which made for
+their common fund of amusement are no longer possible to her. The
+careless talk, the shameless dress, the gambling, the drinking, the
+Sunday amusements--such things as these she has thrown over; and
+she finds that with them she has thrown over the basis of intimacy
+with her usual companions. It is not that they are antagonistic but
+simply that their points of contact have ceased to exist. Her own
+inhibitions exclude her automatically from most of the activities
+of her social circle. She finds herself much alone. Her friends are
+sorry for her and think her foolish and try to win her back, but it
+is clear to her that she can only go back by going back from
+Christ.</p>
+<p>This is the common case of the young whether boy or girl to-day,
+and the practical question is, Can they endure the isolation? It is
+easy to say: Let them make Christian friends; but that is not
+always practical, especially in the present state of the Church
+when there is no cohesion among its members, no true sense of
+constituting a Brotherhood, of being members of the same Body. We
+have to admit that the attempt to hold a high standard usually ends
+in failure, at least the practical failure of a weak compromise.
+But there are characters that are strong enough to face the
+isolation and to readjust life on the basis of the new principles
+and to mould it in accord with the new ideals. The period of this
+readjustment is one of severe testing of one's grasp on principles
+and one's strength of purpose. But the battle once fought out we
+attain a new kind of freedom and expansion of life. We look back
+with some amusement at the old life and the things that fascinated
+us in the days of our spiritual unconsciousness much as we look
+back at the games that amused us in our childish hours. The desert
+of Egypt that we entered with trepidation and fearful hearts turns
+out not to be so dreadful as we imagined, and indeed the flowers
+spring up under our feet as we resolutely tread the desert way.</p>
+<p>These trials must be the daily experience of those who attempt
+to put their religion into practice, and these perplexities must
+assail them so long as the Christian community continues to show
+its present social incompetence; so long, that is, as we attempt to
+make the basis of our social action something other than the
+principles of the spiritual life. A Christian society, one would
+naturally think, would spring out of the possession of Christian
+ideals; and doubtless it would if these ideals were really dominant
+in life, and not a sort of ornament applied to it. Any social
+circle contains men and women of various degrees of intellectual
+development and of varying degrees of experience of life; what
+holds them together is the pursuit of common objects, the objects
+that we sum up as amusement. Now the Christians in a community
+certainly have a common object, the cultivation of the spiritual
+life through the supernatural means offered by the Church of God.
+One would think that this object would have a more constraining
+power than the attractions of motoring or golf; but in fact we know
+that this is not so save in individual cases. There is not, that is
+to say, anywhere visible a Christian community which is wrought
+into a unity by the solidifying forces of its professed ideals.
+Those very people whose paths converge week by week until they meet
+at this altar, as they leave the altar, follow diverging paths and
+live in isolation for the rest of their time.</p>
+<p>One of the constant problems of the Church is that of the loss
+of those who have for a time been associated with it--of those who
+have for a time seemed to recognise their duty to God, and their
+privileges as members of His Son. They drift away into the world.
+We pray and meditate and worry over this and try to invent some
+machinery which will overcome it. But it cannot be overcome by
+machinery, especially by the sort of machinery which consists in
+transferring the amusements that people find in the world bodily
+into the Church itself. It cannot and will not be overcome until a
+Christian society has been created which is bound together by the
+interests of the Kingdom of God, and in which those interests are
+so predominant as to throw into the shade and practically
+annihilate other interests. And especially must such spiritual
+interests be strong enough to break down all social barriers so
+that the cultured and refined can find a common ground with the
+uneducated and socially untrained in the spiritual privileges that
+they share in common. When the banker can talk with his chauffeur
+of their common experience in prayer, and the banker's wife and her
+cook can confer on their mutual difficulties in making a
+meditation, then we shall have got within sight of a Christian
+society; but at present, while these have no spiritual contact, it
+is not within sight. The primitive Christian community in Jerusalem
+made the attempt at having all things in common. Their mistake
+seems to have been that they, like other and more modern people, by
+"all things" understood money. You cannot build any society which
+is worth the name on money, a Church least of all. It is
+unimportant whether a man is rich or poor; what is important is his
+spiritual accomplishment: and it is common spiritual aims and
+accomplishments which should make up the "all things" which
+possessed in common will form the basis of an enduring unity. But
+not until accomplishment becomes the supreme interest of life can
+we expect to get out of the impasse in which we at present find
+ourselves; in which, that is, the person can be converted to
+Christianity and enter into union with God in Christ and become a
+citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, and wake to find himself isolated
+from his old circle by his profession of new principles; but not,
+by his new principles, truly united to his fellow citizens in the
+Kingdom of God! One is tempted to write, What a comedy; but before
+one can do so, realises that it is in fact a tragedy!</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Mother of God--oh, rare prerogative;<br>
+Oh, glorious title--what more special grace<br>
+Could unto thee thy dear Son, dread God, give<br>
+To show how far thou dost all creatures pass?<br>
+That mighty power within the narrow fold<br>
+Did of thy ne'er polluted womb remain,<br>
+Whom, whiles he doth th' all-ruling Sceptre hold,<br>
+Not earth, nor yet the heavens can contain;<br>
+Thou in the springtide of thy age brought'st forth<br>
+Him who before all matter, time and place,<br>
+Begotten of th' Eternal Father was.<br>
+Oh, be thou then, while we admire thy worth<br>
+A means unto that Son not to proceed<br>
+In rigour with us for each sinful deed.<br>
+<br>
+John Brereley, Priest<br>
+(Vere Lawrence Anderton, S.J.)<br>
+1575-1643</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>NAZARETH</h3>
+<center>And he went down with them, and came to<br>
+Nazareth, and was subject unto them.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke II, 51.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>The Holy Church acknowledges and confesses the pure
+Virgin Mary as Mother of God through whom has been given unto us
+the bread of immortality and the wine of consolation. Give
+blessings then in spiritual song.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">ARMENIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-a.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>fter the rapid succession of fascinating pictures which are
+etched for us in the opening chapters of the Gospel there follows a
+space of about twelve years of which we are told nothing. The
+fables which fill the pages of the Apocryphal Gospels serve chiefly
+to emphasise the difference between an inspired and an uninspired
+narrative. The human imagination trying to develop the situation
+suggested by the Gospel and to fill in the unwritten chapters of
+our Lord's life betrays its incompetence to create a story of God
+Incarnate which shall have the slightest convincing power. These
+Apocryphal stories are immensely valuable to us as, by contrast,
+creating confidence in the story of Jesus as told by the
+Evangelists, but for nothing more.</p>
+<p>We are left to use our own imagination in filling in these years
+of silence in our Lord's training; and we shall best use it, not by
+trying to imagine what may have occurred, but by trying to
+understand what is necessarily involved in the facts as we know
+them. We know that the home in Nazareth whither Mary and Joseph
+brought Jesus after the death of Herod permitted them to return
+from Egypt was the simple home of a carpenter. It would appear to
+have been shared by the children of Joseph, and our Lady would have
+been the house-mother, busy with many cares. We know, too, that
+under this commonplace exterior of a poor household there was a
+life of the spirit of far reaching significance. Mary was
+ceaselessly pondering many things--the significance of all those
+happenings which, as the years flowed on without any further
+supernatural intervention, must at times have seemed as though they
+were quite purposeless. Of course this could not have been a
+settled feeling, for the insight of her pure soul would have held
+her to the certainty that such actions of God as she had
+experienced would some day reveal the meaning which as yet lay
+hidden.</p>
+<p>In the meantime other things did not matter much, seeing she had
+Jesus, the object of endless love. Every mother dreams over the
+baby she cares for and looks out into the future with trembling
+hope; so S. Mary's thoughts would go out following the hints of
+prophecy and angelic utterances, unable to understand how the light
+and shadow which were mingled there could find fulfilment in her
+Child. But like any other mother the thought would come back to her
+present possession, the satisfaction of her heart that she had in
+Jesus. With the growth of Jesus there would come the unfolding of
+the answering love, which was but another mode in which the love of
+God she had experienced all her life was manifesting itself. Jesus
+grew in wisdom and stature and we are able to enter a little into
+the over-flowing love of Mary as she watched the advance, this
+unfolding from day to day. The wonder that was hers in guiding this
+mind and will, in teaching our Lord His first prayers, in telling
+Him the story of the people of whom He had assumed our nature!
+There was here no self-will, no resistance to guidance, no
+perversity to wound a mother's heart. In the training of an
+ordinary child there are from time to time hints of characteristics
+or tendencies which may develop later into spiritual or moral
+disaster. There are growls of the sleeping beast which make us
+tremble for the future: there are hours of agony when we think of
+the inevitable temptations which must be met, and suggestions of
+weakness which colour our imagination of the meeting of them with
+the lurid light of defeat. But as Mary watched the unfolding
+character of Jesus she saw nothing there that carried with it the
+least suggestion of evil growth in the future, no outcropping of
+hereditary sin or disordered appetite. A constantly unfolding
+intelligence, and growing interest in the things that most
+interested her, an eagerness to hear and to know of the will and
+love of the eternal Father, these are her joy. That would have been
+the centre--would it not?--of the unfolding consciousness of Jesus:
+the knowledge of the Father.</p>
+<p>Training by love, so we might describe the life in the Home at
+Nazareth. And we must not forget the grave ageing figure who is the
+head of the household. <i>The Holy Family</i>--that was the perfect
+unity that their love created. There is a wonderful picture of
+these three by Sassaferato which catches, as no other Holy Family
+that I know of does, the meaning of their association. S. Mary whom
+the artistic imagination is so apt, after the Nativity, to
+transform into a stately matron, here still retains the note of
+virginity which in fact she never lost. It is the maiden-mother who
+stands by the side of the grave, elderly S. Joseph, the ideal
+workman, who is also the ideal guardian of his maiden-wife. And
+Jesus binds these two together and with them makes a unity,
+interpreting to us the perfection of family life.</p>
+<p>Family life is a tremendous test, it brings out the best and the
+worst of those who are associated in it. The ordinary restraints of
+social intercourse are of less force in the intimacy of family
+life: there is less need felt to watch conduct, or to mask what we
+know are our disagreeable traits. It is quite easy for character to
+deteriorate in the freedom of such intercourse. It is pretty sure
+to do so unless there is the constant pressure of principle in the
+other direction. The great safeguard is the sort of love that is
+based on mutual respect,--respect both for ourselves and for
+others. We talk a good deal as though love were always alike; as
+though the fact that a man and a woman love each other were always
+the same sort of fact. It does not require much knowledge of human
+nature or much reflection to convince us that that is not the case.
+Love is not a purely physical fact; and outside its physical
+implications there are many factors which may enter, whose
+existence constitute the <i>differentia</i> from case to case. It
+is upon these varying elements that the happiness of the family
+life depends. One of the most important is that character on either
+side shall be such as to inspire respect. Many a marriage goes to
+pieces on this rock; it is found that the person who exercised a
+certain kind of fascination shows in the intimacy of married life a
+character and qualities which are repulsive; a shallowness which
+inspires contempt, an egotism which is intolerable, a laxity in the
+treatment of obligations which destroys any sense of the stability
+of life. A marriage which does not grow into a relation of mutual
+honour and respect must always be in a state of unstable
+equilibrium, constantly subject to storms of passion, to suspicion
+and distrust.</p>
+<p>And therefore such a marriage will afford no safe basis on which
+to build a family life. But without a stable family life a stable
+social and religious life is impossible. It is therefore no
+surprise to those who believe that the powers of evil are active in
+the world to find that the family is the very centre of their
+attack at the present time. The crass egotism lying back of so much
+modern teaching is nowhere more clearly visible than in the
+assertion of the right of self-determination so blatantly made in
+popular writings. By self-determination is ultimately meant the
+right of the individual to seek his own happiness in his own way,
+and to make pleasure the rule of his life. "The right to happiness"
+is claimed in utter disregard of the fact that the claim often
+involves the unhappiness of others. "The supremacy of love,"
+meaning the supremacy of animalism, is the excuse for undermining
+the very foundations of family life. No obligation, it appears, can
+have a binding force longer than the parties to it find
+gratification in it. Personal inclination and gratification is held
+sufficient ground for action whose consequences are far from being
+personal, which, in fact, affect the sane and healthy state of
+society as a whole.</p>
+<p>The decline of a civilisation has always shown itself more
+markedly in the decline of the family life than elsewhere. The
+family, not the individual, is the basis of the social state, and
+no amount of theorising can make the fact different. Whatever
+assails the integrity of the family assails the life of the state,
+and no single family can be destroyed without society as a whole
+feeling the effect. "What," it is asked, "is to be done? If two
+people find that they have blundered, are they to go on
+indefinitely suffering from the result of their blunder? If an
+immature boy or girl in a moment of passion make a mistake as to
+their suitability to live together, are they to be compelled to do
+so at the expense of constant unhappiness?"</p>
+<p>It would seem obvious to say that justice requires that those
+who make blunders should take the consequences of them; that those
+who create a situation involving suffering should do the suffering
+themselves and not attempt to pass it on to others. It is not as
+though the consequences of the act can be avoided; they cannot.
+What happens is that the incidence of them is shifted. It is a part
+of the brutal egotism of divorce that it is quite willing to shift
+the incidence of the suffering that it has created on to the lives
+of wholly innocent people; in many cases upon children, in all
+cases upon society at large. For it is necessary to emphasize the
+fact that society is a closely compact body: so interwoven is life
+with life that if one member suffer the other members suffer with
+it. Breaches of moral order are not individual matters but social.
+This truth is implied in society's constantly asserted right to
+regulate family relations in the general interest even after it has
+ceased to think of such relations as having any spiritual
+significance. We need to-day a more vivid sense of the
+<i>community</i> lest we shall see all sense of a common life
+engulfed in the rising tide of individual anarchism. We need the
+assertion in energetic form of the right of the community as
+supreme over the right of the individual. We must deny the right of
+the individual to pursue his own way and his own pleasure at the
+expense of the rights of others. And to his insolent question, "Why
+should I suffer in an intolerable situation?" we must plainly
+answer: "Because you are responsible for the situation, and it is
+intolerable that you should be permitted to throw off the results
+of your wickedness or your stupidity upon other and innocent
+people."</p>
+<p>And it is quite clear that should society assert its pre-eminent
+right in unmistakable form and make it evident that it does not
+propose to tolerate the results of the egotistic nonsense of
+self-determination and the right of every one to live his own life,
+the evils of divorce and of shattered families would presently
+shrink to relatively small proportions. The present facility of
+divorce encourages thoughtless and unsuitable marriages in the
+first place; and in the second place, encourages the resort to
+divorce in circumstances of family disturbance which would speedily
+right themselves in the present as they have done in the past if
+those concerned knew that their happiness and comfort for years
+compelled an adjustment of life. When as at present any one who
+loses his temper can rush off to a court and get a marriage
+dissolved for some quite trivial reason, there is small
+encouragement to practice self-control. If a man and woman know
+that the consequences of conduct must be faced by them, and cannot
+be avoided by thrusting them upon others, they will no doubt in the
+course of time learn to exercise a little self-control.</p>
+<p>The family is the foundation of the state because, among other
+things, it is the natural training place of citizens: no public
+training in schools and camps can for a moment safely be looked to
+as a substitute or an equivalent of wholesome family influence. If
+the family does not make good citizens we cannot have good
+citizens. The family too is at the basis of organised religious
+life; if the family does not make good Christians we shall not have
+good Christians. The Sunday School and the Church societies are
+poor substitutes for the religious influence of the family, as the
+school and the camp are for its social interests.</p>
+<p>One is inclined to stress the obvious failure of the family to
+fulfil its alloted functions in the teaching of religion as the
+root difficulty that the Christian religion has to encounter and
+the most comprehensive cause of its relative failure in modern
+life. The responsibility for the religious and moral training of
+children rests squarely upon those who have assumed the
+responsibility of bringing them into the world, and it cannot be
+rightly pushed off on to some one else. To the protest of parents
+that they are incompetent to conduct such training, the only
+possible reply is a blunt, "Whose fault is that?" If you have been
+so careless of the fundamental responsibilities of life, you are
+incompetent to assume a relation which of necessity carries such
+responsibility with it. It is no light matter to have committed to
+you the care of an immortal soul whose eternal future may quite
+well be conditioned on the way in which you fulfil your trust. It
+would be well as a preliminary to marriage to take a little of the
+time ordinarily given to its frivolous accompaniments and seriously
+meditate upon the words of our Lord which seem wholly appropriate
+to the circumstance: "Whoso shall cause to stumble one of these
+little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a
+millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in
+the depths of the sea." It is the careless and incompetent training
+of children which in fact "causes them to stumble" when the
+presence of word and example would have held them straight. It has
+been (to speak personally) the greatest trial of my priesthood that
+out of the thousands of children I have dealt with, in only rare
+cases have I had the entire support of the family; and I have
+always considered that I was fortunate when I met with no
+interference and was given an indifferent tolerance. It is
+heart-breaking to see years of careful work brought to naught (so
+far as the human eye can see: the divine eye can see deeper) by the
+brutal materialism of a father and the silly worldliness of a
+mother.</p>
+<p>The interplay of lives in a family should be consciously
+directed by those who control them to the cultivation, to the
+bringing out of the best that is in them. Education means the
+drawing out of the innate powers of the personality and the
+training of them for the highest purposes. It is the deliberate
+direction of personal powers to the highest ends, the discipline of
+them for the performance of those ends. The life of a child should
+be shaped with reference to its final destiny from the moment of
+its birth. It should be surrounded with an atmosphere of prayer and
+charity which would be the natural atmosphere in which it would
+expand as it grows, and in terms of which it would learn to express
+itself as soon as it reaches sufficient maturity to express itself
+at all. It should become familiar with spiritual language and modes
+of action, and meet nothing that is inharmonious with these. But we
+know that the education of the Christian child is commonly the
+opposite of all this. It learns little that is spiritual. When it
+comes to learn religion it is obviously a matter of small
+importance in the family life; if there is any expression of it at
+all, it is one that is crowded into corners and constantly swamped
+by other interests which are obviously felt to be of more
+importance. Too often the spiritual state of the family may be
+summed up in the words of the small boy who condensed his
+observation of life into the axiom: "Men and dogs do not go to
+Church." In such an atmosphere the child finds religion and morals
+reduced to a system of repression. God becomes a man with a club
+constantly saying, Don't! He grows to think that he is a fairly
+virtuous person so long as he skilfully avoids the system of taboos
+wherewith he feels that life is surrounded, and fulfils the one
+positive family law of a religious nature, that he shall go to
+Sunday School until he is judged sufficiently mature to join the
+vast company of men and dogs.</p>
+<p>Nothing very much can come of negatives. Religion calls for
+positive expression; and it is not enough that the child shall find
+positive expression once a week in the church; he must find it
+every day in the week in the intimacy of the family. He must find
+that the principles of life which are inculcated in the church are
+practiced by his father and his mother, his brother and his sister,
+or he will not take them seriously. If he is conscious of virtue
+and religious practice as repression, a sort of tyranny practiced
+on a child by his elders, his notion of the liberty of adult life
+will quite naturally be freedom to break away from what is now
+forced upon him into the life of self-determination and
+indifference to things spiritual that characterises the adult
+circle with which he is familiar.</p>
+<p>But consider, by contrast, those rare families where the
+opposite of all this is true; where there is the peace of a
+recollected life of which the foundations are laid in constant
+devotion to our Lord. There you will find the nearest possible
+reproduction of the life of the Holy Family in Nazareth. Because
+the life of the family is a life of prayer, there will you find
+Jesus in the midst of it. There you will find Mary and Joseph
+associated with its life of intercession. In such a family the
+expression of a religious thought will never be felt as a discord.
+The talk may quite naturally at any moment turn on spiritual
+things. There are families in which one feels that one must make a
+careful preparation for the introduction of a spiritual allusion:
+one does it with a sense of danger, much as one might sail through
+a channel strewn with mines. There are other families in which one
+has no hesitation in speaking of prayer, of sacraments, of
+spiritual actions, as things with which all are familiar in
+practice, and are as natural as food and drink. In this atmosphere
+it produces no smile to say, "I am going to slip into the Church
+and make my meditation"; or, "I shall be a little late to-night as
+I am making my confession on my way home." Religion in such a
+circle has not incurred contempt through familiarity: it still
+remains a great adventure, the very greatest of all indeed; but it
+is an adventure in the open, full of joy and gladness.</p>
+<p>The Holy Family was a family that worked hard. It is no doubt
+true that our Lord learned his foster-father's trade, so that those
+who knew him later on, or heard His preaching, asked, "Is not this
+the carpenter?" But the Holy Family was a radiant centre of joy and
+peace because Jesus was in the midst of it. Where Jesus dwells
+there is the effect of his indwelling in the spiritual gladness
+that results. Mary was never too busy for her religious duties nor
+Joseph too tired with his week's work to get up on the Sabbath for
+whatever services in honour of God the Synagogue offered. They were
+perhaps conscious as the Child "increased in wisdom and stature,
+and in favour with God and man" of a spiritual influence that
+flowed from Him, and sweetened and lightened the life of the home.
+They were not conscious that in His Person God was in the midst of
+them; but that is what we can (if we will) be conscious of. We are
+heirs of the Incarnation, and God is in the midst of us; and
+especially does Jesus wish to dwell, as He dwelt in Nazareth, in
+the midst of the family. He wishes to make every household a Holy
+Family. He is in the midst of it in uninterrupted communion with
+the soul of the baptised child; and the father and mother,
+understanding that their highest duty and greatest privilege is to
+watch and foster the spiritual unfolding of the child's life in
+such wise that Jesus may never depart from union with it, become as
+Joseph and Mary in their ministry to it. There is nothing more
+heavenly than such a charge; there is nothing more beautiful than
+such a family life.</p>
+<p>There is often a pause in God's work between times of great
+activity--a time of retreat, as it seems, which is a rest from what
+has preceded and a preparation for what is to come. Such a pause
+were these years at Nazareth in the life of Blessed Mary. The time
+from the Annunciation to the return from Egypt was a time of deep
+emotion, of spirit-shaking events. Later on there were the trials
+of the years of the ministry, culminating in Calvary. But these
+years while Jesus was growing to manhood in the quietness of the
+home were years of unspeakable privilege and peace. The daily
+association with the perfect Child, the privilege of watching and
+guarding and ministering to Him, these days of deepening spiritual
+union with Him, although much that was happening to the mother was
+happening unconsciously,--were strengthening her grasp on ultimate
+reality, so that she issued with perfect strength to meet the
+supreme tragedy of her life. How wonderful God must have seemed to
+her in those thirty years of peace! To all of us God is thus
+wonderful in quiet hours; and the quiet hours are much the more
+numerous in most of our lives. But have we all learned to use these
+hours so that we may be ready to meet the hours of testing which
+shall surely come? No matter how quiet the valley of our life, some
+day the pleasant path will lift, and we must climb the hilltop
+where rises the Cross. It will not be intolerable, if the quiet
+years have been spent in Nazareth with Jesus and Mary and
+Joseph.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Most holy, and pure Virgin, Blessed Mayd,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Sweet Tree of Life, King David's Strength and
+Tower,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;The House of Gold, the Gate of Heaven's power,<br>
+The Morning-Star whose light our fall hath stay'd.<br>
+<br>
+Great Queen of Queens, most mild, most meek, most wise,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Most venerable, Cause of all our joy,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Whose cheerful look our sadnesse doth destroy,<br>
+And art the spotlesse Mirror to man's eyes.<br>
+<br>
+The Seat of Sapience, the most lovely Mother,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;And most to be admired of thy sexe,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Who mad'st us happy all, in thy reflexe,<br>
+By bringing forth God's Onely Son, no other.<br>
+<br>
+Thou Throne of Glory, beauteous as the moone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;The rosie morning, or the rising sun,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Who like a giant hastes his course to run,<br>
+Till he hath reached his two-fold point of noone.<br>
+<br>
+How are thy gifts and graces blazed abro'd,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Through all the lines of this circumference,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;T'imprint in all purged hearts this Virgin sence<br>
+Of being Daughter, Mother, Spouse of God?<br>
+<br>
+Ben Jonson,<br>
+1573-1637.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE TEMPLE</h3>
+<center>And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought<br>
+me? Know ye not that I must be in my Father's house?<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke II, 49.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>We give thanks unto thee, O Lord, who lovest mankind,
+Thou benefactor of our souls and bodies, for that Thou hast this
+day vouchsafed to feed us with Thy Heavenly Mysteries; guide our
+path aright, establish us all in Thy fear, guard our lives, make
+sure our steps through the prayers and supplications of the
+glorious Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary and of all Thy
+saints.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">RUSSIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he time was come when by the law of His people the Boy Jesus
+must assume the duties of an adult in the exercise of His religion.
+Therefore His parents took Him with them to Jerusalem that He might
+participate in the celebration of the Passover. It would be a
+wonderful moment in the life of any intelligent Hebrew boy when for
+the first time he came in contact with the places and scenes which
+were so familiar to him in the story of his nation's past; and we
+can imagine what would have been the special interest of the Child
+Jesus who would have been so thoroughly taught in the Old Testament
+Scriptures, and who would have felt an added interest in the places
+He was now seeing because of their association with His great
+ancestor, David. Still His chief interest was in the religion of
+His people, and it was the temple where the sacrificial worship of
+God was centred that would have for Him the greatest attraction.
+This was His "Father's House," and here He Himself felt utterly at
+home. We are not surprised to be told that He lingered in these
+courts.</p>
+<p>"And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the
+child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and His mother
+knew it not." They had perfect confidence in Jesus; and yet it
+seems strange that they should have assumed that He was somewhere
+about and would appear at the proper time. When the night drew on
+and the camp was set up there was no Child to be found. Then we
+imagine the distress, the trouble of heart, with which Mary and
+Joseph hurry back to Jerusalem and spend the ensuing days in
+seeking through its streets. We share something of our Lord's
+surprise when we learn that the temple was the last place that they
+thought of in their search. Did they think that Jesus would be
+caught by the life of the Passover crowds that filled the streets
+of Jerusalem? Did they think that it would be a child's curiosity
+which would hold him fascinated with the glittering toys of the
+bazaars? Did they think that He had mistaken the caravan and been
+carried off in some other direction and was lost to them forever?
+We only know that it was not till three days had passed that they
+thought of the temple and there found Him. "And when they saw Him,
+they were amazed: and his mother said unto Him, Son, why has thou
+thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee
+sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Know
+ye not that I must be in my Father's house?"</p>
+<p>S. Mary and S. Joseph were proceeding on certain assumptions as
+to what Jesus would do which turned out to be untenable. It is one
+of the dangers of our religion--our personal religion--that we are
+apt to assume too much which in the testing turns out to be
+unfounded. We reach a certain stage of religious attainment, and
+then we assume that all is going well with us. When one asks a
+child how he is getting on he invariably answers: "I am all right."
+And the adult often has the same childish confidence in an untested
+and unverified state of soul. We are "all right"; which practically
+means that we do not care to be bothered with looking into our
+spiritual state at all. We have been going on for years now
+following the rules that we laid down when we first realised that
+the being a Christian was a more or less serious matter. Nothing
+has happened in these years to break the placidity of our routine.
+There has never been any relapse into grievous sin; we have never
+felt any real temptation to abandon the practice o&pound; our
+religion. We run along as easily and smoothly as a car on well-laid
+rails. We are "all right."</p>
+<p>But in fact we are all wrong. We have lapsed into a state of
+which the ideal is purely static: an ideal of spiritual comfort as
+the goal of our spiritual experience here on earth. We have
+acquired what appears to be a state of equilibrium into which we
+wish nothing to intrude that would endanger the balance. We are, no
+doubt, quite unconsciously, excluding from life every emotion,
+every ambition, as well as every temptation, which appears to
+involve spiritual disturbance. But we need to be disturbed.</p>
+<p>For the spiritual life is dynamic and not static; its ideal is
+motion and not rest. Rest is the quality of dead things, and
+particularly of dead souls. The weariness of the way, which is so
+obvious a phenomenon in the Christian life, is the infallible sign
+of lukewarmness. What we need therefore is to break with the
+assumption that we know all that it is necessary to know, and that
+we have done or are doing all that it is necessary to do. It is
+indeed the mark of an ineffective religion that the notion of
+necessity is adopted as its stimulus, rather than the notion of
+aspiration. The question, "Must I do this?" is a revelation of
+spiritual poverty and ineptitude. "I press on," is the motto of a
+living religion.</p>
+<p>Personal religion, therefore, needs constantly to be submitted
+to new tests, lest it lapse into an attitude of finality.
+Fortunately for us, God does not leave the matter wholly in our
+hands, but Himself, through His Providence, applies a wide variety
+of tests to us. It is often a bitter and disturbing experience to
+have our comfortable routine broken up and to find that we have
+quite miserably failed under very simple temptations. And the sort
+of failure I am thinking of is not so much the failure of sin as
+the failure of ideal. It is the case of those who think that they
+have satisfactorily worked out the problems of the spiritual life,
+and have reached a satisfactory adjustment of duty and practice,
+and then find that if the adjustment changes their practice falls
+off. The outer circumstances of life change and the change is
+followed by a readjustment of the inner life on a distinctly lower
+plane. It is revealed to us that the outer circumstances were
+controlling the spiritual practice, and not the practice dominating
+the circumstances. The ruling ideal was that of comfort, and under
+the new circumstances the spiritual ideal is lowered until it fits
+in with a new possibility of comfort in the altered circumstances.
+It is well to examine ourselves on these matters and to find what
+is the actual ruling motive in our religious practice.</p>
+<p>We may have assumed that we have Jesus, when all the assumption
+meant was that we thought that He was somewhere about. After all,
+it will not aid us very much if He is "in the company," if we go on
+our day's journey without Him. It is a poor assumption to build
+life upon, that Jesus exists, or that He is in the Church, or that
+He is the Saviour. It is nothing to us unless He is <i>our</i>
+Saviour, unless He is personally present in us and with us. And it
+is not wise or safe to let this be a matter of assumption, even
+though the assumption rest on a perfectly valid experience in the
+past; we cannot live on history, not even on our own history. That
+Jesus is with us must be verified day by day, and we ought to go no
+day's journey without the certainty of His presence. We can best do
+that, when the circumstances of life permit, by a daily communion.
+There at the altar we meet Jesus and know that He is with us. When
+the circumstances of life do not permit, (and often they do, when
+we lazily think they do not) there are other modes of arriving at
+spiritual certainty.</p>
+<p>It is quite easy to lose Jesus. He does not force His
+companionship upon us, but rather when we meet Him. "He makes as
+though he would go farther." He offers Himself to us; He never
+compels us to receive Him as a guest. And when we have in fact
+received Him, and asked Him to abide with us, He does not stay any
+longer than we want Him. We have to constrain Him. In other words,
+we lose Jesus, we lose the vitality of our spiritual life (though
+we may retain the routine practice of our religion), if we are not
+from day to day making it the most vital issue of our lives. That
+does not necessarily mean that we are spending more time on it than
+on anything else, but that we are putting it first in the order of
+importance in our lives and are sacrificing, if occasion arise,
+other things to it, rather than it to them. That a man loves his
+wife and child does not necessarily mean that he actually spends
+more time on them than he does on his business, but it does mean
+that they are more important in his life than his business, and if
+need arise it will be the business that is sacrificed to them and
+not they to the business. Spirituality is much less a matter of
+time than of energy. A wise director can guide a man to sanctity
+who will probably consecrate his Sunday, and give the director one
+half hour on week days to dispose of.</p>
+<p>To lose Jesus does not require the commission of great sin, as
+we count sin. The quite easiest way to lose Him is to forget Him
+and go about our business as though He did not exist. That is a
+frequent happening. For vast numbers Jesus does not exist except
+for an hour or so on Sunday. They give Him the formal homage of
+attendance at church on Sunday morning and then they go out and
+forget Him, not only for the rest of the week but for the rest of
+the day. The religion which thus reduces itself to a minimum of
+attendance at Mass on Sunday morning is surely not a religion from
+which much can be expected in the way of spiritual accomplishment.
+If it be true that there is a minimum of religious requirement
+which will ensure that we "go to heaven," then that sort of
+religion may be useful; but I do not know that anywhere such a
+minimum <i>is</i> required. The statement that I find is "Thou
+shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
+soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." The
+outstanding characteristic of love is surely not niggardliness, but
+passionate self-giving. All things are forgiven, not to those who
+are careful to keep within the limits required, but to those who
+"love much."</p>
+<p>The study of many cases, the experience of over thirty years in
+the confessional, convinces me that the chief cause of spiritual
+failure among Christians is not the irresistible impact of
+temptation but the lack of spiritual vision. The average man or
+woman is not consciously going anywhere; but they are just keeping
+a rule which is the arbitrary exactment of God. It might just as
+well be some other rule. That is, in their minds, the practice of
+the spiritual life has no immediate ends; it is not productive of
+spiritual expansion; it is not a ladder set up on earth to reach
+heaven on which they are climbing ever nearer God, and on the way
+are catching ever broader visions of spiritual reality as they
+ascend. The knowledge and the love of God are to them phrases, not
+practical goals, invitations to paths of spiritual adventure.
+Hence, having no immediate ends to accomplish, they find the whole
+spiritual routine dull and unattractive and naturally tend to
+reduce it to a minimum. It is not at all surprising that in the end
+they drop religion altogether, as why should one keep on travelling
+a road that leads nowhere? How can one love and serve a Jesus whom
+one has lost?</p>
+<p>The problem of personal religion is the problem of finding
+Jesus, of bringing life into a right relation to Him. The plain
+path is to follow the example of His parents who sought Him
+"sorrowing." Sorrow for having lost Jesus is the true repentance.
+Repentance which springs from fear of consequences, or from disgust
+with our own incompetence and stupidity when we realise that we
+have made a spiritual failure of life, is an imperfect thing. True
+repentance has its origin in love and is therefore directed toward
+a person. It is the conviction that we have violated the love of
+our Father, our Saviour, our Sanctifier. Sorrow springing from love
+is sorrow "after a godly sort." It is easy for us to drift into
+ways of carelessness and indifference which seem not to involve
+sin, to be no more than a decline from some preceding standard of
+practice which we conclude to have been unnecessarily strict; but
+the result is an increasing disregard of spiritual values, a
+growing obscuration of the divine presence in life. Then the day
+comes when some quite marked and positive spiritual failure, a
+failure of which we cannot imagine ourselves to have been guilty,
+when we were living in constant communion with our Lord, arouses us
+to the fact that for months our spiritual vitality has been
+declining and that we have ended in losing Jesus. It is a
+tremendous shock to find how fast and how far we have been
+travelling when we thought that we were only slightly relaxing an
+unnecessarily strict routine: that when we thought that we were but
+acting "in a common sense way," we were in reality effecting a
+compromise with the world. Well is it then if the surprise of our
+disaster shocks us back to the recovery of what we have lost, if it
+send us into the streets of the city, sorrowing and seeking for
+Jesus.</p>
+<p>Mere spiritual laziness is at the bottom of much failure in
+religion. There is no success anywhere in life save through the
+constant pressure of the will driving a reluctant and protesting
+set of nerves and muscles to their daily tasks. The day labourer
+comes home from his work with his muscular strength exhausted, but
+he has to go back to the same monotonous task on the morrow: his
+family has to be fed and clothed and he cannot permit himself to
+say, "I am tired and will stay away from work to-day." The business
+or professional man comes back from his office with a wearied brain
+that makes any thought an effort, but he must take up the routine
+to-morrow; the pressure of competitive business does not permit him
+to work when and as much as he chooses. But the Christian who is
+engaged in the most important work that is carried on in this
+world, the work of preparing an immortal soul for an unending
+future, is constantly under the temptation "to take a day off"--to
+let down the standard of accomplishment till it ceases to interfere
+with the business or the pleasure of life; is constantly too tired
+or too busy to do this or that. In short, religion is apt to be
+treated in a manner that would ensure the bankruptcy of any
+material occupation in life. Why then should it not ensure
+spiritual bankruptcy?</p>
+<p>Surely, to retain Jesus with us, to live in the intimacy of God,
+is the most pressingly important of our duties; it is worth any
+sort of expenditure of energy to accomplish it. And it cannot be
+accomplished without expenditure of energy. The view of religion
+which conceives it as a facile assent to certain propositions, the
+occasional and formal participation in certain actions, the more or
+less strict observance of certain rules of conduct, is so far from
+the fact that it is not worth discussing. Religion is the realised
+friendship of God; it is a personal relation of the deepest and
+purest sort; and, like all personal relations, is kept alive by the
+mutual activities of those concerned. The action of one party will
+not suffice to keep the relation in healthy state. The love of God
+itself will not suffice to maintain a being in holiness and carry
+him on to happiness who is himself quite indifferent to the entire
+spiritual transaction--whose attitude is that of one willing to be
+saved if he be not asked to take much trouble about it. That
+lackadaisical attitude can never produce any result in the
+spiritual order; it can only ensure the spiritual decline and death
+of one who has not thought it worth while to make an effort to
+live.</p>
+<p>Jesus can be found; but the finding depends upon the method of
+the seeking. There are many men who claim, and quite honestly, to
+be in pursuit of truth: to find the truth is the end of all their
+efforts. Yet they do not succeed in finding it. Why is this? I
+think that the principal reason is that they are constituting
+themselves the judges of the truth; they first of all lay down
+certain rules which God must obey if He wishes them to believe in
+Him! They insist on having, before they will believe, a kind of
+evidence that is impossible of attainment. They assert that this or
+that is impossible, and the other thing incredible. They partially
+ascertain the laws that govern the material universe, and they deny
+to the Maker of the universe the power to act otherwise than in
+accord with so much of the order of nature as they have discovered!
+They deny to God the sort of personal action in this world that
+they themselves constantly exercise.</p>
+<p>The method is not a method that can be hopeful of success. And
+it is worth noting that it is not a method that these same men
+followed in their investigations of the natural world. They have
+not accumulated information about natural law by first laying down
+rules as to how natural law must act, and refusing to listen to any
+evidence which does not fall in with these rules: rather, they have
+set themselves to observe how nature does act, and then deduced
+rules from their observation. Why not pursue the same method in
+religion? Why not in an humble spirit observe how God does act? Why
+start by saying, "Miracles do not happen?" Why reject as incredible
+the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection? Why not get a bigger notion
+of God than that of a mechanician running a machine, and think of
+Him as a Person dealing with persons? The relation of persons
+cannot be mechanical or predetermined; they are and must be free
+and spontaneous: they have their origin, not in the pressure of
+invariable law but in the impulse of love.</p>
+<p>Nor is the search for Jesus that is inspired by mere curiosity
+likely to be a success. There are many people who are curious about
+religion, and they want to know why we believe thus and so; and
+particularly why we act as we do. Why do you keep this day? What do
+you mean by this ceremony? Do you think that it is wrong to do this
+or that? Such people wander about observing; but their observation
+we understand is the observation of an idler who does not expect to
+be influenced by what he observes, but only to be amused. These are
+they who run after the latest thing in heresy, the newest thing in
+thought. What is observable about them is that they never seriously
+contemplate doing anything themselves. They are like those
+multitudes who followed our Lord about for awhile but were
+dispersed by the test of hard sayings.</p>
+<p>But Jesus can be found. He is found of all those who seek Him
+humbly and sincerely, putting away self and desiring simply to be
+led: who do not challenge Him with Pilate's scornful, "What is
+truth?" but rather say, "Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief."
+He is easily found of those who know where to look for Him. There
+is no mystery about that,--He will certainly be in His Father's
+House. The surprise of Joseph and Mary that He had thus dealt with
+them is answered by Jesus' surprise that they did not certainly
+know where He would be: "Wist ye not that I must be in My Father's
+House?"</p>
+<p>In the House of God, the Church of God, is the ready approach to
+Jesus. It is in the last degree foolish to waive aside the Church
+in which are stored the treasures of more than nineteen centuries
+of Christian experience as though it did and could have nothing to
+say in the matter. A seeker after information as to the meaning of
+the constitution of the United States would be considered a madman
+if he impatiently turned from those of whom he made enquiry when
+they suggested the decrees of the Supreme Court as the proper place
+to seek information. Surely, from any point of view, the Church
+will know more about Jesus than any one else: if in all the
+centuries it has not discovered the meaning of Him Whom it
+ceaselessly worships there is small likelihood that that meaning
+will be discovered by an unbeliever studying an ancient book! If
+the Church cannot lead us to Jesus, and if it cannot interpret to
+us His will, there is small likelihood that any one else will be
+able to do so. And if during all these centuries His will has been
+unknown it can hardly be of much importance to discover it now. If
+His Church has failed, then His Mission is discredited.</p>
+<p>For us who have accepted His revelation as made to the Church
+and by it unfailingly preserved, who have learned to find Him there
+where He has promised to be until the end of time, there is another
+sense in which we think of His words as words of encouragement and
+consolation. There are hours in life which press hard upon us;
+there are other hours when the sense of God's love and goodness
+fills us with thankfulness and joy. In such hours we crave the
+intimacy of personal communion: we want to tell our grief or our
+joy. And then we take our way to the temple, and know that we shall
+find Him there in His Incarnate Presence in His Father's House. We
+go in and kneel before the Tabernacle and know that Jesus is here.
+Here in the silence He waits for us. Here in the long hours He
+watches; here is the ever-open door leading to the Father where any
+man at any time may enter. He who humbled Himself to the hidden
+life of Nazareth now humbles Himself to the hidden life of the
+Tabernacle: and we who believe His Word, have no need to envy
+Joseph and Mary the intimacy of their life with Jesus, because here
+for us, if we will, is a greater intimacy--the intimacy of those of
+whom it can be said: They evermore dwell in Him and He in them.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Lady of Heaven, Regent of the Earth,<br>
+&nbsp;Empress of all the infernal marshes fell,<br>
+Receive me, thy poor Christian, 'spite my, dearth,<br>
+&nbsp;In the fair midst of thine elect to dwell:<br>
+&nbsp;Albeit my lack of grace I know full well;<br>
+For that thy grace, my Lady and my Queen,<br>
+Aboundeth more than all my misdemean,<br>
+&nbsp;Withouten which no soul of all that sigh<br>
+May merit heaven. 'Tis sooth I say, for e'en<br>
+&nbsp;In this belief I will to live and die.<br>
+<br>
+Say to thy Son, I am his--that by his birth<br>
+&nbsp;And death my sins be all redeemable--<br>
+As Mary of Egypt's dole he changed to mirth,<br>
+&nbsp;And eke Theophilus', to whom befell<br>
+&nbsp;Quittance of thee, albeit (so men tell)<br>
+To the foul fiend he had contracted been.<br>
+Assoilzie me, that I may have no teen,<br>
+&nbsp;Maid, that without breach of virginity<br>
+Didst bear our Lord that in the Host is seen:<br>
+&nbsp;In this belief I will to live and die.<br>
+<br>
+A poor old wife I am, and little worth:<br>
+&nbsp;Nothing I know, nor letter aye could spell:<br>
+Where in the church to worship I fare forth,<br>
+&nbsp;I see heaven limned with harps and lutes, and hell<br>
+&nbsp;Where damned folk seethe in fire unquenchable:<br>
+One doth me fear, the other joy serene;<br>
+Grant I may have the joy, O Virgin clean,<br>
+&nbsp;To whom all sinners lift their hands on high,<br>
+Made whole in faith through thee, their go-between:<br>
+&nbsp;In this belief I will to live and die.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<blockquote>ENVOY<br>
+<br>
+Thou didst conceive, Princess most bright of sheen,<br>
+Jesus the Lord, that hath no end nor mean,<br>
+Almighty that, departing heaven's demesne<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To succour us, put on our frailty,<br>
+Offering to death his sweet of youth and green:<br>
+Such as he is, our Lord he is, I ween:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;In this belief I will to live and die.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>CANA I</h3>
+<center>And the third day there was a marriage in Cana<br>
+of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there; and<br>
+both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.<br>
+<br>
+S. John II, 1.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Grant, O Lord, we beseech thee, that we thy servants
+may enjoy constant health of body and mind, and by the glorious
+intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be delivered from all
+temporal afflictions, and come to those joys that are eternal.
+Through.<br>
+<br>
+Having received, O Lord, what is to advance our salvation; grant we
+may always be protected by the patronage of blessed Mary, ever a
+virgin, in whose honor we have offered this sacrifice to thy
+majesty. Through.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">Old Catholic.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/quote-t.png" width="23%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>here was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus
+was there." To S. John Blessed Mary is ever the "mother of Jesus."
+He never calls her by her name in any mention of her. Jesus who
+loved him and whom he loved and loves always with consuming
+passion, held the foreground of his consciousness; all other
+persons are known through their relation to Him. As he is writing
+his Gospel-story toward the end of his life, the Blessed Virgin has
+long been gone to join her Son in the place of perfect love. We
+cannot conceive of her living long on earth after His Ascension.
+Her "conversation" would in a special way be "in heaven." Whatever
+the time she remained here awaiting the will of God for her, we may
+be sure that the days she spent under the protection of S. John
+were wonderful days for him, wherein their communing would have
+been the continual lifting of their hearts and souls to Him, Child
+and Friend, who is also God enthroned at the Right Hand of the
+Father. It is not unlikely that the marvellous spiritual maturity
+of which we are conscious in the writings of S. John was aided in
+its unfolding by the intimacy of his relations with S. Mary. But
+always she remained to him what she was because of what Jesus was;
+she remained to the end "the mother of Jesus."</p>
+<p>Here at the marriage of Cana the way in which she is mentioned
+suggests that she was staying in the house where the marriage was
+celebrated: she was simply there; Jesus and the disciples were
+called, invited, to the wedding. Some relationship, it has been
+suggested, between S. Mary and the bride or groom led to her
+presence in the house. That however is mere conjecture. The
+marriage in any case was a wonderful one, for both Jesus and Mary
+were there. It was therefore the ideal of all weddings which seem
+to lack the true note of the new matrimony which springs from the
+Incarnation if they take place without such guests. As in
+imagination we follow Mary as she goes quietly about the house,
+which like her own was a home of the poor, helping in the
+arrangements of the wedding, one cannot help recalling many
+weddings with which one has had something to do, and in the
+arrangements of which we cannot think of Mary as having any part.
+They were the arrangements of the weddings of Christians, and the
+weddings took place in a Christian church; but neither is Mary
+there nor Jesus called. We are unable to think of Mary as present
+amid the tumult of worldiness and frivolity, the endless chatter
+over dress and decoration, which so commonly precedes the
+celebration of a sacrament which is the symbol of "the mystical
+union that there is betwixt Christ and His Church." That deep piety
+which puts God and God's will before all else would strike a
+jarring note here, where the dominant note is still the pagan note
+of the decking of the slave for her new master. It is perhaps not
+without significance of the direction of the movement of the modern
+mind that the protests of the emancipated woman are against the
+Christian, not the pagan elements in matrimony: she tends to regard
+marriage as a state of temporary luxury rather than the perfect
+union of two souls in Christ. Clearly in marriages which are
+regarded as purely temporary engagements, dependent on the will of
+the parties for their continuance, there is no place for the mother
+of Jesus. The purity that emanates from her will be a silent but
+keenly felt criticism on the whole conception underlying a vast
+number of modern marriages. Even as I write I read that in a
+certain great city in the United States the number of divorces
+granted was one fourth of the number of the marriages
+celebrated.</p>
+<p>Clearly at marriages which are surrounded with this atmosphere
+of paganism, be they celebrated where they may, there is no place
+for the Blessed Mother; and neither is Jesus called. His priest,
+unfortunately, is often called, and dares celebrate a sacrament
+which in the circumstances he can hardly help feeling is a
+sacrilege. There are many cases in which what purports to be
+Christian marriage is between those who are not Christians, or of
+whom only one is a Christian in any complete sense. One hears
+frequently of the sacrament of matrimony being celebrated when only
+one of the parties is baptised. It is of course possible for any
+priest to act on the authority conferred upon him by the state and
+in his capacity as a state official perform marriages between those
+whom the state authorises to be married: but why do it under the
+character of a priest? or why throw about the ceremony the
+suggestions of a sacrament?</p>
+<p>If Jesus is really to be called to a marriage, it means that the
+preparations for the marriage will be largely spiritual. The
+parties to the marriage will approach the marriage through other
+sacraments. They will both be members of the Church of God by
+baptism; and they will be, or look forward to becoming,
+communicants. They will prepare for the sacrament of matrimony by
+receiving the sacrament of penance, and receiving the communion.
+What better preparation for starting a new life, for setting out to
+create a new family in the Kingdom of God, a family in which the
+ideals of the life at Nazareth are to be the ruling ideals, than
+that cleansing of soul that fits them for the beginning of a new
+life? A priest has great joy when he knows that those who are
+kneeling before him to receive the nuptial blessing are souls pure
+in God's sight, dwellings ready and adorned for the coming of
+Christ.</p>
+<p>For it is the normal and fitting crown of the ceremonies of
+marriage that Jesus be there, that the Holy Mass be celebrated and
+that those who have just been indissolubly united may as their
+first act partake of the Bread of Heaven which giveth life to the
+world. I myself would rather not be asked to celebrate a wedding
+unless it is to be approached with the purity of Mary, and sealed
+by the partaking of Jesus. It is so great and wonderful a thing,
+this sacrament of matrimony. Here are two human beings setting out
+to fulfil the vocation of man to build up the Kingdom of God, to
+set up a new hearth where the love of God may be manifest and where
+children may be trained in the knowledge and love of God; where the
+life of Christ may find contact with human life and through it
+manifest God to the world--how wonderful and beautiful and holy all
+that is! And then to remember what commonly takes place is to be
+overcome with a sense of what must be the pain of God's heart.</p>
+<p>We go back to look into the home where Mary seems to be
+directing the arrangements of the wedding feast. It was a poor home
+and not much could be provided; the wine, so essential to the
+feast, failed. What was to be done? To whom would Mary look? She
+could have no money to buy wine. One feels that after Joseph's
+death she had come more and more to look to Jesus for help of all
+sorts. The deepening of their mutual love, the completeness of
+their understanding, would make this the natural thing. S. Mary
+feels that if there is any help in these embarrassing
+circumstances, any way of sparing the feelings of the bridegroom,
+Jesus will know it and help. There is no doubt in her mind; but the
+certainty that He can help. So she turns to Him with her "they have
+no wine." The words as we read them contain at once an appeal and a
+suggestion: an appeal for help, advice, guidance, with the hint
+that Jesus can effectually help if He will. It is not as some have
+rather crudely thought a suggestion that He perform a miracle, but
+the appeal of one who has learned to have unlimited trust in
+Him.</p>
+<p>The reply of our Lord cannot fail to shock the English reader;
+and the very nature of the shock ought to indicate that there is
+something wrong with the translation. The words sound brusque and
+ill-mannered; and our Lord was never that nor could be, least of
+all to His blessed Mother. The dictionaries all tell us that the
+word translated woman is quite as well translated lady, in the
+sense of mistress or house mother. There is really a shade of
+meaning that we have no word for. Perhaps we best understand what
+it is that is missed if we recall the fact that when our Lord
+addressed S. Mary from the Cross He used the same word: "Woman,
+behold thy son." In such circumstances we understand that the word
+on our Lord's lips is a word of infinite tenderness. I do not
+believe that we could do better than to translate it mother. We
+might paraphrase our Lord's saying thus: "Mother, we are both
+concerned with the trouble of these friends; but do not be anxious;
+I will act when the time comes." His words are perfectly simple and
+courteous, though they do, no doubt, suggest that her anxiety is
+unnecessary and that He will act in due time. If we are to
+understand that our Lady was suggesting that He perform a miracle,
+then He certainly yielded to her intercession.</p>
+<p>Indeed, this short aside in the rejoicing of the marriage
+celebration is suggestive of wide reaches of thought. It suggests,
+which concerns us most here, something of the mode of prayer.
+Prayer is not a force exercised upon God, it is an aspiration that
+He answers or not as He sees fit, according as He sees our needs to
+be: and if He answers, He answers in His own way and at His own
+time--when His hour is come. The intercession of the saints, and of
+the highest saint of all, the holy Mother, must thus be conceived
+as aspiration not as force. We hardly need to remind ourselves that
+Blessed Mary though the highest of creatures is still a creature
+and infinitely removed from the uncreated God. When we think of her
+prayers or the prayers of the saints as having "influence" or
+"power" with God, we must remember the limitations of human
+language. It is quite possible through inaccurate use of language
+to create the impression that we believe the prayers of the saints
+to be prevailing with God because of some peculiar spiritual energy
+that belongs to them, or, still worse, because we regard them as a
+sort of court favourites who have special influence and can get
+things done that ordinary people cannot. We need only to state the
+supposition to see that we do not mean it. When we think what we
+mean by the influence of the prayers of the saints, of their
+prevailingness with God, we know that we mean that the superior
+value of the prayers of the saints is due to the superior nature of
+their spiritual insight, to their better understanding of the mind
+and purpose of God. Blessed Mary is our most powerful intercessor
+because by her perfect sanctity she understands God better than any
+one else. No educated Christian believes that she can persuade God
+to change His mind or alter His judgment, or that she or any saint
+would for a moment want to do so. Nor do we who cry for aid in the
+end want any other aid than aid to see God's will and power to do
+it: we have no wish or hope to impose our will on God. Prayer is
+aspiration, the seeking for understanding, the submitting our
+desires to the love of God; and the prayer of the saints helps us
+because they are our brothers and sisters, of the same household,
+and join with us in the offering of ourselves to God that we may
+know and do His holy will. And we can see here in this incident at
+Cana the whole mode of prayer. There is the just implied suggestion
+of the need, the hint of her own thought about the matter, in the
+way in which S. Mary presents the case to Jesus. There is the
+divine method which approves the end sought but reserves the time
+and method of fulfilling it to the "hour" which the divine wisdom
+approves. There is the ideal Christian attitude which accepts the
+divine will perfectly, and says to the servants: "Whatsoever he
+saith unto you, do it."</p>
+<p>"They have no wine": S. Mary's word expresses the present
+weakness of humanity, Man is born in sin, that is, out of union
+with God. That hoary statement of dogmatic theology seems to stir
+the wrath of the modern mind more than any other dogma of the
+Christian Faith, except it be the dogma of eternal punishment. It
+is rather an amusing phenomenon that those who have no visible
+basis for pride are likely to be the most consumed with it. The
+pride of Diogenes was visible through the holes in his carpet; the
+pride of liberalism is visible in its irritability whenever the
+subject of sin, especially original sin, is mentioned. Yet the very
+complacency of liberalism about the perfection of man, is but
+another evidence (if we needed another) of his inherent sinfulness,
+his weakness in the face of moral ideals. If we confess our sins we
+are on the way to forgiveness; but if we say that we have no sin
+the truth is not in us.</p>
+<p>This boasting of capacity to be pure and strong without God,
+theologically the Pelagian heresy, is sufficiently answered by a
+cursory view of what humanity has done and does do. Even where the
+Christian religion has been accepted the accomplishment is hardly
+ground for boasting. The plain fact is (and you may account for it
+how you like, it remains in any case a fact) that human beings are
+terribly weak in the face of moral and spiritual ideals. They are
+not sufficiently drawn by them to overcome the tendency of their
+nature toward a quite opposite set of ideals. We do run easily and
+spontaneously after ideals which the calm and enlightened judgment
+of the race, whether Christian or non-Christian, has continuously
+disapproved. We know that Buddha and Mahomet and Confucius would
+repudiate Paris and Berlin and New York and London with the same
+certainty if not with the same energy as Christ. We live in a time
+when a decisive public opinion gets its way; and therefore we are
+quite safe in saying that the misery and sin which go unchecked in
+the very centres of modern civilisation exist and continue because
+there is no decided public opinion against them.</p>
+<p>All attempts at reform which are merely attempts to reform
+machinery are futile, they can produce only passing and superficial
+results. There is only one medicine for the disease of the world,
+and that medicine is the Blood of Christ. Ultimately, one believes,
+that will be applied; but evidently it will not be applied in any
+broad way as a social treatment till all the quack remedies have
+demonstrated their uselessness. The last two centuries have been
+the flowering time of quacks. The mere history of their theories
+fills volumes. Our own time shows no decline in productiveness, nor
+decline in hopefulness in the efficacy of the last remedy to bid
+for support. But the time of disillusionment must some time
+come.</p>
+<p>When that time comes all men will lift their eyes, as individual
+men have always lifted them, up to the hills whence cometh their
+help. Except they had kept their eyes so resolutely fastened on the
+earth at their feet they would have seen, what has always been
+visible to those who lift up their eyes, a crucified Figure on the
+one supreme hill of earth,--the hill called Calvary. There "one
+Figure stands, with outstretched hands" saying, with
+inextinguishable optimism, the indestructible optimism of God, "and
+I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me."</p>
+<p>What in the end will prevail with them, what will make them turn
+to the Tree which is for the healing of the nations, is the
+perception that in it is the remedy for the weakness that they have
+either sought to heal by other means, or have resolutely denied to
+exist at all. There are men whose wills are so strong that even in
+the grip of some serious disease they will long go on about their
+business asserting that there is nothing the matter with them and
+overcoming bodily pain and weakness by sheer will power; but the
+end comes finally with a collapse that is perhaps beyond remedy. We
+live in a society which has the same characteristics, but it may be
+that it will see its state and turn to healing. For God cannot heal
+except with our co-operation. Christ pleads from the Cross, but he
+can do no more. He will not submit to our tests; He will not come
+down that we may believe in Him. We must come to Him, laying aside
+all our pride and self-will, and kneel by the Cross to ask His
+help.</p>
+<p>We know, do we not? that that is the law for the individual;
+that we found the meaning of Christ, and what He can do in life,
+when we laid aside pride and self-will and humbly asked help and
+pardon. It may be that we resisted a long while, struggling against
+the pull of the divine magnet; but if we have attained to spiritual
+peace it is because the Cross won, because we found ourselves
+kneeling at the feet of Jesus. Perhaps we have not got there yet,
+but are only on the way. Perhaps our religion as yet is a formality
+and not a devotion. Perhaps our pride still struggles against the
+Catholic practice of religion. Then why not give way now, to-night?
+Let Mary take you and lead you to Jesus. She will bring you to him
+with her half-suggestion, half-prayer: "He has no wine." He has got
+to the end of his strength, and he has found the weariness of self,
+he is ready for healing. O my divine Son, is not this your
+opportunity, your "hour"?</p>
+<p>Jesus loves to have us bring one another to Him. It is so
+obviously the response to His Spirit, that carrying out of His
+teaching, so to love the brother that we may bring him to the
+healing of the Cross. To care for the spiritual needs of the
+brother is a real ministry: it is an extension of Christ in us that
+clothes us with the power to aid other souls in work or prayer.
+What a beautiful picture of this work there is in the Gospel of St.
+John. "And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to
+worship at the feast: the same came therefore to Philip, which was
+of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see
+Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and
+Philip tell Jesus." And this work of presenting souls to Jesus
+which is so clearly one of our chief privileges, how should not
+that be also the privilege of all the saints, and especially of the
+Holy Mother? Blessed Mary, we may be sure, delights in leading
+souls who so hesitatingly come to her, to the presence of her
+Son,--just presenting them in their need and with her prayer, which
+is all the plea that is needed to attract the love and mercy of
+Jesus. "Why not," ask certain people who have not thought out the
+meaning of Catholic dogma, "why not go at once to our Lord; why go
+in this roundabout way?" Why not? Because of our human qualities.
+Because we need company and sympathy. For the same reason precisely
+that makes us ask one another's prayers here. "The Father Himself
+loveth you." Why in this roundabout way ask me to pray? You do not
+come to me because you lack faith in God or in God's love; you come
+to me because you feel, if only implicitly, that in the Body of
+Christ association in love and sympathy and work is a high
+privilege, and that it is God's will that we should work together
+and "bear one another's burdens." And the frontiers of the Kingdom
+of God are not the frontiers of the Church Militant, and its
+citizens are not only the citizens of the Church here below,
+but--we believe in the Communion of saints.</p>
+<p>The hour of God strikes for any soul when that soul yields to
+prevenient grace and places itself utterly at the disposal of God,
+confiding wholly in His divine wisdom. When our Lord had answered
+His Blessed Mother she turned away satisfied. She did not have to
+concern herself any further; it was now in Jesus' hands to provide
+as He would. It remained but to see that His will should be carried
+out when He made it known.</p>
+<p>Submission is a difficult attitude to acquire; but it is such a
+happy attitude when once one has acquired it. The critics of it
+wholly mistake it and confound it with fatalism. It is not
+fatalism, or passive acquiescence in another's will--a will that we
+have no part in forming and cannot reject. Submission is the
+acceptance of God's will as the expression of the highest wisdom
+for us. It is not true that we have no part in forming it; it is at
+any time an expression of God's will for us which is determined by
+the way in which we hitherto have corresponded to that will.
+Submission means that we have put ourselves in a position of active
+co-operation with that will, that we have made it ours: because it
+is the expression of a divine wisdom and love we make it wholly
+ours. And we have found in the acceptance of it not bondage but
+liberty. It is wonderful how our preconceived notion of God and
+religion vanishes before the first gleams of experience. To the
+unregenerate the service of God is utter bondage; to the regenerate
+it is perfect freedom. And the difference seems to be accounted for
+by the reversal of ideals, by a new direction of affections. "I
+will run the way of thy commandments, when thou hast set my heart
+at liberty,"</p>
+<p>A true conversion is, perhaps, signified, more than in any other
+way, by the liberty of the heart,--by this change in the object of
+our love. That has been the constant exhortation to us, to love
+that which is worthy of love. "Set your affection on things above."
+"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." And
+we, loving the world and the things that are in the world, listen
+impatiently. But there is no possibility of a sincere conversion
+without a change of love. "A change of heart" conversion is often
+called, and so inevitably it is. And as we go through our
+self-examination one of the most profitable questions we can ask
+is, "What do I love?" That will commonly tell the whole story of
+the life, for "where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be
+also."</p>
+<p>Richard Rolle said: "Truly he who is stirred with busy love, and
+is continually with Jesu in thought, full soon perceives his own
+faults, the which correcting, henceforward he is ware of them; and
+so he brings righteousness busily to birth, until he is led to God
+and may sit with heavenly citizens in everlasting seats. Therefore
+he stands clear in conscience and is steadfast in all good ways the
+which is never noyed with worldly heaviness nor gladdened with
+vainglory."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>CANA I<br>
+<br>
+O Glorious Lady, throned in light,<br>
+Sublime above the starry height,<br>
+Whose arms thine own creator pressed,<br>
+A Suckling at thy sacred breast.<br>
+Through the dear Blossom of thy womb,<br>
+Thou changest hapless Eva's doom;<br>
+Through thee to contrite souls is given<br>
+An opening to their home in heaven.<br>
+Thou art the great King's Portal bright,<br>
+The shining Gate of living light;<br>
+Come then, ye ransomed nations, sing<br>
+The Life Divine 'twas hers to bring.<br>
+Mother of Love and Mercy mild,<br>
+Mother of graces undefiled.<br>
+Drive back the foe, and to thy Son<br>
+Lead thou our souls when life is done.<br>
+All glory be to thee, O Lord,<br>
+A Virgin's Son, by all adored,<br>
+With Sire and Spirit, Three in One,<br>
+While everlasting ages run.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>CANA II</h3>
+<center>And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus<br>
+saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith<br>
+unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee?<br>
+mine hour is not yet come.<br>
+<br>
+S. John II, 3, 4.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>We, the faithful, bless thee, O Virgin Mother of God,
+and glorify thee as is thy due, the city unshaken, the wall
+unbroken, the unbreakable defence and refuge of our
+souls.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">BYZANTINE.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/quote-w.png" width="23%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hatsoever He saith unto you, do it." These words have often been
+called the Gospel according to S. Mary. They certainly sum up her
+whole attitude in life. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it
+unto me according to thy word," she had said in reply to the
+message S. Gabriel brought her: and that is the meaning of her
+whole life-story, that she is at all times ready to accept the will
+of God, to give herself to the fulfilment of the divine purpose.
+There is no more perfect attitude, for it is the attitude of her
+divine Son whose meat it was to do the will of the Father and to
+finish His work, whose whole life's attitude was compressed into
+the words of His self-oblation in Gethsemane, "Not my will, but
+thine be done."</p>
+<p>And this is the virtue that Jesus Christ inculcates upon us.
+"When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven ... thy will be
+done." There is no true religion possible without that attitude.
+And therefore one is deeply concerned about the immediate future
+inasmuch as the spirit of obedience, the spirit of Jesus, the
+spirit of Mary, is so rare. As one looks into the social
+development of the Christian era, one feels that the life and
+example of S. Mary has been of immense influence in the development
+of the ideal of womanhood. The rise of woman from a wholly
+subordinate and inferior condition to a condition of complete
+equality with man has owed more to S. Mary than to any other
+factor. I am not concerned with political equality; that under our
+present conditions of social development women should have that
+equality if they want it seems to me just, but I am by no means
+satisfied that in the long run it will prove a boon either to them
+or to society at large. But I am at present thinking of their
+spiritual equality, which after all is the basis of their other
+claims; and this comes to them through the Gospel, and was shown to
+the mind of the Church largely through S. Mary. In the earliest
+records of the Church woman stands on the same level of privilege
+as man, and the same sort of spiritual accomplishment is expected
+of her.</p>
+<p>There are many members of the Body of Christ and there is a
+certain spiritual equality among them; but "all members have not
+the same office." In the Holy Spirit's distribution of functions
+within the Body there is a difference. Some functions, by the
+allotment of God, women are not called to exercise: these are
+sacramental and ruling functions. Others, as prophecy (the
+daughters of S. Philip), and ministry (the deaconess), are given
+them. For centuries she recognised this allotment and gave her best
+energies to her appointed works. She showed herself a true daughter
+of Mary in her loyal acceptance of the divine will and her zeal in
+its accomplishment. And what was the result? The Calendar of
+Saints, filled with the names of women, is the answer. There are no
+more wonderful works of God than the women whose names are
+commemorated at the altars of the Church and whose intercession is
+constantly asked throughout Catholic Christendom. There can be no
+thought of narrowness of opportunity or limitations in life as we
+study that wonderful series of women who have illumined the history
+of the Church from the day of S. Gabriel's message to this very
+moment when there are many many women who are faithfully following
+their vocation and doing God's will, and who will one day be our
+intercessors about the throne of God and of the Lamb, as they are
+our intercessors in the Church on earth to-day. Why any woman
+should complain of lack of opportunity and of the narrowness of the
+Church--the Church that has nourished S. Mary and S. Monica, S.
+Catherine of Genoa and S. Theresa; the foundresses of so many and
+so varied Religious Orders, so many who have devoted their lives to
+teaching, nursing, conducting works of charity, I am at a loss to
+understand. To-day we are witnessing all over the world a revolt of
+women against the Church; we hear not infrequent threats of what is
+to be done to the Church by those revolted members. I am afraid
+that woman is on the edge of another tragedy. She is once more
+looking fascinated at the fruit which "is good for food, and
+pleasant to the eyes and to be desired to make one wise," and
+listening to a voice that whispers: "Thou shalt be as God."</p>
+<p>The question which is becoming more urgent everywhere is, What
+are the women of the future to be,--the daughters of Eve, or the
+daughters of Mary? It is not a question for declamation, but a
+question that calls for immediate action: and the action must be
+the action of women. If women clamour for work in the Church of
+God, here it is, and here it is abundantly; and to accomplish it
+there is no need that they "seek the priesthood also." The work in
+the Church of God is in the first place a work that God has given
+mothers to do; it is the primary duty of a mother to bring up her
+children, and especially her daughters, in fear of the Lord. That
+she can always succeed I do not for a moment claim; there are many
+adverse factors in the situation that she has to deal with. But she
+is inexcusable if she does not give her effort to the work as the
+most important work of her life. She is utterly inexcusable and
+must answer to God for the result if she turn her children over to
+the care of maids and teachers while she occupies herself with
+society or any exterior work.</p>
+<p>In the second place the work of the Church of God is a work that
+ought to appeal to all women and a work that any woman can help in.
+All women can help the spiritual progress of the Church by
+meditating upon the life of Blessed Mary and fashioning their lives
+upon her example. We are all tremendously affected by example, and
+that is especially true of young girls. Their supreme terror seems
+to be that they should be caught doing or saying something
+different from what all other girls say or do or wear. Their
+opinions are as imitative as their clothes. Hence the need of the
+pressure of a strong Christian example, which would result most
+readily in the union of Christian women in a single ideal. Our
+present difficulty is that so many of our women who are devout
+members of the Church in their private capacity, so far succumb to
+the group-mind in their social relations that they are possessed by
+the same terror as the young girl in the face of the possibility of
+being different. Therefore are they careful to hide their real
+feeling for religion and their devotion to spiritual things under
+the mask of worldly conformity which evacuates their example of
+much of the power that it might have. I am quite convinced that
+fear of the world is about as strong an impulse toward evil as love
+of the world.</p>
+<p>We need that women should clear their ideals and realise their
+public responsibility for the presentation of them. We need
+terribly at this moment insistence on the purity and simplicity of
+the Holy Mother of God. One is stunned at the abandonment of the
+ideal of reserve and modesty that the last few years have seen.
+Women seem to take it quite gaily: men, one notes, take it much
+more seriously. I have been consulted by more than one father
+during the past year as to the possibility of sending a boy to a
+school where he would be kept out of the society of half-naked
+girls. Have mothers no longer any sense of the value of purity? Or
+have they simply abandoned all responsibility that normally goes
+with being a mother? One recognises how helpless a man is under the
+circumstances, that his intervention in such matters simply casts
+him for the part of family tyrant; but why should a mother abandon
+her duty simply because her daughter says: "You don't understand.
+Girls are not as they were when you were young. All the girls do
+this. No other mother takes the line that you do. You are not
+modern."</p>
+<p>One knows, of course, that the whole matter of decline in
+manners and morals is but a part of the world-wide revolt against
+the morality of Jesus Christ that we are witnessing everywhere.
+Social and religious teachers, students of history and social
+movements have seen the approach of this revolt for a long time,
+have been watching its rise and growth. When they have pointed out
+the end of the path that we have been travelling, they have been
+disposed of by calling them pessimists. These "pessimists" pointed
+out long ago that the denial of the obligation to believe would be
+followed by an abandonment of all moral standards. They pointed out
+to the devotees of "liberal religion" that they are in reality the
+leaders of a moral revolt, that if it does not make any difference
+what you believe it will soon come to make no difference what you
+do. It is a rather silly performance to blow up the dam which holds
+back the mass of water of an irrigation system and imagine that no
+more water will flow out than you want to flow out. When the
+Protestant revolt blew up the restraining dams of the Catholic
+Religion they had no right to expect that only so much denial of
+Catholic truth as it suited them to dispense with would be the
+result. Through the broken dams the whole religion of Christ has
+been flowing out and it is mere empty pretence to claim that all
+that is of any value is left. It is impossible to maintain anything
+of the sort now that all the moral content of the Christian system
+is openly thrown overboard by vast numbers of the population of the
+world, in every country that claims to be civilised. It is useless
+to say that there has always been evil in the world and that the
+maintenance of the Catholic religion has never anywhere abolished
+sin. That is true, but it is not to the present point. The social
+situation is one where there are definite religious and moral
+ideals strongly maintained and universally recognised, though there
+are many men and women who violate them; it is quite another
+situation when the ideals themselves are repudiated and set aside
+as superstitions. That is our case to-day. The Christian theory is
+confronted with a theory of naturalism in morals, and those who
+follow that theory do not do so with a feeling that they are
+violating accepted ideals, but with the assumption that they are
+missionaries setting forth a new faith. Those who have revolted
+from the Kingdom of God have now set up another kingdom and
+proclaimed openly, "We will not have this Man to reign over us."
+The revolt which began with a breach in the dogmatic system of the
+Church and denial of the authority of the Catholic Church in favour
+of the right of private judgment, has ended, as it could not help
+but end, in open abandonment of the life-ideal of the Gospels. We
+now have the application of the right of private judgment in the
+theory that one's morals are one's own concern. Such things have
+happened before. "In those days there was no king in Israel, but
+every one did what was right in his own eyes." The social state
+depicted in the Book of Judges reflects this revolt. The result of
+the same repudiation of authority is seen in modern society where
+what is right in one's own eyes is the whole Law and Gospel. Are we
+to remain quiescent, or are we to make the attempt to generate
+moral force?</p>
+<p>But how can Christendom generate any more moral force? The
+teaching of the Gospel which it proclaims is perfectly plain. True,
+but is the adherence of the Church to its statements perfectly
+plain? Is there no falling away, no compromise, there?</p>
+<p>When one speaks thus of the Church one is conscious of a
+confusion of thought in the use of the word. The teaching of the
+formal documents of the Church is not here in question; what we
+necessarily mean is the effect that the existing membership of the
+Church is having upon contemporary life. What we have especially in
+mind is the attitude of the clergy and the action of the
+congregation in the way of moral force. What sort of a front is the
+church presenting to the world, what sort of moral influence is it
+exercising?</p>
+<p>It seems to me perfectly evident that all along the line the
+conventions of contemporary society have been accepted in the place
+of the life-ideals of the Gospel of Jesus. We have accepted plain
+departures from or compromises with Christian teaching as the
+recognised law of action. This is due largely to the natural sloth
+of the human being and his disinclination to struggle for superior
+standards. He feels safe and comfortable if he can succeed in
+losing himself in a crowd: thus he escapes both trouble and
+criticism. A violation of law may become so common that there is no
+public spirit to oppose it. The same thing may happen in
+morals,--violations of the Christian standard, if sufficiently
+widespread, command almost universal acquiesence. What is actually
+uncovered in the process is the fact that the plain man has no
+morals of his own, but imitates the prevailing morality; and if
+fashion sets against some particular ruling of the Christian
+Religion he feels quite secure in following the fashion. The <i>vox
+dei</i> in Holy Scripture and in Holy Church affect him not at all
+if he be conscious that he is on the side of the <i>vox
+populi</i>.</p>
+<p>It is easy to illustrate this. The non-Catholic Christian world
+has the Bible, and boasts of its adherence to it as the sole guide
+of life; but in the matter of divorced persons it utterly
+disregards its teachings. By this acceptance of an unchristian
+attitude it has vastly weakened the fight for purity in the family
+relation which the Catholic Church, at least in the West, has
+always waged. It deliberately divides the Christian forces of the
+community and to a large extent thereby nullifies their action. The
+divisions of Christendom are terrible from every point of view; but
+there are certain questions on which a united mind might well be
+presented, and in relation to which an united mind would go far to
+control the attitude of society. An united Christian sentiment
+against divorce would go far to reduce the evil.</p>
+<p>On the other hand the progress of the movement to abolish the
+evils growing out of the use of alcohol has had its strength in the
+Protestant bodies. On the whole (there were no doubt individual
+exceptions) the Churches of the Catholic tradition have been
+lukewarm in the matter. It is quite evident that the reform could
+never have been carried through if left to them, and especially if
+left to the bishops and clergy of the Roman and Anglican
+Communions. It is a plain case of failure to support a vast moral
+reform because of the pressure of opinion in the social circles in
+which they move, combined with a purely individualistic attitude
+toward a grave social question.</p>
+<p>Another instance is ready at hand in the practical abandonment
+of the religious observance of Sunday. To Christians Sunday is the
+Lord's day, and is to be observed as such. It is not true that an
+hour in the morning is the Lord's day, and is to be given to
+worship, and that the rest of the day is given to us to do what we
+will with. But in our own Communion do we get any strong protest in
+favour of the sanctity of the day? Or are not the clergy
+compromising in the hope that if they surrender the greater part of
+the day to the world they will be able to save an hour or two for
+God? But is anything actually saved by this sort of compromise? Do
+we not know that the encroachments of worldliness that have
+narrowed down Sunday observance to an hour a day will ultimately
+demand that hour, that is, will deny any obligation other than the
+obligation of inclination? Are we not bound to stand by the Lord's
+day? Are we to be made lax by silly talk about puritanism? Those
+who talk about the "Puritan Sunday" would do well to read a little
+of the Medieval legislation of the Church. Are we to keep silent in
+the pulpit because wealthy and influential members of the
+congregation want to play golf and tennis on Sunday afternoons, or
+children want to play ball or go to the movies? Are we to be taken
+in by talk of hard work during the week and consequent need of
+rest? It is no doubt well that a man should arrange his work with a
+view to an adequate amount of rest; but it is also well that he
+should rest in his own time and not in God's. The Lord's day is not
+a day of rest. It ought to be, and is intended to be, a very
+strenuous day indeed.</p>
+<p>One could easily spend hours in pointing out where and how the
+Gospel standard of life has been abandoned or compromised, and the
+life of the Christian in consequence conformed to the world. The
+result would only strengthen the position that has been already
+sufficiently indicated that a wholly different standard of living
+has been quietly substituted throughout the Western world for the
+standard that is contained in Holy Scripture. Now we are either
+bound to be Christians or we are not; and we are not Christians
+solely by virtue of certain beliefs more or less loosely held. Our
+Lord's word is: "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command
+you." And the Gospel view of life is a perfectly plain one, and is
+as far removed from the common life of Christians to-day as it
+possibly can be. The Gospel conception of the Christian life is
+contained first of all in our Lord's life. That is the perfect
+human life; and the New Testament optimism is well illustrated by
+its conviction that that life in its essential features can, with
+the grace of God, be imitated by man. And by those who have
+approached it in this spirit of optimism it has been found
+imitable. Innumerable men and women have lived the Christian life
+in the past and are living it in the present. To-day the
+possibility of living the Christian life, of bringing life
+approximately to the standard of the Gospel, is declared to be an
+impracticable piece of optimism, and our Lord's teaching hopelessly
+out of touch with reality. When people talk of the difficulty of
+living the Christ-life under modern conditions, the plain answer is
+that there is in fact only one difficulty in the matter, and that
+is the difficulty of wanting to do it. It is a confession of utter
+spiritual incompetence to say that we cannot follow the Gospel
+standards under modern conditions because of the isolation in which
+we at once find ourselves if we attempt it. If the attempt to be a
+Christian isolates us, it tells a pretty plain tale about our
+chosen companionship. It is asserting that it is hard for us to be
+Christians because we are devoted to the society of those who are
+not Christians, of those who ignore it and habitually insult the
+teachings of our Saviour. That is surely an extraordinary
+confession for a Christian to make! Can we imagine a Christian of
+the first period of the Church excusing himself for offering
+incense to the divinity of Augustus on the ground that if he did
+not do so certain court festivities would be closed to him, and
+that his friends would think him odd!</p>
+<p>"Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you," "The
+friendship of this world is enmity with God." We have to choose. It
+is not that we may choose. It is not that it is possible to have a
+little of both. As Christians it is quite impossible in any real
+sense to have the friendship of the world, though many Christians
+think that they can. What really is open to us is the enmity of the
+world if we are sincere and strict in our profession, and the
+contempt of the world if we are not. You have not to read very deep
+in contemporary literature to learn what the world thinks about the
+Christian who ignores or compromises his standards. The world knows
+perfectly well what constitutes a Christian life, and it shows a
+well merited scorn of those who, not having the courage openly to
+abandon it, yet show by their lives that they do not value it. We
+may not show the same sort of contempt for the "weak brother" as S.
+Paul calls him, but we ought to make it plain that we have no sort
+of approval of the brother who pleads weakness as an excuse for
+laxity.</p>
+<p>There is one law of life and only one; and that is summed up in
+our Lady's direction to the servants at Cana in Galilee:
+"Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." There is no ground for
+pleading that our Lord's will is an obscure will, or that
+circumstances have so changed that much that He set forth in word
+and example has no application to-day in the America of the
+twentieth century. Perhaps if any one feels that there is some
+truth in the last statement, he would do well to examine the case
+and to find out just what and how much of the Gospel teaching is
+obsolete, and how much has contemporary application, and to ask
+himself whether he is constantly putting in action that part which
+he thinks still holds good. It will, I think, on examination be
+found that none of our Lord's teaching is obsolete, though in some
+cases changed circumstances may have changed its mode of
+application. Certainly there is nothing obsolete in His teaching in
+the matter of purity. The virtues that He dwells upon--humility,
+meekness and the rest--are universal qualities on which time and
+social change have no effect.</p>
+<p>What Christian conduct needs on our part is interest. We have to
+make clear to ourselves that a certain kind of life is like the
+life of God, and therefore is the medium for understanding God, and
+ultimately for enjoying God. The Christian life is not an arbitrary
+thing; it is the highest expression of humanity. Any other life is
+a distortion of the human ideal. People talk as though they thought
+that by the arbitrary will of God they were obliged to be good--a
+thing wholly contrary to our nature and to our present interests.
+But goodness is the natural unfolding of our nature as God made it:
+we find our true expression in the likeness of God. Perfection is
+what nature aspires to. Religion is not a curb on nature; religion
+is a help to enable nature to express itself. Nature reaches its
+perfect expression when by the grace of God it becomes godlike.</p>
+<p>And the words of Christ are our guide to the perfect expression
+of our best. Therefore the earnest Christian is willing to give
+time to the careful study of them, and of the whole ideal of life
+that is contained in them. He is not concerned with what they will
+cut him off from; he is concerned with that to which they will
+admit him. He is concerned to find the meaning of Christ's
+teaching. This that S. Paul says is fundamental is his rule of
+life: "Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the
+renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and
+acceptable, and perfect, will of God."</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Of one that is so fayr and bright<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Velut maris stella</i>,<br>
+Brighter than the day is light,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Parens et puella</i>;<br>
+I crie to thee, thou see to me,<br>
+Levedy, preye thi Sone for me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Tam pia</i>,<br>
+That I mote come to thee<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Maria</i>.<br>
+<br>
+Al this world was for-lore<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Eva peccatrice</i>,<br>
+Tyl our Lord was y-bore<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>De te genetrice</i>.<br>
+With <i>Ave</i> it went away<br>
+Thuster nyth and comz the day<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Salutis</i>;<br>
+The welle springeth ut of the,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Virtutis</i>.<br>
+<br>
+Levedy, flour of alle thing,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Rosa sine spina</i>,<br>
+Thu here Jhesu, hevene king,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Gratia divina</i>;<br>
+Of alle thu ber'st the pris,<br>
+Levedy, quene of paradys<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Electa</i>:<br>
+Mayde milde, moder <i>es<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Effecta</i>.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>WHO IS MY MOTHER?</h3>
+<center>Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in
+heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother,<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. XII, 50.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we may keep
+with an immaculate heart the sacrament which we have received in
+honour of the blessed virgin mother Mary; so that we who celebrate
+her feast now, may be found worthy when we have left this life to
+pass into her company. Through &amp;c.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">SARUM MISSAL.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-o.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>Our Blessed Lord had begun his ministry of preaching. The mark
+of the early days of that preaching was success. Crowds came about
+Him wherever He taught. The fact that there were frequent miracles
+of healing no doubt added to the popularity that He achieved. It
+was largely the popularity of a new and strange movement, of a
+preaching cutting across the normal roads of instruction to which
+the Jewish people were accustomed. There was a fascination about
+its form, its picturesque way of conveying its meaning, its use of
+the parable drawn from the everyday circumstances of life. There
+was nothing of hesitation in the words of the new Preacher, but the
+ring of a dogmatic certainty. "He taught as one having authority,
+and not as the scribes." He pushed aside the rulings of the
+traditional teaching with His, "Ye have heard it said ... but I
+say." "Verily, verily, I say unto you." And yet there are people
+who tell us that there was nothing dogmatic about our Lord and His
+teaching! One would infer from much that is written upon the
+subject of our Lord's teaching that He was a very mild giver of
+good advice but evidently the Scribes and Pharisees did not think
+so. They saw in Him a man who was setting himself to undermine
+their whole authority.</p>
+<p>This popularity was at a high point when an interesting event
+happened of which we have an account in the first of the Gospels.
+"His mother and His brethren stood without, desiring to speak with
+Him." One gathers from the whole tone of the narrative that they
+were anxious about Him, that they looked with doubt upon this
+career of popular teacher that He was launched upon and felt that
+He was going too far. He needed advice and restraint, perhaps; it
+may be that there were already reports of possible interference by
+the national authorities. The fact that His "brethren" were present
+suggests the well meant interference of the older members of the
+family, who must always have thought Jesus rather strange. That
+they had induced His mother to come with them makes us think that
+they were counting on the influence naturally hers, an influence
+which must always have been apparent in their family relations. So
+we reconstruct the incident.</p>
+<p>No doubt S. Mary herself was anxious. She must always have been
+anxious as to what would be the next step in the development of her
+mysterious Child. And while there was one side of her relation to
+Jesus which would always have run out into mystery, the mystery of
+the as yet unrevealed will of God; on the other side she was no
+doubt a very real normal human mother, with all a mother's anxiety
+and need of constant intervention in the life of her Child. I do
+not suppose that S. Mary, any more than any other mother, ever
+understood that her Son had grown up and could be trusted to
+conduct the ordinary affairs of the day without her help. She was
+no doubt as much concerned as any mother with the fact that His
+feet might be wet, or that He might not have had any lunch, or that
+he might have got run over by a passing chariot, or have been taken
+mysteriously ill. It was, we may think, this mother-attitude which
+brought her along with the brethren to give some advice as to how
+to carry on the preaching mission and avoid getting into trouble
+with the religious authorities. "One said unto him, Behold, thy
+mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.
+But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother?
+and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his
+disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For
+whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the
+same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother."</p>
+<p>Our Lord had a way of turning the passing incidents of the
+moment to account in His preaching, making them the texts of moral
+and spiritual teaching. One gathers that more than one of the
+parables and parabolic sayings was suggested by something that was
+before the eyes of His hearers. He was quick to seize any spoken
+word, any question, any exclamation, and to turn it to immediate
+account. It was so now. The report that His mother and His brethren
+were seeking Him, He made the occasion of a statement of vast
+import. When we try to think it out, it was not in the least, as it
+has been perversely understood, an impatient rebuff of an untimely
+interference, an indication that He did not care for their
+intervention in a work that they did not understand. There is
+really nothing of all that, but a seizing of a passing incident as
+the medium of an universal truth. It is the skill of one who knows
+that the human attention is caught by a matter, however trifling,
+which is vividly present. The scene is sharply defined for us: our
+Lord interrupted in His talk; the report of the mother and the
+brethren seeking Him; the obvious interest of the people as to how
+He will take their intervention; and then the rapid seizing of this
+interest to make His declaration: "Whosoever shall do the will of
+my Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister,
+and my brother."</p>
+<p>And what are we to understand Him to mean? Surely He is
+declaring that through the revelation of God that He is, there is a
+new stage in God's work for man being entered upon, and that this
+new stage will be characterised by the emergence of a new set of
+relations, relations so important that they throw into the
+background the ordinary relations of life. He is proclaiming to
+them the advent of the Kingdom of God; and in that Kingdom, the
+service of God will be put first, before all human relations. It
+will not be antagonistic to human relations; indeed, it will hallow
+them and raise them to a higher level; but in case they, as not
+infrequently they will, decline to adjust themselves to the work of
+the Kingdom, or set themselves in opposition to it, then will they
+be brushed aside, no matter what they be. If we can consecrate our
+human relations and bring them into God, then will they be ours
+still with a vast enrichment and a rare spiritual beauty; but if
+they remain selfish, insist on absorbing all attention and energy,
+then they must be broken. The love of father and mother and
+children is an holy thing wherever we find it, but it is capable of
+becoming a selfish and perverse thing, insistent upon its own ends
+and declining wider responsibilities. In that case it must be
+regarded from the standpoint of a higher good: if it stand in the
+path of the Kingdom it must be swept aside. So our Lord declared in
+one of the most searching of His utterances; one of the utterances
+which we feel could come only from the lips of God: "Think not that
+I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a
+sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father,
+and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law
+against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be those of his
+own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not
+worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is
+not worthy of me."</p>
+<p>That is the teaching of the incident before us. Our Lord's
+primary mission is to declare the will of God, and to make known
+the mind of the Father to all who will heed. Their acceptance of
+this will of the Father will bring them into a new relation to Him
+more important than, and transcending, all relations of flesh and
+blood. But--and this is important to mark--it does not exclude
+relations of flesh and blood; but it demands that they shall be put
+on a new basis and be assimilated to the higher relation. In our
+Lord's case they were in fact so assimilated. The blessed Mother
+and the brethren did not resist God's will when they came to
+understand it. They were, we know, glad of the higher relation, the
+new privilege. There is no ground at all for the suggestion of any
+breach between them. They are of the inner circle always in the
+Kingdom of the regenerate.</p>
+<p>This fundamental truth of Christ's teaching, that through Him a
+new and closer relation to the Father becomes possible, and that
+the Kingdom is its embodiment, is one of the truths which have
+received constant lip-service, but have never been really
+assimilated in the working life of the Church. That the Church is
+the Body of Christ and we His members, and that by virtue of this
+membership in Him we are also members one of another; that we are,
+at our entrance into the Kingdom, made, as the Catechism puts it,
+members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the kingdom of
+Heaven are truths of most marvellous reach and of splendid social
+implications. But can we say that they have very wide or real
+acknowledgment?</p>
+<p>In face of a divided Christendom it seems almost farcical to
+talk of a Christian Brotherhood. The baptismal membership of the
+Church of God has fallen into group organisations whose mutual
+antagonism is of the bitterest kind. The so-called "religious
+press" is perhaps the saddest picture of modern Christian life. One
+could name a half dozen journals off hand, organs of this or that
+group, every one a sufficient refutation of the claim of the
+Christian Religion to be a Brotherhood of the Redeemed. There is no
+possible excuse for the tone of such publications.</p>
+<p>No doubt it is an inevitable result of the state of a divided
+Christendom that there should be disputes and controversies. We
+shall never reach any expression of the Brotherhood that is the
+Church by saying, Peace, Peace, where there is no Peace. The unity
+we look to must be reached through painful sacrifice and through
+conflict; and we know that the wisdom that is from above is "first
+pure, and then peaceable," But it is quite possible while holding
+with all firmness to the truth, to hold it in the fear and love of
+God.</p>
+<p>So long as Christendom is thus divided into hostile camps the
+ideal of brotherhood is impossible of realisation. I do not want
+however to discuss this matter from the point of view of Church
+unity. I want to point out that within the groups themselves there
+is small vision of the meaning of the oneness of Christ. For
+brotherhood is the expression of a spiritual reality. It looked for
+a moment in the early days of the Church as though the ideal would
+be realised. The description of the Church was that "all that
+believed were together, and had all things in common: and sold
+their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every
+man had need." That was, no doubt, a passing phase of the life of
+the Church in Jerusalem, but we have evidence that elsewhere all
+distinctions based upon social considerations were for the moment
+swept away. There is "neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond
+nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in
+Christ Jesus." Our glimpses of the congregations of the early
+Church are of men and women of all classes held together by the
+bond of a common membership in Christ, so strongly felt as to
+enable them to forget all worldly distinctions. Their sense of
+redemption was strong. They thrilled with the joy of deliverance
+from the old life "after the flesh." They knew that they were
+regenerate, new creations, and that this was the distinction of the
+brother who knelt beside them at their communions. It mattered not
+at all what he was in the world, whether he were Greek or
+Barbarian, whether he were patrician or freedman, whether he were
+of the slaves of Rome or of Caesar's household. The man who knelt
+to receive his communion might be a great nobleman, the priest who
+communicated him might be a slave: that did not matter; the
+significant thing was that they were both one in Jesus Christ.</p>
+<p>That did not last. I suppose that it could not be expected to
+last in an unconverted or half converted world. It could only last
+on condition of the fairly complete isolation of the Christian
+group from the rest of society, pending the conversion of society
+as a whole. But it proved impossible to secure the isolation. The
+only real isolation was in monastic groups which naturally could
+contain only such men and women as God called to a special sort of
+life: the whole of society could not be so organised. As the Church
+grew and took in the various social constituents included in the
+Empire, it took them in differentiated as they were. There seems to
+have been no real effort to break down race distinctions or class
+distinctions. There were no doubt protests, but the protests were
+as ineffective then as now. "You cannot change human nature," men
+say; but that in fact is precisely what Christianity claims to do.
+Unless it can change human nature it is a failure.</p>
+<p>The ideal of Christianity is not the abolition of inequality
+(only a certain sort of social theorists are insane enough to
+expect that). All men are born unequal in a variety of ways,
+physical, intellectual, moral; and under any form of society that
+so far has been invented they are born in social classes which
+remain very hard realities in spite of our theories. What
+Christianity aims at accomplishing is to transcend these
+inequalities, natural and artificial, by raising men to a state of
+spiritual equality, a state which ensures true and full enjoyment
+of all the privileges of the child of God. In this state there is
+open to all the gift of sanctifying grace which is the possession
+of God now, and in the future will unfold into the capacity of the
+complete participation of the life of heaven. This belongs to, is
+within the grasp of, any child, any ignorant peasant, any toiler,
+as much as it is within the grasp of bishop or priest or Religious.
+And this much--and how much it is!--the Church has succeeded in
+accomplishing. It may be slow in offering the riches of the Gospel
+to the unconverted world, but where it has presented the Gospel, it
+presents it to all men as a Gospel of salvation and sanctification.
+When tempted to discouragement let us remember that whatever the
+shortcoming of the Church, it is yet true that every man, woman and
+child in these United States of America can through its
+instrumentality, become a saint whenever he desires. But,
+naturally, to become a saint, effort is necessary.</p>
+<p>Where the Church has failed is not in the offer of salvation and
+sanctity, but in removing some of of the obvious obstacles to its
+attainment by many to whom it appeals, to whom its divine mission
+is. It has not succeeded in convincing us that we are members one
+of another, that is, it has not succeeded in persuading us to act
+upon what we profess in any broad way. The Church is not a
+fellowship in any comprehensive sense. The divisions which run
+through secular society and divide group from group run through it
+also. The parish which should be the exemplification of the
+Christian brotherhood in action is not so. Too often a parish is
+known as the parish of a certain social group. There are parishes
+to which people go to get "into society." Very likely they do not
+succeed, but that is the sort of impression that the parish
+membership has made upon them. Then there are parishes to which
+people "in society" would not be transferred. There are churches in
+which no poor person would set foot, not that they would be
+unwelcome, but that they would feel out of place. So long as such
+things are true, our practice of brotherhood has not much to
+commend of it.</p>
+<p>And when we go about setting things right I am not sure that we
+do not mostly make them worse. I do not believe that it is the
+business of the Church to set about the abolition of inequalities
+and the getting rid of the distinctions between man and man. Apart
+from the waste of time due to attempting the impossible, what would
+be gained? Pending the arrival of the social millenium we need to
+do something; and that something, it seems to me a mistake to
+assume must be social. "We must bring people together": but what is
+gained by bringing people together when they do not want to be
+together, and will not actually get together when you force them
+into proximity. There is nothing more expressive of the failure of
+well-meant activity than a church gathering where people at once
+group themselves along the familiar lines and decline to mix,
+notwithstanding the utmost endeavours of clergy and zealous ladies
+to bring them together. The thing is an object lesson of wrong
+method.</p>
+<p>Is there a right method? There must be, though no one seems to
+have found it yet. There is in any case a right point of departure
+in our common membership in Jesus Christ. Suppose we drop the
+supposition that we make, I presume because we think it pious, that
+if they are both Christians a dock labourer ought to be quite at
+home at a millionaire's dinner party, or a scrub-woman in a box at
+the Metropolitan opera house. Suppose we drop the attempt to force
+people together on lines which will be impossible till after the
+social revolution has buried us all in a common grave, and fasten
+attention on the one fact that, from our present point of view,
+counts, the fact that we are Christians. Suppose one learns to meet
+all men and all women simply on the basis of their religion; when
+that forms the bond that unites us when we come together, we have
+at once common grounds of interest in the life and activities of
+the Body of Christ. Suppose the millionaire going down town in his
+motor sees his clerk walking and stops and picks him up, and
+instead of talking constrainedly about the weather or about
+business, he begins naturally to talk to him about spiritual
+matters. Why could they not talk about the Mission that has just
+been held, or the Quiet Day that is in prospect? One great trouble,
+is it not? is that we fight shy of talking to our fellow-Christians
+of the interests that we really have in common and try to put
+intercourse on some other ground where we have little or nothing in
+common. The things that should, and probably do, vitally interest
+us, we decline to talk about at all. We are so stiff and formal and
+restrained in all matter of personal religious experience that we
+are unable to express the fact of Christian Brotherhood. The fact
+that you smile at the presentment of the case, that you cannot even
+imagine yourself talking about your spiritual experience with your
+clerk or your employer, shows how far you are from a truly
+Christian conception of Brotherhood.</p>
+<p>Our Lord's words that we are making our subject indicate the
+paramount importance that He laid upon the acceptance of God's will
+as the ultimate rule of life. "Whosoever shall do the will of My
+Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister,
+and my brother." "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command
+you." That is the common ground on which we are all invited to
+stand, the ground of a common loyalty to God, of intense zeal for
+the cause of God. Our Lord gave His whole life to that cause. As
+His disciples watched Him on an occasion, they remembered that it
+was written: "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." Zeal is
+not a very popular quality because it is always disturbing the
+equanimity and self-complacency of lukewarm people. And then, we
+dislike to be thought fanatics. But I fancy that there will always
+be a touch of the fanatic about any very zealous Christian, and it
+is not worth while to suppress our zeal for fear of the world's
+judgment upon it. What we have to avoid is the misdirection of
+zeal. There is, no doubt, a zeal which is "not according to
+knowledge." We need to be sure, in other words, that our zeal is a
+zeal for God, and not a zeal for party or person or cause. It is no
+doubt quite easy to imagine that we are seeking to do God's will
+when we are merely seeking to impose on our own will. Self-seeking
+is quite destructive of the friendship and service of God. The
+Kingdom whose interests we are attempting to forward may turn out
+to be a Kingdom in which we expect to sit on the right hand or the
+left of the throne because of the brilliance of the service
+rendered.</p>
+<p>Life is simplified very much when the will of God thus becomes
+its guiding principle, and all other relations of life are
+subordinated to our relation to our heavenly Father. Then have we
+brought life to that complete simplicity which is near akin to
+peace. When we have learned in deciding any line of action not to
+think what our neighbours and friends will feel, or what the world
+will think, but only what God will think, we have little difficulty
+in making up our minds. Suppose that a boy has to make up his mind
+whether he will study for the priesthood, the vital thing on which
+to concentrate his thought and prayer is whether God is calling him
+to that life, and if he is convinced that he is being called the
+whole question should be settled. In fact in most cases it is far
+from being settled because this simplicity has not been attained.
+There is a whole social circle to be dealt with, who urge the
+hardness of the life, the scant reward, the greater advantages of a
+business career, and so on; all of which have absolutely nothing to
+do with the question to be decided. It is so all through life. In
+most questions of life's decisions, no doubt, there is no sense of
+any vocation at all, of a determining will of God; but is not that
+because we assume that God has no will in such matters, and leaves
+us free to follow our own devices? Such an assumption is hardly
+justified in the case of One to Whom the fall of a sparrow is a
+matter of interest. It is our weakness, or the sign of our
+spiritual incompetence, that we have unconsciously removed the
+greater part of life from the jurisdiction of the divine will. We
+do not habitually think of God as interested in the facts of daily
+experience; we do not take Him with us into offices and factories.
+Perhaps we think that they are hardly fit places for God, and I
+have no doubt that He has many things to suffer there. But He is
+there, and will suffer, until we recognise His right there, and
+insist upon His there being supreme.</p>
+<p>Let us go back for a moment to Our Lady standing outside the
+place where Jesus was preaching, perplexed and worried at the
+course He was taking. I suppose that it is always easier to
+surrender ourselves unreservedly into God's hands than it is to so
+surrender some one we love. I suppose that S. Mary so trusted in
+God that she never thought with anxiety of what His providence was
+preparing for her; but she would not quite take that attitude about
+her Son; or rather, while she did intellectually, no doubt, take
+that attitude, her feelings never went the whole distance that her
+mind went. But surrender to the will of God means complete
+surrender of ourself and ours. It means absolute confidence in God,
+it means lying quiet in his arms, as the child lies still in the
+arms of his mother. It means that we trust God.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;Rose-Mary, Sum of virtue virginal,<br>
+&nbsp;Fresh Flower on whom the dew of heaven downfell;<br>
+O Gem, conjoined in joy angelical,<br>
+&nbsp;In whom rejoiced the Saviour was to dwell:<br>
+&nbsp;Of refuge Ark, of mercy Spring and Well,<br>
+Of Ladies first, as is of letters A,<br>
+&nbsp;Empress of heaven, of paradise and hell--<br>
+Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.<br>
+<br>
+O Star, that blindest Phoebus' beams so bright,<br>
+&nbsp;With course above the empyrean crystalline;<br>
+Above the sphere of Saturn's highest height,<br>
+&nbsp;Surmounting all the angelic orders nine;<br>
+&nbsp;O Lamp, that shin'st before the throne divine,<br>
+Where sounds hosanna in cherubic lay,<br>
+&nbsp;With drum and organ, harp and cymbeline--<br>
+Mother, of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,<br>
+<br>
+O Cloister chaste of pure virginity,<br>
+&nbsp;That Christ hath closed 'gainst crime for evermo';<br>
+Triumphant Temple of the Trinity,<br>
+&nbsp;That didst the eternal Tartarus o'erthrow;<br>
+&nbsp;Princess of peace, imperial Palm, I trow,<br>
+From thee our Samson sprang invict in fray;<br>
+&nbsp;Who, with one buffet, Belial hath laid low--<br>
+Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,<br>
+<br>
+Thy blessed sides the mighty Champion bore,<br>
+&nbsp;Who hath, with many a bleeding wound in fight,<br>
+Victoriously o'erthrown the dragon hoar<br>
+&nbsp;That ready was his flock to slay and smite;<br>
+&nbsp;Nor all the gates of hell him succour might,<br>
+Since he that robber's rampart brake away,<br>
+&nbsp;While all the demons trembled at the sight--<br>
+Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,<br>
+<br>
+O Maiden meek, chief Mediatrix for man,<br>
+And Mother mild, full of humility,<br>
+Pray to thy Son, with wounds that sanguine ran,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Whereby for all our trespass slain was he.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;And since he bled his blood upon a tree,<br>
+'Gainst Lucifer, our foe, to be our stay,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;That we in heaven may sing upon our knee--<br>
+Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,<br>
+<br>
+Hail, Pearl made pure; hail, Port of paradise;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Hail, Ruby, redolent of rays to us;<br>
+Hail, Crystal clear, Empress and Queen, hail thrice;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Mother of God, hail, Maid exalted thus;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;O Gratia plena, tecum Dominus;<br>
+With Gabriel that we may sing and say,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Benedicta tu in mulieribus--<br>
+Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.<br>
+<br>
+William Dunbar,<br>
+<br>
+XV-XVI. Cents.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>HOLY WEEK I</h3>
+<center>Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. XXVI, 56.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God,
+accept, O Lord, our prayers and save us.<br>
+<br>
+May the Holy Mother of God and all the saints be our intercessors
+with the Heavenly Father, that He may deign to be merciful to us,
+and in pity save His creatures. Lord God all-powerful! save us and
+have mercy upon us.<br>
+<br>
+Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God, the Immaculate
+Mother of Thine only Son, and through the prayers of all the
+saints, receive, O Lord, our supplications; hear us, O Lord, and
+have mercy upon us; pardon us, bear with us, and blot out our sins,
+and make us worthy to glorify Thee, together with Thy Son and the
+Holy Ghost, now and ever, world without end. Amen.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">Armenian.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>e try to see our Lord's passion through the eyes of His Blessed
+Mother. We feel that all through Holy Week she must have been in
+direct touch with the experiences of our Lord. Her outlook would
+have been that of the Apostolic circle the record of which we get
+in the Gospels. Our Lord's ministry had showed a period of
+popularity during which it must have seemed to those closest to Him
+that they were moving rapidly to success; and then, after the day
+at Caeserea Phillipi, when His Messianic claims had been
+acknowledged, they would have been filled with enthusiasm for the
+mission the meaning of which was now defined. Then came a period of
+disappointment. Our Lord declined to become a popular leader, and
+by the nature of His preaching, the demands that He made upon those
+who were inclined to support Him lost popularity till it was a
+question to be considered whether the very Apostles would not
+desert Him. Then came the flash of renewed enthusiasm which is
+evidenced by the Palm Sunday entry, bringing, no doubt, renewed
+hopes to those nearest our Lord who seem to have been utterly
+unable to accept the view of His failure and death that He kept
+before them. But the hope vanished as quickly as it was roused. In
+less than a week the rejoicing group of Sunday followed Him from
+the Upper Chamber to the shades of Gethsemane. The betrayal, the
+trial, the end, come quickly on.</p>
+<p>This to S. Mary was the piercing of the sword through the very
+heart. These were the days when the meaning of close association
+with Incarnate God, with God Who was pursuing a mission of rescue,
+came out. The mission of the Son for the Redemption of man meant
+submitting to the extremity of insult and torture, and it meant
+that those who were closest associated with Him should be caught
+into the circle of His pain. As our Lord was displaying the best of
+which humanity is capable, so was He calling out the worst of which
+it is capable. These last days of the life of Jesus show where man
+can be led when he surrenders himself to the dominion of the Power
+of Evil and becomes the servant of sin. The triumph of demoniac
+malice through its instruments, the Roman governor, the Jewish
+authorities, of necessity swept over all who were related to our
+Lord. The storm scattered the Apostolic group and left the Christ
+to face His trial alone. Yet not alone: He himself tells us the
+truth. "Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be
+scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet
+I am not alone, because the Father is with me." It was what the
+Prophet had foreseen: "All ye shall be offended because of me this
+night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep
+shall be scattered."</p>
+<p>We do not know where S. Mary was during these days, but we are
+sure that she was as near our Lord as it was possible for her to
+be. We know that her own thought would be of the possibility of
+ministering to Him. We know that she would not have fled with the
+Apostles in their momentary panic. She was at the Cross, and she
+was at the grave, and she would have been as near Him in the agony
+and the trial as it was possible for her to be. And she too was in
+agony. Every pang of our Lord found echo in her. Every blow that
+fell upon His bleeding back, she too felt. Every insult that the
+soldiers inflicted, hurt her. Our Lord in the consciousness of His
+mission is constantly sustained by the thought that His Passion and
+Death is an offering to the will of the Father,--an offering even
+for these miserable men who are brutally treating a man whom they
+know to be innocent. Her sorrow is the utter desolation of seeing
+the One Whom she loves above all else suffer, while she can bear
+Him no alleviation in His suffering, cannot so much as wipe the
+blood from off His wounded brow, cannot even touch His hand, and
+look her love into His eyes. She follows from place to place while
+our Lord is being hustled from Caiaphas to Pilate and from Pilate
+to Herod and back again; from time to time hearing from some one
+who has succeeded in getting nearer, how the trial is going on,
+what the accusation is, how Jesus is bearing Himself, what answers
+He has made, what the authorities have said. Once and again, it may
+be, catching a distant glimpse of Him as He is led about by the
+guards, seeing Him always more worn and weary, always nearer the
+point of collapse. Herself, too, nearer collapse; yet going on
+still with that strength that love gives to mothers, determined at
+the cost of any suffering to be near Him, as near as she can be,
+till the very end. So we see her on that day in the streets of
+Jerusalem, and think of the distance travelled since the morning
+when Gabriel said to her, wondering: "Hail thou that art highly
+favoured.... Blessed art thou among women."</p>
+<p>We, too, follow. We have so often followed, with the Gospel in
+our hands, and wondered at the method of God. We have tried hour
+after hour to penetrate the meaning of the Passion, to find what
+personal message it brings, to discover what light it throws on our
+own lives. We have gone out into Gethsemane and placed ourselves
+with the three chosen Apostles while our Lord went on to pray by
+Himself; and we have discovered in ourselves the same weariness,
+the same tendency to sleep, in the presence of what we tell
+ourselves is the most important of all interests. We call up the
+scene under the olives, and find that we wander and are inattentive
+and idle when we most want to be attentive and alert. We place
+ourselves in the group that surrounds our Lord when the soldiers,
+led by Judas, come, and ask ourselves shall I too run away? And our
+memory flashes the answer: You have run away again and again: you
+have in the face, not of grave dangers, but of insignificant
+trifles--how insignificant they look now--for fear of criticism,
+for fear of being thought odd, for fear of the opinion of worldly
+companions, for fear of being pitied or laughed at, over and over
+again you have run away. The things that seemed important when they
+were present seem pitifully insignificant in the retrospect.</p>
+<p>We follow out of the garden to the meeting-place of the
+Sanhedrin, to the Judgment seat of Pilate, to the palace of Herod.
+Any impulse to criticise S. Peter is speedily suppressed: we have
+denied so often under such trifling provocation. S. Peter was
+frightened from participation in the act of our Lord's sacrifice
+through mortal fear of his life. We have stayed away from the
+offering of the Holy Sacrifice, how often! from mere sloth, from
+disinclination to effort, from the fact that our participation
+would prevent us from joining in some act of worldly amusement. S.
+Peter, following to the high Priest's palace to see the end, looks
+heroic beside our frivolity. We follow through the details of the
+trial, we go to Herod's palace and see the brutal treatment of our
+Lord, and we remember of these men that their conduct was founded
+in ignorance. We do not for a moment believe that they would have
+spit upon our Lord and buffeted Him, and crowned Him with a crown
+of thorns, if they had believed that He was God. But we believe
+that He is God. Our desertion of Him when we sin, our contempt of
+His expressed ideals when we compromise with the world, our
+departure from His example when we excuse ourselves on the ground
+of very minor inconveniences from keeping some holy day or fasting
+day, are not founded in ignorance at all. They can hardly be said
+to be founded in weakness, so slight is the temptation that we do
+not resist. As we meditate on the Passion, as we keep Good Friday,
+very pitiful all our idleness and subterfuges appear to us. But we
+so easily shake off the effect! We emerge from our meditation
+almost convinced that the stinging sense of the truth of our
+conduct which we are experiencing is the equivalent of having
+reformed it. We go out with a glow of virtue and by night realise
+that we have sinned again!</p>
+<p>It is no doubt well that we should not be permanently depressed
+about our spiritual state, but only because we have taken all the
+pains we can to heal the wounds of sin. There is no need that any
+one should abide in a state of sin because there has been in the
+Precious Blood a fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, and
+by washing therein, though our souls were as scarlet, they shall
+become white as snow. We have the right to a certain optimism about
+ourselves if it be founded on actual spiritual activity which
+ceaselessly tries to reproduce the Christ-experience in us, even
+the experience of the Passion by the voluntary self-discipline to
+which we subject ourselves. A brilliant writer has spoken of those
+whose view of their lives is drawn from "that fountain of all
+optimism--sloth." That is a true saying: our optimism is often no
+more than an idle refusal to face facts; a quaint and good-natured
+assumption that nothing very much matters and that everything will
+be all right in the end!</p>
+<p>This easy going optimism is commonly as far as possible from
+representing any spiritual fact. If we are seeking any serious and
+fruitful relation to the Passion of our Lord, we must seek it along
+the Way of the Cross. To follow His example means to follow His
+experience, to treat life as He treated it. The content of our
+lives is quite different, but the treatment of the given fact must
+be essentially the same. We need the same repulse of temptation,
+the same quiet disregard of the appeals of the world, whether it
+offer the alleviation of difficulty or the bestowal of pleasure as
+the reward of our allegiance. And we, sinners in so manifold ways,
+need what our Lord did not need, repulsion from our sins as the
+necessary preliminary to forgiveness.</p>
+<p>My experience makes me feel very strongly that we are apt to be
+deficient in the first step in repentance--contrition. As we follow
+the Way of Sorrows we know that our Lord is suffering <i>for
+us</i>; and we feel that the starting point of our repentance must
+lie in our success in making that a personal matter. In our self
+examination, in our approach to the sacrament of penance, we are
+compelled to ask ourselves, Am I in fact sorry for my sins? It
+surely is not enough that we fear the results of sin, or that we
+are ashamed at our failure. This really is not repentance but a
+sort of pride. There must, I feel, be sorrow after a godly sort.
+That is, true contrition, true sorrow for sin, is the sort of
+sorrow which is born of the Vision of God; it has its origin in
+love. I have found in our Lord love giving itself to me, and I must
+find in myself love giving itself to Him. To my forgiveness it is
+not enough that God loves me. I know that He loves me and will love
+me to the end, whether I repent or not; but the possibility of
+forgiveness lies in my love of Him, whether it takes such hold on
+me as actually to stimulate me to forsake sin. I shall never really
+forsake sin through shame or fear; one gets used to those emotions
+after a little and disregards them. But one does not get used to
+love; it grows to be an increasing force in life, and so masters us
+as to draw us away from sin.</p>
+<p>Contrition then will be the offspring of love. It will be born
+when we follow Christ Jesus out on the Sorrowful Way and understand
+that He is going out for us. Then we want to get as near Him as
+possible: we want to take His Hand and go by His side. We want to
+stand by Him in His trial and share His condemnation. We want
+constantly to tell Him how sorry we are that we have brought Him
+here. We shall not be content that He feel all the pain. We are
+convinced that we ought to share in the pain as we share in the
+results of the Passion. When we have achieved this point of view we
+shall feel that our approach to Him to ask His forgiveness needs,
+it may be, much more care than we have hitherto bestowed upon it.
+We have thought of penance as forgiveness; now we begin to see how
+much the attitude which precedes our entrance to the confessional
+counts, and that we must value the gift of God enough to have made
+sure that we are ready to receive it. We kneel down, therefore, and
+look at our crucifix, and say: "This hast Thou done for me," and
+make our act of love in which we join ourselves to the Cross of
+Jesus. We tell ourselves that love is the beginning and end of our
+relation to Him.</p>
+<p>It is to be urged that every Christian should be utterly
+familiar with the life of our Lord, and should spend time regularly
+in meditation upon His life, and especially upon His Passion. Love
+is the constant counteractive of familiarity; and it is kept fresh
+in our souls by the contemplation of what our Lord has actually
+done for us. A general recalling of what He has done has not the
+same stimulating force as the vivid placing before us of the actual
+details of His work. To most of us visible aids to the realisation
+of our Lord's action for us are most helpful. A crucifix on the
+wall of one's room before which one can say one's prayers, and
+before which also we stop for a moment time and again in the course
+of the day, just to say a few words, to make an act of love, of
+contrition, or of union, keeps the thought of the Passion fresh. We
+gain in freshness and variety of prayer by the use of such
+devotions as the litany of the Passion or the Way of the Cross. A
+set of cards of the Stations help us to say them in our homes. It
+is much to be desired that we accustom ourselves to devotional
+helps of all sorts. We are quite too much inclined to think that
+there is something of spiritual superiority in the attempt to
+conduct our devotional life without any of the helps which
+centuries of Christian experience have provided. It is the same
+sort of feeling that makes other Christians assume that there is a
+superiority in spiritual attainment evidenced by their dispensing
+with "forms," especially with printed prayers. It is just as well
+to remember that we did not originate the Christian Religion, but
+inherited it; and that the practices of devotion that have been
+found helpful by generations of saints, and after full trial have
+retained the approval of the greater part of Christendom, can
+hardly be treated as valueless, much less as superstitious. The
+fact that saints have found them valuable and one has not, may
+possibly not be a criticism of the saints.</p>
+<p>The meditation upon the Way of the Cross, the vision of Jesus
+scourged, spitted upon, crowned with thorns, may well give us some
+searchings of heart in regard to our own easy-going, luxurious
+life. Nothing seems to disturb the modern person so much as the
+suggestion that the chief business of the Christian Religion is not
+to look after their comfort. They hold, it would appear, to the
+pre-Christian notion that prosperity is an obvious mark of God's
+favour, and that by the accumulation of wealth they are giving
+indisputable evidence of piety. It is well to recall that there is
+no such dangerous path as that of continual success. I do not in
+the least mean to imply that success is sinful or indicates the
+existence of sin, but I do mean to insist very strongly that the
+successful man needs to be a very spiritually watchful man. He is
+quite apt to think that he may take all sorts of liberties with the
+laws of God. There are, no doubt, evident dangers to the
+unsuccessful man, but the Holy Scriptures have not thought it worth
+while to spend much time in denouncing him. It has a good deal to
+say of the danger, not so much of wealth, as of prosperity in
+general: "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride,
+fullness of bread, and prosperous ease were in her." When we find
+ourselves in a satisfied and comfortable home life, so comfortable
+that we find it difficult to get up to a week-day Mass, and
+disinclined to go out to a service after dinner, we need
+watching.</p>
+<p>And the best watchman is oneself; and the best method of
+self-examination is by the Cross. Is there any sense in which we
+can be said to be following our Lord on the Sorrowful Way? Have we
+taken up the Cross to go after Him, or are we assuming that we can
+just as well drift along with the crowd of those who only look on?
+We all need from time to time to consider the Catholic teaching as
+to mortification and self-discipline. I am quite aware that to
+insist on this is not the way of popularity, but nevertheless I
+learned a long time ago that about the only way that a priest can
+take if he wishes to be saved is the way of unpopularity. And
+therefore I am going to insist that the practice of rigorous
+self-discipline is essential to any healthy Christian life. We
+cannot dispense ourselves from this, for the mere fact that we are
+dispensing ourselves is the proof that we need that upon which we
+are turning our back. Briefly, what I mean is that the assumption
+of the Cross by a Christian means that he is taking into his life,
+voluntarily, personal acts of self-sacrifice which he offers to our
+Lord as the evidence and the means of his own Cross-bearing.</p>
+<p>The unruliness of our nature can only be kept in order by
+continual acts of self-discipline. We, no doubt, recognise the need
+of the discipline of the passions, but our theory, so far as we can
+be said to have one, would seem to be that the discipline of the
+passions means resistence to special temptations as they arise. We
+may no doubt sin through the passions, and therefore we need a
+minimum of watchfulness to meet temptations which come our way. I
+submit that such a way of conducting life is quite sufficient to
+account for the vast amount of failure we witness or, perhaps,
+experience. When from time to time the country gets alarmed about
+its health, when it is threatened with some epidemic such as
+influenza, the papers are full of medical advice the sum of which
+is you cannot dodge all the disease germs that are in the air, but
+you can by a vigorous course of exercise and by careful diet, keep
+yourself in a state of such physical soundness that the chances are
+altogether favourable for your withstanding the assaults of
+disease. No doubt the vast majority of people prefer not to follow
+this advice. A considerable number of them resort to various magic
+cults, such as letting sudden drafts of cold air in upon the
+inoffensive bystander with a view to exorcising the germs. But it
+remains that the medical advice is sound: it amounts to saying,
+"Keep yourself in the best physical condition possible and you will
+run the minimum chance of being ill."</p>
+<p>The Catholic treatment of life and its recommendation of
+discipline and mortification has precisely the same basis as the
+physical advice--an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of
+cure. We are exposed to temptation constantly, and we need to
+recognise the fact and prepare ourselves to meet it; and the best
+preparation is the preparation of self-discipline for the purpose
+of keeping rebellious nature under control. Good farming does not
+consist in pulling up weeds; it consists in the choice and
+preparation of the ground in which the seed is to be sown; it looks
+primarily to the growth of the seed and not to the elimination of
+the weeds. Our nature is a field in which the Word of God is sown;
+its preparation and care is what we need to focus attention on, not
+the weeds.</p>
+<p>Self-discipline is the preparation of nature, the discipline of
+the powers of the spiritual life with a view to what they have to
+do. And one of the important phases of our preparation is to teach
+our passions obedience, to subject them to the control of the
+enlightened will. If they are accustomed to obey they are not very
+likely to get out of hand in some time of crisis. If they are
+broken in to the dominion of spiritual motive, they will
+instinctively seek that motive whenever they are incited to act.
+Hence the immense spiritual value of the habitual denial to
+ourselves of indulgence in various innocent kinds of activity. I do
+not at all mean that we are never to have innocent indulgences: I
+do mean that the declining of them occasionally for the purpose of
+self-discipline is a most wholesome practice. How frequently it is
+desirable must be determined by the individual circumstances. It is
+utterly disastrous to permit a child to have everything it wants
+because there is sufficient money to spend, to permit it to run to
+soda fountains or go to the picture houses as it desires. Any sane
+person recognises that; but does the same person recognise the sane
+principle as applying in his own life? Does he feel the value of
+going without something for a day or two, or staying from places of
+amusement for a time, or of abandoning for a while this or that
+luxury?</p>
+<p>The principle is of course the ascetic principle of
+self-mastery. It is best brought before us by the familiar practice
+of fasting, which is very mildly recommended to us in its lowest
+terms in the table in the Book of Common Prayer. Naturally, its
+value is not the value of going without this or that, but the value
+of self-mastery. The very fact that our appetites rebel at the
+notion shows their undisciplined character. The child at the table
+begins to ask, not for a sensible meal founded on sound reasons of
+hygiene, but for various things that are an immediate temptation to
+the appetite. The adult is not markedly different save that he
+preserves a certain order in indulgence. The principle of fasting
+is that he should from time to cut across the inclination of
+appetite, and either go without a meal altogether, or select such
+food as will maintain health without delighting appetite. So man
+gains the mastery over the animal side of his nature and shows
+himself the child of God.</p>
+<p>The actual practice of the ascetic life really carries us much
+farther than these surface matters of a physical nature that have
+been cited. It applies in particular to the disposition of time and
+the ruling of daily actions. The introduction of a definite order
+into the day actually seems to increase the time at one's disposal.
+I know, I can hear you saying: "If you were the head of a family,
+and had children to look after, you would not talk that way. You
+would know something of the practical difficulties of life." But
+indeed I am quite familiar with the situation. And if I were so
+situated I am certain that I should feel all the more need of
+order. Families are disorderly because we let them be; because we
+do not face the initial trouble of making them orderly. A school or
+a factory would be still more disorderly than a family if it were
+permitted to be. Any piece of human mechanism will get out of order
+if you will let it. That is precisely the reason for the insistence
+on the ascetic principle--this tendency of life to get out of
+order; that is the meaning of all that I have been saying, of the
+whole Catholic insistence on discipline. Time can be controlled;
+and, notwithstanding American experience, children can be
+controlled; and control means the rescuing of the life from
+disorder and sin, and the lifting it to a level of order and sanity
+and possible sanctity.</p>
+<p>We cannot hope to meet successfully the common temptations of
+life except we be prepared to meet them, except there be in our
+life an element of foresight. An undisciplined and untried strength
+is an unknown quantity. The man who expects to meet temptation when
+it occurs without any preparation is in fact preparing for failure.
+I do not believe that there is any other so great a source of
+spiritual weakness and disaster as the going out to meet life
+without preceding discipline, thus subjecting the powers of our
+nature to trials for which we have not fitted them. Self-control,
+self-discipline, ascetic practice, are indispensible to a
+successful Christian life.</p>
+<blockquote>O STAR of starr&egrave;s, with thy stream&egrave;s
+clear,<br>
+Star of the Sea, to shipman Light or Guide,<br>
+O lusty Living, most pleasant t'appear,<br>
+Whose bright&egrave; beames the cloud&egrave;s may not hide:<br>
+O Way of Life to them that go or ride,<br>
+Haven from tempest, surest up t'arrive,<br>
+O me have mercy for thy Joy&egrave;s five.<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+O goodly Gladded, when that Gabriel<br>
+With joy thee gret that may not be numb'r&egrave;d,<br>
+Or half the bliss who could&egrave; write or tell,<br>
+When th' Holy Ghost to thee was obumbr&egrave;d,<br>
+Wherethrough the fiend&egrave;s were utterly encombr&egrave;d?<br>
+O wemless Maid, embellished in his birth,<br>
+That man and angel thereof hadden mirth.<br>
+<br>
+John Lydgate of Bury,<br>
+XV Cent.<br>
+From Chaucerian and Other<br>
+Poems, edited by W. W. Skeat,<br>
+1894.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>HOLY WEEK II</h3>
+<center>And after they had mocked him, they took the robe off from
+him,<br>
+and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify
+him.<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. XXVII, 31.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Forgive, O Lord, we beseech thee, the sins of thy
+people: that we, who are not able to do anything of ourselves, that
+can be pleasing to thee, may be assisted in the way of salvation by
+the prayers of the Mother of thy Son. Who.<br>
+<br>
+Having partaken of thy heavenly table, we humbly beseech thy
+clemency, O Lord, our God, that we who honour the Assumption of the
+Mother of God, may, by her intercession, be delivered from all
+evils. Through.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p class="loc">OLD CATHOLIC.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he way of the Cross is indeed a Sorrowful Way. We have meditated
+upon it so often that we are familiar with all the details of our
+Lord's action as He follows it from the Judgment Seat of Pilate to
+the Place of a Skull. I wonder if we enough pause to look with our
+Lord at the crowds that line the way, or at those who follow Him
+out of the city. It is not a mere matter of curiosity that we
+should do so, or an exercise of the devout imagination; the reason
+why we should examine carefully the faces of those men who attend
+our Lord on the way to His death is that somewhere in that crowd we
+shall see our own faces: it is a mirror of sinful humanity that we
+look into there. All the seven deadly sins are there incarnate.</p>
+<p>It is extremely important that we should get this sort of
+personal reaction from the Passion because we are so prone to be
+satisfied with generalities, to confess that we are miserable
+sinners, and let it go at that! But to stop there is to stop short
+of any possibility of improvement, because we can only hope to
+improve when we understand our lives in detail, when we face them
+as concrete examples of certain sins.</p>
+<p>There was pride there. It was expressed by both Roman and Jewish
+officialism which looked with scorn on this obscure fanatic who
+claimed to be a king! Pilate had satisfied himself of His
+harmlessness by a very cursory examination. This Galilean Prophet
+with His handful of followers, peasants and women, who had deserted
+Him at the first sign of danger, was hardly worth troubling about.
+The only ground for any action at all was the fear that the Jewish
+leaders might be disagreeable. Those Jewish leaders took a rather
+more serious view of the situation because they knew that through
+the purity of His teaching and His obvious power to perform
+miracles, a power but just now once more strikingly demonstrated in
+the raising of Lazarus, He had a powerful hold on the people. They,
+these Jewish leaders, declined a serious examination of the claims
+of such a man in their pride of place and knowledge of the
+Scriptures. They were concerned to sweep Him aside as a possible
+leader in a popular outbreak, not as one whose claim to the
+Messiahship needed a moment's examination.</p>
+<p>This intellectual pride is one of the very greatest sins to
+which humanity is tempted. It goes very deep in its destructive
+force because it is a sin, preeminently, of the spiritual nature,
+of that in us which is akin to God, His very image. It is, you will
+remember, the sin on which our Lord centres His chief denunciation.
+And common as it has always been, it has never been so common as it
+is to-day. Pilate and the chief priests are duplicated in every
+community in the thousands who reject Christianity without any
+adequate examination as incredible in view of what they actually
+hold, or as inconvenient in view of what they desire to practice.
+We have only to read very superficially in the current literature
+of the day, we have only to examine the teaching in colleges, to be
+completely convinced of the vast extent of the revolt against the
+Christian Religion. This revolt is for the most part a revolt
+without adequate examination. It assumes that the Christian
+Religion is contrary to science, or to something else that is
+established as true. It looks at Christianity superficially through
+the eyes of those who reject it and are ignorant of it. The fact is
+that Christianity cannot be understood in any complete sense of the
+word by those who do not practice it. Its "evidence" is no doubt of
+great force; of sufficient force to lead men to experiment; but the
+actual comprehension of Christ as the Saviour of man is an
+experience. The operation of the Holy Spirit in life is necessarily
+proved, and only completely proved, by the action of the Spirit
+Himself.</p>
+<p>Another demonstration of the same pride is seen in the refusal,
+without adequate examination, to accept the Catholic Religion, and
+the picking and choosing among articles of belief and sacraments
+and practices as to what we will use or observe. Men do not like
+this or that, and they therefore decline it. The whole attitude is
+one of self-will and pride. Whatsoever comes to us with a great
+weight of Christian experience back of it certainly deserves
+careful consideration; it demands of us that we treat it as other
+than a matter of taste. Pride is the commonest of sins and the most
+dangerous for it attacks the very heart of the spiritual life. It
+runs, to be sure, through a broad range of experience and not all
+manifestations of pride are mortal sin; but all manifestations of
+it are subtle and insidious and capable of expansion to an
+indefinite degree. For there is no difference in nature between the
+spiritual attitude of the person who says, "I do not see any sense
+in that and will not do it," when the matter in question may be the
+Church's rule of fasting, and that of the man who before Pilate's
+Judgment Seat cried out, "We have no king but Caesar."</p>
+<p>It was in fact because they found their own power and place
+threatened that the Jewish authorities were so determined on our
+Lord's death. Their sin from this point of view was the sin of
+covetousness. This sin reaches its highest point when it is greed
+for power over other men's lives and destinies, when it is ready to
+sacrifice the lives of others in order to gain or maintain its
+ends. In this broad sense it is the most socially destructive of
+sins. The wars of the world for these many years have been wars for
+commercial supremacy. The world is being continually exploited by
+commercial enterprises which will stop at nothing to gain their
+ends. Some day a history of the last two hundred years will be
+written which will tell the story of the commercial expansion of
+the world we call civilised, and it will be the most horrible book
+that has ever been written. It will contain the story of the
+Spanish colonisation of America. It will contain the history of the
+slave trade. It will contain the history of the Belgian Congo, and
+of the rubber industry in South America. It will contain the
+history of the American Indian and of the opium trade of India--and
+of many like things.</p>
+<p>But while we shudder at the world-torturing ways of the pursuit
+of wealth, of the world-wide seeking of money and power, we need
+not forget that the sin of covetousness is as common as any sin can
+be. It is so common and so subtle that it is almost impossible to
+know how far one is a victim of it. It is deliberately taught to us
+as children under the guise of thrift, which if it be a virtue is
+certainly one that the saints have overlooked. We are constantly
+called on to strike a balance between what are the proper needs of
+life and what is an improper concentration of attention upon
+ourselves. Waste of money, like waste of any other energy, is a
+sin; but it is a very nice question as to what is waste. I think it
+a pretty safe rule to give expenditure the benefit of the doubt
+when it is for others, and to deny it when it is for self.</p>
+<p>However, I imagine that those who are conscientiously trying to
+conduct their lives as the children of God will have little
+difficulty in this matter. The real trouble is not in the matter of
+expenditure but in the matter of gain. The ethics of business are
+very far from being the ethics of the Gospel, and we are often
+frankly told by those engaged in business that it cannot be
+successfully conducted on the basis of the ethics of the Gospel,
+That it is not so conducted is sufficiently obvious from a cursory
+scanning of the advertising columns of any newspaper or magazine.
+The ideal of the business world is success. Naturally, one cannot
+carry on an unsuccessful business, but need it be success by all
+means and to all extents? Are there no limits to the methods by
+which business is to be pushed, except legal limits? If there is no
+room for Christian ethics in the business world there can be but
+one end; competitive business will lead the civilisation that it
+controls to inevitable disaster. Our Lord said: "Take heed and
+beware of covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the
+abundance of the things that he possesseth." And He went on to
+speak a parable which has come to be known as the Parable of the
+Rich Fool. The "practical man" may be as angered as he likes by
+this teaching, but in his soul he knows that our Lord was right.
+When such things are pointed out from the pulpit the "practical
+man" says: "What would become of the Church were it not for the
+rich and the successful?" I think that the answer is that in that
+case the Church would no more represent the rich and would have a
+fair chance of once more representing Jesus Christ.</p>
+<p>It may seem at the first sight that of the mortal sins lust was
+not represented here upon the Sorrowful Way; but that, I think is
+but a superficial analysis of the nature of lust, thinking only of
+some manifestations of it. There is however one sin that has its
+roots deep in lust which psychologists tell us is one of its
+commonest manifestations, and that is cruelty. Lust is not always,
+but commonly, cruel; and the desire to inflict pain on others is a
+very common form of its expression. There are sights we have seen
+or incidents we have read of, it may be a boy torturing an animal
+or another child, it may be a shouting mass of men about a
+prize-ring, it may be soldiers sacking a town,--when the action
+seems so senseless that we are at a loss to account for it; but the
+account of it lies in the mystery of our sensual nature, in the
+ultimate animal that we are. The savage joy that is being expressed
+by the participants in such scenes is ultimately a sensual joy.
+These men who delighted in the torture of our Lord were
+sensualists; and there are few of us who if we will watch our
+selves closely will not find traces of the animal showing itself
+from time to time. Of this crowd about the Cross relatively few
+could have known anything about the case of our Lord; but they were
+fascinated by the spectacle of a man's torture. If the executions
+of criminals were public to-day there would undoubtedly be huge
+crowds to gaze upon them.</p>
+<p>It is one of the lessons we learn from the study of sin that
+what we had thought was the essence of the sin was in fact but one
+of the manifestations of it, and that we have to carry our study
+far before we arrive at the ideal, Know thyself. It is always
+dangerous to assume that we know when we have not been at the pains
+to look at a subject on all sides. Our sensual nature needs a very
+careful discipline, and the mere freedom from certain forms of the
+sin of lust is not the equivalent of that purity which is the
+medium of the Vision of God.</p>
+<p>It is the sin of gluttony which is the least obvious in the Way
+of the Cross. There are no doubt plenty of gluttons there, but that
+is not what we are trying to find; we are trying to see how each
+sin contributed to this final act in the drama of our Lord's life,
+how each sin contributed to put men in opposition to our Lord. It
+is not the actual sin of gluttony that we shall find in operation
+here but certain inevitable effects of it, What is the effect of
+gluttony on the soul of man? Absorption in the pursuit of the
+pleasures that spring from material things; the indulgence of the
+appetite, and the natural result of such indulgence which is to
+render the soul insensitive to the spiritual. The man whose motto
+is, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," puts himself out
+of touch with the spiritual realities of life. He is materialistic,
+whatever may be his philosophy. He wants immediate results from
+life. When he is confronted with our Lord, when he is told that our
+Lord makes demands upon life for self-restraint and
+self-discipline, that He demands that the appetites be curbed
+rather than indulged, he declines allegiance. One can have no doubt
+that in our Lord's time as to-day indifference to His teaching and
+failure even to take in what the Gospel means or how it can be a
+possible rule of life is largely due to the dull spiritual state,
+outcome of the indulgence of the appetite for meat and drink. Men
+whose brains are clogged by over eating, and whose faculties are in
+a deadened state through the use of alcohol, cannot well understand
+the Gospel of God.</p>
+<p>There is abundant evidence of anger all along the Way of the
+Cross. The constant thwarting of the purpose of the Jewish
+authorities by our Lord, His unsparing criticism of them before the
+people, had stirred them to fury. If our Lord had seemed to them to
+threaten their "place and nation" we can understand that they would
+show toward Him intense hostility. Their attitude toward the people
+whose religious interests they were supposed to have in charge was
+one of utter contempt: "This people which knoweth not the Law is
+cursed." Our Lord's attitude was the opposite of all this. It was
+not, to be sure, as to-day it is represented to be an appeal to the
+people. He was not bidding for popular support, but he showed
+unbounded sympathy with the people; He cast His teaching in a form
+that would appeal to them and draw them to him. He made a popular
+appeal in that He showed Himself understanding of the popular mind
+and without social prejudice of any sort. This setting aside of the
+arrogant authorities of Israel roused them to implacable wrath.
+They felt that our Lord was setting Himself to undermine their
+authority, and as they felt that their authority was "of God" their
+indignation translated itself into terms of zeal for God.</p>
+<p>This anger that manages to wear a cloak of virtue is peculiarly
+dangerous to the soul. When we are just ordinarily mad over some
+offence committed against us it is no doubt a sin; but it is not a
+sin of the same malignity as when we feel that we can go any
+lengths because we are not angry on our own behalf, then our anger
+almost becomes an act of religion in our eyes. We have become the
+defenders of a cause. No doubt there is such a thing as "righteous
+indignation," but it is not a virtue that we are compelled to
+practice, and we would do well to leave it alone as much as
+possible lest our indignation exceed our righteousness, and we
+indentify our personal interests with the cause of God.</p>
+<p>The worst feature of tempermental flare-ups is the testimony
+they bear to our lack of discipline. When we excuse ourselves or
+others on the ground that action is "temperamental" we are in fact
+no more than restating the fact that there is sore need of
+discipline; and there is no more ground for excusing one variety of
+temperament for its lack of discipline than an other. In fact, the
+more inclined a temperament is to certain sins, the more necessity
+there is for the appropriate sort of training. People without
+self-control, who are constantly losing their temper, are public
+nuisances and ought to be suppressed. There is the worst kind of
+arrogance in the assumption that I do not have to control myself
+and can speak and act as I like. No one, whatever his position, has
+the right to ignore the feelings of others; and the more the
+position is one of authority, exempting him from a certain kind of
+criticism, the more is he bound to criticise himself and examine
+himself as to this particular sin.</p>
+<p>There are sins under this caption which do not contain much
+malice but are disturbing to life, and they are especially
+disturbing to one's spiritual life. There are peevish, complaining
+people, who do not seem to mean much harm, but keep themselves in a
+state of dissatisfaction which renders their spiritual growth
+impossible. They grow old without any of the grace and beauty of
+character which should mark a Christian old age. One knows old
+people who have been in intimate contact with the Church and the
+sacraments for many years but do not show any signs of having
+reached our Lord through them. They are dissatisfied and
+complaining and critical and generally disagreeable so that the
+task of those who take care of them is rendered very disheartening.
+What is the trouble? Has there never been any true spiritual
+discipline, but only a certain superficial conformity to a
+spiritual rule? When old age comes the will is weakened and the
+sense of self-respect undermined, with the result that what the
+person has all along been in reality, now comes to the surface and
+is, perhaps for the first time, visible to every one.</p>
+<p>Envy is closely related to pride on the one hand and to
+covetousness on the other. It begins in the perception of another's
+superiority, and carries its victim through the feeling of hurt
+pride at the contrast with himself to desire for that which is not
+his own. The envious person covets the qualities of possessions of
+another, while vividly denying that they are in fact superior to
+his own, except, it may be, in certain apparent and not very
+valuable aspects. The contrast between the superior and the
+inferior has one of two results: either the inferior is stirred to
+admiration, or he is stirred to a greater or less degree of
+envy.</p>
+<p>It was thus that contact with our Lord <i>revealed</i> the
+reality of men. It was a very true judgment to associate with him.
+His apostles were simple men who never thought of putting
+themselves in comparison with Him: the more they knew Him the more
+wonderful He seemed to them. We feel all through the Gospel story
+what an overwhelming impression His personality made upon men.
+There is no criticism raised on His character from any point of
+view. His enemies fell back on the accusation of blasphemy growing
+out of His claims, an accusation that would be true, if the claims
+were not true. What we really discover in those who oppose Him is
+envy, envy of the influence He exercises over others, envy stirred
+by His obvious superiority to themselves.</p>
+<p>Envy is one of the sins of which we are least conscious. When
+people affirm that they envy others this or that: their leisure,
+their beauty, or what not, they clearly do not envy them at all,
+but are mildly covetous of the things that they see others possess.
+Where envy does show its presence and where we do not recognise its
+nature, is in that horrible inclination to depreciate others which
+is visible in certain characters. They seem never to hear another
+mentioned but they try to think of something which limits the
+praise bestowed upon him, or altogether counteracts it. It seems to
+be an instinctive hostility to superiority as involving an implied
+criticism of one's own inferiority. It is that curious love of the
+worst that lies at the root of gossip.</p>
+<p>And what about the last of the deadly sins, the sin of sloth?
+One is almost tempted to say that it is at once the least obvious
+and the most destructive of all the deadly sins. That would no
+doubt be somewhat of an exaggeration, but it would not be very far
+off the truth. It is spiritual sloth that prevents us from
+considering as we should the spiritual problems that are presented
+to us, and therefore prevents us from gaining their promise. It is
+the quality in humanity that blocks the consideration of the new on
+the ground that we already know and can gain nothing by further
+exertion. The Jewish religious leaders declined the intellectual
+and spiritual effort of considering our Lord's claims; they just
+set them aside unconsidered. And is not that just what we are
+constantly doing, and what constitutes the most pressing danger of
+the spiritual life? We will not consider the future as the field of
+constantly new opportunity and therefore new stages of growth. We
+do not want to make the effort that is implied in that
+attitude.</p>
+<p>Our sloth binds us hand and foot and delivers us to the enemy.
+There are no doubt some who cry out: "But I am not at all slothful;
+I am busy from morning to night; of whatever else I may be guilty,
+it is not of sloth!" My friend, busy people are quite often the
+most slothful people that there are. They are busy dodging their
+rightful duties and the opportunities that God offers them, all day
+long. Have you never discovered that when you had something that
+you ought to do and do not want to do, that the easiest method by
+which you can still your conscience is to make yourself terribly
+busy about something else, and then to tell yourself that the
+reason why you have not done what you know that you ought to have
+done is that really you have not had time? Do you not know that
+being busy is one of the most effective screens that you can put
+between your conscience and your obligation? Do you not know that
+tens of thousands of men and women to-day are putting the screens
+of good works, of social service of some sort, between their souls
+and the worship of God and the practice of the sacraments? Beware
+lest while you wear yourself out with activity your besetting sin
+be found to be sloth!</p>
+<p>And shall we find there on the Way of Sorrow the virtues that
+are the opposite of the Seven Sins? Perhaps, if we had time to
+look, or had sufficient knowledge of the crowd that lines the way.
+There are certain women over there wailing and lamenting; perhaps
+they could help us. In any case we know that there is one woman who
+has succeeded in keeping near whose love of Jesus is so intense
+that it will enable her to overcome all obstacles and be near Him
+to the very last. Jesus as He staggers along the way and falls at
+length under the intolerable weight of the Cross is the embodiment
+of all virtues and of all spiritual accomplishment, and his blessed
+Mother through His grace has been kept pure from all sin. She will
+show the perfection of purely human accomplishment. She is the best
+that humanity in union with the Incarnate Son has brought forth. We
+have seen--we have caught glimpses of her life through what the
+Scriptures tell us of her--how completely she has responded to
+grace in all the actions of her life. Not much do the Scriptures
+say, but what they do say is like the opening of windows through
+which we catch passing aspects of her life which we feel are
+perfectly characteristic and revealing.</p>
+<p>And we have seen there, or we may see, may we not? the virtues
+which are the work of the Holy Spirit enabling us to overcome the
+deadly sins. We have seen the humility with which, without thought
+of self, she answered God's call to be the Mother of His Son. We
+have seen the liberality with which she places her whole life at
+God's disposal, withholding nothing from the divine service. Purity
+undefiled had been God's gift to her from the first moment of her
+existence. Hers too was that meekness which willingly accepted all
+that the appointment of God brought her, showing in her acceptance
+no withholding of the will, no trace of self-assertion. Hers was
+the great virtue of temperance, the power of self-restraint and
+self-discipline, which suppressed all movements of nature that
+would be contrary to God's will. There too was the love of the
+brother and of the neighbour which is the contrary of envy; and
+there was the eagerness in fulfilling the will of God which is the
+opposite of sloth.</p>
+<p>We have then two spotless examples,--how shall we not be stirred
+to follow them! There is Jesus manifesting the qualities of His
+sinless life, of the life of God's election, of humanity as God
+wills it to be, and as it ultimately will be when it gives itself
+to His will; and Mary in whom we see the work of God's grace
+perfectly accomplished by virtue of her perfect response to the
+love of her Sen. We look at these two lives and we see what is
+possible for us. We do not say, we cannot say, these things are too
+wonderful and great for me. We can only say, through the grace of
+God which is given me, "I can do all things." It is not my
+inevitable destiny that I should abide a sinner. I have the choice
+of being a sinner or a saint.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>MARY: Ever I cried full piteously:<br>
+"Lordings, what have ye i-brought?<br>
+It is my Son I love so much:<br>
+For God's sake bury Him nought."<br>
+They would not stop though that I swooned,<br>
+Till that He in the grave were brought.<br>
+Rich clothes they around him wound:<br>
+And ever mercy I them besought.<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+They said there was no better way<br>
+But take and bury him full snel.<br>
+They looked on my cousin John<br>
+For sorrow both a-down we fell--<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+By Him we fell that was My Child.<br>
+His sweet mouth well full oft I kissed.<br>
+John saw I was in point to spill,<br>
+That nigh mine heart did come to break.<br>
+He held his sorrow in his heart still<br>
+And mildly then to me did speak:<br>
+"Mary, if it be thy will<br>
+Go we hence; the Maudeleyn eke."<br>
+He led me to a chamber then<br>
+Where my Son was used to be,--<br>
+John and the Maudeleyn also;<br>
+For nothing would they from me flee.<br>
+I looked about me everywhere:<br>
+I could nowhere my Son&egrave; see.<br>
+We sat us down in sorrow and woe<br>
+And 'gan to weep all three.<br>
+<br>
+From St. Bernard's Lamentation on Christ's Passion.<br>
+Engl. version, probably 13th Cent, by Richard
+Maydestone.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+<h3>THE CRUCIFIXION</h3>
+<br>
+<center>And they crucified him.<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. XXVII, 35.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>In as much as we have no confidence because of our many
+sins, do thou, O Virgin Mother of God, beseech him who was born of
+thee; for a Mother's supplication availeth much to gain the
+benignity of the Master. Despise not the prayers of sinners, O
+all-august, for merciful and mighty to save is he, who vouchsafed
+to suffer for us.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">BYZANTINE.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>e have followed the Way of Sorrows to the very end and now stand
+on Calvary watching by the Cross, waiting for the death of the Son
+of God. The mystery of iniquity is consummated here where man in
+open rebellion against his God crucifies the Incarnate Son. Here is
+fulfilled the saying: "He came unto His own and His own received
+Him not." All that man can do to prove his own degredation he has
+done. In the person of Pilate he has condemned to death a man whom
+he knows to be innocent. The representative of human justice has
+denied justice for the sake of his own personal ends. In the person
+of Herod he has permitted the insult and abuse of One of whom he
+knows no ill, and has displayed toward Him wanton and brutal
+cruelty. In the person of the Jewish authorities he has rejected
+the Messenger of the God whom he recognises as his God, and will
+not listen to the voice of prophecy because he finds his personal
+ends countered by the fulfilment of the promises of the religion
+whose subject he professes to be. In the person of the disciples he
+shows himself too cowardly and self-regarding to stand by his
+innocent Master and to throw in his lot with Him. In the person of
+the people he shows himself cruel, hardened, indifferent to
+suffering and to justice, ready to be made the tool of unscrupulous
+politicians, unstable and ignorant. As we look on, we succeed in
+retaining any shred of respect for humanity only through the
+contemplation of the exceptions--of S. John and the little group of
+women who are faithful to the end: above all in the sight of
+blessed Mary standing by the Cross of her Son.</p>
+<p>It is the will of God that our Lord should follow the human lot
+to the very depth of its possible sufferings. There are no doubt
+many sufferings of humanity that our Lord does not share, they are
+those which spring out of personal sin. He in Whom was no sin could
+not suffer those things which spring from one's own wrong doing.
+That is one broad distinction between the burdens of the crosses on
+Calvary, a distinction which the penitent thief caught easily when
+he said to his reviling fellow-criminal, "Dost thou not fear God,
+seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for
+we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done
+nothing amiss." And in as much as a great part of what we suffer is
+plainly just, the pain we bear is intensified by the knowledge that
+what we are is the outcome of what we have been. But our Lord,
+while He does not suffer as the result of His own sin, does suffer
+as the result of sin in that He wills to bear the result of men's
+sin by putting Himself at their mercy. He bears the burden of sin
+to the uttermost, looking down from the Cross at the faces of these
+men whose salvation He is making possible if in the days to come
+they will associate themselves with Him. One wonders how many of
+those who saw Him crucified came, before they died, to accept Him
+as the Saviour and their God. There must have been many wonderful
+first Communions in the early Church when those who had rejected
+Jesus in His humility came to receive Him glorified.</p>
+<p>But as we look at this scene of the dying we feel that the
+powers of evil are working their uttermost, they are driving their
+slaves to incredible sins. One feels the tremendous power that evil
+is as one looks at these human beings who are body and soul wholly
+under its dominion. The Power of Darkness appears utterly in
+control of the world of humanity; but we know that this moment in
+which its triumph seems most complete is in fact the moment in
+which its defeat is at hand. The victory that is being won is the
+victory of the Vanquished: and the moment when the victory of evil
+seems assured by the dying of Jesus, is in fact the moment when the
+chains of the slaves of sin are broken, and men who will to be free
+are henceforth free indeed. From that moment a new freedom is
+within the reach of men, the freedom which comes to them through
+their participation in the redemption wrought for them by God.
+Presently S. John will announce the great message of freedom to the
+Church, a message that he will tell in his own wonderful
+simplicity, a simplicity which almost deceives us as to its
+unfathomable depth of love and mystery: "For whatsoever is born of
+God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh
+the world, even our faith.... We know that whosoever is born of God
+sinneth not: but He that was begotten of God keepeth him, and the
+evil one toucheth him not. And we know that we are of God, and the
+whole world lieth in the evil one. And we know that the Son of God
+is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him
+that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus
+Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life."</p>
+<p>This is what the dying of Jesus achieved for us, that we should
+be free as men had never been free, and that we should be strong as
+men had never been strong.</p>
+<p>On their crosses the thieves agonise in the realisation of the
+sin that has brought them there; but our Lord, Who is free from
+sin, looks out on the scene before Him in a wonderful detachment
+from His personal suffering. Being without sin our Lord is without
+egotism, and never treats life from that purely personal standpoint
+that we are constantly tempted to adopt. Our own needs, our own
+interests, occupy the foreground and determine the judgment; and we
+are rarely able to see in dealing with the concrete case that our
+own interests are ultimately indentical with the interests of the
+whole Body. The lesson that if one member suffer, all the members
+suffer with it, that we are partners in joy and sorrow alike, is
+almost impossible of assimilation by the radical individualists
+that we are. Our theories break down before the test of actuality.
+But our Lord was not an individualist. He, in His relations with
+men, is the Head of the Body; and He admits no division of
+interests between His members. He therefore can think of the needs
+of others while He Himself is undergoing the last torture of death.
+He can impartially judge the separate cases of His members; He can
+attend to the spiritual welfare of a needy soul; He can think of
+His own death as an act of sacrifice willed by God, and not as a
+matter concerning Himself alone; and in doing these things He
+teaches us a much-needed lesson of the handling of life.</p>
+<p>No lesson is to-day more needed because we are more and more
+being influenced to treat life as a private matter. I have spoken
+of this before and need not elaborate it now; but I do want to
+insist, at whatever risk of repetition, that a Christian must, if
+his religion mean anything at all, look on the interests of the
+Body, not as a separate group of interests to which he is
+privileged or obligated to contribute such help as seems to him
+from time to time appropriate, but as in fact his own primary
+interests because his true significance in the world is gained
+through his membership in the Body. His life is hid with Christ in
+God and his conversation is in heaven. The life that he now lives
+in the flesh he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him
+and gave Himself for him. To assert separate interests is to break
+the essential relation of his life. He is nothing apart from the
+Body but a dry and withered branch fit for the burning. No doubt
+our egotism rebels against this view of life, but it is certain
+that it is the view of the Christian Religion. If we would realise
+the ideals of the Religion we must act as those who are in constant
+relations with the other members of the Body and whose life gets
+its significance through those relations.</p>
+<p>There is no more outstanding lesson of our Lord's life than
+this. It is true from whichever angle you look at it. If you think
+of our Lord as a divine Person it is at once evident how much of
+His meaning is included in His relations to the other Persons of
+the Blessed Trinity. He claims no independent will; it is the will
+of the Father that He has come to do. He claims no original work:
+it is the work that the Father has given Him to do that He is
+straightened until He accomplish. He has no individual possession,
+but all things that the Father has are His. Considered as God, our
+Lord is One Person in the one divine nature, no Unitarian
+interpretation of Him is possible. On the other hand, if you look
+at Him as Incarnate, as having identified Himself with humanity, He
+is in that respect made one with His brethren. He has made their
+interests His, and as their new Head is opening for them the gate
+of the future. He is inviting them into union with Himself, that in
+the status of His "brethren" and "friends" they may be also the
+true children of the heavenly Father. There is no hint anywhere
+that these things may be accomplished apart from Him, in individual
+isolation: indeed, if they could be so accomplished the Incarnation
+would be meaningless. He is the Way and no one cometh to the Father
+but by Him. He is the Truth, and no one knows the Father but he to
+whom the Son reveals Him. He is the Life, and no one spiritually
+lives except through His self-impartation. "He that eateth my flesh
+and drinketh my blood hath eternal life. He that eateth me, even he
+shall live by me." In this outlook from the Cross which we
+recognise in our Blessed Lord when, forgetting His own sufferings
+in His appreciation of the needs of others, we see Him still
+fulfilling His ministry of mercy and of sympathy, we are certain
+that His eyes would rest upon one group which could not fail to
+pierce His heart with its pathos and tragedy. Our Lord's love is
+not a general, impersonal love of humanity; it is always love of a
+person. He no doubt felt a special love for this thief who appealed
+to Him from the cross by His side. In the whole course of His life
+our Lord had shown His oneness with us in that He loved special
+people in a special way. He loved Lazarus and his sisters, He loved
+S. John. Above all others He loved His Blessed Mother. And now
+looking down from the Cross He sees that the disciple whom He loved
+was succeeded in leading His mother into the very shadow of the
+Cross. How S. Mary had made her way there we do not know: only love
+knows how it triumphs over its obstacles and comes forth
+victorious. There is Blessed Mary, looking up into the face so
+scarred and bleeding, and there is the Son, looking down through
+the blinding blood into the face of the mother. This is the supreme
+human tragedy of Calvary. We can only stand and watch the exchange
+of love.</p>
+<p>And then comes the word--the word, by the way, which when it was
+spoken years ago in Cana of Galilee, men have interpreted as a
+harsh and rebuking word, with how much truth this scene tells--then
+comes the word: "Woman, behold thy son." In His love He gives her
+that which He had so much loved, the friendship of S. John. He
+brings together those who had so supremely loved Him in an
+association which would support them both in the trial of their
+loss. "Woman, behold thy son; behold thy mother." Bitter as was
+their sorrow in this hour, we know that they were marvellously
+comforted by this power of love which is able to transcend
+suffering and death. We know, because we know how utterly our Lord
+is one with us, that it was much to Him to look on the face that
+bent over Him in the Manger in Bethlehem. We know, because we know
+the perfect woman that was Mary, that there was deep joy as well as
+deep agony in being able to stand there at the last beneath the
+Cross.</p>
+<p>Do you think that we are going too far when we see in S. Mary
+not simply the mother of our Lord, but when we also see in her a
+certain representative character? Does she not represent us in one
+way and S. John represent us in another, in this supreme exchange
+of love? Do we not feel that in S. John we have been recommended to
+the love and care of Mary who is our mother? Do we not feel that in
+S. John the mother has been committed to our love and care? Surely,
+because we are members of her Son we have a special relation to S.
+Mary, and a special claim upon her, if it be permitted to express
+it in that way. It is no empty form of words when we call her
+mother, no exaltation of sentimentalism. The title represents a
+very real relation of love. It brings home to us that the love of
+Mary is as near infinite as the love of a creature can be, and that
+like the love of her Son it is an unselfish love. She is
+necessarily interested in all the members of the Body, and their
+cares and joys and sorrows she is glad to make her own. She is very
+close to us in her love and sympathy; she is very ready to help us
+with her prayers. We never go to her for succour but she hears us.
+"Behold thy son," her divine Son said to her on the Cross in His
+agony, and all who are members of that Son are her sons too. Her
+place in heaven above all creatures, most highly favoured as she
+is, is a place to which our prayers penetrate, and never penetrate
+unheard. For that other Son, through whose merits she is what she
+is, whose Face she ever beholds as the Face alike of her Redeemer
+and her Child, is ever ready to hear her intercessions for us
+because they come to Him with the power and the insight that
+perfect purity and perfect sympathy alone can give. So for us there
+is intense personal consolation in this word: "Behold thy
+mother."</p>
+<p>But there is another side to this committal. It is mutual:
+"Behold thy son." If we can see ourselves in S. John, committed to
+the Blessed Mother, we can also see ourselves in S. John to whom
+the blessed mother is committed. "Behold thy mother." There is a
+sense in which the blessed mother is committed to us; to-day she is
+our care. We see the fulfillment of this trust in the love and
+reverence wherewith Christendom from the beginning has surrounded
+S. Mary. It has accepted the charge with a passionate devotion. The
+growth of devotion to her is recorded in the vast literature of
+Mariology which comes to us from all parts and all eras of the
+Catholic Church. The details of the expression of this devotion
+have been wrought out through the centuries with loving care, and
+the result is that wherever there is a Catholic conception of
+religion, either in East or West, there is a grateful response to
+our Lord's trust of His Blessed mother to His Church in the person
+of S. John.</p>
+<p>We feel, do we not? that it is one of the great privileges of
+our spiritual life that we have found a personal part in this
+trust, that it is permitted us to preserve and hand on this
+reverence for Blessed Mary, and in so doing to gain personal
+contact with her as a spiritual power in the Kingdom of God. It
+means much to us that we can have the love and sympathy which are
+blended with her intercession, that we can associate our prayers
+with hers in the time of our need. Much as we value the sympathy
+and prayers of our friends here, we cannot but feel that in Mary we
+have a friend whose helpfulness is stimulated by a great love and
+directed by deep spiritual insight into the reality of our needs.
+We turn therefore to her with the certainty of her
+co-operation.</p>
+<p>Our Lord on the Cross had now fulfilled His mission in the care
+of individual persons, had prayed for His tormentors, had forgiven
+the penitent thief, and had commended those who were the special
+objects of His love to one another, and could now turn His thoughts
+away from earth to the love of the Father. His last words are
+intimate words to Him. They express the agony that tears His soul
+as the Face of the Father is for a moment hidden, and the peace of
+an accomplished work as He surrenders Himself into the hands of the
+Father that sent Him. He who had been our example all His life,
+showing us how to meet life, is our example in death, showing us
+how to meet death.</p>
+<p>But just wherein does the dying of Christ become an example for
+us? This final surrender to the Father of a will that had never
+been separate from the Father,--what can we derive from all that?
+There are many lines of approach and application. I can only touch
+on one or two:--</p>
+<p>"I have glorified Thee on the earth," our Lord said in the last
+wonderful prayer, "I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to
+do." And here on the Cross He repeats, "It is finished." When we
+think of this we are impressed with the steadiness with which our
+Lord pursued His purpose, with the way He concentrated His whole
+life upon His work. He declined to be drawn aside by anything
+irrelevant to it. People came to Him with all sorts of requests,
+from the request that He will settle a disputed inheritance to the
+request that He will become their king; and He puts them all aside
+as having no pertinence to His mission. It is interesting to go
+through the Gospel and note just what are the details of this
+winnowing process; mark what our Lord accepts as relevant to His
+mission and what not. He is never too occupied or tired to attend
+to what belongs to His work. An ill old woman or idiot child is
+important to Him and He attends to them; but He declines the sort
+of work that will involve Him and His mission in controversy and
+politics. He is not a reformer of society but a reformer of men. He
+knows that only by the reformation of men can society be
+reformed.</p>
+<p>There is no doubt much to be learned from the study of our
+Lord's method of the limits of the social and political activity of
+His Church. It has constantly fallen a victim to the temptation to
+undertake the reform of the world by some other means than the
+conversion of it. It has shown itself quite willing to be made "a
+judge and divider." It has not always declined the invitation it
+has received to assume the purple. "Your business is to reform this
+miserable world which so sadly and so obviously needs you," men say
+to it; "You are not living up to your principles and you are
+neglecting your duty by not supporting this great movement for the
+betterment of the race," others say. Still others urge, "You are
+losing great masses of men through your inexplicable failure to
+adopt their cause." And the Church in the whole course of its
+history has constantly yielded to this temptation, and has not seen
+until too late that in so doing it was making itself the tool or
+the cat's-paw of one interest or another whose sole interest in
+religion was the possibility of exploiting the influence of the
+Church. In the stupid hope of forwarding its spiritual interests
+the Church has entangled itself with the responsibilities of
+temporal power; it has made itself the backer of "the divine right
+of kings"; and it has found itself bound hand and foot in the
+character of a national or state Church; and with a curious
+incapacity to learn anything from experience is now
+enthusiastically cheering for democracy! Poor Church, whose leaders
+are so constantly misleaders.</p>
+<p>It is all due to the hoary temptation to try to get to one's end
+by some sort of a short cut: "All these things will I give you if
+you will fall down and worship me." Our Lord knew that Satan could
+not really give Him the ends He was seeking; but His followers are
+constantly confident that he can, and are therefore his constant
+and ready tools for this or that party or interest. They sell
+themselves to monarchy or democracy, to capital or labour, with the
+same guileless innocence of what is happening to them, with the
+same simple-minded incapacity to learn anything from the lessons of
+the past. There are no short cuts to spiritual ends, and those ends
+can never be accomplished by secular means. The interests of the
+Kingdom of God can never be forwarded by alliance with the powers
+of this world; the interests of particular persons or parties in
+the Church may be--but that is quite another thing.</p>
+<p>The lesson is one that is not without application to the
+individual life. There again the tendency to mind something other
+than one's own business is almost ineradicable. We have before us
+the work of building our spiritual house, of finishing the work
+that the Father has given us to do, of carrying to a successful
+conclusion the work of our sanctification. In view of the
+experience of nearly two thousand years of Christianity and of our
+own personal experience, that would seem a sufficiently difficult
+and obligatory work to occupy the undivided energies of a
+life-time. But we are accustomed to treat this primary business of
+life quite as though it were a parergon, a thing to play with in
+our unoccupied hours, the fad of a collector rather than the
+supreme interest of an immortal being. That spiritual results are
+no oftener achieved than they are can occasion no surprise when one
+understands the sort of spirit wherewith they are approached. If
+the average man adopted toward his business the attitude he adopts
+toward his religion he would be bankrupt within a week,--and he
+knows it. You know that the attention you are paying to religion
+and the sort of energy and sacrifice you are putting into it are
+insufficient to secure any sort of a result worth having.
+Spiritually speaking, your life is an example of misdirected and
+dissipated energy. There is no spiritual result because there is no
+continuous and energetic effort in a spiritual direction. You are
+not like a master-builder planning and erecting a house. You are
+like a child playing with a box of blocks who begins to build a
+house with them and, when it is half built, is attracted by
+something else and runs after that--not even waiting to put the
+blocks back into the box!</p>
+<p>Life, no doubt, this modern city life into which we are plunged,
+is terribly distracting. Concentration upon a single aim is hard to
+attain. So we plead in our excuse, but the excuse is a false one
+and we know it. We know it because we know many people who have
+achieved the sort of concentration and simplicity of aim that we
+complain of as so difficult. They to be sure have other ends than
+those we claim to be ours, but that would not seem to be important.
+By far the greater part of the male population of this city is
+intensely concentrated in money making. I do not believe that I
+have overheard during the last year two men talking in a car or on
+the street who were not talking about money. There is a good enough
+example of the possibility of concentrating on a single end under
+the conditions of our life. There are other people, you know some
+of them, whose lives are devoted in the most thorough manner to the
+pursuit of pleasure. They find no difficulty in such concentration,
+and they afford an even better example of what we are discussing
+than the money-makers. The money-maker says, "I have to live and my
+family has to live, and we cannot live unless I devote myself to
+business. It is all very well to talk about spiritual interests,
+but those are the plain common sense facts. A man who spends all
+his time on religion will find it pretty difficult to live in New
+York." Very well, that seems unanswerable. But go back to the men
+and women whose sole interest is amusement--how do they live? In
+some way they seem to have so succeeded in subordinating business
+to pleasure that they get what they want, and they somehow escape
+starvation!</p>
+<p>There, I fancy, is the explanation--they get what they want. In
+a broad way we all get what we want. We accomplish in some degree
+at least the ends which we make the supreme ends of life. We are
+back therefore where we started: What are our supreme ends? Are
+they in fact spiritual? Have we mastered the technique of the
+Christian life sufficiently to be single-eyed and pure-hearted in
+our pursuit of life's ends? Are we devoted to the aim of
+manifesting the glory of God and finishing the work that He has
+given us to do?</p>
+<p>This, once more, was the secret of our Lord's life, and it is
+the secret of all those who have at all succeeded in imitating Him.
+They have followed Him with singleness of purpose. They have felt
+life to be before all else a vocation to manifest the will of God
+and to finish a given work. That was the attitude of our Blessed
+Mother; she began on that note: "Behold the hand-maid of the Lord;
+be it unto me according to thy word." It was the Gospel that she
+preached: "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." Her whole life was
+a response--the response of love to love.</p>
+<p>That no doubt, goes to the heart of the spiritual problem. If we
+are to accomplish anything at all in the way of spiritual
+development, if we are to conduct life in simplicity toward
+spiritual ends, it will only be when the source of life's energy is
+found in love. He who does not love has no compelling motive toward
+God and no abiding principle to control life. If we conceive the
+Christian life as a task that is forced upon us, and which in some
+way we are bound to fulfil, we may be sure that the way in which we
+shall fulfil it will be weak and halting. We may be as
+conscientious as you please, but we shall not be able to
+concentrate on a work which is merely a work of duty and not the
+embodiment of a great love. Our primary activity should be devout
+meditation and study of our Lord's life, with prayer for guidance
+and help, till something of the love of God is shed abroad in our
+hearts, till we feel our hearts burn within us and our spirits glow
+and we become able to offer ourselves, soul and body, a living
+sacrifice unto Him.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>
+<table summary="">
+<tr>
+<td>MARY:</td>
+<td>I cried: "Maudeleyn, help now!</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>My Son hath loved full well thee;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Pray Him that I may die,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>That I not forgotten be!</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Seest thou, Maudeleyn, now</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>My Son is hanged on a tree,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Yet alive am I and thou,--</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>And thou, thou prayest not for me!"</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MAUDELEYN</td>
+<td>said: "I know no red,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Care hath smitten my heart sore.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>I stand, I see my Lord nigh dead;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>And thy weeping grieveth me more.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Come with me; I will thee lead</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Into the Temple here before</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>For thou hast now i-wept full yore."</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MARY:</td>
+<td>"I ask thee, Maudeleyn, where is that place,--</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>In plain or valley or in hill?</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Where I may hide in any case</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>That no sorrow come me till.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>For He that all my joy was,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Now death with Him will do its will;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>For me no better solace is</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Than just to weep, to weep my fill."</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Maudeleyn comforted me tho.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To lead me hence, she said, was best:</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But care had smitten my heart so</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That I might never have no rest.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>"Sister, wherever that I go</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>The woe of Him is in my breast,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>While my Sone hangeth so</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>His pains are in mine own heart fast.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Should I let Him hangen there</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Let my Son alone then be?</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Maudeleyn, think, unkind I were</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>If He should hang and I should flee."</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>
+<hr style="width: 25%;"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I bade them go where was their will,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This Maudeleyn and everyone,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And by myself remain I will</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For I will flee for no man.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+From St. Bernard's "Lamentation On Christ's Passion."<br>
+<br>
+Engl. version, 13th Cent., by Richard Maydestone.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE DESCENT AND BURIAL</h3>
+<center>And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped<br>
+it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own<br>
+new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock.<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. XXVII, 59, 60.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>It is meet in very truth to bless thee the Theotokos,
+the ever-blessed and all-immaculate and Mother of our God. Honoured
+above the Cherubim, incomparably more glorious than the Seraphim,
+thou who without stain gavest birth to God the Word, and art truly
+Mother of God, we magnify thee.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">BYZANTINE.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he end had come--so it must have seemed to those who had loved
+and followed our Lord. As they came back from the burial, those of
+them who had remained true to the end, as they came out of their
+hiding places, those others who forsook Him and fled, they met in
+that "Upper Room" which was already consecrated by so many
+experiences. They came back from Joseph's Garden, S. John leading
+the blessed Mother, the Magdalen and the other Mary following, S.
+Peter came from whatever obscure corner he had found safety in. The
+other Apostles came one by one, a frightened, disheartened group,
+shame-faced and doubtful as to what might next befall them. The
+thing that to us seems strangest of all is that no one seems to
+have taken in the meaning of our Lord's words about His
+resurrection. Not even S. Mary herself appears to have seen any
+light through the surrounding darkness. I suppose that so much of
+what our Lord taught them was unintelligible until after the coming
+of the Holy Spirit that they rarely felt sure that they understood
+His meaning; and when the meaning was so unprecedented as that
+involved in His sayings about the resurrection we can understand
+that they should have been so little influenced by them.</p>
+<p>S. Mary's grief would have been so deep, so overwhelming, that
+she would have been unable to think of the future at all save as a
+dreary waste of pain. She could only think that her Son who was all
+to her, was dead. She had stood by the Cross through all the agony
+of His dying: she had heard His last words. That final word to her
+had sunk very deep into her heart. She had once more felt His Body
+in her arms as it was taken down from the Cross; and she had
+followed to the place where was a Garden and a new tomb wherein man
+had never yet lain, there she had seen the Body placed and hastily
+cared for, as much as the shortness of the time on the Passover Eve
+would permit. And then she had gone away, not caring at all where
+she was taken, with but one thought monotonously beating in her
+brain,--He is dead, He is dead.</p>
+<p>It would not be possible in such moments calmly to recall what
+He Himself had taught about death. Death for the moment would mean
+what it had always meant to religious people of her time and
+circle. What that was we have very clearly presented to us in the
+talk with Martha that our Lord had near the place where Lazarus lay
+dead. There is a fuller knowledge than we find explicit in the Old
+Testament, showing a growth in the understanding of the Revelation
+in the years that fall between the close of the Old Testament canon
+and the coming of our Lord. There is a belief in survival to be
+followed by resurrection at the last day. That would no doubt be
+St. Mary's belief about death. That is still the belief of many
+Christians to-day. "I know that he shall rise again in the
+resurrection at the last day." There are still many who think that
+they have accepted the full Revelation of God in Christ who have
+not appreciated the vast difference that the triumph of Christ over
+death has made for us here and now.</p>
+<p>So we have no difficulty in understanding the gloom that fell on
+the Apostolic circle, accentuated as it was by the very vivid fear
+that at any moment they might hear the approaching feet of the
+Jewish and Roman officials and the knock of armed hands upon the
+door. What to do? How escape? Had they so utterly misunderstood and
+misinterpreted Christ that this is the natural outcome of His
+movement? Had they been the victims of foolish hopes and of a
+baseless ambition when they saw in Him the Christ, the one who
+should at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel? They had
+persistently clung to this nationalistic interpretation of His work
+although He had never encouraged it; but it was the only meaning
+that they were able to see in it. And now all their expectations
+had collapsed, and they were left hopeless and leaderless to face
+the consequences of a series of acts that had ended in the death of
+their Master and would end, they knew not how, for them. Was it at
+all likely that the Jewish authorities having disposed of the
+leader in a dangerous movement would be content to let the
+followers go free? Would they not rather seek to wipe out the last
+traces of the movement in blood?</p>
+<p>So they would have thought, gathered in that Upper Room, while
+outside the Jewish authorities were keeping the Passover. What a
+Passover it was to them with this nightmare of a rebellion which
+threatened their whole place and power passed away. What mutual
+congratulations were theirs on the clever way in which the whole
+matter had been handled. There had been a moment when they were on
+the very point of failure, when Pilate was ready to let Jesus go
+free. That was their moment of greatest danger; and they took their
+courage in both hands and threw the challenge squarely in the face
+of the cowardly Governor: "If thou let this man go, thou art not
+Caesar's friend!" The chief priests knew their man, and they
+carried their plan against him with a determined hand, declining to
+accept any compromise, anything less than the death of Jesus. Great
+was the rejoicing; hearty were the mutual congratulations in the
+official circles of Jerusalem. It had been long since they had
+celebrated so wonderful a Passover as that!</p>
+<p>So limited, so mistaken, is the human outlook on life. They had
+but to await another night's passing and all would be changed. But
+in the meantime the position of the disciples was pitiful. They
+were in that state of dull, hopeless discouragement that is one of
+the most painful of human states. It is a state to which we who are
+Christians do from time to time fall victims with much less excuse.
+We are hopeless, we say and feel. We look at the future, at the
+problems with which we are fronted, and we see no ray of light, no
+suggestion of a solution. We have been robbed of what we most
+valued and life looks wholly blank to us. For those others there
+was this of excuse,--they did not know Jesus risen, they did not
+know the power of the resurrection life. For us there is no such
+excuse because we have a sure basis of hope in our knowledge of the
+meaning of the Lord.</p>
+<p>Hope is one of the great trilogy of Christian Virtues, the gift
+to Christians of God the Holy Ghost. As Christians we have the
+virtue of hope, the question is whether we will excercise it or no.
+It is one of the many fruits of our being in a state of grace. Many
+blunder when they think of hope in that they confound it with an
+optimistic feeling about the future. We hear of hopeful persons and
+we know that by the description is meant persons who are confident
+"that everything will be all right," when there seems no ground at
+all for thinking so. They have a "buoyant temperament," by which I
+suppose is meant a temperament which soars above facts. That not
+very intelligent attitude has nothing to do with the Christian
+virtue of hope. Hope is born of our relation to God. It is the
+conviction: "God is on my side; I will not fear what man can do
+unto me." It is the serene and untroubled trust of one who knows
+that he is safe in the hands of God, and that his life is really
+ordered by the will and Providence of God.</p>
+<p>This virtue, had they possessed it, would have carried the
+disciples through the crisis of our Lord's death. They had had
+sufficient experience of Him to know that they might utterly rely
+on Him in all the circumstances of their lives. He had always
+sustained them and carried them through all crises. They had often
+been puzzled by Him, no doubt; they had felt helpless to fathom
+much of His teaching, but they had slowly arrived at certain
+conclusions about Him which He Himself had confirmed. On that day
+at Caesarea Phillipi they had reached the conclusion of His
+Messiahship, a slumbering conviction had broken into flame and
+light in the great confession of S. Peter. The meaning of
+Messiahship was a part of their national religious tradition; and
+although in some important respects mistaken, they yet, one would
+think, have been led to perfect trust in our Lord when they
+acknowledged His Messianic claims. But death? They could not get
+over the apparent finality of death. But, again, perhaps we are not
+very far beyond this in our understanding of it. To us still death
+seems very final.</p>
+<p>But it was just that sense of its finality--of its constituting
+a hopeless break in the continuity of existence--that our Lord was
+engaged in removing during these days which to them were days of
+hopelessness and despair. When they came to know what in these days
+was taking place; and when the Church guided by the Holy Spirit
+came to meditate upon the meaning of our Lord's action it would see
+death in a changed light. The sense of a cataclysmic disaster in
+death would pass and be replaced by a sense of the continuity of
+life. Hitherto attention had been concentrated on this world, and
+death had been a disappearence from this world, the stopping of
+worldly loves and interests. Presently death would be seen to be
+the translation of the human being to a new sphere of activities,
+but involving no cessation of consciousness or failure of personal
+activities. Men had thought, naturally enough in their lack of
+knowledge, of the effect of death on the survivors, of the break in
+their relations with the dead. Now death would be viewed from the
+point of view of the interests of the person who is dead; and it
+would emerge that he continued under different conditions, and in
+the end it would come to be seen that even in the relations of the
+survivors with the dead there was no necessary and absolute break,
+but that the new conditions of life made possible renewed
+intercourse under altered circumstances.</p>
+<p>Our Lord, the disciples learned not long after, during these
+days went to preach to the spirits in prison, which the thought of
+the Church has interpreted to mean that He carried the news of the
+Redemption He had wrought through His dying, to the place of the
+dead, to the region where the souls of the faithful were patiently
+waiting the time of their perfecting. The doors of the heavenly
+world could not be opened till the time when He by His Cross and
+Passion, by His death and resurrection, opened them. The Heads of
+the Gates could not be lifted till they were lifted for the
+entrance of the King of Glory. But once lifted they were lifted
+forever; and when He ascended up on high He led His troop of
+captives redeemed from the bondage of death and hell.</p>
+<p>It is through these lifted Gates that the companies of the
+sanctified have been streaming ever since; and the difference that
+has been made in our view of death has been immense. If we have the
+faith of a Christian death has been transformed. There remains, of
+course, the natural grief which is ours when we part from those
+whom we love. This grief is natural and holy as it is in fact an
+expression of our love. It is not rebellion against the will of
+God, but is the expression of a feeling wherewith God has endowed
+us. But there is no longer in it the sting of hopelessness that we
+find, for instance, in the inscriptions on pagan tombs, nay, on
+tombs still, though created by Christians and found in Christian
+cemeteries. Rather it is the expression of a love which is learning
+to exercise itself under new conditions. We do not find it possible
+to reverse all our habits in a moment; and the new relation with
+the dead is one to which we have to learn to accustom ourselves. I
+remember a case where a mother and a son had never been separated
+for more than a day at a time, though he was far on in manhood.
+There came a time of indeterminate separation and the mother's
+grief was intense notwithstanding that there was no thought of a
+permanent separation. It took some time for her to accustom herself
+to the new mode of communication by letter. It is not far otherwise
+in death; it takes some time for us to accustom ourselves to the
+new mode of intercourse through prayer, but we succeed, and the new
+intercourse is very real and very precious. In a sense, too, it is
+a nearer, more intimate intercourse. It lacks the homely, daily
+touches, no doubt; but in compensation it reveals to us the
+spiritual values in life. We speedily learn, we learn almost by a
+spiritual instinct, what are the common grounds on which we can now
+meet. By our intercourse with our dead we get a new grasp on the
+truth of our common life in Christ: it is in and through Him that
+all our converse is now mediated. We have little difficulty in
+knowing what are the thoughts and interests which may be shared
+under the new conditions in which we find ourselves. Our perception
+of spiritual interests and spiritual values grows and deepens, and
+our communion with our dead becomes an indication of the extent of
+our own spiritual growth.</p>
+<p>There come times in the spiritual experience of most of us when
+we seem to have got to the end. There is a deepening sense of
+failure which is not, when we analyse it, so much a failure in this
+or that detail, as a general sense of the futility of the life of
+the Church as expressed in our individual lives. It came to those
+primitive congregations, you remember, to which S. Peter was
+writing; "Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers
+fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of
+creation." It is the weariness of continuous effort from which we
+conclude that we are getting quite insufficient results.</p>
+<p>No doubt that is true. The results are never what we expect,
+possibly because the effort is never what we imagine it to be. We
+continually underestimate the opposing force of evil, the
+difficulty of dealing with a humanity which falls so easily under
+the slightest temptation. It is not that sinners decline to hear
+the Word of God, but that those who profess themselves to be the
+servants of God, and who in fact intend to be such, are so
+lamentably weak and ineffective. We think of the effort of God in
+the Incarnation; we have been following that effort in some detail
+through the Passion. We are surprised, shocked, disheartened by the
+spectacle of the hatred that innocence stirs up, at the lengths men
+will go when they see their personal ends threatened. We are
+horrified by Caiphas, Pilate, Herod. But is that the really
+horrifying thing about the Passion of our Lord? To me the supreme
+example of human incomprehension is that all the disciples forsook
+Him and fled, that He was left to die almost alone. There we get
+the most disheartening failure in the tragedy.</p>
+<p>For we expect the antagonism of the world, especially that part
+of the world that has seen and rejected Christ. There we find
+Satanic activities. One of the outstanding features of the
+literature of to-day in the Western world, the world that had known
+from childhood the story of Jesus, is its utter hatred of
+Christianity; its revolt from all that Christianity stands for.
+This is markedly true in regard to the Christian teaching in the
+matter of purity. The contemporary English novel is perhaps the
+vilest thing that has yet appeared on this earth. There have been
+plenty of unclean books written in the course of the world's
+history--we have only to recall the literature of the
+Renaissance--but for the most part they have been written in
+careless or boastful disregard of moral sanctions which they still
+regarded as existing; but the novel of the present is an immoral
+propaganda--it is deliberately and of malice immoral, not out of
+careless levity, but out of deliberate intention. You do not feel
+that the modern author is just describing immoral actions which
+grow out of his story, but that he is constructing his story for
+the purpose of propagating immoral theory. He hates the whole
+teaching of the Christian Religion in the matter of purity. He has
+thrown it overboard on the ground that it is an "unnatural"
+restraint. To those who have studied the development of thought
+since the Renaissance there is nothing surprising in this.</p>
+<p>But what does still surprise those who are as yet capable of
+being surprised is the light way in which the mass of Christians
+take their religion. Occasionally, in moments of frankness, they
+admit that they are not getting anything out of it; but it is
+harder to get them to admit that the reason is that they are not
+putting anything into it. You do not expect to get returns from a
+business into which you are putting no capital, and you have no
+right to expect returns from a religion into which you are putting
+no energy. What is meant by that is that those Christians who are
+keeping the minimum routine of Christianity, who are going to High
+Mass on Sunday (or perhaps only to low Mass) and then making the
+rest of the day a time of self-indulgence and pleasure; who make
+their communions but rarely; who do not go to confession, or go
+only at Easter; who are giving no active support to the work of the
+Gospel as represented in parish and diocese have no right to be
+surprised if they find that they do not seem to get any results
+from their religion; that it is often rather a bore to do even so
+much as they do, and that they see no point in permitting it
+further to interfere with their customary amusements and
+avocations. I do not know what such persons expect from their
+religion, but I am sure that they will be disappointed if they are
+expecting any spiritual result. Naturally, they will be
+disappointed if they look in themselves for any evidence of the
+virtue of hope. The most that can be looked for under the
+circumstances is that mockery of hope, presumption.</p>
+<p>We are not to be discouraged in our estimate of the Christian
+Religion by this which seems to be the failure of God. We are not
+to echo the cry: "Since the fathers fell asleep, all things
+continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." S. Peter
+pointed out to those pessimists that all things do not continue the
+same, that there are times of crisis which are the judgments of
+God. Such a judgment was that of old which swept the wickedness of
+the world away, "whereby the world that then was, being overflowed
+with water, perished." He goes on to state that the present order
+likewise will issue in judgment: "The heavens and the earth which
+are now ... are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day
+of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." What renders men
+hopeless is the feeling of God's inactivity; but this declaration
+of impending judgment certifies the active interest of God. God's
+dealing with the world is a perpetual judgment of which we are apt
+to decline the evidence until the cataclysm reveals the final
+scene. But every society, every individual life, is being judged
+through the whole course of its existence, and there is no need
+that either society or individual should be blind to the fact that
+such a judgment is taking place. There is no failure of God. There
+is a failure on our part to understand the works of God.</p>
+<p>We may very well consider the problem an individual one and ask
+ourselves what ground of hope we have. On the basis of our present
+effort can we, ought we, to have more than we have? The spiritual
+life is not an accident that befalls certain people; it is an art
+that is acquired by such persons as are interested in it. It is
+attained through the careful training and exercise of the faculties
+wherewith we have been endowed. The answer to our question is
+itself a perfectly simple one, as simple as would be the answer to
+the question: "Do you speak French?" We speak French if we have
+taken the trouble to learn French; and we have gained results in
+the way of spiritual development and culture if we have taken the
+trouble to do so. I do not know why we should expect results on any
+other ground than that.</p>
+<p>But certain persons say: "I have tried, and have not attained
+any results." Well, I should want to know what the trying means in
+that case. It is well for a person who aspires to spiritual culture
+to think of his past history. What sort of character-development
+has so far been going on? Commonly it happens that there has been
+no spiritual effort that is worth thinking about; but that does not
+mean that nothing spiritual has been happening. It means on the
+contrary that there has been going on a spiritual atrophy, the
+spiritual powers have been without exercise and will be difficult
+to arouse to activity. In such a case as that spiritual awakening
+will be followed by a long period of spiritual struggle against
+habits of thought and action which we have already formed, a period
+in which unused and immature spiritual powers must be roused to
+action and disciplined to use. The simplest illustration of this is
+the difficulty experienced by the enthusiastic beginner in holding
+the attention fixed on spiritual acts such as the various forms of
+prayer. In all such attempts at spiritual activity there will be
+the constant drag of old habits, the recurrence of states of mind
+and imagination that had become habitual. These hindrances can be
+overcome, but only by steady and rather tedious labour. They call
+for the display of the virtue of patience which is not one of the
+virtues characteristic of spiritual immaturity. Hence reaction and
+the feeling that one is not getting on, the feeling that we have
+quite possibly made a mistake about the whole matter.</p>
+<p>This is the place for the exercise of hope; and hope will come
+if we look away from our not very encouraging acquirement to the
+ground that we have for expecting any acquirement at all. If we
+ask: "Why hope?" we shall see that our basis of hope is not in
+ourselves at all but in God. We hope because of the promises of
+God, because of His will for us as revealed in His Son. "He loved
+us and gave Himself for us"; and that giving will not be in vain.
+"He gave Himself for me," I tell myself, "and therefore I am
+justified in my expectation of spiritual success." So one tries to
+learn from the present failure as it seems; so one repents and
+pushes on; so one learns that it is through tenacity of purpose
+that one attains results.</p>
+<p>And again: I am sustained by hope because I see that the results
+that I covet are not imaginary. They exist. I see them in operation
+all about me. I learn of them as I study the lives of other
+Christians past and present. They are reality not theory, fact not
+dream. And what has been so richly and abundantly the outcome of
+spiritual living in others must be within my own reach. The results
+they attained were not miraculous gifts, but they were the working
+of God the Holy Spirit in lives yielded to Him and co-operating
+with Him.</p>
+<p>Once more: is it not true that after a period of honest labour I
+do find results? Perhaps not all that I would like but all that I
+am justified in expecting from the energy I have spent? I do not
+believe that any one can look back over a year's honest labour and
+not see that the labour has born fruit.</p>
+<p>In any case the fact that we do not see just what we are looking
+for does not mean that no spiritual work is going on. It may seem
+that our Lord is silent and that to our cries there is no voice nor
+any that answers; but that may mean that we are looking in the
+wrong place or listening for the wrong word. The disciples looked
+that the outcome of our Lord's life should be that the Kingdom
+should be restored to Israel; and when they turned away from the
+tomb in Joseph's Garden they felt that what they had looked for and
+prayed for was hopeless of accomplishment. But the important point
+was not their vision of the Kingdom at all, but that they had
+yielded themselves to our Lord and become His disciples and lovers.
+This is not what they intended to do, but it is what actually had
+happened: and when the grave yielded up the dead Whom they thought
+that they had lost forever, Jesus came back with a mission for them
+that was infinitely wider than their dream: the mission of founding
+not the old Kingdom of David, but the Kingdom of David's Son. All
+their aspirations and prayers were fulfilled by being transcended,
+and they found themselves in a position vastly more important than
+had been reached even in their dreams.</p>
+<p>Something like that not infrequently happens in our experience.
+We conceive a spiritual ambition and work for a spiritual end, and
+seem always to miss it; and then the day comes when God reveals to
+us what He has been doing, and we find that through the very
+discipline of our failure we have been being prepared for a success
+of which we had not thought: and when we raise our eyes from the
+path we thought so toilsome and uninteresting, it is to find
+ourselves at the very gate of the City of God. It will be with us
+as with the Apostles who in the darkest hour of their imagined
+failure, when they were gathered together in hiding from the Jews
+were startled by the appearence among them of the risen Jesus, and
+were filled with the unutterable joy of His message of peace.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>"His body is wrapp&egrave;d all in woe,<br>
+Hand and foot He may not go.<br>
+Thy Son, Lady, that thou lovest so<br>
+Naked is nailed upon a tree.<br>
+<br>
+"The Bless&egrave;d Body that thou hast born,<br>
+To save mankind that was forlorn,<br>
+His body, Lady, the Jews have torn,<br>
+And hurt His Head, as ye may see."<br>
+<br>
+When John his tale began to tell<br>
+Mary would not longer dwell<br>
+But hied her fast unto that hill<br>
+Where she might her own Son see.<br>
+<br>
+"My sweete Son, Thou art me dear,<br>
+Oh why have men hanged thee here?<br>
+Thy head is closed with a brier,<br>
+O why have men so done to Thee?"<br>
+<br>
+"John, this woman I thee betake;<br>
+Keep My Mother for My sake.<br>
+On Rood I hang for mannes sake<br>
+For sinful men as thou may see.<br>
+<br>
+"This game alone I have to play,<br>
+For sinful souls that are to die.<br>
+Not one man goeth by the way<br>
+That on my pains will look and see.<br>
+<br>
+"Father, my soul I thee betake,<br>
+My body dieth for mannes sake;<br>
+To hell I go withouten wake,<br>
+Mannes soul to maken free".<br>
+<br>
+Pray we all that Blessed Son<br>
+That He help us when may no man<br>
+And bring to bliss each everyone<br>
+Amen, amen, amen for Charity.<br>
+<br>
+Early English Lyrics, p. 146.<br>
+From an MS. in the Sloane collection.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<h3>THE RESURRECTION</h3>
+<br>
+<center>And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted; ye<br>
+seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he<br>
+is risen; he is not here.<br>
+<br>
+S. Mark XVI, 6.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>O God, who wast pleased that thy Word, when the angel
+delivered his message, should take flesh in the womb of the blessed
+Virgin Mary, give ear to our humble petitions, and grant that we
+who believe her truly to be the Mother of God, may be helped by her
+prayers. Through.<br>
+<br>
+O Almighty and merciful God, who hast wonderfully provided
+perpetual succour for the defence of Christian people in the most
+blessed Virgin Mary; mercifully grant that, contending during life
+under the protection of such patronage, we may be enabled to gain
+the victory, over the malignant enemy in death.
+Through.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p class="loc">OLD CATHOLIC.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hatever may be our grief, however life may seem to have been
+emptied of all interest for us, nevertheless the routine of life
+reasserts itself and forces us back to the daily tasks no matter
+how savourless they may now seem. We speedily find that we are not
+isolated but units in a social order which claims us and calls on
+us to fulfil the duties of our place. Blessed Mary was led away
+from the tomb of her Son in the prostration of grief; but her very
+duty to Him would have forced her thought away from herself and led
+her to join in the preparations which were being made for the
+proper care of the Sacred Body. And in that sad duty she would find
+solace of a kind; there is an expression of love in the care we
+give our dead. This body now so helpless and unresponsive, has been
+the medium through which the soul expressed itself to us; it has
+been the instrument of love and the sacrament of our union. How
+well we know it! How well the mother knows every feature of her
+child, how she now lingers over the preparations for the burial
+feeling that the separation is not quite accomplished so long as
+her hands can touch and her eyes see the familiar features. In the
+pause that the Sabbath forced on the friends of Jesus we may be
+sure that they were making what preparations might be made under
+the restrictions of their religion, and that they looked eagerly
+for the passing of the Sabbath as giving them one more opportunity
+of service to the Master. There was the group of women who had
+followed Him and "ministered of their substance" who were faithful
+still. The Mother had no "substance"; she shared the poverty of her
+Son. Her support during the Sabbath would be the expectancy of
+looking once more upon His Face.</p>
+<p>But when the first day of the week dawned it proved to be a day
+of stupendous wonder. They, the Disciples and these faithful women,
+seemed to themselves, no doubt, to have passed into a new world
+where the presuppositions of the old world were upset and reversed.
+There were visions of angels, reported appearances of Jesus, an
+empty tomb. Through the incredible reports that came to them from
+various sources the light gradually broke for them. It was true
+then, that saying of Jesus, that He would rise again from the dead!
+It was not some mysterious bit of teaching, the exact bearing of
+which they did not catch, but a literal fact! And then while they
+still hesitated and doubted, while they still hid behind the closed
+doors, Jesus Himself came and stood in the midst with His message
+of peace. It is often so, is it not? While we are in perplexity and
+fear, while we think the next sound will be the knock of armed
+hands on the door, it is not the Jews that come, but Jesus with a
+message of peace. Our fears are so pathetic, so pitiful; we meet
+life and death with so little of the understanding and the courage
+that our Lord's promises ought to inspire in us! We stand so
+shudderingly before the vision of death, are so much appalled by
+the thought of the grave! We shudder and tremble as the hand of
+death is stretched out toward us and ours. One is often tempted to
+ask as one hears people talking of death: "Are these Christians? Do
+they believe in immortality? Have they heard the message of the
+first Easter morning, the angelic announcement of the resurrection
+of Christ? Have they never found the peace of believing, the utter
+quiet of the spirit in the confidence of a certain hope which
+belongs to those who have grasped the meaning of the resurrection
+of the dead?" Here in Jerusalem in a few days the whole point of
+view is changed. The frightened group of disciples is transformed
+by the resurrection experience into the group of glad and
+triumphant missionaries who will be ready when they are endowed
+with power from on high to go out and preach Jesus and the
+resurrection to the ends of the earth.</p>
+<p>What in these first days the resurrection meant to them was no
+doubt just the return of Jesus. He was with them once more, and
+they were going to take hope again in the old life, to resume the
+old mission which had been interrupted by the disaster of Calvary.
+All other feeling would have been swallowed up in the mere joy of
+the recovery. But it could not be many hours before it would be
+plain that if Jesus was restored to them He was restored with a
+difference. A new element had entered their intercourse which was
+due to some subtle change that had passed upon Him. We get the
+first note of it in that wonderful scene in Joseph's Garden when
+the Lord appears to the Magdalen. There is all the love and
+sympathy there had ever been; but when in response to her name
+uttered in the familiar voice the Magdalen throws herself at His
+Feet, there is a new word that marks a new phase in their relation:
+"Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended."</p>
+<p>This new thing in our Lord which held them back with a new word
+that they had never experienced before must have become plainer
+each day. S. Mary feels no less love in her Son restored to her
+from; the grave, but she does not find just the same freedom of
+approach. S. John could no longer think of leaning on His Heart at
+supper as before. Jesus was the same as before. There was the same
+thoughtful sympathy; the same tender love; but it is now mediated
+through a nature that has undergone some profound change in the
+days between death and resurrection. The humanity has acquired new
+powers, the spirit is obviously more in control of the body. Our
+Lord appeared and disappeared abruptly. His control over matter was
+absolute. And in His intercourse with the disciples there was a
+difference. He did not linger with them but appeared briefly from
+time to time as though He were but a passing visitor to the world.
+There were no longer the confidential talks in the fading light
+after the day's work and teaching was over. There was no longer the
+common meal with its intimacy and friendliness. There was, and this
+was a striking change, no longer any attempt to approach those
+outside the apostolic circle, no demonstration of His resurrection
+to the world that had, as it thought, safely disposed of Him. He
+came for brief times and with brief messages, short, pregnant
+instructions, filled with meaning for the future into which they
+are soon to enter.</p>
+<p>What did it mean, this resurrection of Jesus? It meant the
+demonstration of the continuity of our nature in our Lord. The Son
+of God took upon Him our nature and lived and died in that nature.
+Our pressing question is, what difference has that made to us? How
+are <i>we</i> affected? Has humanity been permanently affected by
+the resumption of it by God in the resurrection? If the assumption
+of humanity by our Lord was but a passing assumption; if He took
+flesh for a certain purpose, and that purpose fulfilled, laid it
+aside, and once more assumed His pre-incarnate state, we should
+have difficulty in seeing that our humanity was deeply affected by
+the Incarnation. There would have been exhibited a perfect human
+life, but what would have been left at the end of that life would
+have been just the story of it, a thing wholly of the past. It is
+not much better if it is assumed that the meaning of the
+resurrection is the revelation of the immortality of the human
+spirit, that in fact the resurrection means that the soul of Jesus
+is now in the world of the spirit, but that His Body returned to
+the dust. We are not very much interested in the bare fact of
+survival. What interests us is the mode of survival, the conditions
+under which we survive. We are interested, that is to say, in our
+survival as human beings and not in our survival as something
+else--souls.</p>
+<p>A soul is not a human being; a human being is a composite of
+soul and body. It is interesting to note that people who do not
+believe in the resurrection of our Lord, do not believe in our
+survival as human beings, consequently do not believe in a heaven
+that is of any human interest. But we feel, do we not? a certain
+lack of interest in a future in which we shall be something quite
+different in constitution from what we are now. We can think of a
+time between death and the resurrection in which we shall be
+incomplete, but that is tolerable because it is disciplinary and
+temporary and looks on to our restitution to full humanity in the
+resurrection at the Last Day. And we feel that the promise, the
+certainty of this is sealed by our Lord's resurrection from the
+dead. We are certain that that took place because it is needful to
+the completion of His Work.</p>
+<p>The Creed is one: and if one denies one article one speedily
+finds that there is an effect on others. The denial of the
+resurrection is part and parcel of the attempt to reduce
+Christianity to a history of something that once took place which
+is important to us to-day because it affords us a standard of life,
+a pattern after which we are to shape ourselves. Else should we be
+very much in the dark. We gain from the Christian Revelation a
+conception of God as a kindly Father Who desires His children to
+follow the example of His Son. That example, no doubt, must not be
+pressed too literally, must be adapted to modern conditions; but we
+can get some light and guidance from the study of it. Still, if you
+do not care to follow it nothing will happen to you. It is merely a
+pleasing occupation for those who are interested in such things.
+The affirmation of the resurrection, on the other hand, is the
+affirmation of the continuity of the work of God Incarnate; it is
+an assertion that Christianity is a supernatural action of God
+going on all the time, the essence of which is, not that it invites
+the believer to imitation of the life of Christ, so far as seems
+practical under modern conditions, but that it calls him to union
+with Christ; it makes it his life's meaning to recreate the
+Christ-experience, to be born and live and die through the
+experience of Incarnate God. It fixes his attention not on what
+Jesus did but on what Jesus is. It insists on a present vital
+organic relation to God, mediated by the humanity of Jesus; and if
+there be no humanity of Jesus, if at His death He ceased to be
+completely human, then there is no possibility of such a relation
+to God in Christ as the Catholic Religion has from the beginning
+postulated; and unless we are to continue human there seems no
+continuing basis for such a relation to one another in the future
+as would make the future of any interest to us. For us, as for S.
+Paul, all our hope hangs on the resurrection of Christ from the
+dead; and if Christ be not risen from the dead then is our faith
+vain.</p>
+<p>For us then, as for the men who wrote the Gospel, and for the
+men who planted the Church and watered it with their blood, the
+resurrection of Jesus means the return of His Spirit from the place
+whither it had gone to preach to the spirits in prison and its
+reunion with the Body which had been laid in the tomb in Joseph's
+Garden, and the issuing of perfect God and perfect man from that
+tomb on the first Easter morning. That humanity had, no doubt,
+undergone profound changes to fit it to be the perfect instrument
+of the spirit of Christ Jesus henceforward. It is now the
+resurrection body, the spiritual body of the new man. We understand
+that it is now a body fitted for the new conditions of the
+resurrection life, and we also understand that it is the exemplar
+of what our risen bodies will be. They will be endowed with new
+powers and capacities, but they will be human bodies, the medium of
+the spirit's expression and a recognisable means of intercourse
+with our friends. We lie down in the grave with a certainty of
+preserving our identity and of maintaining the capacity of
+intercourse with those we know and love. That is what really
+interests us in the future which would be uninteresting on other
+terms; and that is what our Lord's appearances after the
+resurrection seem to guarantee. He resumed a human intercourse with
+those whom He had gathered about Him. He continued His work of
+instruction and preparation for the future. And when at length He
+left them they were prepared to understand that His departure was
+but the beginning of a new relation. But also they would feel much
+less that there was an absolute break with the past than if He had
+not appeared to them after the Crucifixion, and they had been left
+with but a belief in His immortality. They would, too, now be able
+to look on to the future as containing a renewal of the relations
+now changed, to read a definite meaning into His promises that
+where He is there shall His servants be.</p>
+<p>It is much to know that we are immortal: it is much more to know
+that this immortality is a human immortality. One feels in studying
+the pre-Christian beliefs in immortality that they had very little
+effectiveness, and that the reason was that there was no real link
+connecting life in this world with life in the next. Death was a
+fearful catastrophe that man in some sense survived, but in a sense
+that separated his two modes of existence by a great gulf. Man
+survived, but his interests did not survive, and therefore he
+looked to the future with indifference or fear. This life seemed to
+him much preferable to the life which was on the other side of the
+grave. So far as the Old Testament writings touch on the future
+world, they touch upon it without enthusiasm. There is an immense
+difference between the attitude of the Old Testament saint toward
+death and that, for instance, of the early Christian martyr. And
+the difference is that the martyr does not feel that death will put
+an end to all he knows and loves and set him, alive it may be, but
+alive in a strange country. He feels that he is about to pass into
+a state of being in which he will find his finer interests not lost
+but intensified. At the center of his religious expression is a
+personal love of Jesus and a martyr's death would mean immediate
+admission to the presence and love of His Master. He would--of this
+he had no shadow of doubt--he would see Jesus, not the spirit of
+Jesus, but the Jesus Who is God Incarnate, whose earthly life he
+had gone over so many times, Whom he felt that he should recognise
+at once. Death was not the breaking off of all in which he was
+interested but was rather the fulfilment of all that he had
+dreamed. And this must be true always where our interests are truly
+Christian interests. It is no doubt true that we find in Christian
+congregations a large number of individuals whose attitude toward
+death and the future is purely heathen. They believe in survival,
+but they have no vital interest in it. I fancy that there are a
+good many people who would experience relief to be persuaded that
+death is the end of conscious existence, that they do not have to
+look forward to a continuous life under other conditions. And this
+not at all, as no doubt it would in some cases be, because it was
+the lifting of the weighty burden of responsibility for the sort of
+life one leads, because it was relief from the thought of a
+judgment to be one day faced, but because the world to come, as
+they have grasped its meaning, is a world in which they have no
+sort of interest. Our Lord in His Presentation of the future does
+actually point us to the natural human interest by which our
+affection will follow that which we do in fact value. "Where your
+treasure is, there will your heart be also." But the class of whom
+I am thinking have no treasures. Notwithstanding some sort of
+conformity to the Christian Religion, conceived most likely under
+the aspect of a compulsory moral code, there is nothing in their
+experience that one can call a love of our Lord, no actually felt
+personal affection for Him that makes them long to see Him. There
+were those with whom they had intimately lived and whom they had
+loved and who have passed through the experience of death, but in
+the years that have passed they have become used to living without
+them and there is no passionate longing to be with them again.
+There are no interests in their lives which when they think of them
+they feel that they can carry with them to the world beyond.
+Whatever they have succeeded in accumulating in life is hardly to
+be regarded as heavenly treasure!</p>
+<p>There then is the vital centre of the Christian doctrine of the
+world to come,--that it is a life continuous with this life, not in
+bare existence, but in the persistence of relations and interests
+upon which we have entered here. At the center of that world as it
+is revealed to us, is Jesus Christ, God in our nature, and about
+Him ever the saints of His Kingdom, who are still human with human
+interests, and who look on to the time when the fulness of humanity
+will be restored to them by the resurrection of the body. The
+interests that are vital here are also the interests that are vital
+there, the interests of the Kingdom of God. As the Christian thinks
+of the life of the world to come he thinks of it as the sphere in
+which his ambitions can be and will be realised, where the ends of
+which he has so long and so earnestly striven will be attained. His
+life has been a life given to the service of our Lord and to his
+Kingdom, and it had, no doubt, often seemed to small purpose; it
+has often seemed that the Kingdom was not prospering and the work
+of God coming to naught. And then he looks on to the future and
+sees that the work that he knows is an insignificant fragment of
+the whole work; and he thinks with longing of the time when he
+shall see revealed all that has been accomplished. He feels like a
+colonist who in some outlying province of an empire is striving to
+promote the interests of his Homeland. His work is to build up
+peace and order and to civilise barbarous tribes. And there are
+days when the work seems very long and very hopeless; and then he
+comforts himself with the thought that this is but a corner of the
+empire and that one day he will be relieved and called home. There
+at the centre he will be able to see the whole fact, will be able
+to understand what this colony means, and will rejoice in the
+slight contribution to its upbuilding that it has been his mission
+to make. The heart of the Christian is really in the Homeland and
+he feels acutely that here he is on the Pilgrim Way. But he feels
+too that his present vocation is here and that he is here
+contributing the part that God has appointed him for the upbuilding
+of the Kingdom, and that the more he loves our Lord and the more he
+longs for Him the more faithfully and exactly will he strive to
+accomplish his appointed work.</p>
+<p>They are right, those who are continually reproaching Christians
+with having a centre of interest outside this world; but we do not
+mind the reproach because we are quite sure that only those will
+have an intelligent interest in this world who feel that it does
+not stand by itself as a final and complete fact, but is a single
+stage of the many stages of God's working. We no more think it a
+disgrace to be thinking of a future world and to have our centre of
+interest there than we think it a disgrace for the college lad to
+be looking forward to the career that lies beyond the college
+boundaries and for which his college is supposed to be preparing
+him. We do not consider that boy ideal whose whole time and energy
+is given to the present interests of a college, its athletics, its
+societies, and in the end is found to have paid so little attention
+to the intellectual work that he is sent there to perform that he
+fails to pass his examinations. Christians are interested in this
+world because it is a province of the Kingdom of God and that they
+are set here to work out certain problems, and that they are quite
+sure that the successful solution of these problems is the best and
+highest contribution that they can make to the development of life
+in this world. They do not believe that as a social contribution to
+the betterment of human life a saint is less valuable than an
+agnostic professor of sociology or an atheistic socialistic leader;
+nor does the Christian believe that strict attention to the affairs
+of the Kingdom of God renders him less valuable as a citizen than
+strict attention to a brewery or a bank. A whole-hearted Christian
+life which has in view all the relations of the Kingdom of God in
+this or in any other world, which loves God and loves its neighbour
+in God, is quite the best contribution that a human being can make
+to the cause of social progress. If it were possible to put in
+evidence anywhere a wholly Christian community I am quite convinced
+that we should see that our social problems were there solved. I
+think then we shall be right to insist that what is needed is not
+less otherworldliness but more: that more otherworldliness would
+work a social revolution of a beneficent character. The result
+might be that we should spend less of our national income on
+preparations for war and more in making the conditions of life
+tolerable for the poor; that we should begin to pay something of
+the same sort of care for the training of children that we now
+bestow on the nurture of pigs and calves. We might possibly look on
+those whom we curiously call the "inferior races" as less objects
+of commercial exploitation and more as objects of moral and
+spiritual interest.</p>
+<p>We shall no doubt do this when we have more fully grasped what
+the resurrection of Christ has done and made possible. It is no
+account of that resurrection to think of it as a demonstration of
+immortality. It only touches the fringes of its importance when we
+think of it as setting the seal of divine approval upon the
+teaching of Jesus. We get to the heart of the matter when we think
+of the risen humanity of our Lord as having become for us a source
+of energy. The truth of our Lord's life is not that He gave us an
+example of how we ought to live, but that He provided the power
+that enables us to live as He lived. Also He gave us the point of
+view from which to estimate life. The writer of the Epistles to the
+Hebrews uses a striking phrase when he speaks of "the power of an
+endless life." Is not that an illuminating phrase when we think of
+our relation to our Lord? His revelation of the meaning of human
+life has brought to us the vision of what that life may become and
+the power to attain that end. The fact of our endlessness at once
+puts a certain order into life. Things, interests, occupations fall
+into their right places. There are so many things which seem not
+worth while because of the revelation of the importance of our
+work. Other things there are which we should not have dared to
+undertake if we had but this life in which to accomplish them. But
+he who understands that he is building for eternity can build with
+all the care and all the deliberation that is needed for so vast a
+work. There is no haste if we select those things which have
+eternal value. We can undertake the development of the Christian
+qualities of character with entire hopefulness. The very conception
+of the beauty and perfectness of the fruits of the Spirit might
+discourage us if our time were limited. But if we feel that the
+work we have done on them, however elementary and fragmentary, as
+long as it is honest and heartfelt, will not be lost when death
+comes, then we can go securely on. We can go on in any spiritual
+work we have undertaken without that sense of feverish haste lest
+death overtake us and put an end to our labour which so affects men
+in purely secular things. To us death is not an interruption. Death
+does not destroy our human personality, nor does it destroy our
+interest in anything that like us is permanent. We feel perfectly
+secure when we have identified ourselves with the business of the
+Kingdom of God. Then we almost feel the throb of our immortality;
+the power of an endless life is now ours. We have not to wait for
+death and resurrection to endue us with that power because it is
+the gift of God to us here, that gift of enternal life which our
+Lord came to bestow upon us. Only the gift which we realise
+imperfectly or not at all at its bestowal we come to understand in
+something of its real power; and henceforth we live in the
+possession and fruition of it, growing up "into Him in all things,
+which is the Head, even Christ."</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Hail, thou brightest Star of Ocean;<br>
+Hail, thou Mother of our God;<br>
+Hail, thou Ever-sinless Virgin,<br>
+Gateway of the blest abode.<br>
+Ave; 'tis an angel's greeting--<br>
+Thou didst hear his music sound,<br>
+Changing thus the name of Eva--<br>
+Shed the gifts of peace around.<br>
+Burst the sinner's bonds in sunder;<br>
+Pour the day on darkling eyes;<br>
+Chase our ills; invoke upon us<br>
+All the blessings of the skies.<br>
+Show thyself a watchful Mother;<br>
+And may He our pleadings hear,<br>
+Who for us a helpless Infant<br>
+Owned thee for His mother dear.<br>
+Maid, above all maids excelling,<br>
+Maid, above all maidens mild,<br>
+Freed from sin, oh, make our bosoms<br>
+Sweetly meek and undefiled.<br>
+Keep our lives all pure and stainless,<br>
+Guide us on our heavenly way,<br>
+'Till we see the face of Jesus,<br>
+And exult in endless day.<br>
+Glory to the Eternal Father;<br>
+Glory to the Eternal Son;<br>
+Glory to the Eternal Spirit:<br>
+Blest for ever, Three in One.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE FORTY DAYS</h3>
+<center>To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by
+many infallible proofs,<br>
+being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things
+pertaining to the kingdom of God.<br>
+<br>
+Acts I, 3.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Open unto us the door of thy loving kindness, O blessed
+Mother of God; we have set our hope on thee, may we not be
+disappointed, but through thee may we be delivered from adversity,
+for thou art the saving help of all Christian people.<br>
+<br>
+O Mother of God, thou who art a deep well of infinite mercy, bestow
+upon us thy compassion; look upon thy people who have sinned, and
+continue to make manifest thy power. For thee do we trust, and to
+thee do we cry, Hail! even as of old did Gabriel, the chief of the
+angelic hosts.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">RUSSIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hese Forty Days that intervened between our Lord's resurrection
+and ascension must have been utterly bewildering in the experience
+of the Apostles. Our Lord was once more with them; He had come back
+from the grave; that would have been the central experience. But in
+His intercourse with them He was so changed, the same and yet with
+a vast difference. We think of the perplexed group of the disciples
+gathered in the familiar place, going over the recent facts and
+trying to adjust themselves to them. Just what is the difference
+that death and resurrection have made, we hear them discussing. Is
+it that He appears and disappears so strangely, not coming any
+longer to be with them in the old way, with the old familiar
+intercourse? There is obviously no failure in Himself, no decline
+in love; but there is a decline in intimacy. They themselves feel a
+strange awe in His presence such as they had not been accustomed to
+feel in the past. They feel too that this restrained intercourse is
+but temporary, that at any moment it may end. The instructions He
+is giving them are so obviously final instructions, fitting them
+for a future in which He will not be with them.</p>
+<p>Amid all this perplexity we try to see Our Lady and to get at
+her mind. She was no doubt in the small group eagerly waiting our
+Lord's coming, dreading each time He left them that He would return
+no more. One thinks of her as less bewildered than the others
+because her interest was more concentrated. She had no problems to
+work out, no perplexities to absorb her; she had simply to love.
+Life to her was just love--love of the Son Whom she had brought
+forth and Whom she had followed so far. She lived in His
+appearings; and between them she lived in remembrance of them. One
+does not think of her as dwelling very much on what He says, but as
+dwelling upon Him. The thought of Him absorbs her. She has passed
+into that relation to our Lord that in the years to come many souls
+will strive to acquire--the state of absorbed contemplation, the
+state in which all things else for the time recede and one is alone
+with God. God so fills the soul that there is room there for
+nothing else.</p>
+<p>For the Apostles these were days of immense importance as days
+in which they were compelled to reconstruct their whole view of the
+meeting of our Lord's mission and of their relation to it. They
+came to these days with their settled notion about the renewed
+Kingdom of Israel and of our Lord's reign on earth which His
+teaching hitherto had not been able to expel; but now they are
+compelled to see that the Kingdom of God of which they are to be
+the missionaries is a Kingdom in another sense than they had so far
+conceived it. It differs vastly from their dream of an Israelite
+empire. It is no doubt true that this mental revolution is of slow
+operation, and that even when certain truths are grasped it will
+still take time to grasp them in all their implications. For long
+their Judaism will impede their full understanding of the meaning
+of the Kingdom of God. It will be years before they can see that it
+is a non-Jewish fact and that other nations will stand on an
+equality with them. But they will by the end of the Forty Days have
+grasped the fact that they are not engaged in a secular revolution
+and are not entering on a career of worldly power. They will be
+ready for their active ministry after Pentecost, a ministry of
+spiritual initiation into the Kingdom of God. When in response to
+their preaching men asked the question: "Men and brethren, what
+shall we do?" They were ready with their answer: "Repent and be
+baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the
+remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
+Ghost."</p>
+<p>So the Forty Days were filled with new meanings emerging from
+the old teaching, of suddenly grasped significance in some saying
+of our Lord that they had assumed that they understood but in
+reality had attributed little meaning to. It is one of the striking
+things about our relation to spiritual truth that we can go on for
+long thinking that we are attaching a meaning to something which in
+fact, it turns out, has meant almost nothing to us. Some day a
+phrase which we have often read or repeated suddenly is lighted up
+with a significance we had never dreamed of. We have long been
+looking some truth in the face, but in fact it has never laid hold
+of us; we have made no inferences from it, deduced no necessity of
+action, till on a day the significance of it emerges and we are
+overwhelmed by the revelation of our blunder, of our stupidity. The
+fact is that we assume that our conduct is quite right, and we
+interpret truth in the light of our conduct rather than interpret
+conduct in the light of truth. It is the explanation, I suppose, of
+the fact that so many people read their Bible regularly without, so
+far as one can see, the reading having any effect upon their
+conduct. The conduct is a settled affair and they are finding it
+reflected in the pages of the Gospel. Their minds are already
+definitely made up to the effect that they know what the Gospel
+means, and that is the meaning that they put into the Bible. One
+does not know otherwise how to account for the fact that it is
+precisely those who think themselves "Bible Christians" who are
+farthest from accepting the explicit teaching of the Bible. If
+there is anything plain in the New Testament it is that the whole
+teaching of our Lord is sacramental. If anything is taught there
+one would think it was the nature and obligation of baptism, the
+Presence of our Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar, the gift of
+Confirmation, the meaning of absolution. Yet it is to "Bible
+Christians" that sacraments appear to have no value, are things
+which can be dispensed with as mere ornaments of the Christian
+Religion.</p>
+<p>I wonder if we have wholly got beyond that point of view? I
+wonder if we have got a religious practice which is settled or one
+that is continually expanding? I wonder if we force our meaning on
+the Bible or if we are trying to find therein new stimulus to
+action? That in truth is the reason for reading the Holy Scriptures
+at all--to find therein stimulus, stimulus for life; that we may
+see how little or how much our conduct conforms to the ideal set
+out there. We do not read to learn a religion, but to learn to
+practice the religion that we already have.</p>
+<p>Now to take just one point in illustration. The commission of
+our Lord to His Church in the person of the Apostles was a
+commission to forgive sins. "He breathed on them, and saith unto
+them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they
+are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are
+retained." As to how in detail, this commission is to be exercised
+is a matter for the Church to order as the circumstances of its
+life require. As I read my Bible certain facts emerge: I am a
+sinner; Christ died for my sins; He left power in His Church for
+the forgiveness of sin--of my sin. And then the question arises:
+What is the bearing of all that on my personal practice? Have I
+settled a practice for myself to which I am subjecting the teaching
+of the Bible and the Church? Or am I alert to see a contrast or a
+contradiction between my practice and the teaching of the Bible and
+the Church, if such exist? Now there are many people in the Church
+who make no use of the sacrament of penance, and there are many
+others who make use of it very sparingly. It is clear that either
+they must be right, or the Bible and the Church must be right. It
+is clear that such persons, to press it no farther, are imposing
+the interpretation of their own conduct on the teaching of the
+Christian Religion and asserting by their constant practice that
+that interpretation is quite inadequate, notwithstanding the
+contrary practice of the entire Catholic world. That, to put it
+mildly, is a very peculiar intellectual and spiritual attitude.</p>
+<p>We can most of us, I have no doubt, find by searching somewhere
+in our religious practice parallel attitudes toward truth. We have
+settled many questions in a sense that is agreeable to us. We
+cannot tell just how we got them settled, but settled they are.
+Take a very familiar matter which greatly concerns us in this
+parish dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the question of the
+honour and reverence due to our Blessed Mother. We had got settled
+in our practice that certain things were right and certain wrong. I
+doubt if a very intelligent account of this--why they were right or
+wrong--could, in many cases have been given. But the settled
+opinion and practice was there.</p>
+<p>And then came the demand for a review; that we look our practice
+squarely in the face and ask, "What is the ground of this? Does it
+correspond with the teaching of Scripture and of the Catholic
+Church? And if it does not, what am I going to do about it? Have I
+only a collection of prejudices there where I supposed that I had a
+collection of settled truths? Do I see that it is quite possible
+that I may be wholly wrong, and that I am hindered by pride from
+reversing my attitude?" For there is a certain pride which operates
+in these matters of belief and practice as well as elsewhere. We
+are quite apt to pride ourselves on our consistency and think it an
+unworthy thing to change our minds. That is rather a foolish
+attitude; changing one's mind is commonly not a mark of fickleness
+but of intellectual advance. It means oftentimes the abandonment of
+prejudice or the giving up of an opinion which we have discovered
+to have no foundation. This is rather a large universe in which we
+live, and it is improbable that any man's thought of it at any time
+should be adequate. Intellectual progress means the assimilation of
+new truths. The Christian Religion is a large and complex
+phenomenon, and any individual's thought of it at any time must be,
+in the nature of things, an inadequate thought. Progress in
+religion means the constant assimilation of new truths--new, that
+is, to us. Surely it is a very peculiar attitude to be proud of
+never learning anything, making it a virtue to have precisely the
+same opinions this year as last! I should be very much ashamed of
+myself if a year were to pass in which I had learned nothing, had
+changed my mind about nothing. In religion, one knows that the
+articles of the Faith are expressed in the dogmatic definitions of
+the Church; but one will never know, seek as one will, all that
+these mean in detail, all that they demand in practice. And our
+only tolerable attitude is that of learners constantly seeking to
+fill up the <i>lacunae</i> in our beliefs and practice.</p>
+<p>In fact, any living Christian experience is always in process of
+adjustment. Those who conceive a dogmatic religion as an immovable
+religion, as a collection of cut and dried formulae which each
+generation is expected to learn and repeat and to which it has no
+other relation, are quite right in condemning that conception, only
+that is not, in fact, what the Christian Religion is. The content
+of the Christian dogmas is so full and so complex that there is
+never any danger of intellectual sterility in those who are called
+to deal with them; and their application to life is so rich and so
+manifold that there is not the least danger that those who set out
+to apply them to the problems of daily existence will become mere
+formalists. The attempt to live a truly Christian life is a
+never-ending, inexhaustible adventure. Only those can miss this
+fact who have utterly misconceived Christianity as a barren set of
+prohibitions, warning its devotees off the field of great sections
+of human experience. There are those who appear to imagine that the
+primary business of Christianity is to deal with sin, and that in
+order to keep itself occupied it has to invent a large number of
+unreal sins. Unfortunately sin, as the deliberate rejection of the
+known will of God, exists; and, fortunately, the grace of our Lord
+Jesus Christ Who came into the world to save sinners also exists.
+We can be unendingly thankful for that. But it is also true that
+the action of Christianity is not exhausted in the negative work of
+dealing with sin. Christianity is primarily a positive action for
+the bringing about and development of the relation of the soul with
+God in the state of union. We may say that Christianity has to turn
+aside from this its proper business of developing the spiritual
+life to the preliminary work of dealing with sin which kills
+spirituality and hinders its development. But it is not necessary
+to make the blunder of assuming that this dealing with sin is the
+essential work of Christianity because it has so continually to be
+at it, any more than it is necessary to assume that the essential
+work of a farmer is the digging up of weeds. Surely it would be no
+adequate treatise on agriculture which would confine itself to
+description of the nature of weeds and of methods of dealing with
+them. There is a branch of theology which deals with sin, the
+methods of its treatment and its cure; but there are also other
+branches of theology: and the direction of the Holy Scripture is
+not to get rid of sin and stop; but having done that, to go on to
+perfection.</p>
+<p>Christian experience is a constant process of adjustment, a
+constantly growing experience. By the study of the Christian
+revelation it is always finding new meanings in old truths, new
+modes of application of familiar practices. This simply means that
+the Christian is alive and not a fossil. It means that his relation
+to our Lord is such that it opens to him inexhaustible depths of
+experience. It is easy to see this in the concrete by taking up the
+life of almost any saint. It is easy to trace the growth of S. John
+from the young fisherman, fiery, impatient, who wished to call down
+fire from heaven upon his adversaries as Elijah did, and gained the
+rebuke: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of," to the
+mature and supremely calm and simple experience which is reflected
+in the Gospel and Epistles. It is easy to trace the development of
+the impulsive, zealous Pharisee that Paul of Tarsus was, through
+all the stages of spiritual growth that are reflected in his
+Letters, till he is Paul the aged waiting to depart and be with
+Christ "which is far better." You can study it in the confessions
+of S. Augustine in its first stage and follow it through its later
+stages in his letters and other writings, and in many another saint
+beside. If you have any spiritual experience at all you can trace
+it in your own case: you have grown, not through dealing with sin,
+but through the pursuit of ideal perfection, that perfection which
+is set before you by the Christian Religion. You may not feel that
+you have gone very far: that is not the point at present; you know
+that you have found a method by which you may go on indefinitely;
+that there is no need that you should stop anywhere short of the
+Beatific Vision. You do know that your religion is not the
+deadening repetition of dogmas which the unbeliever conceives it to
+be, but is the never ceasing attempt to master the inexhaustible
+truth that is contained in your relation to our Lord. You do know
+that however far you have gone you feel that you are still but on
+the threshold and that the path before your feet runs out into
+infinity. Let us go back again to our examination of the experience
+of the Apostles. When we examine their training we find there, I
+think, two quite distinct elements both of which must have had a
+formative influence upon their ministry. In the first place there
+was the element of dogmatic teaching. There is a class of persons
+who are accustomed to tell us that there is no dogma in the New
+Testament, by which they appear to mean that the particular
+dogmatic affirmations of the Creed are not formulated in the pages
+of the New Testament, but are of later production. That, no doubt,
+is true; but nevertheless it would be difficult to find a more
+dogmatic book than the New Testament, or a more dogmatic teacher
+than was our Lord. And our Lord taught the Apostles in a most
+definite way the expected acceptance of His teaching because He
+taught it. "He taught as one having authority, and not as the
+scribes," it was noted. The point about the teaching of the scribes
+was that it was traditional, wholly an interpretation of the
+meaning of the Old Testament. It made no claim to originality but
+rather based its claim on the fact it was not original. Our Lord,
+it was noticed, did not base His claim on tradition. In fact He
+often noticed the Jewish tradition for the purpose of marking the
+contrast between it and His own teaching. "Ye have heard that it
+hath been said of old time ... but I say unto you." He commonly
+refused to give an explanation of what He had said, but demanded
+acceptance on His authority. He brought discipleship to the test of
+hard sayings, and permitted the departure of those who could not
+accept them. He cut across popular prejudices and took small
+account of the "modern mind" as expressed by the Sadducees. He
+expected the same unhesitating submission from the Apostles whom He
+was training, though it was also a part of their training to be the
+future heralds of the Kingdom that they should have the "mysteries
+of the Kingdom" explained to them. But from the time when Jesus
+began to preach, saying "the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," He
+preached and taught with the same unhesitating note of certainty,
+and with the same demand for intellectual submission on the part of
+those who heard Him.</p>
+<p>And that continues to the end. During the Forty Days, the few
+sayings that have come to us have the same ring of authority, of
+dogmatic certainty. The result was that when the Apostles went out
+to teach they were equipped with a body of truth which they
+presented to the world in the same unhesitating way. Indeed, that
+is the only way in which the central truths of the Christian Faith
+can be presented. They are not the conclusions of argument, which
+may be taken up and argued over again to the end of the
+world,--they are the dicta of revelation. We either know them to be
+true because they have been revealed, or we do not know them to be
+true at all. They are mysteries, that is, truths beyond the
+possibility of human finding which have been made known to man by
+God Himself. They are the appropriate data of religion and what
+distinguishes it from philosophy. The presence of mystery in
+philosophy is annoying, and the aim is to get rid of it, but a
+religion without mystery is absurd. Religion deals with the
+fundamental relations between God and man and the light it brings
+us must be a supernatural light. Such a religion in its
+presentation naturally cut across the preconceptions of the
+traditionalists in Jerusalem to whom nothing new could be true, as
+across the preconceptions of the sophists of Athens, to whom
+nothing that was not new was interesting.</p>
+<p>This dogmatic equipment was but one side, however, of the
+Apostolic training for their future work, a training to which the
+finishing touches, so to say, were put during the Forty Days. The
+other side of the training was the impression upon them of the
+Personality of our Lord, the effect of their close association with
+Him. This has an importance that dwarfs all other influences of the
+time; and we feel all through the Gospel that it was what our Lord
+himself counted upon in forming them for their mission. In the
+beginning "He chose twelve to be with Him," and their day by day
+association with Him was constantly changing their point of view
+and reforming their character. It was not the teaching, the
+explanation of parables, or the sight of the miracles; it was the
+silent effect of a personality that was in contact with them
+constantly and was constantly presenting to them an ideal of life,
+an ideal of absolute submission to the will of the Father and of
+utter consecration to the, mission that had been committed to
+Him.</p>
+<p>We all know this silent pressure of life upon life. We have most
+of us, I suppose, experienced it either from our parents or from
+friends in later life; and we can through that experience of ours
+attempt the explanation of our Lord's influence on the Apostles.
+There were not only the hours of formal teaching--they, in a way,
+were perhaps the less important from our present point of view. We
+have more in mind the informal talks that would go on as they went
+from village to village in Galilee, or as they gathered about the
+door of some cottage in the evening or sat in the shelter of some
+grove during the noon-day heat. It was just talk arising naturally
+out of the incidents of the day, but it was always talk guided by
+Jesus--talk in which Jesus was constantly revealing Himself to
+them, impressing upon them His point of view, making plain his own
+judgment upon life. And when we turn to His formal teaching we
+realise how revolutionary was His point of view in regard to life,
+how He swept aside the customary conventions by which they were
+accustomed to guide life, and substituted the radical principles
+that they have left on record in the Sermon on the Mount for the
+perplexity of a world yet far from understanding them. Evidently
+the Apostles would find their accustomed values tossed aside and a
+wholly new set of values presented to them.</p>
+<p>I suppose we find it difficult to appreciate how utterly
+revolutionary the Gospel teaching continually is, not because we
+have become accustomed to follow it, but because we have got used
+to hearing it and evacuating it of most of its meaning by clever
+glossing. It was thus that the teaching classes in Jerusalem
+avoided the pressure of Old Testament ideals by a facile system of
+interpretation which made "void the Word of God by their
+traditions." Human nature has not altered; and we succeed by the
+same method in making the Gospel of none effect. We are so well
+accustomed to do this that we lose the point and pungency of much
+of our Lord's teaching. But we know that the apostles did not. We
+know that they presented that teaching in all its sharpness to
+would-be disciples. It could not be otherwise with those who for
+three years had been in day by day intimacy with our Lord and had
+assimilated His point of view and his judgment on life.</p>
+<p>One effect of their contact with our Lord in the days following
+the resurrection would be that whatever changes the passage to a
+new level of existence had wrought in Him, it had not changed
+either the tone of His teaching or the beauty and attractiveness of
+His Personality. The concluding charges that were given them, the
+great commission of proclaiming the Kingdom with which they were
+now definitely endued, the powers which were committed to them in
+the great words: "All power is given unto me in heaven and in
+earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the
+name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching
+them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and,
+lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," would but
+confirm and strengthen all that had gone before in their experience
+of Him. The Jesus of the resurrection was no pale ghost returned
+from the grave, intermittently to appear to them to assure them of
+the fact of immortality. He was "the same Jesus" Whom they had
+known for three years, and whose return from the dead triumphant
+over the powers that had opposed Him, set quite plainly and
+definitely the seal of indisputable authority upon all the teaching
+and the example that had gone before. The period of their probation
+was over: The commission was theirs: It remained that they should
+abide in Jerusalem until they should be "endued with power from on
+high."</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Proclaimed Queen and Mother of a God,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;The Light of earth, the Sovereign of saints,<br>
+With pilgrim foot up tiring hills she trod,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;And heavenly stile with handmaids' toil acquaints;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Her youth to age, her health to sick she
+lends;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Her heart to God, to neighbor hand she
+bends.<br>
+<br>
+A Prince she is, and mightier Prince doth bear,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet pomp of princely train she would not have;<br>
+But doubtless, heavenly choirs attendant were,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Her Child from harm, herself from fall to save:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Word to the voice, song to the tune she
+brings,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The voice her word, the tune her ditty
+sings.<br>
+<br>
+Eternal lights enclos&egrave;d in her breast<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Shot out such piercing beams of burning love,<br>
+That when her voice her cousin's ears possessed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;The force thereof did force her babe to move:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With secret signs the children greet each
+other;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But, open praise each leaveth to his mother.<br>
+<br>
+Robert Southwell, S.J.<br>
+1560-1595.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+<h3>THE ASCENSION</h3>
+<center>And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he<br>
+was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke XXIV, 51.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>O Mother of God, since we have obtained confidence in
+thee, we shall not be put to shame, but we shall be saved.<br>
+<br>
+And since we have obtained thy help and thy meditation, O, thou
+holy, pure, and perfect one!<br>
+<br>
+We fear not but that we shall put our enemies to flight and scatter
+them.<br>
+<br>
+We have taken unto us the shelter of thy mighty help in all things
+like a shield.<br>
+<br>
+And we pray, and beseech thee that we may call upon thee, O Mother
+of God, so that thou deliver us through thy prayers.<br>
+<br>
+And that thou mayest raise us up again from the sleep of darkness,
+to offer praise through the might of God Who took flesh in
+thee.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">COPTIC.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>here would be no doubt of the finality of our Lord's physical
+withdrawal this time. As the group of disciples stood on the
+hilltop in Galilee and watched the clouds close about Him, they
+would feel that this was the end of the kind of intercourse to
+which they had been accustomed. The past Forty Days would have done
+much to prepare them for the separation. Their conception of our
+Lord's work as issuing in the establishment of an earthly Kingdom
+had been swept away; the changed terms of their intercourse with
+Him in the resurrection state had emphasised the change that had
+taken place; His teaching during these weeks which was centered on
+the work of the future in which they were to carry on the mission
+He had initiated; all these elements prepared them for the definite
+withdrawal of the ascension. Nevertheless we can understand the
+wrench that must have been involved in His actual withdrawal. We
+face the dying of some one we love. We know that it is a matter of
+weeks; the weeks shorten to days, and we are "prepared" for the
+death; but what we mean is that the death will not take us by
+surprise. However prepared we may be, the pain of parting will be a
+quite definite pain; there is no way of avoiding that.</p>
+<p>We know that there was no way for the disciples to avoid the
+pain of the going of Jesus. It was not the same sort of pain that
+they felt now, as they gazed up from the hill top to the cloud
+drifting into the distance, as the pain that had been theirs as
+they hurried trembling and affrighted through the streets of
+Jerusalem on the afternoon of the Crucifixion. This pain had no
+sting of remorse for a duty undone, or of fear for a danger to be
+met. It was the calm pain of love in the realisation that the
+parting is final.</p>
+<p>We know that among the group that watched the receding cloud the
+eyes that would linger longest and would find it hardest to turn
+away would be those of the Blessed Mother. Her mission about our
+Lord during all these past years had been a very characteristically
+womanly mission, a mission of silence and help and sympathy. She
+was with the women who ministered to Him, never obtrusive, never
+self-assertive; but always ready when need was. It was the silent
+service of a great love. That is the perfection of service. There
+are types of service which claim reward or recognition. We are not
+unfamiliar in the work of the Kingdom with people who have to be
+cajoled and petted and made much of because of what they do.
+Verily, they have their reward. But the type we are considering, of
+which the Blessed Mother is the highest expression, is without
+thought of self, being wholly lost in the wonder of being permitted
+to serve God at all. To be permitted to give one's time and
+personal ministry to our Lord in His Kingdom and in His members is
+so splendid a grace of God that all thought of self is lost in the
+joy of it. We know that S. Mary could have had no other thought
+than the offering of her love in whatever way it was permitted to
+express itself; and we know that the quality of that love was such
+that the moment of the ascension would have left her desolate,
+watching the cloud that veiled Him from her eyes.</p>
+<p>All of which does not mean that we are wrong when we speak of
+the ascension as one of the "Glorious Mysteries" of S. Mary. There
+we are viewing it in its wide bearing as S. Mary would come to view
+it in a short while. When the meaning of the ascension became
+plain, when under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, S. Mary was able
+to view her Son as "the One Mediator between God and man, the man
+Christ Jesus," when she was able to think of the human nature that
+God had taken from her as permanently enthroned in heaven,--then
+would all this be to her creative of intense joy. We, seeing so
+clearly what the ascension essentially meant, can think of it as a
+mystery of intense joy, but as our Lord passed away from sight the
+passing would for the moment be one last stab of the sword through
+this so-often wounded heart.</p>
+<p>There would be no lingering upon the hill top. The angel
+messengers press the lesson that the life before them is a life of
+eager contest, of energetic action. Jesus had indeed gone in the
+clouds of heaven, but they were reminded that there would be a
+reappearance, a coming-again in the clouds of heaven, and in the
+meantime there was much to do, work that would require their
+self-expenditure even unto death. Back must they go to Jerusalem
+and there await the opening of the next act of the drama of the
+Kingdom of God.</p>
+<p>As we turn to the Epistles of the New Testament and to the
+slowly shaping theology of the early Church, we find set out for us
+the nature of our Lord's heavenly activity; we see the full meaning
+of His Incarnation. The human nature which the Son of God assumed
+from a pure Virgin, He assumed permanently. He took it from the
+tomb on the resurrection morning, he bore it with Him from the
+Galilean hill to the very presence of uncreated God. When the Gates
+lift and admit the Conqueror to heaven, what enters heaven is our
+nature, what is enthroned at the Right Hand of God is man, forever
+united to God. And when we ask, "What is the purpose of this?" The
+answer is that it is the continual purpose of the incarnation, the
+purpose of mediatorship between the created and the uncreated,
+between God and man. The constant purpose of the incarnation is
+mediation--of the need of mediation there is no end. Our Lord's
+work was not finished, though there are those who appear to believe
+that it was finished, when, as a Galilean Preacher He had taught
+men of the Father: nor was it finished when He bought redemption
+for us on the Cross, and triumphing over death in the resurrection,
+returned to heaven at the ascension. There is a very real sense in
+which we can say that all those acts were the preliminaries of His
+work, were what made the work possible. We then mean by His work
+the age-long work of building the Kingdom of Heaven, and through it
+bringing souls to the Father. To insist perhaps over-much: We are
+not saved by the memory of what our Lord did, we are saved by what
+He now does. We are saved by the present application to us of the
+work that was wrought in the years of His earthly life.</p>
+<p>We need to grasp this living and present character of our Lord's
+work if we will understand the meaning of His mediation. There is a
+gulf between the divine, the purely spiritual, and the human, which
+needs some bridge to enable the human to cross it. That bridge was
+thrown across in the incarnation when God and man became united in
+the Person of the second Person of the ever blessed Trinity. When
+God the Son became incarnate, God and man were forever united and
+the door of heaven was about to swing open. Henceforth from the
+demonstrated triumph of our Lord in the Ascension the Kingdom of
+Heaven is open to all believers, and there is an ever-ready way of
+approach to God the Blessed Trinity by the Incarnate Person of the
+Son Who is the One Mediator between God and man. Whoever approaches
+God, whoever would reach to the Divine, must approach by that path,
+the path of Jesus Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.</p>
+<p>He is the Way to God: and that Way is one that we follow by
+participation in His nature, by being taken up into Him. We do not
+reach God by thinking about our Lord, or by believing about our
+Lord: thinking and believing are the preliminaries of action. There
+are wonderful riches in the King's Treasury, but you do not get
+them because you think of them or because you believe that they are
+there. You get them when you go after them. And you get the ends of
+the Christian Religion not because you believe them to exist, but
+because you go after them in the way in which Christ directed.
+Inasmuch as He is the Way to the Father, we reach the Father by
+being made one with the Son, by being made a member of Him, by
+being taken into Him in the life of union. "No man cometh unto the
+Father but by me," He says. And the process of coming is by
+believing all that He said and acting upon His Word to the
+uttermost. Those who by partaking of the Sacraments are in Christ
+have passed by His mediation to the knowledge of the Father.</p>
+<p>For a road can be travelled in either direction. Christ is the
+road by which we come to the Father, to participation in the life
+of the Blessed Trinity; but also we can think of Him as the road by
+which the Father comes to us. We can think of ourselves as drawing
+near to God in His Beloved Son: I love to think the other way of
+the road, of God drawing near to me, of God pouring of His riches
+into human life and elevating that life to His very Self. I like to
+think of the Christian life as a life to which God continually
+communicates Himself, till we are filled "with all the fulness of
+God." Can we imagine any more wonderful expression of the life of
+holiness to which we are called than that? We "grow up into Him in
+all things." That is the true account of the Christian life, not
+some thin and dull routine of moral duty, but the spiritual
+adventure of the road that travels out into the infinite pursuit of
+spiritual accomplishment till it is lost in the very heart of
+God.</p>
+<p>This was the starting point of Blessed Mary. She was filled with
+all the fulness of God from the moment of her conception, and was
+never separated from the joy of the great possession. We are born
+in sin and have to travel the road to the very end. Yet we, too,
+begin in union, because we are born of our baptism into Christ soon
+after our natural birth, and our problem is to achieve in
+experience the content of our birthright. In other words: our feet
+are set in the Way from the beginning, and our part is to keep to
+the Way and not wander to the right hand or to the left; that this
+may be possible for us Christ lived and died and to-day is at the
+Right Hand of the Father where He ever liveth to make intercession
+for us. We need never walk without Christ. The weariness of the
+journey is sustained by His constant and ready help. The way is
+lighted by the Truth which is Himself, and the life that we live is
+His communicated life. "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in
+me." There are those who find the road godward, the road of the
+Christ-life, wearisome because they keep their eyes fixed on the
+difficulties of the way and treat each step as though it were a
+separate thing and not one step in a wonderful journey. The way to
+avoid the weariness of the day's travel is to keep one's eye fixed
+on the end, to raise the eyes to the heavens where Jesus sitteth
+enthroned at the Right Hand of the Father. The day's song is the
+Sursum Corda,--"Lift up your hearts unto the Lord!"</p>
+<p>The mediatorial office of our Lord is exercised chiefly through
+His Sacrifice. He ever liveth to make intercession for us; and this
+intercession is the presentation of the Sacrifice that He Himself
+offered once for all in Blood upon the Cross, and forever presents
+to the Father in heaven "one unending sacrifice." This heavenly
+oblation of our Lord which is the means wherethrough we approach
+pure Divinity, is also the Sacrifice of the Church here on earth.
+The heavenly Altar and the earthly Altar are but one in that there
+is but one Priest and one Victim here and there. The Eucharistic
+Sacrifice is the Church's presentation of her Head as her means of
+approach to God, as the ground of all her prayers. These prayers
+make their appeal through Jesus Who died and rose again for us and
+is on the Right Hand of Power. We know of no other way of approach,
+we plead no other merit as the hope of our acceptance. Let us be
+very clear about this centrality of our Lord's mediation because I
+shall presently have certain things to say which are often assumed
+to be in conflict with his Mediatorial Office, but which in reality
+do not so conflict, but exist at all because of the Office.</p>
+<p>We approach Divinity, then, through our Lord's humanity; and we
+at once see how that teaching, so common to-day, which denies the
+Resurrection of our Lord's Body, and believes simply in the
+survival of His human soul strikes at the very heart of the
+Catholic Religion. If Revelation be true, our approach to God is
+rendered possible because there is a Mediator between God and man,
+the MAN Christ Jesus. All our prayers have explicitly, or
+implicitly, this fact in view. All our Masses are a pleading of
+this fact.</p>
+<p>How great is our joy and confidence when we realise this! We
+come together, let us say, on Sunday morning at the High Mass. We
+are coming to offer the Blessed Sacrifice of our Lord's Body and
+Blood. But who, precisely, is to make the offering? When we ask
+what this congregation is, what is the answer? The congregation is
+the congregation of Christ's Flock: it is the Body of Christ
+gathered together for the worship of Almighty God. The act that is
+to be performed is the act of a Body, not primarily of individuals.
+Our participation in the act of worship in the full sense of
+participation is conditioned upon our being members of the Body. If
+we are not members of the Body we have no recognised status as
+worshippers. No doubt we each one have our individual aspirations
+and needs which we bring with us, but they are the needs and
+aspirations of a member of the Body of Christ, and our ability to
+unite them with the act that is to be performed grows out of our
+status as members of the Body; as such, we join our own intention
+to the sacrificial act and make our petitions through it. But we
+are here as offerers of the Sacrifice, and may not neglect our
+official significance, and attempt to turn the Mass into a private
+act of worship.</p>
+<p>We, then, the Body of Christ in this place, offer the Sacrifice
+of Christ. What is the status of the priest? He is a differentiated
+organ of the Body, not created by the Body, but created by God in
+the creation of the Body. He is not separate from the Body, an
+official imposed upon it from the outside, nor is he a creation of
+the Body set apart to act upon its behalf. He is one mode of the
+expression of the Body's life--the Body could not perfectly perform
+its functions without him any more than a physical body can
+perfectly function without a hand or an eye. But neither has the
+priest any existence apart from the Body of which he is a function.
+The Sacrifice that he offers is not his on behalf of the Body, but
+the Body's own Sacrifice which is made through his agency.</p>
+<p>But a complete body has a head; and of the Body which is the
+Church the Head is Christ. We, the members, have our life from Him,
+the Head; we are able at all to act spiritually because of our
+union with Him. He is our life; and the acts of the Body are
+ultimately the acts of the Head. The Sacrifice which the Body
+offers as the means of its approach to Divinity is One Sacrifice of
+the Head: and the priestly function of the Body has any vitality
+because it is Christ Who is its life, Who functions through the
+priest, Who is, in fact, the true Priest. He Himself is both
+Sacrifice and Priest; and that which is offered here is indentical
+with that which is offered there.</p>
+<p>Our life flows from our Head, is the life of Christ in us. So
+closely are we associated with Him that we are called His members,
+the instrument through which His life expresses itself, through
+which He acts. By virtue of the life of Christ of which all we are
+partakers, we are not only members of Christ, but members one of
+another. Our spiritual life is not our own affair, but we have
+duties one to another, and all the members of the Body are
+concerned in our exercise of our gifts, have, in fact, claims on
+the exercise of them.</p>
+<p>This mutual inherence of the members of the Body and these
+obligations to one another are in strict subordination to the Head;
+but they are very real duties and privileges which are ours to
+exercise. What we are concerned with at present is that from, this
+view of them that I have been presenting there results the
+possibility and obligation of intercession; the love and care of
+the members for one another is exercised in their prayers for one
+another. This privilege of intercession is one of the privileges
+most widely valued and most constantly exercised throughout the
+Church. Days of intercession, litanies, the offering of the Blessed
+Sacrifice with special intention, the constant requests for prayers
+for objects in which people are interested, all testify to the
+value we place on the privilege. Here is one action in regard to
+which there is no doubting voice in Christendom.</p>
+<p>But curiously, and for some reason to me wholly unintelligible,
+there are a great many who think of this right and duty of
+intercession between the members of the One Body as exclusively the
+right and duty of those who are living here on earth; or at least
+if it pertain to the "dead" it is in a way in which we can have no
+part. One would think--and so the Catholic Church has always
+thought--that those whom we call dead, but who are really "alive
+unto God" with a life more intense, a life more spiritually
+clear-visioned, than our own, would have a special power and
+earnestness in prayer, and that a share in their intercessions is a
+spiritual privilege much to be valued. They are members with us of
+the same Body; death has not cut them off from their membership,
+rather, if possible, it has intensified it, or at least their
+perception of what is involved in it. They remain under all the
+obligations of the life of the Body and consequently under the
+obligation to care for other members of the Body. The intercession
+of the saints for us is a fact that the Church has never doubted
+and cannot doubt except under penalty of denying at the same time
+the existence of the Body. That certain members of the Church have
+of late years doubted our right to invoke the saints, to call upon
+them for the aid of their prayers, is true; but there seems no
+ground for rejecting the tradition of invocation except the rather
+odd ground that we do not know the mode by which our requests reach
+them! As there are a good many other spiritual facts of which we do
+not know the mode, I do not think that we need be deterred from the
+practice of invocation on that ground: certainly the Church has
+never been so deterred.</p>
+<p>It is strange how little people attempt to think out their
+religion, and especially their obligation to religious practice. I
+have so often heard people say, when the practice of invocation of
+saints was urged: Why ask the saints? Why not go directly to God?
+And these same people are constantly asking the prayers of their
+fellow Christians here on earth! Suppose when some pious soul comes
+to me and asks me if I will not pray for a sick child, or a friend
+at sea, I were to reply: "Why come to me? Why not go directly to
+God?" I should be rightly thought unfeeling and unchristian. But
+that is precisely what the same person says when I suggest that the
+saints or the Blessed Mother of God be invoked for some cause that
+we have in hand! A person comes to me and asks my prayers, and I go
+to a saint and ask his prayers on precisely the same basis and for
+precisely the same reason, namely, that we are both members of the
+Body of Christ and of one another. We have the right to expect the
+interest and to count on the love of our fellow-members in Christ.
+We go to the saints with the same directness and the same
+simplicity with which we go to the living members of the Body,
+living, I mean in the Church on earth. If it be not possible to do
+that, then death has made a very disastrous break in the unity of
+the Body of Christ.</p>
+<p>And if we can count so without hesitation upon the love and
+sympathy and interest of the saints, surely we can count upon
+finding the same or greater love and sympathy in the greatest of
+all the saints, our blessed Mother, who is also the Mother of God.
+She in her spotless purity is the highest of creatures. She by her
+special privilege has boundless power of intercession; not power as
+I have explained before, because of any sort of favouritism, but
+power because her spiritual perfection gives her unique insight
+into the mind of God. Power in prayer really means that, through
+spiritual insight we are enabled to ask according to His will "And
+this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask
+anything according to his will, he heareth us." That is why
+righteousness is the ground of prevailing intercession, because
+righteousness means sympathetic understanding of the mind of
+God.</p>
+<p>And in none is there such sympathetic understanding because in
+none is there such nearness to God, as in Blessed Mary. To go to
+her in our prayers and to beg her to intercede for us is, of
+course, no more a trenching upon the unique mediatorship of our
+Lord than it is to ask my human friend to pray for me. We tend, do
+we not? to select from among the circle of our acquaintance those
+whom for some reason we feel to have what we call a special power
+in prayer when we seek for some one to pray for us in our need. Is
+it not wholly natural then that we should go to our Blessed Mother
+on whose sympathy we can unfailingly count and in whose spiritual
+understanding we can implicitly trust, when we want to interest
+those who are dear to our Lord in our special needs? We have every
+claim upon their sympathy because they are fellow-members of the
+same Body; and we know, too, that He Who has made us one in His
+Body wills that we should receive His graces through our mutual
+ministrations.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Mary, Maiden, mild and free,<br>
+Chamber of the Trinity,<br>
+A little while now list to me,<br>
+&nbsp;As greeting I thee give;<br>
+What though my heart unclean may be,<br>
+&nbsp;My offering yet receive.<br>
+<br>
+Thou art the Queen of Paradise,<br>
+Of heaven, of earth, of all that is;<br>
+Thou bore in thee the King of Bliss<br>
+&nbsp;Without or spot or stain;<br>
+Thou didst put right what was amiss,<br>
+&nbsp;What man had lost, re-gain.<br>
+<br>
+The gentle Dove of Noe thou art<br>
+The Branch of Olive-tree that brought,<br>
+In token that a peace was wrought,<br>
+&nbsp;And man to God was dear:<br>
+Sweet Ladye, be my Fort,<br>
+&nbsp;When the last fight draws near.<br>
+<br>
+Thou art the Sling, thy Son the Stone<br>
+That David at Goliath flung;<br>
+Eke Aaron's rod, whence blossom sprung<br>
+&nbsp;Though bare it was, and dry:<br>
+'Tis known to all, who've looked upon<br>
+&nbsp;Thy childbirth wondrous high.<br>
+<br>
+In thee has God become a Child,<br>
+The wretched foe in thee is foiled;<br>
+That Unicorn that was so wild<br>
+&nbsp;Is thrown by woman chaste;<br>
+Him hast thou tamed, and forced to yield,<br>
+&nbsp;With milk from Virgin breast.<br>
+<br>
+Like as the sun full clear doth pass,<br>
+Without a break, through shining glass,<br>
+Thy Maidenhood unblemished was<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;For bearing of the Lord:<br>
+Now, sweetest Comfort of our race,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To sinners be thou good.<br>
+<br>
+Take, Ladye dear, this little Song<br>
+That out of sinful heart has come;<br>
+Against the fiend now make me strong,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Guide well my wandering soul:<br>
+And though I once have done thee wrong,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Forgive, and make me whole.<br>
+<br>
+Wm. De Shoreham's translation<br>
+from the Latin, or French of<br>
+Robt. Grosseteste; C. 1325.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+<h3>THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT</h3>
+<br>
+<center>And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of
+fire, and it sat upon each of them.<br>
+And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak
+with other tongues,<br>
+as the Spirit gave them utterance.<br>
+<br>
+Acts II, 3.</center>
+<blockquote>Holy Mother of God, Virgin ever blessed, glorious and
+noble, chaste and inviolate, O Mary Immaculate, chosen and beloved
+of God, endowed win singular sanctity, worthy of all praise, thou
+who art the Advocate for the sins of the whole world; O listen,
+listen, listen to us, O holy Mary, Pray for us. Intercede for us.
+Disdain not to help us. For we are confident and know for certain
+that thou canst obtain all that thou wiliest from thy Son, our Lord
+Jesus Christ, God Almighty, the King of ages, Who liveth with the
+Father and the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever.<br>
+<br>
+MS. Book of Cerne, belonging<br>
+to Ethelwald, BP. of Sherbourne,<br>
+760.</blockquote>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/quote-w.png" width="23%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hen the Day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one
+accord in one place"--I suppose the "all" will be not merely the
+"twelve," but the "all" that were mentioned by S. Luke a few verses
+before. He mentions the Apostles by name and then adds, "These all
+continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the
+women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren."</p>
+<p>We think of our Lady as sharing in the Pentecostal gift. This
+was the first act of her ascended Son, this sending forth of the
+Holy Spirit whom He had promised. It was the fulfilment of the
+prophecy: "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons
+and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see
+visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." I do not know of
+anything in the teaching of the Church to lead us to suppose that
+this gift was to the Apostles alone: rather the thought of the
+Church is that to all Christians is there a gift of the Spirit. The
+Holy Spirit is imparted to the Church as such, and within the
+organisation He functions through appropriate organs. "There are
+diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." Whatever the operations
+of God through the Body of Christ, the same divine energy is making
+them possible. "All these worketh that one and selfsame Spirit,
+dividing to every man severally as he will."</p>
+<p>That the Holy Spirit should manifest Himself in her life was, of
+course, no new experience for S. Mary. Her conscious vocation to be
+the Mother of God had begun when the Holy Ghost had come upon her,
+and she had conceived that "Holy Thing" which was called the Son of
+God. And we cannot think that the Spirit Who is the Spirit of
+sanctity had ever been absent from her from the moment of her
+wonderful conception when by the creative act of the Spirit she was
+conceived without sin, that is, in union with God. But as there are
+diversities of gifts, so the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost
+would have meant to her some new or increased gift of God.</p>
+<p>For the Church as such this coming of the Spirit meant the
+entrance of the work of the Incarnation upon a new phase of its
+action. We may, I suppose, think of the work of our Lord during the
+years of His Ministry as intensive. It was the work of preparing
+the men to whom was to be committed the commission to preach the
+Kingdom of God. They had been chosen to be with Him, and their
+training had been essentially an experience of Him, an experience
+which was to be the essence of their Gospel and which their mission
+was to interpret to the world. "Who is this Jesus of Nazareth Whom
+ye preach? What does He mean?" was to be the question that they
+would have to answer in the coming years; and they would have to
+answer it to all sorts of men; to Jews who would find this
+conception of a suffering and rejected Messiah "a stumbling-block";
+to the Greeks who would find "Jesus and the resurrection"
+"foolishness"; to all races of men who would have to be persuaded
+to leave their ancestral religions and revolutionise their lives,
+and before they would do so would wish to know what was the true
+meaning of Christ in whose name their whole past was challenged. As
+we watch the perplexity, the bewilderment, of these Apostles in the
+face of the collapse of all their hopes on the first Good Friday,
+as we see them struggling with the fact of the Resurrection, and
+attempting to adjust their lives to that; and then listen to their
+preaching and follow their action in the days succeeding Pentecost,
+we have brought home to us the nature of the action of the Holy
+Spirit when He came to them as the Spirit of Jesus to enable them
+to carry on the work that Jesus had committed to them.</p>
+<p>We understand that the work of the Spirit was first of all the
+work of interpreting the experience of the last three years. During
+these years they had been with Jesus, and the result was an
+experience which, however wonderful, or rather, just because it was
+wonderful, was in their consciousness at present little more than a
+chaotic mass of impressions and memories. It was the work of the
+Spirit to enkindle and illuminate their understanding so that they
+could put the experiences of the last three years in order, if one
+may put it in that way. He enabled them to draw out the meaning of
+what they had gone through. We are at once impressed with the
+reality of the work of the Spirit when we listen to the sermon of
+S. Peter to those who have witnessed the miracle of Pentecost. Here
+is another miracle of which we have, perhaps, missed something of
+the wonder. This man who in answer to the mockeries of the
+crowd--"these men are full of new wine"--stands forth to deliver
+this exposition of Jesus is the same man who but a few days before
+had denied his Lord through fear; he is the same man who even after
+the Resurrection was filled with such discouragement that he could
+think of nothing to do but to return to the old life of a
+fisherman, who had said on a day, "I go a-fishing." If we wish to
+understand the meaning of the coming of the Spirit, let us forget
+for the moment the tongues of fire, which are the symbol, and read
+over the words of S. Peter which are the true miracle of
+Pentecost.</p>
+<p>And this action of the Spirit is not sporadic or temporary. We
+follow the annals of the Church and we find the constant evidence
+of the Spirit's power and action in the Christian propaganda. The
+courage with which the Christians meet the opposition of Jews and
+Romans, in their resourcefulness in dealing with the utterly
+unprecedented problems they are called on to face, in the
+intellectual grip of the Apologists who have to meet the criticism
+of very diverse sets of opponents, in their rapidly growing
+comprehension of what the Incarnation means, and of all in the way
+of action that our Lord's directions involve,--all these, when we
+recall the antecedents of these men, lead us to a clearer
+apprehension of the nature of the Spirit's work in the Church. As
+our Lord had promised, He is bringing "all things to their
+remembrance" and "leading them into all the truth." If we need
+proof of the constant supernatural action of God in the Church, we
+get all we can ask in the preaching of Jesus by His followers in
+these opening years of their ministry.</p>
+<p>I said that our Lord's work in the time of His ministry was
+intensive, the preparing of instruments for the founding of the
+Kingdom. With Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit it passes into
+a new stage; it becomes <i>extensive</i> in that it now reaches out
+to gather all men into the Kingdom. To this end there is now a vast
+development of the machinery (so to call it) of the Gospel, a
+calling into existence of the means whereby Christ is to continue
+His action in men's souls. For there must continue a direct action
+of Christ or the Gospel will sink to the condition of a twice-told
+tale: it will be the constant repetition of the story of Jesus of
+Nazareth Who went about doing good: and it will have less and less
+power to be of any help to men as it receeds into the past. Without
+the means which are called into existence to produce continual
+contact between the Redeemer and the Redeemed we cannot conceive of
+the Gospel continuing to exist as power.</p>
+<p>This is not a matter of pure theory: it is a thing that we have
+seen happen. We have seen the growth of a theory of Christianity
+which dispenses wholly or nearly wholly with the means of grace,
+and reduces the presentation of the Gospel to the presentation of
+the ideal of a good life as an object of imitation. When one asks:
+"Why should I imitate this life which, however good in an abstract
+way, is not very harmonious with the ideals of society at present?"
+one is told that it is the best life ever lived, the life that best
+interprets God, our heavenly Father to us. If one asks: "What is
+likely to happen if one does not imitate this life, but prefers
+some more modern type of usefulness?" the answer seems to be:
+"Nothing in particular will happen." In other words, the preaching
+of the Gospel divorced from the means of grace tends more and more
+to decline to the presentation of a humanitarian ideal of life
+which has little, and constantly less, driving power.</p>
+<p>We see then as we study the history of the early days of the
+Church the constant presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the
+mode and means by which the Gospel is presented. We see it
+particularly in the development of the ministry and the growth of
+the sacramental system. It seems to me not very important to find a
+detailed justification of all the things that were done or
+established in explicit words or acts in the New Testament. If we
+are dealing, as we believe that we are, with an organism of which
+the life is God the Holy Ghost Who is the Vicar of Christ in the
+building and administration of His Kingdom, I do not see why we
+should not find in the action of the Kingdom as much of inspiration
+as we find in its writings. I do not see why we should accept
+certain things on the authority of the action of the early
+Christian community, as the baptism of infants and the communion of
+women, and reject others, as the reservation of the Blessed
+Sacraments and prayers for the dead. Nor do I see why we should
+draw some sort of an artificial line through the history of the
+Church and declare all the things on one side of it primitive and
+desirable, and all on the other late and suspect! Especially as no
+one seems to be able to explain why the line should be drawn in one
+place rather than in another.</p>
+<p>If the Holy Spirit was sent by our Lord as His Vicar to preside
+in the Church, as I suppose we all believe, it was in fulfilment of
+our Lord's promise to be with it till the end of the world and that
+the gates of hell should not prevail against it. There is nothing
+anywhere in Holy Scripture indicating that the Holy Spirit was to
+be sent to the "primitive Church," even if any one could tell what
+the primitive Church is, or rather when the Church ceased to be
+primitive. The Holy Spirit is present as a guide to the Church
+to-day quite as fully as He was in the first century. His presence
+then was not a guarantee that all men should believe the truth or
+do the right, nor is it now. The state of Christendom is a
+sufficient evidence of the ability of men to defy the will of God,
+the Holy Spirit; but that does not mean that the Holy Spirit has
+withdrawn any more than the state of things at Corinth which called
+out S. Paul's two Epistles to that Church is a proof that God the
+Holy Ghost never came or did not stay with that primitive Christian
+community. The power of the Spirit is not an irresistible power,
+but a spiritual influence which will guide those who are willing to
+be guided, who will to be submissive to His will. But the will of
+God can always be resisted--and always is. Nevertheless the Holy
+Spirit is in the Church. He shaped and is shaping its beliefs and
+institutions: and to-day we trust that He is leading us back to His
+obedience that we may at length realize the unity of the Spirit in
+the bonds of peace.</p>
+<p>The work of the Holy Spirit in the individual Christian is a
+constructive work; it has in view the growth of the child of God in
+holiness. He makes the soul of the baptised His dwelling-place and
+wishes to remain there as in His Temple, carrying on the work of
+its sanctification. The state of guiltlessness that follows
+absolution is not the equivalent of sanctity. Guiltlessness is a
+negative, sanctity is a positive state, and is acquired as the
+result of active correspondence with the will of God. In order that
+there may be this correspondence the will of God must be known, not
+merely as we know the things that we have learned by rote, but
+known in the sense of understood and appreciated. The will of God
+is knowable: that is, it has been revealed to man; but it needs to
+be effectively made known to the individual man. He must be
+convinced of the importance of divine truth to him. We know that
+just there is the supremely vital point in the teaching of the
+truth. Men assent to truth as true; but they are not thereby
+necessarily moved to act upon it: it may remain unassimilated. The
+vast majority of the people of this country, if they were
+questioned, would assert a belief in God; but a surprising number
+of them are unmoved by that belief, are led by it to no action. Or
+take the membership of any parish; they would all profess a belief
+in the efficacy of the sacraments: yet there is a surprisingly
+large number who do not frequent the sacraments. How many of you,
+for example, make your confessions and communions with the
+frequency and regularity that your theory about the sacraments
+implies?</p>
+<p>Now it is the work of the Holy Spirit to effect the passage in
+life from theory to practice, from profession to action. He
+illuminates the mind that we may understand; He stirs the will that
+we may act. He aids us to overcome the intellectual and physical
+sloth which is the arch-enemy of Christian practice. He intercedes
+for us, and He pleads with us that we may act as the children of
+God that we believe ourselves to be. But all He can do is to entice
+the will; if we remain unwilling, unmoved, He is ultimately grieved
+and leaves us. We may hope that that despair of the Holy Spirit of
+a soul rarely happens because it is a spiritual disaster awful to
+contemplate. In most men and women we can see enough impulse toward
+God, enough struggle with evil, to encourage us to think that the
+Holy Spirit has not utterly abandoned them. And it is never safe
+for us to judge definitely of another's spiritual case; but we do
+see lives that are so given over to malignancy that our hope for
+them is an optimism which has small basis on which to rest.</p>
+<p>In most we may be certain that there is going on a very active
+pleading of the Holy Spirit. He is interpreting the meaning of the
+truth we accept. He is present in a careful reading of the Bible,
+in meditation, in devotional study. He receives of Christ and shows
+it unto us. I am sure we ought to think more of this interpretative
+assistance of the Holy Spirit in the work of understanding the
+Christian Religion, especially in its application to the daily
+life. I am quite certain, and I have no doubt that the experience
+of some of you, at least, will bear me out, that it makes a vast
+difference in the results of our reading and study if we undertake
+it under the direct invocation of the Holy Spirit and with the
+conscious giving ourselves up to His guidance. We have to make a
+meditation, for example, and we begin with prayer to God the Holy
+Ghost for guidance and enlightenment. It is often well to let that
+prayer run on as long as it will. It may be in the end that instead
+of making the meditation we had planned we shall have spent the
+time in a prayer of union with the Holy Spirit and will find
+ourselves refreshed and enlightened as the result. There is need of
+that sort of yielding of self to the promptings of the Spirit. I
+think that it not infrequently happens that our rules get in the
+way of His action by destroying or checking in us a certain
+flexibility which is necessary if we are to respond quickly to the
+voice of the Spirit. As in the case just mentioned where the Spirit
+is leading us to communion with Him we are apt to think: "I must
+get on with my meditation or the time will be up and I shall not
+have made it," and we turn from the Spirit and stop the work that
+He was accomplishing.</p>
+<p>He has so much to do for us, so many things to show us, so many
+grounds to urge for our more earnest seeking of sanctity. The true
+point of our Bible reading is that it is the opportunity of the
+Holy Spirit to exhibit truth to us so that in us it will become
+energetic. We already are familiar with the incidents of our Lord's
+Passion. If it be a matter of knowledge there is no need to-night
+to take up the Gospel and read the chapters which tell of the
+Crucifixion. There is not much point in reading through a chapter
+as a matter of pious habit. It is extraordinary how many there are
+who speak with contempt of "medi&aelig;val prayers" such as the
+recitation of the Rosary, who yet "read a chapter" once a day in
+the shortest possible time and with the minimum of attention. We
+can think of all religious practices as opportunities that we offer
+to God the Holy Ghost. The few verses of Holy Scripture we read may
+well be the medium of His action upon us. He may give us new
+insight into their meaning, He may stir our wills to correspondence
+with their teaching, He may kindle our hearts by the evidence of
+the divine love that He presses home. Who does not remember moments
+when new meaning seemed to flash from the familiar pages, when we
+felt ourselves convicted of inadequate response to the knowledge we
+have, or when we felt our heart stir and send us to our knees in an
+act of thanksgiving and love?</p>
+<p>Our constant need is the clear knowledge of ourselves. We may,
+we often do, see clearly God's will, and then we deceive ourselves
+as to the nature of our response. We think we are seeking for God
+when in reality we are seeking our own ends. We make our own plans
+and then seek to impose them on the will of God. Self-seeking,
+which we mistake for something else, is at the root of much
+spiritual failure. We try to believe that God's will is our will,
+and we succeed in a measure. We need therefore to be constantly
+examining ourselves by the revealed standard of God's will, to let
+in the light of the Spirit on our judgments and acts. For the
+struggle of the Spirit for control is a struggle with a resisting
+and sluggish will. We see, but we do not move; we know, but we do
+not act. The horrible inertia of spiritual sloth paralyses us, and
+the call of the Spirit is heard in vain. Like the man in our Lord's
+parable we plead the lateness of the hour, and our unwillingness to
+disturb others as our excuse for not rising at the Spirit's
+summons. But the Spirit, like the Friend at midnight, still knocks
+at the door, and the sound of the summons penetrates the quietness
+of the house and breaks in upon our slumbers. Well is it for us if
+in the end we rise and open to Him.</p>
+<p>It is only as we thus become energetic by the yielding to God of
+our wills that He can go on to His desired work. The aim of God in
+dealing with our lives is creative. He wills that we bring forth
+fruit, and the fruit that He wills that we bring forth is the Fruit
+of the Spirit. The general notion of holiness analyses into these
+qualities which are the evidence of God's indwelling, of His actual
+possession of the soul. When the soul yields at last to the divine
+will and begins to follow the divinely indicated course of action,
+then it loses self and finds God, then the results begin to show in
+the growth of the character-qualities that we call fruits or
+virtues. The presence or the absence of these is infallible
+evidence of the Spirit's success or failure in His work in us. If
+we abide in Christ, then the natural results of such abiding must
+be forthcoming. "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that
+abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit:
+for without me ye can do nothing."</p>
+<p>A vine bears fruit because it assimilates the natural elements
+which are furnished it by the Providence of God through earth and
+air and water, and works them into the fruit which is the end, the
+meaning of its existence. Our Lord through the constant operation
+within us of the Holy Spirit gives us the spiritual power to work
+over the endowments of nature and the opportunities of life into
+the spiritual product which is holiness. We can just as well, and
+perhaps easier, work up the same natural elements into a quite
+different product. The result of our life's action may be that we
+can show the works of the flesh. But what is the will of the
+Spirit, S. Paul sets before us in these words: "For when ye were
+the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit
+had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end
+of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and
+become the servants of God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and
+the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the
+gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."</p>
+<p>Any adequate self-examination, therefore, bears not only on our
+sins, our failures, but on our accomplishment. A tree is known by
+its fruits; and fruits are things which are evident to all men. If
+indeed the work of the Spirit in us is love, joy, peace and the
+rest of the fruits, these qualities cannot be hid. Certainly they
+cannot be hid from ourselves. They are the evidence to us of
+precisely where we stand in the way of spiritual accomplishment.
+And we must remember that they are supernatural qualities, and not
+be deceived by the existence in us of a set of human counterfeits.
+Love is not good-natured tolerance; joy is not superficial gaiety,
+peace is not clever dodging of difficulties. The fruits of the
+Spirit are not of easy growth, but come only at the end of a long
+period of cultivation, of energetic striving. But like all the
+gifts of God they do come if we want them to come. "If ye abide in
+me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it
+shall be done unto you." But when we ask our Lord for gifts we must
+remember that the giving is not a mechanical giving. What our Lord
+gives is the Might of the Spirit to effect what we desire. If a man
+ask of God a good harvest the prayer is answered if there be given
+the conditions under which a good harvest can be produced; it will
+not be produced without the appropriate human labour. And when we
+ask of God the Fruits of the Spirit the prayer is granted if the
+conditions are given under which this Fruit may be brought forth.
+But neither here may we expect Fruit without appropriate action on
+our part. God gives, but He gives to those who want.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote><b>I</b></blockquote>
+In that, O Queen of queens, thy birth was free<br>
+From guilt, which others do of grace bereave,<br>
+When, in their mother's womb, they life receive,<br>
+God, as his sole-borne Daughter, loved thee:<br>
+To match thee like thy birth's nobility,<br>
+He thee his Spirit for thy Spouse did leave,<br>
+Of whom thou didst his only Son conceive;<br>
+And so was linked to all the Trinity.<br>
+Cease, then, O queens, who earthly crowns do wear,<br>
+To glory in the pomp of worldly, things:<br>
+If men such respect unto you bear<br>
+Which daughters, wives and mothers are of kings;<br>
+What honour should unto that Queen be done<br>
+Who had your God for Father, Spouse and Son?<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote><b>II</b></blockquote>
+Sovereign of Queens, if vain ambition move<br>
+My heart to seek an earthly prince's grace,<br>
+Show me thy Son in his imperial place,<br>
+Whose servants reign our kings and queens above:<br>
+And, if alluring passions I do prove<br>
+By pleasing sighs--show me thy lovely face,<br>
+Whose beams the angels' beauty do deface,<br>
+And even inflame the seraphins with love.<br>
+So by ambition I shall humble be,<br>
+When, in the presence of the highest King,<br>
+I serve all his, that he may honour me;<br>
+And love, my heart to chaste desires shall bring,<br>
+When fairest Queen looks on me from her throne,<br>
+And jealous, bids me love but her alone.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote><b>III</b></blockquote>
+Why should I any love, O Queen, but thee,<br>
+If favor past a thankful love should breed?<br>
+Thy womb did bear, thy breast my Saviour feed,<br>
+And thou didst never cease to succour me.<br>
+If love do follow worth and dignity,<br>
+Thou all in thy perfections dost exceed;<br>
+If love be led by hope of future meed,<br>
+What pleasure more than thee in heaven to see?<br>
+An earthly sight doth only please the eye,<br>
+And breeds desire, but doth not satisfy:<br>
+Thy sight gives us possession of all joy;<br>
+And with such full delights each sense shall fill,<br>
+As heart shall wish but for to see thee still,<br>
+And ever seeing, ever shall enjoy.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote><b>IV</b></blockquote>
+Sweet Queen, although thy beauty raise up me<br>
+From sight of baser beauties here below,<br>
+Yet, let me not rest there; but, higher go<br>
+To him, who took his shape from God and thee.<br>
+And if thy form in him more fair I see,<br>
+What pleasure from his deity shall flow,<br>
+By whose fair beams his beauty shineth so,<br>
+When I shall it behold eternally?<br>
+Then, shall my love of pleasure have his fill,<br>
+When beauty's self, in whom all pleasure is,<br>
+Shall my enamoured soul embrace and kiss,<br>
+And shall new loves and new delights distill,<br>
+Which from my soul shall gush into my heart,<br>
+And through my body flow to every part.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote>HENRY CONSTABLE: 1562-1613.</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+<h3>THE HOME OF S. JOHN</h3>
+<br>
+<center>And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own
+home.<br>
+<br>
+S. John XIX, 27.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>But now we unite to praise thee, O Pure and Immaculate
+One, blessed Virgin and sinless Mother of thy great Son and the God
+of all. O perfectly spotless and altogether holy, thou art the hope
+of despairing sinners. We bless thee as most full of grace, who
+didst give birth to Christ, God and Man. And we fall down before
+thee. We all invoke thee and implore thy help. Deliver us, O
+Virgin, holy and undefiled, from every pressing strait and from all
+temptations of the Evil One. Be thou our peacemaker in the hour of
+death and judgment. Do thou save us from the future unquenchable
+fire and from the outer darkness. Do thou render us worthy of the
+glory of thy Son, O Virgin and Mother, most sweet and
+clement.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">A PRAYER OF S. EPHREM THE SYRIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>here is no scene in the whole range of Scripture narrative which
+is more full of pathos than this scene of the Cross. Two agonies
+meet: the agony of the nailing, the lifting, the dying; and the
+agony that looks on in silent helplessness. But while our Lord's
+physical agony was in some sort swallowed up in the intensity of
+the love which was the motive for enduring it, overpassed in the
+vision of the need of those for whom He was dying, S. Mary's agony
+was the pain of a love concentrated upon the Sufferer Who hangs
+dying before her eyes. If there be anything that can lighten the
+pain of such love it is that it feels itself answered, that its
+object is conscious of it and is helped by it. And S. Mary had that
+consolation: the love poured to her from the Cross, and revealed
+itself when the suffering Son turned His eyes upon her agony and,
+understanding what her desolation would be, committed her to His
+beloved disciple: "Behold thy Mother; behold thy son." These two
+great loves which had been our Lord's human consolation were thus
+committed to one another. And when the darkness fell, and death
+relieved the agony, and the Sacred Body had been cared for, then
+the mother found refuge with S. John: "and from that hour that
+disciple took her unto his own home."</p>
+<p>From the day of Pentecost on, S. Mary is no more heard of in the
+history of the Church. As so often, the Scriptures are silent and
+decline to answer our interested questions. They go on with the
+essentails of their story, the founding of the Church of God, and
+leave other things aside. So we do not know any of the last years
+of the life of Blessed Mary. Where did she live? How long did she
+live? The traditions, in any case of quite an untrustworthy nature,
+are contradictory. Jerusalem and Ephesus contend for the honour of
+our Lady's residence. Jerusalem must have been the site of that
+"home" to which S. John took her after the crucifixion. Did she
+remain there, or did she follow S. John, and at length come to live
+with him in Ephesus? Ephesus puts forward the claim, and we feel
+that it would be well founded in the nature of the relation between
+these two, if S. Mary lived until the settlement of the last of the
+apostles in the Asian city. Our Lord's committal of His Mother to
+the beloved disciple implies their personal association as long as
+S. Mary lived: if till S. John was settled in Ephesus, then we may
+be sure that she was there. She would be with S. John as long as
+she lived, but can we think of her as living long? Would not a
+great love draw her to another world and the presence of her
+triumphant Son?</p>
+<p>Let us, however think, as one tradition bids us, of our Lady as
+living some time with S. John at Ephesus. We can understand the
+situation because it is so much like our own. These Asia Minor
+cities of the imperial period were curiously like the great centers
+of population in the Western world of to-day--London, Paris, New
+York, Chicago. There was the same over-crowding of population, the
+same intense commercial activity, the same almost insane thirst for
+amusement and excitement, the same degeneracy of moral fibre. The
+sins that sapped the life of Ephesus are the same that degrade
+contemporary life. In some ways Ephesus was, possibly, more frankly
+corrupt; but on the other hand it had no daily press to advertise
+and promote sin and social corruption. There is more of
+Christianity and of Christian influence in the modern city, but
+even here there is a curious resemblance between the two. The
+Christian Religion had but recently been introduced into Ephesus,
+but already it had precisely that touch of ineffectiveness that
+seems to us so modern. The message of the risen Lord to the angel
+of the Church in Ephesus is: "Nevertheless I have this against
+thee, that thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from
+whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else
+I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out
+of his place, except thou repent."</p>
+<p>The things that hearten us are sometimes strange; but I suppose
+that there is a feeling of encouragement in our present day
+distress and spiritual ineffectiveness in the thought that even
+under S. John the Church in Ephesus was not wholly ideal. The
+conditions which baffle us, baffled him. The converts who were so
+promising and enthusiastic declined in zeal and fell back under the
+spell of worldliness. Zeal is a quality which is maintained with
+great difficulty, and the pull of the world, whether social or
+business, is steadily exercised. Converts in Ephesus, like converts
+in New York, felt that their friends were right who declared that
+they were quite unnecessarily strict, and that in order to serve
+Christ it was not necessary to turn their backs absolutely on
+Diana.</p>
+<p>As one tries to reconstruct the situation in Ephesus, one feels
+that our Lady would have had no prominence in the Church in the way
+of an actively exercised influence. One thinks of her as living in
+retirement, as not even talking very much. If she lived long she
+would be an object of increasing interest and even of awe to the
+new converts, and an object of growing love to all those who were
+admitted to any sort of fellowship with her. But one cannot imagine
+a crowd about her, inquiring into her experiences and her memories
+of her divine Son. Once she told of her experience, for it was
+necessary that the Church should know of the circumstances of the
+coming of the Son of God into the world, but beyond that necessary
+communication of her experience we cannot think of her as speaking
+of her sacred memories. Silence and meditation, longing and
+waiting, would have filled the years till the hour of her
+release.</p>
+<p>But in the quiet hours spent with S. John it would be different.
+Between the Blessed Virgin and S. John there was perfect
+understanding and perfect sympathy, and we love to think of the
+hours that they would have spent together in deep spiritual
+intercourse. Those hours would not be hours of reminiscence merely;
+they would rather be hours in which these two would attempt with
+the aid of the Spirit Who ruled in them so fully to enter deeper
+and ever deeper into the meaning of Incarnate God. Jesus would be
+the continual object of their thought and their love, and
+meditation upon His words and acts would lead them to an ever
+increasing appreciation of their depth and meaning.</p>
+<p>We have all felt, in reading the pages of S. John, how vast is
+the difference both in attitude toward his subject and in his
+understanding of it from that of the other Evangelists. The earlier
+Evangelists seem deliberately to keep all feeling out of their
+story, to tell the life of our Lord in the most meagre outline,
+confining themselves to the essential facts. Anything like
+interpretation they decline. In S. John all this is changed. The
+Jesus whom he presents is the same Jesus, but seen through what
+different eyes! The same life is presented, but with what changes
+in selection of material! The Gospel of S. John seems almost a
+series of mediations upon selected facts of an already familiar
+life rather than an attempt to tell a life-story. And so indeed we
+think of it. When S. John wrote, the life of our Lord as a series
+of events was already before the Church. The Church had the
+synoptic Gospels, and it had a still living tradition to inform it.
+What it needed, and what the Holy Spirit led S. John to give it,
+was some glimpse of the inner meaning of the Incarnation, some
+unfolding of the spiritual depths of the teaching of Jesus.</p>
+<p>We know how it is that different people listening to the same
+words get different impressions and carry away with them quite
+different meanings. We hear what we are able to hear. And S. John
+was able to hear what the other disciples of our Lord seem not to
+have heard. What dwelt in his memory and was worked up in his
+meditations and was at length transmitted to us, was the meaning of
+such incidents as the interview with Nicodemus, and the talk with
+the woman of Samaria, the discourse on the Holy Eucharist and the
+great High-priestly prayer. Men have felt the contrast between S.
+John and the other Evangelists so intensely that they have said
+that this is another Christ who is presented by S. John, and the
+influences which have shaped the author of the Fourth Gospel are
+quite other than those which shaped the men of the inner circle of
+Jesus. But no: it is the instinctive, or rather the Spirit-guided,
+selection of the material afforded by those years of association
+with Jesus for the purpose of transmitting to the Church a
+spiritual depth and beauty, a spiritual significance in our Lord's
+teaching, that the earlier Gospel had hardly touched.</p>
+<p>Which perhaps they could not touch because when they wrote there
+was not yet in the Church the spiritual experience which could
+fully interpret our Lord. Through the life of union with the risen
+Jesus and all the spiritual experience, all the illumined
+intelligence that that life brought, S. John was enabled to
+understand and interpret as he did. Writing far on toward the end
+of the first century he was writing out of the personal experience
+of Christian living of many years, which brought with it year by
+year an increased power of spiritual vision opening to him the
+depth and wonder of the fact of God made man. It is to an
+experience of our Lord that he appeals as the basis of his
+teaching. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
+which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and
+our hands have handled, of the Word of life: (for the life was
+manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto
+you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was
+manifested unto us;) that which we have seen and heard declare we
+unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our
+fellowship is with the Father, and His Son Jesus Christ." And as we
+read on in S. John's Epistles we cannot fail to see how deeply the
+years of meditation have influenced his understanding of our Lord
+and His teaching, and how much his past experience of our Lord has
+been illumined by the experience of the risen Jesus which has
+followed. At no time, we are certain, has S. John been out of touch
+with his Master.</p>
+<p>And can we for a moment think that the years of intercourse with
+our Lady meant nothing in the spiritual development of S. John? On
+the contrary, may we not think that much of the spiritual richness
+which is the outstanding feature of his writings was the outcome of
+his association with the blessed Mother? No one has ever shown the
+sympathetic understanding of our Lord, has been so well able
+convincingly to interpret Him, as the beloved disciple. I myself
+have no doubt that much of his understanding came by way of S.
+Mary. Her interpretative insight would have been deeper than any
+one else's, not only because of her long association with Jesus,
+but because of her sinlessness. No two lives ever touched so
+closely; and there was not between them the bar that so blocks our
+spiritual understanding and clouds our spiritual vision, the bar of
+sin. I suppose it is almost impossible for us to appreciate the
+effect of sin in clouding vision and dulling sympathy. Our every
+day familiarity with venial sin, our easy tolerance of it, the
+adjustment of our lives to habits that involve it, have resulted in
+a lack of spiritual sensitiveness. Much of the meaning of our
+Lord's life and words passes over us just because of this dimness
+of vision, this insensitiveness to suggestion. And therefore we
+find it difficult to imagine what would be the understanding, the
+insight, the response to our Lord, of one between whom and Him
+there was no shadow of sin. And such an one was the blessed Mother.
+With unclouded vision she looked into the face of her Son. As His
+life expanded she followed with perfect sympathy; indeed,
+sometimes, as at Cana, her understanding of what He was made her
+precipitate in concluding as to His necessary action. When He
+became a public teacher and unfolded largely in parable His
+doctrine, it was her sinless soul which would see clearest and
+deepest, and with the most ready response. And therefore I am sure
+that we cannot go astray in thinking that S. John's relation to S.
+Mary was not simply that of a guardian of her from the pressure of
+the world, but was indeed that of a son who listened and learned
+from the experience of his Mother. No doubt S. John himself was of
+a very subtle spiritual understanding; notwithstanding that, and
+notwithstanding his exceptional opportunities of learning, we may
+still believe that there are many touches in his Gospel which are
+the result of his association with his Lord's Mother.</p>
+<p>Is it not possible for us to have our share in that pure insight
+of blessed Mary? When we try to think out the lines of our own
+spiritual development and the influences that have contributed to
+shape it, do we not find that the presence or absence of devotion
+to our Lady has been a factor of considerable importance? Devotion
+to her injected an element into our religion which is of vast
+moment, an element of sympathy, of gentleness, of purity. You can
+if you like, in condemnatory accents, call that element
+sentimentalism, although it is not that but the exercise of those
+gentler elements of our nature without whose exercise our nature
+functions one-sidedly. You may call it the feminine element, if you
+like; you will still be indicating the same order of activity.
+Surely, an all around spiritual development will bring out the
+feminine as well as the masculine qualities. And it seems to be
+historically true that those systems of religion which represent a
+revolt against the cultus of our Lady and carefully exclude all
+traces of it from their worship, show as a consequence of this
+exclusion a hardness and a barrenness which makes their human
+appeal quite one-sided. And when those same systems have realised
+their limitations and their lack of human appeal, and have tried to
+supply what is lacking, they have again failed, because instead of
+reverting to historical Christianity they have taken the road of
+humanitarianism, basing themselves on our Lord's human life and
+consequent brotherhood with us, rather than upon His supernatural
+Personality as operative through His mystical Body. Stress is laid
+upon charitable helpfulness rather than upon the power of grace.
+The modern man tries to reform life rather than to regenerate
+it.</p>
+<p>And, I repeat, I cannot help associating with a repudiation of
+the cultus of the saints, and especially of the Blessed Virgin
+Mary, a consequent failure to understand the Christian life as a
+supernatural creation. If one leaves out of account the greater
+part of the Kingdom of Heaven, all the multitudes of the redeemed,
+and their activities, and fastens one's attention exclusively upon
+that small part of the Kingdom which is the Church on earth, one
+can hardly fail to miss the significance of the earthly Church
+itself. Religion understood in this limited way may well drift more
+and more toward Deism and Humanitarianism, and further and further
+from any supernatural implications. This is no theory; it is what
+has happened. It was the course of Protestantism from the
+Reformation to the eighteenth century; and, after a partial revival
+of supernaturalism, is once more the rapid course of Protestantism
+to-day. Protestantism has lost or is fast losing any grip on the
+Trinity or the Incarnation: to it God is more and more a barren
+unity, and Jesus a good man. And this largely because all interest
+in the world of the Redeemed has been abandoned and all intercourse
+with the inhabitants of that world denied.</p>
+<p>It is therefore of the last importance that we, infected as we
+are with Protestantism, should stress the revival of the cultus of
+the saints, and should insist upon our right and privilege to pay
+due honour to the Mother of God and ask our share in her prayers.
+We must do all we can to make her known to our brethren. We need
+her sympathy, her aid, her example.</p>
+<p>Above all, the example of her spotless purity. It is notorious
+that one of the most marked features of our time is the virulent
+assault on purity. We had long emphasised a certain quality of
+conduct which we called modesty; it was, perhaps, largely a
+convention, but it was one of those protective conventions which
+are valuable as preservative of qualities we prize. It was
+protective of purity; and however artificial it was, in some
+respects, it existed because we felt that purity was a thing too
+precious to be exposed to unnecessary risk. Well, modesty is gone
+now, whether in conduct or convention. One hears discussed at
+dinner-tables and in the presence of young girls matters which our
+mothers would have blushed to mention at all. The quality of
+modesty is declared Puritanical and hypocritical. "Hypocritical
+virtue" is a phrase one frequently meets; and we seem fast going on
+to the time when all virtue will be regarded as hypocrisy.
+Customary standards are falling all about us, overthrown in the
+name of personal liberty.</p>
+<p>And by liberty, one gathers, is meant freedom to do as one
+pleases, and especially as one sexually pleases. The assault is
+pushed hardest just now against the sanctity of the sacrament of
+matrimony and the morals of that sacrament as they have been
+developed by the Christian Church. Protestantism long ago assented
+to the overthrow of Christian standards in the marriage relation
+and has aided the sexual anarchy with which we are faced to-day.
+To-day the chief attack is on the purity of marriage in the
+interests, ostensibly, of humanity. A vigorous campaign in favour
+of what is called birth-control is being carried on, and is being
+supported in quarters which are professedly Christian. There are
+many grounds for opposing the movement, social, humanitarian and
+other. We are here concerned with it only as it is an attack on
+purity. From the Christian point of view the marriage relation has
+for its end the procreation of children for the upbuilding of the
+Kingdom of God. If circumstances are such, through reasons of
+health or economy, that children seem undesirable, the remedy is
+plain, self control. The theory that human beings have no more
+control over their appetites than beasts, while it has much to
+support it in contemporary life, cannot be admitted from the point
+of view of religion. Self-control is always possible, and is
+constantly exercised by many men and women who choose to be guided
+by principle rather than by passion. And in any case the Christian
+Religion can become no partner, not even a silent one, in a
+conspiracy to murder, or in the sort of compromise that turns
+marriage into a licensed sodomy. If indeed the economic status of
+the modern world is such that the average couple cannot support a
+family, then the Christian Church may well aid in the bringing
+about of an economic revolution; but it can hardly aid in the
+destruction of its own ideals of purity.</p>
+<p>What is ultimately at stake in the modern world is the whole
+conception of purity as a quality that is desirable. This attitude
+has become possible among us for one reason because we have
+consented to the suppression of ideals of life which were
+calculated to sustain it. To sustain any moral or spiritual
+conception there must be maintained certain appropriate ideals
+which, while out of the reach of the average man, create and
+sustain in him an admiration and respect for the ideal standard. So
+the standard of purity presented in Mary and protected by the
+belief in her Immaculate Conception and her assumption, has the
+effect, not only of commending the life of chastity in the sense of
+the vows of religion, but also in the broad sense of the restraint
+and discipline of appetite whether within or without the marriage
+relation. It impresses upon us the truth that purity is not only a
+human quality but a divinely created virtue, the result of the
+infusion of sanctifying grace into the soul. Is it not largely
+because the young are taught (when they are taught anything at all
+in the premises) that purity is a matter of the <i>will</i>, that
+they so often fail? If they were taught the nature of the
+<i>virtue</i> and were led to rely more on the indwelling might of
+the Holy Spirit would they not have better success? And if there
+were held constantly before their eyes the example of the saints
+and especially of Blessed Mary ever-virgin, would not they have an
+increased sense of the value of purity?</p>
+<p>The life and example of S. Mary are an inestimable treasure of
+the Church of God, and her removal from the world has only enhanced
+that value. To-day her meaning is clearer to us than ever. The
+spirit-guided mind of the Church has through the centuries been
+meditating on the meaning of her office as Mother of God. The words
+in which she accepts her vocation, Behold the handmaid of the Lord,
+implying, as they do, an active co-operation with the divine
+purpose, a voluntary association of herself with it, imply, too,
+the perpetual continuance of that association, and contain in germ
+all Catholic teaching in regard to her office. She passed from this
+world silently, and to the world unknown; but to the Church of God
+she ever remains of all human beings the greatest spiritual force
+in the Kingdom of God.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Weep, living things, of life the Mother dies;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;The world doth lose the sum of all her bliss,<br>
+The Queen of earth, the Empress of the skies;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;By Mary's death mankind an orphan is.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Let Nature weep, yea, let all graces moan,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Their glory, grace and gifts die all in one.<br>
+<br>
+It was no death to her, but to her woe,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;By which her joys began, her griefs did end;<br>
+Death was to her a friend, to us a foe,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Life of whose lives did on her life depend:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Not prey of death, but praise to death she
+was.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whose ugly shape seemed glorious in her
+face.<br>
+<br>
+Her face a heaven; two planets were her eyes,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Whose gracious light did make our clearest day;<br>
+But one such heaven there was, and lo, it dies,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Death's dark eclipse hath dimmed every, ray:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sun, hide thy light, thy beams untimely
+shine;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; True light since we have lost, we crave not
+thine.<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Robert Southwell, 1560-1595</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+<h3>THE ASSUMPTION</h3>
+<br>
+<center>Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be
+with me where I am;<br>
+that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me.<br>
+<br>
+S. John XVII, 24.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Hail! Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail! Our life,
+our<br>
+sweetness, our hope, all hail. To thee we cry, poor exiled<br>
+children of Eve. To thee we send up our cries, weeping and<br>
+mourning in this vale of tears. Turn, then, Most gracious<br>
+Advocate, thy merciful eyes upon us, and now, after this<br>
+our exile, show unto us the blessed Fruit of thy womb,<br>
+Jesus. O gracious, O merciful, O sweet Virgin Mary.<br>
+Anthem from the breviary. Attributed to Hermann Contractus,
+1013-54.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>here is nothing more wonderful or beautiful, nothing that brings
+to us a more perfect revelation of our Lord's mind, than this
+prayer which is recorded for us by S. John. There is in it a
+complete unfolding of that sympathy and love which we feel to
+underlie and explain our Lord's mission. As we come to know what
+God is only when we see Him revealed in Jesus; when we enter into
+our Lord's saying, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father," so
+in the revelation of Jesus we understand God's attitude toward us.
+In Jesus the love of God shows itself, not as an abstract quality,
+a philosophical conception, but as a burning, passionate eagerness
+to rescue, an outgoing of God to individual souls. There is a deep
+personal affection displayed in this final scene in the Upper
+Chamber. This is our Lord's real parting from His disciples. He
+will see them again, but under conditions of strain and tragedy, or
+under such changed circumstances that they cannot well enter into
+the old intimacy. But here there is no bar to the expression of
+love. Here He gives them the final evidence of His utter union with
+them in the humility of the foot-washing. Here He marvellously
+imparts Himself in the Breaking of the Bread, wherein is
+consummated His personal union with them. This is the
+demonstration, if one were needed, that having loved His own, He
+loved them unto the uttermost.</p>
+<p>It is inconceivable that passionate love such as this should
+ever end. It is a personal relation which must endure while
+personality endures. It is really the demands of love which more
+than anything else outside revelation are the evidence of
+immortality. We are certain that the love of God which in its
+fulness has been made known in Christ cannot be annihilated by
+death. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with
+loving kindness have I drawn thee." Love such as that must draw
+men, not only in this world, but in all worlds. If it can draw men
+out of sin to God, it must create an enduring bond. If it can draw
+God to men, it must be the revelation of a permanent attitude of
+God to man. It is a love that goes out beyond the world, that love
+of which S. Paul says: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor
+life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
+present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
+creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which
+is in Christ Jesus our Lord."</p>
+<p>Our instinctive thought of the Judgment seems to be of it as
+condemnation, or, at best, as acquittal. But why not think of it as
+consummation? Why not think of it as setting the seal of God's
+approval upon our accomplishment of His will and purpose for us?
+The final Judgment is surely that,--the entrance of those who are
+saved into the full joy of their Lord. There once more will our
+humanity be complete because it is the whole man, not the soul
+only, but the soul clothed with the body of the resurrection, once
+more clothed upon with its "house from heaven," which is filled
+with the joy of the Beatific Vision. The thought of the particular
+judgment may fill us with dread; but if we are able to look beyond
+that to the general Judgment at the last day, we shall think only
+of our perfect bliss in the enjoyment of God.</p>
+<p>The belief in the Assumption of our Lady is a belief that in her
+case that which is the inheritance of all the saints, that they
+shall rise again with their bodies and be admitted to the Vision of
+God, has been anticipated. In her, that which we all look forward
+to and dream of for ourselves, has been attained. She to-day is in
+God's presence in her entire humanity, clothed with her body of
+glory.</p>
+<p>This teaching, one finds, still causes some searching of hearts
+among us, and is thought to raise many questions difficult to
+answer. And it may be admitted at the outset that it is not a truth
+taught in Holy Scripture but a truth arrived at by the mind of the
+Church after centuries of thought. Unless we can think of the
+Church as a divine organism with a continuous life from the day of
+Pentecost until now, as being the home of the Holy Spirit, and as
+being continuously guided by Him into all the truth; unless we can
+accept in their full sense our Lord's promises that He will be with
+the Church until the end of the world, we shall not find it
+possible to accept the assumption as a fact, but shall decline to
+believe that, and not only that but, if we are consistent, many
+another belief of the Christian Church. But if we have an adequate
+understanding of what is implied in the continuity of the Church as
+the organ of the present action of the Holy Spirit, we shall not
+find that the fact that a given doctrine is not explicitly
+contained in Holy Scripture is any bar to its acceptance. We shall
+have learned that the revelation of God in Christ, and our relation
+to God in Christ, are facts of such tremendous import and
+inexhaustible content that it would be absurd to suppose that all
+their meaning had been understood and explicitly stated in the
+first generation of the Christian Church.</p>
+<p>We shall not, then, find it any bar to the acceptance of belief
+in the assumption of our Lady that its formal statement came, as is
+said, "late." We simply want to know that when it came it came as
+the outcome of the mature thought of the Church, the Body of
+Christ, the Fulness of Him that filleth all in all.</p>
+<p>It is to be noted that the assumption is not a wholly isolated
+fact. There are several cases of assumption in the Old Testament
+though of a slightly different character in that they were
+assumptions directly from life without any interval of death. Such
+were the assumptions of Enoch and Elijah. Moses, too, it has been
+constantly believed, was assumed into heaven,--in his case after
+death and with his resurrection body. A case which is more
+strangely like what is believed to have taken place in the
+experience of blessed Mary is that closely connected with our
+Lord's resurrection and recorded by S. Matthew. "And the graves
+were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and
+came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the
+holy city, and appeared unto many." Although it is not asserted
+that these were assumed into heaven, it seems impossible to avoid
+the inference; and if "many saints which slept" were raised from
+the dead and assumed into the heavenly world, there can be no <i>a
+priori</i> difficulty in believing the same thing to have taken
+place in the Blessed Mother of God. Nay if such a thing as an
+assumption is at all possible for any human being one would
+naturally conclude from the very relation of S. Mary to our Lord
+that the possibility would be realised in her.</p>
+<p>And there were elements in her case which were lacking in all
+the other cases which suggest a certain fitness, if not
+inevitability, in her assumption. She was conceived without
+sin,--never had any breath of sin tainted her. Was it then possible
+that she should be holden by death? Surely, in any case, it was
+impossible that her holy body should see corruption: we cannot
+think of the dissolution of that body which had no part in sin. If
+ever an assumption were possible, here it was inevitable--so the
+thought of the Church shaped itself. The compelling motives of the
+belief were theological rather than historical. The germ out of
+consideration of which was evolved the belief in the assumption was
+the relation of Blessed Mary to her Son. That unique relation might
+be expected to carry with it unique consequences, and among these
+the consequence that the body which was bound by no sin should be
+reunited to the soul which had needed no purgation, but had passed
+at once to the presence of its God and its Redeemer who was
+likewise Son. It is well to stress the fact that the assumption is
+not only a fact but a doctrine. Fact, of course, it was or there
+could be no doctrine; but the truth of the fact is certified by the
+growing conviction in the mind of the Church of the inevitability
+of the doctrine.</p>
+<p>What is implied in the word assumption is that the body of the
+Mother of our Lord was after her death and burial raised to heaven
+by the power of God. It differed therefore essentially from the
+ascension of our Lord which was accomplished by His Own inherent
+power. When this assumption took place we have no means of knowing.
+We do not certainly know where S. Mary lived, nor where and when
+she died. Jerusalem and Ephesus contend in tradition for the
+privilege of having sheltered her last days and reverently carried
+her body to its burial. There is no way of deciding between these
+two claims, although the fact that our Lord confided His Mother to
+S. John throws some little weight into the scale of Ephesus. And
+yet S. Mary may have died before S. John settled in Ephesus. We can
+only say that history gives us no reliable information on the
+matter.</p>
+<p>In the silence of Scripture we naturally turn to the other
+writings of the early Church for light and guidance on the matter;
+but there, too, there is little help. There is, to be sure, a group
+of Apocryphal writings which have a good deal to say about the life
+of S. Mary, where the Scriptures and tradition are silent. Among
+other things these Apocryphal writings have a good deal to say, and
+some very beautiful stories to tell, of S. Mary's last days, of her
+burial and assumption. Are we to think of these stories as
+containing any grain of truth? If they do, it is now impossible to
+sift it from the chaff. These stories are generally rejected as a
+basis of knowledge. And there has been, and still is in some
+quarters, a conviction that the belief of the Church in the
+assumption rests on nothing better or more stable than these
+Apocryphal stories; that the authors of these Apocrypha were
+inventing their stories out of nothing, and that in an uncritical
+age their legends came to be taken as history. Thus was a belief in
+the assumption foisted upon the Church, having no slightest ground
+in fact. The human tendency to fill in the silences of Scripture
+has resulted in many legends, that of the assumption among
+them.</p>
+<p>There is a good deal to be said for this position, yet I do not
+feel that it is convincing. That the incidents of the life of the
+Blessed Virgin Mary as narrated in the Apocrypha are historical, of
+course cannot be maintained. But neither is it at all probable that
+such stories grew up out of nothing: indeed, their existence
+implies that there were certain facts widely accepted in the
+Christian community that served as their starting point. While the
+Apocryphal stories of the life of our Lady cannot be accepted as
+history, they do presuppose certain beliefs as universally, or at
+least widely, held. Thus one may reject all the details of the
+story of the death and burial and assumption of our Lady, and yet
+feel that the story is evidence of a belief in the assumption among
+those for whom the story was written. What was new to them was not
+the fact of the assumption but the detailed incidents with which
+the Apocrypha embroidered it. I feel no doubt that these Apocryphal
+stories are not the source of belief in the assumption, but are our
+earliest witness to the existence of the belief. They actually
+presuppose its existence in the Church as the necessary condition
+of their own existence.</p>
+<p>Another fact that tells in the same direction is the absence of
+any physical relics of our Lady. At a time when great stress was
+laid upon relics, and there was little scruple in inventing them,
+if the authentic ones were not forthcoming, there were no relics
+produced which were alleged to be the physical relics of S. Mary.
+Why was this? Surely, unless there were some inhibiting
+circumstances, relics, real or forged, would have been produced.
+The only probable explanation is that the inhibiting circumstance
+was the established belief in the assumption. If the assumption
+were a fact, there would be no physical relics; if it were an
+established belief, there would be no fraud possible. Add to this
+that various relics of our Lady were alleged to exist; but they
+were not relics of her body.</p>
+<p>Again: by the seventh century the celebration of the feast of
+the assumption had spread throughout the whole church. This
+universal establishment of the feast implies a preceding history of
+considerable length, going well back into the past. The feast was
+kept in many places, and under a variety of names which seem to
+imply, not mere copying, but independent development. It is
+alleged, to be sure, that the names by which the feast was called
+do not imply belief in the assumption. The feast is called "the
+Sleeping," "the Repose," "the Passage" of the Virgin, as well as by
+the Western title, the assumption. But a study of the liturgies and
+of the sermons preached in honour of the feast will convince any
+one that the underlying tradition was that of our Lady's
+assumption.</p>
+<p>These quite separate and yet converging lines of evidence seem
+to me to show convincingly what was the wide-spread belief of the
+early Christian community as to the destiny of Blessed Mary. They
+imply a tradition going well back into the past, so far back, that
+in view of the theological expression of the mind of the Church
+they may well be regarded as apostolic. Our personal belief in the
+assumption will still rest primarily upon its theological
+expression in the mind of the Church, but having attained certainty
+as to the doctrine, which is of course at the same time certainty
+as to the fact, we shall have no difficulty in finding in the above
+sketched lines of historical development the evidence of the
+primitive character of the belief.</p>
+<p>It may not be amiss to give a few characteristic quotations as
+indicating the mind of the Church in this matter.</p>
+<p>S. Modestus, patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 614), preaching on the
+Falling Asleep of the Mother of God, said:--</p>
+<p>"The Lord of heaven and earth has to-day consecrated the human
+tabernacle in which He Himself, according to the flesh, was
+received, that it may enjoy with Him forever the gift of
+incorruptibility. O blessed sleep of the glorious, ever-virgin
+Mother of God, who has not known the corruption of the grave; for
+Christ, our all-powerful Saviour, has kept intact that flesh which
+gave Him His flesh.... Hail, most holy Mother of God: Jesus has
+willed to have you in His Kingdom with your body clothed in
+incorruptibility.... The most glorious Mother of Christ our Lord
+and Saviour, Who gave life and immortality, is raised by her Son,
+and forever possesses incorruptibility with Him Who called her from
+the tomb."</p>
+<p>S. Andrew, Archbishop of Crete (d. 676), also preaching on the
+Falling Asleep of the Mother of God, says:--"It is a wholly new
+sight, and one that surpasses the reason, that of a woman purer
+than the heavens entering heaven with her body. As she was born
+without corruption, so after death her flesh is restored to
+life."</p>
+<p>In one of his sermons at the same feast, S. Germanus of
+Constantinople (d. 733), speaks thus:--"It was impossible that the
+tomb should hold the body which had been the living temple of the
+Son of God. How should your flesh be reduced to dust and ashes who,
+by the Son born of you, have delivered the human race from the
+corruption of death?"</p>
+<p>Preaching on the same festival, S. John Damascene (d. 760)
+said:--"Your flesh has known no corruption. Your immaculate body,
+which knew no stain, was not left in the tomb. You remained virgin
+in your child-bearing; and in your death your body was not reduced
+to dust but has been placed in a better and celestial state."</p>
+<p>There are one or two practical consequences of this doctrine
+concerning which, perhaps, it may be well to say a few words. The
+first is as the result of such devotions to our Lady as are implied
+in, or have in fact followed, a belief in her assumption. It is
+objected to them that even granting the truth of the fact of the
+assumption, still the stress laid on the fact and the devotions to
+our Lady which are held to be appropriate to it, are unhealthy in
+their nature, and do, in fact, tend to obscure the worship of our
+Lord: that where devotions to our Lady are fostered, there devotion
+to our Lord declines. That therefore instead of trying to advance
+the cultus of our Lady, we should do much better to hold to the
+sanity and reserve which has characterised the Anglican Church
+since the Reformation.</p>
+<p>These and the like arguments seem to me to hang in the air and
+to be quite divorced from facts. They imply a state of things which
+does not exist. The assertion that where devotion to our Lady
+prevails devotion to our Lord declines is as far as possible from
+being true. Where to-day is the Deity of our Lord defended most
+ardently and devotion to Him most wide spread? Is it in Churches
+where devotion to our Lady is suppressed? On the contrary, do you
+not know with absolute certainty, that in any church where you find
+devotion to our Lady encouraged, there will you find the Deity of
+our Lord maintained? Has the Anglican "sanity and reserve" in
+regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary saved the Anglican Church from
+the inroads of unitarianism and rationalism? Is it not precisely in
+those circles where the very virginity of our Lady is denied that
+the divinity of our Lord is denied also? No, devotion to Mary is
+far indeed from detracting from the honour due to Mary's Son.</p>
+<p>And we cannot insist too much or too often that the doctrines of
+the Christian Church form a closely woven system such that none,
+even the seemingly least important, can be denied without injuring
+the whole. No article of Christian belief expresses an independent
+truth, but always a truth depending upon other truths, and in its
+turn lending others its support. To deny any truth that the mind of
+the Church has expressed is equivalent to the removal of an organ
+from a living body.</p>
+<p>And to-day we feel more than ever the need of the doctrine of
+the assumption. One of the bitterest attacks on the Christian Faith
+which is being made to-day, emanating principally from within the
+Christian community, and even from within the Christian ministry,
+is that which is being made on the truth of the resurrection of the
+body, whether the resurrection of our Lord, or our own
+resurrection. In place of the Christian doctrine believed and
+preached from the beginning, we are asked to lapse back into
+heathenism and a doctrine of immortality. Not many seem to realise
+the vastness of the difference that is made in our outlook to the
+future by a belief in the resurrection of the body as distinguished
+from immortality. But the character of the religions resulting from
+these two contrary beliefs is absolutely different. It needs only
+to study them as they actually exist to be convinced of this
+fact.</p>
+<p>And it is precisely the doctrine of the assumption of our Lady
+which contributes strong support to the Christian doctrine of the
+resurrection of the body. It teaches us that in her case the vision
+and hope of mankind at large has been anticipated and accomplished.
+The resurrection of our Lord is found, in fact, to extend (if one
+may so express it) to the members of His mystical body; and the
+promise which is fulfilled in Blessed Mary, is that hope of a
+joyful resurrection which is thus confirmed to us all. In its
+stress upon the assumption the mind of the Christian Church has not
+been led astray, has not been betrayed into fostering
+superstitions, but has been led by the Spirit of Christ which He
+promised it to the development of a truth not only revealing the
+present place of His glorious Mother in the Kingdom of her Son, but
+encouraging and heartening us in our following of the heavenly
+way.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Whoe is shee that assends so high<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Next the heavenlye Kinge,<br>
+Round about whome angells flie<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;And her prayses singe?<br>
+<br>
+Who is shee that adorned with light,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Makes the sunne her robe,<br>
+At whose feete the queene of night<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Layes her changing globe?<br>
+<br>
+To that crowne direct thine eye,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Which her heade attyres;<br>
+There thou mayst her name discrie<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Wrytt in starry fires.<br>
+<br>
+This is shee, in whose pure wombe<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Heaven's Prince remained;<br>
+Therefore, in noe earthly tombe<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Cann shee be contayned.<br>
+<br>
+Heaven shee was, which held that fire<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Whence the world tooke light,<br>
+And to heaven doth now aspire,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Fflames with fflames to unite.<br>
+<br>
+Shee that did so clearly shyne<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;When our day begunne,<br>
+See, howe bright her beames decline<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Nowe shee sytts with the sunne.<br>
+<br>
+Sir John Beaumont, 1582-1628.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+<h3>THE CORONATION</h3>
+<center>And there appeared a great wonder in heaven;<br>
+a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under<br>
+her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.<br>
+<br>
+Rev. XII, I.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>To-day the Angel Gabriel brought the palm and the crown
+to the triumphant Virgin. To-day he introduced to the Lord of all,
+her, who was the Temple of the Most High, and the dwelling of the
+Holy Spirit.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">FOR THE ASSUMPTION. ARMENIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he heaven which S. John the Evangelist shows us is the
+continuation of the earthly Church. As we read his pages we feel
+that entrance there would be a real home-coming for the earnest
+Christian. We are familiar enough with presentations of heaven
+which seem to us to be so detached from Christian reality as to
+lack any human appeal. We think of philosophic presentations of the
+future with entire indifference. It is possible, we say, that they
+may be true; but they are utterly uninteresting. It is not so in
+the visions of S. John. Here we have a heaven which is humanly
+interesting because it is continous with the present life, and its
+interests are the interests that it has been the object of our
+religion to foster. The qualities of character which the Christian
+religion has urged upon our attention are presented as finding
+their clear field of development in the world to come. There, too,
+are unveiled the objects of our adoration, the ever-blessed Three
+who yet are but one. Love which has striven for development under
+the conditions and limitations of our earthly life, which has tried
+to see God and has gone out to seek Him in the dimness of
+revelation, now sees and is satisfied. Whom now we see in a mirror,
+enigmatically, we shall then see face to face.</p>
+<p>And it is a heaven thronged with saints, with men and women who
+have gone through the same experiences as those to which we are
+subjected, and have come forth purified and triumphant. We
+sometimes in discouragement think of life as continuous struggle.
+It is perhaps natural and inevitable that we should thus
+concentrate attention upon the present, but if we lift our eyes so
+as to clear them from the mists of the present we see that it is
+far from a hopeless struggle, but rather the necessary discipline
+from which we emerge triumphant. Those saints whom we see rejoicing
+about the throne of God, those who go out to follow the Lamb
+whithersoever He goeth, passed through the struggle of persecution
+to their triumphant attainment of the Vision. It is our eternal
+temptation to expect to triumph here; but it is only in a very
+limited sense that this can be true: our triumph is indeed here,
+but the enjoyment of it and all that is implied in it is elsewhere.
+Here even our most complete achievement is conditioned by the
+limitations of earth: there the limitations are done away and life
+expands in perfectness.</p>
+<p>So we look eagerly through the door that is opened in heaven as
+those who are looking into their future home. That is what we all
+are striving for--presumably. We are consciously selecting out of
+life precisely those elements, are centering on those interests,
+which have eternal significance and are imperishable values. As we
+travel along the Pilgrim Way it is with hearts uplifted and
+stimulated by the Vision of the end. We advance as seeing Him Who
+is invisible. We live by hope, knowing that we shall attain no
+enduring satisfaction until we pass through the gates into the
+City, and mingle with the throng of worshippers who sing the song
+of Moses and of the Lamb. Therefore our life is always
+forward-looking and optimistic: because we are sure of the end, we
+wait for it with patience and endurance, thankful for all the
+experience of the Way. As the years flow by we do not look back on
+them with regret as the unrenewable experiences of a vanished
+youth, but we think of them as the bearers of experiences by which
+we have profited, and of goods which we have safely garnered,
+waiting the time when their stored values can be fully
+realised.</p>
+<p>Over all the saints whom the Church has seen rejoicing in the
+heavenly life, rises the form of Mary, Mother of God. S. John's
+vision of the "great sign in heaven" in its primary meaning has, no
+doubt, reference to the Church itself; but the form of its
+symbolism would be impossible if there were not a secondary
+reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is the thought of her and
+of her office as Mother of the Redeemer that has determined the
+form of the vision. The details are too clear to permit of doubt,
+and such has been the constant mind of Catholic interpreters.</p>
+<p>And how else than as Queen of the heavenly host should we expect
+her to be represented? What does the Church teaching as to sanctity
+imply?</p>
+<p>It implies the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision. The normal
+Christian life begins in the sacramental act by which the
+regenerate child is made one with God, being made a partaker of the
+divine nature, and develops through sacramental experience and
+constant response to the will of God to that spiritual capacity
+which is the medium of the Beatific Vision and which we call
+sanctity or purity. "The pure in heart shall see God."</p>
+<p>But the teaching of the Church also implies that there is a
+marvellous diversity in the sanctity of the members of the Body of
+Christ. Each saint retains his personal characteristics, and his
+sanctity is not the refashioning of his character in a common mould
+but the perfecting of his character on its own lines. We sometimes
+hear it said that the Christian conception of heaven is monotonous,
+but that is very far from being the fact. It is only those
+conceptions of heaven which have excluded the communion of saints,
+and have thought of heaven as the solitary communion of the soul
+with God; which have in other words, excluded the notion of human
+society from heaven, which have appeared monotonous. As we read any
+series of the lives of the saints, and realise that it is these men
+and women and multitudes of others like them, that make up the
+society of heaven, we get rid of any other notion than that of
+endless diversity. And thus studying individual saints we come to
+understand that not only is the sanctity of them diverse in
+experience but different in degree. All men have not the same
+capacity for sanctity, we infer; all cannot develop to the same
+level of attainment. We may perhaps say that while all partake of
+God, all do not reflect God in the same way or in the same
+degree.</p>
+<p>But if there be a hierachy of saints it is impossible that we
+should think of any other at its head than Blessed Mary. Whatsoever
+diversity there may be in the attainments of the saints, there is
+one saint who is pre-eminent in all things, who,--because in her
+case there has never been any moment in which she was separate from
+God, when the bond of union was so much as strained,--is the
+completest embodiment of the grace of God. That is, I think,
+essentially what is meant by the Coronation of our Lady,--that her
+supremacy in sanctity makes her the head of the heirarchy of
+saints, that in her the possibilities of the life of union have
+been developed to the highest degree through her unstained purity
+and unfailing response to the divine will.</p>
+<p>It is of the last importance, if the Catholic conceptions are to
+be influential in our lives, that we should gain such a hold on the
+life of heaven, the life that the saints, with Saint Mary at their
+head, are leading to-day, as shall make it a present reality to us,
+not a picture in some sort of dreamland. Our lives are shaped by
+their ideals; and although we may never attain to our ideals here,
+yet we shall never attain them anywhere unless we shape them here.
+Heaven must be grasped as the issue of a certain sort of life, as
+the necessary consequence of the application of Christian
+principles to daily living. It is wholly bad to conceive it as a
+vague future into which we shall be ushered at death, if only we
+are "good"; it must be understood as a state we win to by the use
+of the means placed at our disposal for the purpose. Those attain
+to heaven in the future who are interested in heaven in the
+present.</p>
+<p>And a study of the means is wholly possible for us because we
+have at hand in great detail the lives of those whom the Church, by
+raising them to her altars, has guaranteed to us as having achieved
+sanctity and been admitted to the Beatific Vision. They achieved
+sanctity here--that is, in the past. They achieved it under an
+infinite variety of circumstanies,--that is the encouragement. They
+now enjoy the fruits of it in the world of heaven,--that is the
+promise.</p>
+<p>And nowhere can we better turn for the purpose of our study than
+to the life of Blessed Mary. There is the consummate flower of
+sainthood; and therefore it it best there that we can study its
+meaning. And for two principal reasons can we best study it there.
+In the first place because of its completeness: nowhere else are
+all the elements of sanctity so well developed. And in the second
+place because of the riches of the material for understanding
+Blessed Mary that is placed at our disposal by the labour of many
+generations of saints and doctors. All that devout meditation can
+do to understand the sanctity of Blessed Mary has been done.</p>
+<p>Our limit is necessarily reduced, our selection partial and our
+accomplishment fragmentary. We cannot however miss our way if we
+follow in the steps of Holy Revelation in making love the central
+quality. S. Mary's greatness is ultimately the greatness of her
+love. It began as a love of the will of God. She appears as utterly
+selfless, as having devoted herself to the will of God as He shall
+manifest that will. And therefore when the time comes she makes the
+great sacrifice that is asked of her without hesitation and without
+effort: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according
+to thy word." And all her life henceforth is loving response to
+what is unfolded as the content of the accepted revelation. That is
+a noteworthy thing that I fancy is often missed. It is not uncommon
+for one to accept a vocation as a whole, and then subsequently, as
+it unfolds, shrink from this or that detail of it. But in the case
+of S. Mary the acceptance of the vocation meant the acceptance of
+<i>God</i>, and there was no holding back from the result of
+that.</p>
+<p>That must be our guide in the pursuit of the heavenly life: we
+must understand that we are not called to accept this or that
+belief or practice, but are called to accept God--God speaking to
+us through the revelation He has entrusted to His Catholic Church.
+We do not, when we make our act of acceptance, know all or very
+much of what God is going to mean; but whatever God turns out to
+mean in experience, there can be no holding back. The note of a
+true acceptance of vocation is precisely this limitless surrender,
+a surrender without reservation. S. Mary could by no means
+understand what was to be asked of her: she only knew it was God
+Who asked it. She could not foresee the years of the ministry when
+her Son would not have where to lay His head, followed by the
+anxiety of Holy Week and the watch by the Cross on Good Friday; but
+as these things came she could understand them as involved in her
+vocation, in her acceptance of God.</p>
+<p>And cannot we get the same attitude toward life? In the
+acceptance of the Christian Religion what we have accepted is God.
+We have acknowledged the supremacy of a will outside ourselves. We
+say, "we are not our own, we are bought with a price," the price of
+the Precious Blood. But if our acceptance is a reality and not a
+theory it will turn out to involve much more than we imagined at
+the first. The frequent and pathetic failures of those who have
+made profession of Christianity is largely accounted for by
+this,--that the demands of the Christian Religion on life turn out
+to be more searching and far-reaching than was supposed would be
+the case. Religion turns out to be not one interest to be adjusted
+to the other interests of life, but to be a demand that all life
+and action shall be controlled by supernatural motive. Those who
+would willingly give a part, find it impossible to surrender the
+whole. The world is full of Young Rulers who are willing "to
+contribute liberally to the support of religion," but shrink from
+the demand that they "sell all." "I seek not yours, but you," S.
+Paul writes to the Corinthians; and that is also the seeking of
+God--"Not yours but you." And because the limit of our willingness
+is reached in contribution and does not extend to sacrifice, we
+fail.</p>
+<p>But Blessed Mary did not fail because there was no limit to her
+willingness to sacrifice. Her will to sacrifice had the same
+limitless quality as her love; and because of the limitless quality
+of her self-giving her growth in the life of union was unlimited,
+or limited only by the limitations of creaturehood. When therefore
+we think of her to-day as Queen of Saints we are not thinking of an
+arbitrarily conferred position; we are thinking of a position which
+comes to her because she is what she is. She through the unstinting
+sacrifice of her love came into more intimate relations with God
+than is possible for any other, and through that relation came to
+know more of the mind of God than any other. The power of her
+intercession is the power of her understanding, of her sympathy
+with the thoughts of God. When we come to her with our request for
+her intercession we feel that we are sure of her sympathy and her
+understanding. Her experience of human life, we think, was not very
+wide: can she whose life was passed under such narrow conditions
+understand the complex needs of the modern man or woman? It is true
+that her actual experience of human life was not very wide; but her
+experience of God is very wide indeed, and she is able to
+understand our experience better than we can understand it
+ourselves because of her understanding of God's mind and will. It
+is seeing life through God's eyes that reveals the truth about
+it.</p>
+<p>Hence the blunder and the tragedy of those who seek to know life
+by experience, when they mean experience gained by participation in
+life's evil as well as in its good. They succeed in soiling life
+rather than in understanding it; for participation in evil
+effectually prevents our understandings of good. It is on the face
+of things that the farther a man goes into sin, the less is
+righteousness intelligible to him. Our Lord's rule "He that doeth
+the will shall know of the doctrine" is not an arbitrary maxim, but
+embodies the deepest psychological truth. There is but one path to
+full understanding, and that is the path of sympathy. And therefore
+are we sure of our Lady's understanding and come to her
+unhesitatingly for the help of her intercession. She understands
+our case because she sees it revealed in the mind of her Son.</p>
+<p>It cannot be questioned that much of the weakness of religion
+to-day is due to the fact that Christian ideals make but faint
+appeal. By many they are frankly repudiated as impossible of
+attainment in a world such as this, and as weakening to human
+character so far as they are attained. Christians, of course, are
+unable to take this point of view, and, therefore, they treat the
+ideals with respect, but continue to govern their lives by motives
+which are not harmonious with them. It is tacitly assumed on all
+sides that a consistent pursuit of Christians ideals will assure
+failure in social or business life. This, of course, is tantamount
+to a confession that social and business life are unchristian, and
+raises the same sort of grave questions as to the duty of a
+Christian as were raised in the early days of the Church under the
+heathen empire. With that, however, we may not concern ourselves
+now. We are merely concerned to note and to emphasise the fact
+that, whatever may be true of society or business, our religion is
+lamentably ineffective because of its failure to emphasise the
+ideals of sanctity and to present those ideals as the ideals of
+<i>all</i> Christian life, not as the ideals of a select few. While
+religious teachers asquiesce in the present set of compromises as
+an adequate expression of Christian character, we may expect a
+decline in the Church as a spiritual force, whatever may be true of
+it as a social force.</p>
+<p>If Christian ideals are to resume their appeal to the membership
+of the Church as a whole it is requisite that they be studied by
+the clergy and intelligently presented. But little is to be hoped
+in this direction so long as our theological training ignores
+religion and concentrates its attention on something that it takes
+for scholarship. The raw material that is sent by our parishes to
+the seminaries to be educated for Holy Orders is commonly turned
+out of the seminary with less religion that it entered. The outlook
+for the presentation of Christian ideals is not hopeful. We seem
+destined to drift on indefinitely in our habitual compromises.</p>
+<p>All the more is it necessary that we should lift our eyes to the
+heavens where humility and meekness, where sacrifice and obdience,
+are, in the person of Blessed Mary, crowned as the most perfect
+expression of sanctity, as the qualities that raise man nearest
+God. And what consoles us in the present depressing circumstances
+of the Church is that we are permitted to look through S. John's
+eyes into the world of heaven, and there see "a great multitude,
+which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and
+peoples, and tongues, before the throne and before the Lamb,
+clothed with white robes, and with palms in their hands." Somehow,
+we feel, under whatever distressing and discouraging circumstances,
+the work of God in the regeneration of souls goes on. No doubt it
+is a work that is largely hidden from our eyes, from those eyes
+which are blinded to the reality of spiritual things. Humility and
+meekness are the qualities of a hidden life; they do not flaunt
+themselves before men's eyes. But in their silence and obscurity
+great souls are growing up, growing to the spiritual status of the
+saints of God. In our estimate of values we shall do well to lay to
+heart the utterances of WISDOM: "Then shall the righteous man stand
+in great boldness before the face of such as have afflicted him,
+and made no account of his labours. When they see it, they shall be
+troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the strangeness
+of his salvation, so far beyond all that they had looked for. And
+they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say among
+themselves, This is he, whom we had sometime in derision, and a
+proverb of reproach: we fools accounted his life madness, and his
+end without honour: how is he numbered among the children of God,
+and his lot is among the saints! Verily we went astray from the way
+of truth, and the light of righteousness shined not unto us, and
+the sun of righteousness rose not upon us."</p>
+<p>When we have attained to the point of view as to life's value
+which is expressed in the ideal of sanctity then we shall know how
+to estimate at their true worth the constant criticisms which are
+directed against those ideals and those who seek them. The saints,
+we are told, were no doubt estimable men and women, but they were
+weak, and for the purpose of the world's work, useless. But is this
+true, to keep to a specific example, of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
+What is there about her life that suggests weakness? And what can
+be the meaning of calling such a life useless to the world? Take
+but one aspect of it. It has for centuries furnished an ideal of
+womanhood. It is contended that the women who have taken Blessed
+Mary for their ideal have shown themselves weak and useless?--that
+those women are stronger in character and of more value to the
+world who have thrown over the ideals of sanctity and built their
+lives upon the social ideals prevalent at present? I no not care to
+attempt any characterisation of the feminine ideal which is
+commended to us at present; it is sufficient to say that it is
+difficult to understand how it can be considered socially valuable;
+still less how it can be considered an advance on the character
+qualities which distinguish the Christian ideal of sanctity.</p>
+<p>In the midst of the present confusion of values it is for us of
+vast significance that we have in this matter the mind of Christ.
+There need be no confusion in our minds. What Christ commended has
+proved to be practical of accomplishment, the evidence of which is
+the great multitude which no man can number who to-day sing about
+the throne of God and of the Lamb. What God approves is evidenced
+by the Coronation of the Blessed Mother over all the multitudes of
+the saints of God. Blessed Mary is the embodied thought of God for
+humanity, the realised ideal of a human life. He that is mighty
+hath magnified her, till she shines resplendent in spiritual
+qualities over all the hosts of the elect.</p>
+<p>But though so highly exalted she is not thereby removed to an
+inaccessible distance. She who is privileged to bear the incredible
+title, MOTHER OF GOD is our Mother as well. Upon the Cross our Lord
+said to us in the person of His beloved Disciple, "Behold thy
+Mother"; and it is a mother's love that we find flowing to us from
+the heart of Mary. Have we been cold to her, and inappreciative of
+her love? Have we felt that we have no need of her in the conduct
+of our lives? If so, what we have been doing is to isolate
+ourselves from the divinely provided fount of human sympathy which
+ever flows from our star-crowned Mother. Is life so rich in sources
+of help and sympathy and love that we can afford to over-pass the
+eagerness of God's saints to help us, the willingness of the very
+Mother of God to intercede? Is not the life that shuts out from
+itself the society of heaven pitifully impoverished?</p>
+<p>Too many of us are like the man who owned the field wherein was
+the buried treasure. Limitless aid is at our disposal, but on
+condition that we want it and will seek it. Let us try to
+understand what it is to have at our disposal the love and sympathy
+of the saints of God,--that they are not remote inhabitants of a
+distant sphere whose present interests have led to forgetfulness of
+what they once were, whose present joy is so intense as to make
+them self-centred, but that their very attainment of perfection
+implies the perfection of their love and the completeness of their
+sympathy. The perfection of God's saints and their attainment of
+the end of their course in the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision,
+has but made them more sensitive of our needs and more eager to
+help.</p>
+<p>The spiritual wisdom and power of the Mother of God is at our
+disposal to-day. To the feebleness of our prayers may be added the
+spiritual wisdom and strength of her intercession. He Whose will it
+is that we should pray for one another, wills too that the prayers
+of His Blessed Mother should be at the disposal of all who call
+upon her. Let us take the fact of the intercession of the Queen of
+Saints seriously as a source of power ever open to us.</p>
+<p>Thou who art God's Mother and also ours, thou who lookst
+constantly into the Face of the Son, thou who art the fullest
+manifestation of the love of the Blessed Trinity, thou Mary, our
+Mother, pray for us now and in the hour of our death.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>All hail, O Virgin crowned with stars<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;and moon under thy feet,<br>
+Obtain us pardon of our sins<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;of Christ, our Saviour sweet;<br>
+For though thou art Mother of any God,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;yet thy humility<br>
+Disdaineth not this simple wretch<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;that flies for help to thee.<br>
+Thou knowest thou art more dear to me<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;than any can express,<br>
+And that I do congratulate<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;With joy thy happiness.<br>
+Thou who art the Queen of Heaven and Earth<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;thy helping hand me lend,<br>
+That I may love and praise my God<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;and have a happy end.<br>
+And though my sins me terrify,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;yet hoping still in thee,<br>
+I find my soul refresh&egrave;d much<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;when to thee I do flee;<br>
+For thou most willingly to God<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;petitions dost present,<br>
+And dost obtain much grace for us<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;in this our banishment.<br>
+The honour and the glorious praise<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;by all be given to thee,<br>
+Which Jesus thy beloved Son,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;ordained eternally;<br>
+For thee whom he exalts in heaven<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;above the angels all,<br>
+And whom we find a Patroness<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;when unto thee we call.<br>
+O Mater Dei, memento mei. Amen.<br>
+<br>
+Dame Gertrude More, O.S.B.<br>
+Ob. 1633.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12624 ***</div>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12624 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12624)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Our Lady Saint Mary, by J. G. H. Barry
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Our Lady Saint Mary
+
+Author: J. G. H. Barry
+
+Release Date: June 15, 2004  [eBook #12624]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR LADY SAINT MARY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project
+Gutenbereg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+OUR LADY SAINT MARY
+
+BY
+
+J. G. H. BARRY, D.D.
+
+1922
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+     Would that it might happen to me that I should be called a
+     fool by the unbelieving, in that I have believed such
+     things as these.
+
+     --Origen.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE MEMBERS
+
+OF THE
+
+LEAGUE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN
+
+THIS VOLUME IS HOPEFULLY
+
+DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The two papers in Part I have been published in the American Church
+Magazine. Of Part II Chapter 1 has been published separately; Chapters
+2, 4, 7, 9 and 12 have been published in the Holy Cross Magazine. The
+rest of the volume is here published for the first time.
+
+I would emphasise the fact that the contents of Part II is a series of
+sermons which were prepared as such, and were preached in the Church of
+S. Mary the Virgin, New York City, for the most part in the Winter of
+1921-22. In preparing them for publication in this volume no attempt has
+been made to alter their sermon character. It is not a theological
+treatise on the Blessed Virgin that I have attempted, but a devotional
+presentation of her life.
+
+I have added to the text as originally prepared certain prayers and
+poems. The object of the selection of the prayers, almost exclusively
+from the Liturgies of the Catholic Church, is to illustrate the
+prevalence of the address of devotion to our Lady throughout
+Christendom. The poems are selected with much the same thought, and have
+been mostly gathered from mediaeval sources, and so far as possible,
+from British. I have no special knowledge of devotional poetry, but
+have selected such poems as I have from time to time copied into my note
+books. This fact has made it impossible for me to give credit for them
+to the extent that I should have liked. I trust that any one who is
+entitled to credit will accept this apology.
+
+Much of the difficulty felt by Anglicans at expressions commonly found
+in prayers and hymns addressed to our Lady is due to prevalent
+unfamiliarity with the devotional language of the Catholic Church
+throughout the ages. Those whose background of thought is the theology
+of the Catholic Church, not in any one period, but in the whole extent
+of its life, will have no difficulty in such language because the
+limitations which are implied in it will be clear to them. To others, I
+can only say that it is fair to assume that the great saints of the
+Church of God in all times and in all places did not habitually use
+language which was idolatrous, and our limitations are much more likely
+to be at fault than their meaning. It is not true in any degree that the
+teaching of Catholics as to the place of the Virgin intrudes on the
+prerogative of our Lord. It is, as matter of fact Catholics, and not
+those who oppose the Catholic Religion who are upholding that
+prerogative. This has been excellently expressed by a modern French
+theologian. "We are established in the friendship of God, in the divine
+adoption, in the heavenly inheritance, solely in virtue of the covenent
+by which our souls are bound to the Son of God, and by which the goods,
+the merits, and the rights of the Son of God are communicated to our
+souls, as in the natural order, the property of the husband becomes the
+property of the wife. Surely, one can say nothing more than we say here,
+and assuredly the sects opposed to the Church have never said more:
+indeed, they are far to-day from saying so much to maintain intact this
+truth, that Jesus Christ is our sole Redeemer, and to give that truth
+the entire extent that belongs to it."
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART I.
+
+CHAPTER I. OF LOYALTY. II. THE MEANING OF WORSHIP.
+
+PART II.
+
+I. MARY OF NAZARETH. II. THE ANNUNCIATION I. III. THE ANNUNCIATION II.
+IV. THE VISITATION I. V. THE VISITATION II. VI. S. JOSEPH. VII. THE
+NATIVITY. VIII. THE MAGI. IX. THE PRESENTATION. X. EGYPT. XI. NAZARETH.
+XII. THE TEMPLE. XIII. CANA I. XIV. CANA II. XV. WHO IS MY MOTHER? XVI.
+HOLY WEEK I. XVII. HOLY WEEK II. XVIII. THE CRUCIFIXION. XIX. THE
+DESCENT AND BURIAL. XX. THE RESURRECTION. XXI. THE FORTY DAYS. XXII. THE
+ASCENSION. XXIII. THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. XXIV. THE HOME OF S.
+JOHN. XXV. THE ASSUMPTION. XXVI. THE CORONATION.
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+OF LOYALTY
+
+O God, who causes us to rejoice in recalling the joys of the
+conception, the nativity, the annunciation, the visitation, the
+purification, and the assumption of the blessed and glorious virgin
+Mary; grant to us so worthily to devote ourselves to her praise and
+service, that we may be conscious of her presence and assistance in all
+our necessities and straits, and especially in the hour of death, and
+that after death we may be found worthy, through her and in her, to
+rejoice in heaven with thee. Through &c.
+
+SARUM MISSAL.
+
+The dream of the Middle Ages was of one Christian society of which the
+Church should be the embodiment of the spiritual, and the State of the
+temporal interests. As there is one humanity united to God in Incarnate
+God, all its interests should be capable of unification in institutions
+which should be based on that which is essential in humanity, and not on
+that which is accidental: men should be united because they are human
+and Christian, and not divided because of diversity of blood or color or
+language. The dream proved impossible of realization, and the struggle
+for human unity went to pieces on the rocks of the rapidly developing
+nationalism of the later Middle Ages.
+
+The Reformation was the triumph of nationalism and the defeat of
+Catholic idealism. It resulted in a shattered Christendom in which the
+interests of local and homogeneous groups became supreme over the purely
+human interests. In state and Church alike patriotism has tended more
+and more to become dominant over the interests that are supralocal and
+universal. The last few years have seen an intensification of localism.
+We have seen bitter scorn heaped on the few who have labored for
+internationalism in thought and feeling. We have seen the attempt of
+labor at internationalism utterly break down under the pressure of
+patriotic motive. We are finding that the same concentration on
+immediate and local interests is an insuperable bar to the realization
+of an ideal of internationalism which would effectively deal with
+questions arising between nations and put an end to war. The Church
+failed to establish a spiritual internationalism; the indications are
+that it will be long before humanitarian idealists will be able to
+effect a union among nations still infected with patriotic motive, such
+as shall bring about a subordination of local and immediate interests to
+the interests of humanity as such. That the general interests are also
+in the end the local interests is still far from the vision of
+the patriot.
+
+What the growth of nationalities with its consequent rise of
+international jealousies and hostilities has effected in civil society,
+has been brought about in matters spiritual by the divisions of
+Christendom. The various bodies into which Christendom has been split up
+are infected with the same sort of localism as infects the state. They
+dwell with pride upon their own peculiarities, and treat with suspicion
+if not with contempt the peculiarities of other bodies. The effort to
+induce the members of any body of Christians to appreciate what belongs
+to others, or to try to construe Christianity in terms of a true
+Catholicity, is almost hopeless. All attempts at the restoration of the
+visible unity of the Church have been wrecked, and seem destined for
+long to be wrecked, on the rocks of local pride and local interests. The
+motives which in secular affairs lead a man to put, not only his body
+and his goods, as he ought, at the disposal of his country; but also
+induce him to surrender his mind to the prevailing party and shout, "My
+country, right or wrong," in matters ecclesiastical lead him to cry, "My
+Church, right or wrong." It is only by transcending this localism that
+we can hope for progress in Church or State--can hope to conquer the
+wars and fightings among our members that make peace impossible.
+
+This infection of localism is not peculiar to any body of Christians.
+The Oriental Churches have been largely state-bound for centuries, and,
+in addition, have been mentally immobile. The Roman Church with its
+claims to exclusive ownership of the Christian Religion has lost the
+vision it once had and subordinated the Catholic interests of the Church
+to the local interests of the Papacy. The fragments of Protestantism are
+too small any longer to claim the universalism claimed by the East and
+West, and perforce acknowledge their partial character; but it is only
+to indulge in a more acute patriotism, and assertion of rights of
+division, and the supremacy of the local over the general. The Churches
+of the Anglican Rite are less bound, perhaps, than others. They are
+restless under the limitations of localism and are haunted by a vision
+of an unrealized Catholicity; but they are torn by internal divisions
+and find their attempts at movement in any direction thwarted by the
+pull of opposing parties.
+
+One result of the mental attitude generated by the conditions indicated
+above is that any attempt to deal with subjects other than those which
+are authorized because they are customary, or tolerated because they
+are familiar, is liable to be greeted with cries of reproach and
+accusations of disloyalty. Such and such teachings we are told, without
+much effort at proof, are contrary to the teachings of the Anglican
+Church, or are not in harmony with that teaching, or are illegitimate
+attempts to bring in doctrines or practices which were definitely
+rejected by our fathers at the Reformation. Those who are implicated in
+such attempts are told that they are disturbers of the peace of the
+Church and are invited to go elsewhere.
+
+As one who is not guiltless of such attempts, and as one who is becoming
+accustomed to be charged with novelty in teaching, and disloyalty in
+practice to that which is undoubtedly and historically Anglican, I have
+been compelled to ask myself, "What is loyalty to the Anglican Church?
+Is there, in fact, some peculiar and limited form of Christianity to
+which I owe allegiance?" I had got accustomed to think of myself as a
+Catholic Christian whose lot was cast in a certain province of the
+Catholic Church which was administratively separated from other parts of
+that Church. This I felt--this separation--to be unfortunate; but I was
+not responsible for it, and would be glad to do anything that I could to
+end it. I had not thought that this administrative separation from other
+provinces of the Catholic Church meant that I was pledged to a different
+religion; I had not thought of there being an Anglican Religion. I have
+all my life, in intention and as far as I know, accepted the whole
+Catholic Faith of which it is said in a Creed accepted by the Anglican
+Church that "except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved." I do
+not intend to believe any other Faith than that, and I intend to believe
+all of that; and I have not thought of myself as other than a loyal
+Anglican in so doing.
+
+But criticism has led me to go back over the whole question and ask
+whether there is any indication anywhere in the approved documents of
+the Anglican Communion of an intention at all to depart from the Faith
+of Christendom as it was held by the whole Catholic Church, East and
+West, at the time when an administrative separation from Rome was
+effected. Was a new faith at any time introduced? Has there at any time
+been any official action of the Anglican Church to limit my acceptance
+of the historic Faith? That many Anglican writers have denied many
+articles of the Catholic Faith I of course knew to be true. That some
+Anglican writer could be found who had denied every article of the
+Catholic Faith I thought quite possible. But I was not interested in the
+beliefs or practices of individuals. I am not at all interested in what
+opinions may or may not have been held by Cranmer at various stages of
+his career, or what opinions may be unearthed from the writings of Bale
+by experts in immoral literature; I am interested solely in the official
+utterances of the Anglican Communion.
+
+In following out this line of investigation I have spent many weeks in
+the reading of many dreary documents: but fortunately documents are not
+important in proportion to the element of excitement they contain. I
+have read the documents contained in the collection of Gee and Hardy
+entitled "Documents Illustrative of English Church History." I have read
+the "Formularies of Faith Put Forth by Authority during the Reign of
+Henry VIII." I have read Cardwell's "Synodalia." And I have also read
+"Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be read in Churches at the
+time of Queen Elizabeth of Famous Memory." I doubt whether any other
+extant human being has read them.
+
+And the upshot of the whole matter is that in none of these documents
+have I found any expressed intention to depart from the Faith of the
+Catholic Church of the past as that Faith had been set forth by
+authority. No doubt in the Homilies there are things said which cannot
+be reconciled with the Faith of Catholic Christendom. But the Homilies
+are of no binding authority, and I have included them in my
+investigation only because I wanted their point of view. That is
+harmonious with the rest of the authoritative documents--the intention
+is to hold the Faith: unfortunately the knowledge of some of the writers
+was not as pure as their intention.
+
+The point that I am concerned with is this: there is no intention
+anywhere shown in the authoritative documents of the Anglican Church to
+effect a change in religion, or to break with the religion which had
+been from the beginning taught and practised in England. The Reformation
+did not mean the introduction of a new religion, but was simply a
+declaration of governmental independence. I will quote somewhat at
+length from the documents for the purpose of showing that there is no
+indication of an intention to set up a new Church.
+
+One or two quotations from pre-reformation documents will make clear the
+customary phraseology in England during the Middle Ages. King John's
+Ecclesiastical Charter of 1214 uses the terms "Church of England" and
+"English Church." The Magna Charta of 1215 grants that the "Church of
+England shall be free and have her rights intact, and her liberties
+uninjured." The Articuli Cleri of 1316 speak of the "English Church."
+The Second Statute of Provisors of 1390 uses the title "The Holy Church
+of England." "The English Church" is the form used in the Act "De
+Hæretico Comburendo" of 1401, as it is also in "the Remonstrance against
+the Legatine Powers of Cardinal Beaufort" of 1428[1].
+
+[Footnote 1: Documents in Gee & Hardy.]
+
+These quotations will suffice to show the customary way of speaking of
+the Church in England. If this customary way of speaking went on during
+and after the Reformation the inference is that there had no change
+taken place in the way of men's thinking about the Church; that they
+were unconscious of having created a new or a different Church. We know
+that the Protestant bodies on the Continent and the later Protestant
+bodies in England did change their way of thinking about the Church from
+that of their fathers and consequently their way of speaking of it. But
+the formal documents of the Church of England show no change. "The
+Answer of the Ordinaries" of 1532 appeals as authoritative to the
+"determination of Scripture and Holy Church," and to the determination
+of "Christ's Catholic Church." The "Conditional Restraint of Annates" of
+1532 protests that the English "as well spiritual as temporal, be as
+obedient, devout, catholic, and humble children of God and Holy Church,
+as any people be within any realm christened." In the Act for "The
+Restraint of Appeals" of 1533, which is the act embodying the legal
+principle of the English Reformation, it is the "English Church" which
+acts. The statement in the "Act Forbidding Papal Dispensations and the
+Payment of Peter's Pence" of 1534 is entirely explicit as to the
+intention of the English authorities. It declares that nothing in this
+Act "shall be hereafter interpreted or expounded that your grace, your
+nobles and subjects intend, by the same, to decline or vary from the
+congregation of Christ's Church in any things concerning the very
+articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom[2]."
+
+[Footnote 2: Gee & Hardy.]
+
+These documents date from the reign of Henry VIII. In the same reign
+another series of authoritative documents was put forth which contains
+the same teaching as to the Church. "The Institution of a Christian Man"
+set forth in 1536, in the article on the Church has this: "I believe
+assuredly--that there is and hath been from the beginning of the world,
+and so shall endure and continue forever, one certain number, society,
+communion, or company of the elect and faithful people of God.... And I
+believe assuredly that this congregation ... is, in very deed the city
+of heavenly Jerusalem ... the holy catholic church, the temple or
+habitacle of God, the pure and undefiled espouse of Christ, the very
+mystical body of Christ," "The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any
+Christian Man" of 1543 in treating of the faith declares that "all those
+things which were taught by the apostles, and have been by an whole
+universal consent of the church of Christ ever sith that time taught
+continually, ought to be received, accepted, and kept, as a perfect
+doctrine apostolic." It is further taught in the same document in the
+eighth article, that on "The Holy Catholic Church," that the Church is
+"catholic, that is to say, not limited to any one place or region of the
+world, but is in every place universally through the world where it
+pleaseth God to call people to him in the profession of Christ's name
+and faith, be it in Europe, Africa, or Asia. And all these churches in
+divers countries severally called, although for the knowledge of the one
+from the other among them they have divers additions of names, and for
+their most necessary government, as they be distinct in places, so they
+have distinct ministers and divers heads in earth, governors and rulers,
+yet be all these holy churches but one holy church catholic, invited and
+called by one God the Father to enjoy the benefit of redemption wrought
+by our Lord and Saviour Jesu Christ, and governed by one Holy Spirit,
+which teacheth this foresaid one truth of God's holy word in one faith
+and baptism[3]."
+
+[Footnote 3: Formularies of Faith in the Reign of Henry VIII.]
+
+With the accession of Edward VI. the Protestant element in the
+Reformation gained increased influence. Our question is, Did it succeed
+in imprinting a new theory of the nature and authority of the Church on
+the formal and authoritative utterances of the Church in England? The
+first "Act of Uniformity" of 1549 contains the now familiar appeal to
+Scripture and to the primitive Church, and the Book set forth is called
+"The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and
+other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, after the Use of the Church of
+England." The "Second Act of Uniformity," 1552, uses the same language
+about the Church of England and the primitive Church. Passing on to the
+reign of Elizabeth, in the "Injunctions" of 1559 there is set forth "a
+form of bidding the prayers," which begins: "Ye shall pray for Christ's
+Holy Catholic Church, that is for the whole congregation of Christian
+people dispersed throughout the whole world, and especially for the
+Church of England and Ireland." In the "Act of Supremacy" of the same
+year it is provided that an opinion shall "be ordered, or adjudged to be
+heresy, by the authority of the canonical Scriptures, or by the first
+four general Councils, or any of them, or by any other general Council
+wherein the same was declared heresy by the express and plain words of
+the said canonical Scriptures." This test of doctrine is repeated in
+Canon VI of the Canons of 1571. "Preachers shall ... see to it that
+they teach nothing in the way of a sermon ... save what is agreeable to
+the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic fathers
+and ancient bishops have collected from this self-same doctrine[4]."
+
+[Footnote 4: Documents in Gee & Hardy.]
+
+It is hardly worth while to spend much time on the Homilies. I will
+simply note that they continue the appeal to the primitive Church which
+is asserted to have been holy, godly, pure and uncorrupt; and to the
+"old holy fathers and most ancient learned doctors" which are quoted as
+authoritative against later innovations. They still speak of the Church
+of England as continuous with the past. I do not find that they treat
+the contemporary reformers as of authority or quote them as against the
+traditional teaching of the Church.
+
+We will go on to one more stage, that is, to the Canons of 1604 which
+represent the mind of the Church of England at the time of the accession
+of James I. They declare that "whosoever shall hereafter affirm, That
+the Church of England, by law established under the King's majesty, is
+not a true and an apostolical church, teaching and maintaining the
+doctrine of the apostles; let him be excommunicated." (III) They appeal
+to the "Ancient fathers of the Church, led by the example of the
+apostles." (XXXI) In treating of the use of the sign of the Cross in
+baptism they assert that its use follows the "rules of Scripture and the
+practice of the primitive Church." And further, "This use of the sign of
+the Cross in baptism was held in the primitive Church, as well by the
+Greeks as the Latins, with one consent and great applause." And replying
+to the argument from abuse the canon goes on: "But the abuse of a thing
+doth not take away the lawful use of it. Nay, so far was it from the
+purpose of the Church of England to forsake and reject the Churches of
+Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any such like Churches, in all things
+that they held and practised, that, as the Apology of the Church of
+England confesseth, it doth with reverence retain those ceremonies,
+which do neither endanger the Church of God, nor offend the minds of
+sober men." (XXX)
+
+It appears clear from a study of the passages quoted and of many others
+of kindred nature that the Anglican Church did not start out upon its
+separate career with any intention of becoming a sect; it did not
+complain of the corruption of the existing religion and declare its
+purpose to show to the world what true and pure religion is. It did not
+put forward as the basis of its action the existing corruption of
+doctrine, but the corruption of administration. Its claim was a claim to
+manage its own local affairs, and was put into execution when the
+Convocation of Canterbury voted in the negative on the question
+submitted to it, viz., "Whether the Roman pontiff has any greater
+jurisdiction bestowed on him by God in Holy Scripture in this realm of
+England, than any other foreign bishop?"
+
+The attitude indicated is one that has been characteristic of the
+Anglican Church ever since. It has always been restless in the presence
+of a divided Christendom; the sin of the broken unity has always haunted
+it. It never has taken the smug attitude of sectarianism, a placid
+self-satisfaction with its own perfection. It has felt the constant pull
+of the Catholic ideal and has been inspired by it to make effort after
+effort for the union of Christendom. It has never lost the sense that it
+was in itself not complete but a part of a greater whole. It has never
+seen in the existing shattered state of the Christian Church anything
+but the evidences of sin. Its appeal has constantly been, not to its own
+sufficiency for the determination of all questions, but to the
+Scriptures as interpreted by the undivided Church. If it has at times
+been prone to overstress the authority of some ideal and undefined
+primitive Church, it was because it thought that there and there only
+could the Catholic Church be found speaking in its ideal unity.
+
+This the attitude of the Anglican Church of the past is its attitude
+to-day. The Lambeth Conference of 1920 gave voice to it:
+
+     "The Conference urges on every branch of the Anglican
+     Communion that it should prepare its members for taking their
+     part in the universal fellowship of the re-united Church, by
+     setting before them the loyalty which they owe to the
+     universal Church, and the charity and understanding which are
+     required of the members of so inclusive a society."
+
+Commenting upon this utterance of the Lambeth Conference the three
+bishops who are the joint authors of "Lambeth and Reunion" say:
+
+     The bishops at Lambeth "beg for loyalty to the universal
+     Church. The doctrinal standards of the undivided Church must
+     not be ignored. Nor must modern developments, consistent with
+     the past, be ruled out merely because they are modern. Men
+     must hold strongly what they have received; but they must
+     forsake the policy of denying one another's positive
+     presentment of truth. That only must be forbidden which the
+     universal fellowship cannot conceivably accept within any one
+     of its groups[5]."
+
+[Footnote 5: Lambeth and Rennion. By the bishops of Peterborough,
+Zanzibar and Hereford.]
+
+The bishops just quoted add: "We rejoice indeed at this new mind of the
+Lambeth Conference." Whether it is a new mind in Lambeth Conferences we
+need not consider; it is certainly no new mind in the Anglican Church,
+but is precisely its characteristic attitude of not claiming perfection
+or finality for itself, but of looking beyond itself to Catholic
+Christendom, and longing for the time when reunion of the churches which
+now make up its "broken unity" will enable it to speak with the same
+voice of authority with which it did in its primitive and
+undivided state.
+
+In attempting to decide what as a priest of the Anglican Communion one
+may or may not teach or practice, one is bound to have regard, not to
+what is asserted by anyone, even by any bishop, to be "disloyal" or
+"unanglican," but to the principles expressed or implied in the
+utterances of the Church itself. From those utterances as I have
+reviewed them, it appears to me that a number of general principles may
+be deduced for the guidance of conduct.
+
+I. The Churches of the Anglican Communion are bound by the entire body
+of Catholic dogma formulated and accepted universally in the
+pre-Reformation Church.
+
+The Anglican documents, to be sure, speak constantly of the "Primitive
+Church," but they do not anywhere define what they mean by that; and
+frequently, by their appeal to the "undivided Church," and to "general
+Councils," they seem to include in their undefined term much more than
+is commonly understood. In any case, the Church has no special authority
+because it is _primitive_: its authority results not from its being
+primitive but from its being _Church_. The only point of the Anglican
+appeal would be the universal acceptance of a given doctrine. Such
+universal acceptance must be taken as proof of its primitiveness, that
+is, of its being contained, explicitly or implicitly, in the original
+deposit of faith. The Anglican Church was content with the summing up of
+this Faith in the Three Creeds, and attempted to formulate no new Greed
+of her own--the XXXIX Articles are not strictly a Creed: they are not
+articles of Faith but of Religion. But the very history of the Creeds
+implies that they are not final, that is, complete, but that they are a
+summing up of the Catholic Religion to date. There are truths which the
+circumstances of the Church in the Conciliar period had not brought into
+prominence which later events compelled the Church to express its mind
+upon. Such a truth is that of the Real Presence of our Lord in the
+Sacrament of the Altar. This truth had attained explicit acceptance
+throughout the Church before the Reformation, sufficiently witnessed by
+the liturgies in use. It is also embodied in the Anglican liturgy. If
+anyone thinks the language of the Anglican Church doubtful on this
+point, the principles enunciated by the Church compel interpretation in
+accord with the mind of the universal Church. There are other truths
+which are binding on us on the same basis of universal consent, but I am
+not seeking to apply the principle in every case but only to
+illustrate it.
+
+II. There is another class of truths or doctrines widely held in
+Christendom, which yet cannot be classed as dogmas of the faith. Such a
+doctrine is that of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin
+Mary. This doctrine has been made of faith in the Roman communion, but
+has not yet ecumenical acceptance, and therefore may be doubted without
+sin by members of the Greek or Anglican Churches. What we need to avoid,
+as the Lambeth Conference has reminded us, is a purely insular and
+provincial attitude in relation to doctrines which have not been
+formally set forth by Anglican authority. The Anglican Church has tried
+its best to impress upon us that there is no such thing as an Anglican
+Religion; there is but one Religion--the Religion of God's Catholic
+Church. What we are to seek to know is not the mind "of the Anglican
+reformers," or the mind "of the Caroline divines," but the mind of the
+Catholic Church. Wherever we shall find that mind expressed, though in
+terms unfamiliar to us, we are bound to treat it with respect. We are to
+seek to know the truth that the truth may make us free--from all pride
+and prejudice, as well as from heresy and blasphemy. And we shall best
+come at this mind in its widest meaning by the study of the writings of
+the saints of all ages and of all parts of the Church. It may fairly be
+inferred that those who have attained great perfection in the Catholic
+life have achieved it by the application of Catholic truth to every
+day living.
+
+III. The members of the Anglican Church have the same freedom as other
+Catholics in the matter of theological speculation. What was done at the
+Reformation was not final in the sense that we are never to believe or
+to teach anything that is not found in Anglican formularies. The fact
+that a certain doctrine like that of the Invocation of Saints was
+omitted from the Anglican formularies is not fatal to its practice. The
+grounds of its omission in practice may or may not have been well
+judged. But the theory of it was never denied, it is indeed contained in
+the Creeds themselves, and change in circumstances may justify its
+revival in practice.
+
+Moreover, the theology of the Christian Church is not a body of static
+doctrine, but is the expression of the ceaseless meditation of the
+saints upon the truths revealed to us by God. To suppose that any age
+whatever has exhausted the meaning of the Revealed Truth would be
+absurd. It is inexhaustible. So long as the mind of the Church is
+pondering it, it brings out from it things old and new. Among ourselves
+it is perhaps at present more desirable that we should bring out the old
+things than seek to find the new. The historic circumstances of the
+Anglican Church have been such as to lead to the practical disuse of
+much that is of great spiritual value in the treasury of the Church. It
+is largely in the attempt to bring into use the riches that have been
+abandoned that some are to-day incurring the charge of disloyalty--a
+charge that they are not careful to answer, if they may be permitted to
+minister to a larger spiritual life in the Church they love.
+
+At the same time the development of doctrine is a real mode of
+enrichment of the theology of the Church. The devout mind pondering
+divine truth will ever penetrate deeper into its meaning. Thus it was
+that in the course of centuries the Church arrived at a complete
+statement of the doctrine of our Lord's person. And what it could
+rightly do in the supreme case, it surely can rightly do in cases of
+lesser moment. We need not be afraid of this movement of thought, for
+the mind of the united Church may be trusted not to sanction any error.
+Our Lord has promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail against
+the Church. We can trust Him to fulfil His promise. He has also promised
+us that the Holy Spirit shall lead us into all the truth. Can He trust
+us not to thwart the work of the Spirit by a provincial attitude as of
+those who already in the utterances of the Anglican formularies claim to
+possess all truth?
+
+IV. There is one other inference to be drawn from what I conceive to be
+the Anglican position, and that is one that relates, not primarily to
+doctrine but to practice. For many years now the Anglican Churches have
+been greatly disturbed by varieties of practice, though it is difficult
+to see why varieties of practice should be in themselves disturbing.
+But without going into that matter, which would carry us far afield, I
+would simply state that the principle already laid down in regard to
+doctrine seems to apply here in the matter of practice: that is, the
+Anglican has the right to use any practice which has not been explicitly
+forbidden by the authorities of the local Church. The Churches of the
+Anglican Communion have never set forth any competent guide for the
+conduct of worship, and by refraining from so doing have left the matter
+in the hands of those who have to conduct services and provide for the
+spiritual needs of those over whom they have been given cure of souls.
+There is nothing more absurd than to assume that nothing rightly can be
+done in these matters except what has been directed by authority; that
+no services can be held but such as have formal authorization; that no
+ceremonies can be introduced but such as the custom of the time since
+the Reformation has made familiar to many.
+
+In such matters authority naturally and necessarily goes along with the
+cure of souls; the priest of the parish must perforce provide for the
+spiritual needs of his parish. If he finds those needs satisfied with
+the rendering of Morning and Evening Prayer--well and good; but those
+who do not find the needs of their parish so satisfied must seek to
+satisfy them by the providing of other spiritual means. And in seeking
+thus to provide for the spiritual growth of souls committed to his care,
+the priest, on the principles of the Anglican formularies, is justified
+and entitled to make use of the means in use throughout Catholic
+Christendom. He is quite justified in calling his people together for a
+prayer meeting, if in his judgment that will be for their spiritual
+good; or if his judgment is different, he is equally justified in
+inviting them to join him in saying the rosary. He may incite to greater
+devotion by a shortened form of Evening Prayer or by popular Vespers. I
+do not think that there is anything in the Christian Religion or in the
+formularies of the Anglican Church that forbids him to have moving
+pictures or special musical services. Nor is there any reason why, if it
+be in his judgment promotive of holiness, he should not provide for his
+parish such services as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. There can
+be no legitimate criticism of a service on the ground of its
+_provenance_.
+
+It is a common reproach against the Anglican Communion that is "does not
+know its own mind." It would be much truer to say that there are many
+members of it who have been at no pains to ascertain whether it have a
+mind or what that mind is: who have been content to confound the mind of
+the Church with the mind of the party to which they are attached by the
+accident of birth or of preference. I do not for a moment contend that
+the party (to use an ugly but necessary word) to which I am attached
+stands, in all things, in perfect alignment with the Anglican
+Formularies. There are circumstances in which it appears to me to be
+necessary to appeal from Anglican action to the mind of that larger
+Body, the whole Church of Christ throughout the world, to which the
+Anglican Church points me as its own final authority. In so doing I do
+not feel that I am disloyal, but that I am actually doing what
+authority tells me to do. These are cases in point. I do not believe
+that a local Church can suppress and permanently disuse sacraments of
+the universal Church. The Anglican Church by its suppression of the
+sacraments of Unction and by its almost universal disuse for centuries
+of the sacrament of Penance, compelled those who would be loyal to the
+Catholic Church to which it appealed to act on their own initiative in
+the revival of the use of those sacraments. I do not believe that the
+local Church has the right or the power to forbid or permanently disuse
+customs which are of universal currency in the Catholic Church. I do not
+believe that it has the right to neglect and fail to enforce the
+Catholic custom of fasting, and especially of fasting before communion.
+I do not believe that any Christian who is informed on these things has
+the right to neglect them on the ground that the Anglican Church has not
+enforced them. On the basis of its own declarations the ecumenical
+overrides the local; and if it be said, "What is a priest, that he
+should undertake to set the practice of his Church right?" the answer is
+that he is a man having cure of souls for whose progress in holiness he
+is responsible before God, and if those who claim authority in such
+matters will not act, he must act, though it be at the risk of his
+immortal soul.
+
+These things seem to be true with the truth of self-evidence. And
+because they seem to be true, I have not hesitated to preach, and now to
+print, the sermons on the life and words of our Lady contained in this
+volume. I am told by many that such teaching is dangerous, but I am not
+told by any of any danger that is intelligible to me. That such
+devotions to our Lady as are here commended trench on the prerogative of
+God, and exalt our Lady above the place of a creature is sufficiently
+answered by the fact that the very act of asking the prayers of Blessed
+Mary is an assertion of her creaturehood--one does not ask the prayers
+of God. And when it is said that devotion to her takes away from
+devotion to her Son, one has only to ask in reply, who as a matter of
+fact have maintained and do maintain unflinchingly the divinity of our
+Lord? Certainly the denials of the divinity of our Lord are found where
+there is also a denial that any honor is due or may rightly be given to
+His Blessed Mother; and where that Mother receives the highest honor,
+there we never for a moment doubt that the full Godhead of Jesus will be
+unflinchingly and unhesitatingly maintained.
+
+     Wherefore in praise, the worthiest that I may,
+     Jesu! of thee, and the white Lily-flower
+     Which did thee bear, and is a Maid for aye,
+     To tell a story I will use my power;
+     Not that I may increase her honour's dower,
+     For she herself is honour, and the root
+     Of goodness, next her Son, our soul's best boot.
+
+     O Mother Maid! O Maid and Mother free!
+     O bush unburnt; burning in Moses' sight!
+     That down didst ravish from the Deity,
+     Through humbleness, the spirit that did alight
+     Upon thy heart, whence, through that glory's might,
+     Conceived was the Father's sapience,
+     Help me to tell it in thy reverence.
+
+     Lady! thy goodness, thy magnificance,
+     Thy virtue, and thy great humility,
+     Surpass all science and all utterance;
+     For sometimes, Lady, ere men pray to thee
+     Thou goest before in thy benignity,
+     The light to us vouchsafing of thy prayer,
+     To be our guide unto thy Son so dear.
+
+     My knowledge is so weak, O blissful Queen!
+     To tell abroad thy mighty worthiness,
+     That I the weight of it may not sustain;
+     But as a child of twelve months old or less,
+     Even so fare I; and therefore, I thee pray,
+     Guide thou my song which I of thee shall say.
+
+     Chaucer. The Prioress' Tale. Version by Wordsworth.
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MEANING OF WORSHIP
+
+O Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all holy thoughts do come; who hast
+taught thy servants to honour thy glorious mother; mercifully grant us
+so to celebrate her on earth with the solemn sacrifice of praise and
+with due devotion, that by her intercession we may be found worthy to
+reign in joy in heaven. Who livest &c.
+
+SARUM MISSAL.
+
+There are thoughts and actions which so enter the daily conduct of our
+lives that we take them for granted and never pause to analyse them. If
+perchance something occurs to make us ask what these thoughts and
+actions truly and deeply mean we are surprised to find that we have, in
+fact, no adequate understanding of them. We have a feeling about them
+and we are quite sure that this feeling is a good and right one. We have
+ends that we are seeking and we are satisfied that the ends are in all
+ways desirable. But suddenly confronted with the question why,
+unexpectedly asked to explain, to justify ourselves, we find ourselves
+dumb. We cannot find adequate exposition for what we nevertheless know
+that we are justified in. It is so with much that we admire; we have
+never tried to justify our admiration, have never thought that it needed
+an explanation; and then, unexpectedly, we find ourselves challenged, we
+find our taste criticised, and in our efforts at self-defence we blunder
+and stumble and hesitate about what we still feel that we are quite
+right in holding fast.
+
+It is common things that we thus take for granted; it is daily
+activities that we thus assume need no explanation. For us who
+habitually gather to the services of the Church there is no more
+taken-for-granted act than worship. Worship is a part of our daily
+experience. At certain times each day we offer to God stated and formal
+acts of worship. Many times a day most likely we pause and for a moment
+lift our thought to our blessed Lord for a brief communion with Him. It
+is a part of our settled experience thus to draw strength from the
+inexhaustible source which at all times is at our disposal. We know how
+the tasks of the day are lightened and our strength to meet them renewed
+by these momentary invasions of the supernatural. There are also special
+times in each week when we meet with other members of the One Body of
+Christ in the offering of the unbloody Sacrifice. We know that in that
+act heaven and earth join, and that not only our brethren who are
+kneeling beside us are uniting with us in the offering of the Sacrifice,
+not only are we one with all those other members of the Body who on this
+same morning are kneeling at the numberless altars of Christendom, but
+that all those who are in Christ are with us partakers of the same
+Sacrifice, and that in its offering we are joined with all the holy
+dead, and by our partaking of Christ are brought close to one another.
+We therefore lovingly take their names upon our lips, and enkindle their
+memory in our hearts; and find that death, which we had thought of as a
+separation, has but broken the barriers to the deepest and most blessed
+communion, and that we are now, as never before, united to those whom we
+find in Christ Jesus our Lord.
+
+And then comes the unexpected challenge: "what does all this mean: these
+repeated and diverse acts that you are accustomed to speak of and to
+think of as acts of worship? What, ultimately, do you mean by worship,
+and can there possibly be found any common feature in these so diverse
+acts which can justify you in regarding them as essentially one? This
+act which is in truth presenting yourself before the majesty of God in
+humble adoration, in the guise of a suppliant child depending upon the
+love of the Father for the supply of the daily needs; or this other act
+which is of such deepest mystery that we approach any attempted
+statement of it with awe, which is in fact the representation of the
+sacrifice of Calvary; and then these invocations by which we ask the
+loving co-operation of our fellow members of Christ that they may
+associate themselves with us in the work of prayer and mutual
+intercession--how can all these acts be brought together under a common
+rubric, how can they all be designated as worship? What in fact is it
+that you mean by worship?"
+
+So are we challenged. So are we thrown back, and in the end thrown back
+most beneficially, to the analysis of our acts. Worship, we tell
+ourselves, is _worth_-ship; it is the attribution of worth or honor to
+whom these are properly due. "Honour to whom honour is due," we hear the
+Apostle saying. Worship is therefore not an absolute value but a varying
+value, the content of any act of which will be determined by the nature
+of the object toward which it is directed. It is greatly like love in
+this respect; its nature is always the same, but its present value is
+determined by the object to which it is directed. We are to love the
+Lord our God, and we are also to love our neighbour; the nature of the
+love is in each case the same; and yet we are not to love our neighbour
+with the limitless self-surrender with which we love God. The love of
+God is the passionate giving of ourselves to Him with all our heart and
+with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength. The
+love of the neighbour is measured and restrained, having in view his
+good that we are seeking, the promotion of his salvation as our fellow
+member in the Body of Christ. In the same way worship will take its
+colour, its significance, its tone, its intensity, not from some
+abstract conception, but from the end it seeks. This is made plain, too,
+when we look at our Bibles and Prayer Books for the actual use of the
+word. There we find much of the worship of God: but we also find a
+limited use of the word. "Then shalt thou have worship in the presence
+of them that sit at meat with thee." (S. Luke, XIV, 10.) And in the
+marriage service of the English Prayer Book we read: "With this ring I
+thee wed, and with my body I thee worship." The same limited content of
+the word is found in the old title of respect--"Your Worship."
+
+But so thoroughly has the word worship become associated with our
+approach to God, that we still, many of us, no doubt, feel the shock of
+the unaccustomed when we hear the worship of the Blessed Virgin or of
+the saints spoken of. It does not help us much to fall back on the Latin
+word, _Cultus_, for we understand that the meaning is the same.
+
+We are helped, I think, if we substitute the parallel word honour for
+worship in the places of its use. We meet in the Church to honour God,
+and we offer the Blessed Sacrifice as the act of supreme honour which is
+due to Him alone; but in connection with the supreme honour offered to
+God we also honour the saints of God by the observance of their
+anniversaries with special services including the Holy Sacrifice. The
+word honour does not sound so ill to ears unaccustomed to a certain type
+of Catholic expression as the word worship: but the meaning is
+untouched.
+
+Let us go on then to the analysis of the notion of worship. In the
+writings of theologians we find an analysis of the notion of worship
+into three degrees. There is, first of all, that supreme degree of
+worship which is called _latria_ and which is the worship due to God
+alone. If we ask what essentially it is that differentiates _latria_
+from all other degrees of worship or honour we find that it is the
+element of sacrifice that it contains. Sacrifice is the supreme act of
+self-surrender to another, of utter self-immolation, and it can have no
+other legitimate object than God Himself. The central notion of
+sacrifice is the surrender of self. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant
+were of value because they were the representatives of the nation and of
+the individuals who offered them; because of the self-identification of
+nation or individual with the thing offered, which must therefore be in
+some sense the offerer's, must, so to say, _contain him_: must be that
+in which he merges himself. So the one Sacrifice of the New Covenant
+gets its essential value in that it is the surrender of the Son to the
+will of the Father. "I am come to do Thy will, O God." Christ's
+sacrifice is self-sacrifice: the voluntary surrender of the whole life
+to the divine purpose.
+
+And when we actually worship God, worship Him with the worship of
+_latria_, our act must be of the same essential nature; it must be an
+act of sacrifice, of self-giving; the offering of ourselves to the will
+of the Father. So it is in our participation in the offering of the
+Blessed Sacrifice. The full meaning of our joining in that act is that
+we are uniting ourselves with our Lord's offering of Himself, and as
+members of His Body share in the sacrifice of the Body which is the
+supreme act of worship. And our other acts of worship lay hold on and
+proceed from this which is the ground of their efficacy. All our
+subordinate acts of worship, so to call them, have their character and
+vitality as Christian acts of the worship of God because of the relation
+of the worshipper to God as a member of the Body of His Son. They are
+offered through the Son and derive their potency from their association
+with Him and His sacrifice. They reach God through the sacrifice of the
+One Mediator.
+
+Worship, then, in this complete sense, is due to God alone; and it is
+separated by a whole heaven from any worship, that is, honour, which can
+be offered to any creature, however exalted. No instructed person would
+for a moment imagine that the prayers which we address to the saints are
+in any degree such worship as is offered to God; but in as much as those
+who are unfamiliar with the forms of the Catholic Religion in its
+devotional expression may easily be led astray, it seems needful to
+stress this fact of the difference between simple petition and such
+acts and prayers as involve the highest degree of worship.
+
+One of the chief sources of confusion in this matter is the failure to
+distinguish between the nature of the act of worship, which is
+determined by the person to whom it is directed, and the mere adjuncts
+of the act. But an act of _latria_ is not constituted such by the fact
+that it is aided in its expression by such circumstances as banners,
+lights, incense and so on. These are quite appropriate to any act of
+honour, and have been customarily so used in relation to human beings.
+There was a certain hesitation in the Church for some time in the matter
+of incense which under the older Covenant had been especially
+appropriated to God, because in the experience of the early Church it
+was demanded, and necessarily refused, as an acknowledgment of the
+divinity of the Emperor. But with the passing of the pagan empire
+incense as the universal symbol of prayer came into use in all manner of
+services wherein intercession was a part.
+
+Such adjuncts therefore are not foreign to those subordinate acts of
+worship or honour which are technically known as _dulia. Dulia_--this
+word means service--is such honour as may be rightly rendered to
+creatures without at all encroaching upon the majesty of God. It is
+_that_ degree of worship that we have in mind when we speak of the
+worship of the saints. That _dulia_ of the saints is expressed when we
+ask for the intercession of this or that saint, and is not essentially
+different from the asking for the prayers of any other human beings. We
+commonly ask for one another's prayers and feel that in doing so we are
+exercising our brotherhood in the Body of Christ in calling into action
+its mutual love and sympathy. We should be beyond measure astonished if
+we were told that such requests for the prayers of our brethren were
+encroachments upon the honour of God and the sin of idolatry! But if in
+this case our surprise is justified, it is difficult to see how the case
+is at all altered by the fact that the fellow members of the Body whose
+prayers we are asking happen to be _dead_, that is, as we believe and
+imply in our request for their intercession, have passed into a new and
+closer relation to our Blessed Lord. Nor, again, does the case seem to
+be at all altered, if the brother whose prayers we ask has been dead a
+long time, and has, by the common consent of Catholic Christendom, been
+received into the number of the saints. The ways in which the human mind
+works under the influence of prejudice are always interesting. There are
+many devout persons who feel that it is a valuable element in their
+religion to have the privilege of following the Kalendar of the Church
+and to keep the saints' days therein indicated by attendance at divine
+service; who yet would be horrified if it were suggested that a prayer
+should be offered to the saint whose day is being observed, and that the
+saint should be made the object of an act of worship. But what
+essentially _is_ the keeping of a saint's day, with a celebration of the
+Holy Communion with special collect, epistle and gospel, but an act of
+worship _(dulia)_ of the saint? The nature of the act would be in no way
+changed if in addition to our accustomed collects there were added one
+which plainly asked for the prayers of the saint in whose honour we are
+keeping the feast.
+
+In the worship of the Church of God a place apart is assigned to the
+honour to be paid to the blessed Mother of our Lord. As the highest of
+all creatures, as highly favoured above all, as she whom God chose to be
+the Mother of His Son, the devout thought of generations of Christians
+has felt that their recognition of her relation to God in the
+Incarnation called for a special degree of honour rightly to express it.
+The thought of the faithful lingers about all that was in any degree
+associated with the coming of God in the flesh: so great was the
+deliverance thereby wrought for man that man's gratitude ever seeks new
+means of expression and ever finds the means inadequate to his love.
+Many of the expressions that are found in devotional writers associated
+with the cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary are an outcome of this
+attitude of mind. To those who are unused to them they seem exaggerated;
+in the vast mass of the devotional writings of Catholic Christendom
+there is no difficulty in finding expressions which _are_ exaggerated;
+but it is well to remember when thinking of this that the exaggeration
+is the exaggeration of love. The tendency of love _is_ to exaggerate the
+forms of its expression. It is, however, we feel on reflection, an error
+to judge by the exaggeration rather than by the love. It is perhaps well
+to ask ourselves whether we are saved from exaggeration by greater
+sanity or by lesser love.
+
+But exaggeration apart, this feeling of the unique position of the
+blessed Mother in relation to the Incarnate Son, as calling forth a
+special honour for her is embodied in the designation of the honour to
+be rendered her as _hyperdulia_--a specially devoted service. It is
+hardly necessary after what has been said to point out that even here in
+the highest honour rendered to any saint there is no passing of the
+infinite gulf which separates Creator from creature, any infringement
+upon the honour of God. No Catholic could dream that blessed Mary would
+be in any wise honoured by the attribution to her of what belongs to her
+Son. These are no doubt commonplaces, but it is better to be commonplace
+than to be misunderstood. The intercession that is asked of the blessed
+Mother is the intercession of one who by God's election is more closely
+associated with God than any other human being is or can be. Her power
+of prayer is felt to proceed from the depth of her sanctity; from, in
+other words, the perfection of her relation to her blessed Son Who is
+the only Mediator and the Saviour of us all.
+
+Let me say in conclusion that this giving of honour to our Lord, and to
+all His saints as united to Him, and the celebration of their days
+according to the Church's year, and the asking of the help of their
+intercession in all the needs of our lives, is not simply a thing to be
+tolerated in those who are inclined to it, is not simply a privilege
+which we are entitled to if we care for it, but is a duty which all
+Christians ought to fulfil because otherwise they are failing to make
+real to them a very important article of the Christian Creed. The
+Communion of Saints, like all other articles of the Creed, needs to be
+put into active use, and will be when we believe it as distinguished
+from assent to it. When we believe that all who live unto God in the
+Body of His dear Son are inspired with active love one toward another,
+we shall ourselves feel the impulse of that love, and be compelled both
+to seek an outlet for it toward all other members of the Body, and also
+will equally feel compelled to seek our own share in the action of that
+love by asking for the prayers of the saints for ourselves and for all
+in whom we are interested. Then will we find in the "worship of the
+saints" one great means whereby we can worship the God of the saints by
+the devout recognition of the greatness of His work in them, May God be
+praised and glorified in all His saints.
+
+     O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,
+       Lowly, and higher than all creatures raised,
+       Term by eternal council fixed upon,
+     Thou art she who didst ennoble man,
+       That even He who had created him
+       To be Himself His creature disdained not.
+     Within thy womb rekindled was the love,
+       By virtue of whose heat this flower thus
+       Is blossoming in the eternal peace.
+     Here thou art unto us a noon-day torch
+       Of charity, and among mortal men
+       Below, thou art a living fount of hope.
+     Lady, thou art so great and so prevailest,
+       That who seeks grace without recourse to thee,
+       Would have his wish fly upward without wings.
+     Thy loving-kindness succors not alone
+       Him who is seeking it, but many times
+       Freely anticipates the very prayer.
+     In thee is mercy, pity is in thee,
+       In thee magnificence, whatever good
+       Is in created being joins in thee.
+
+Dante, Par. XXXIII, 1-21. (Trans. H. Johnson.)
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MARY OF NAZARETH
+
+     Mary, of whom was born Jesus.
+
+     S. Matt. I. 16.
+
+My Maker and Redeemer, Christ the Lord, O Immaculate, coming forth from
+thy womb, having taken my nature upon him, hath delivered Adam from the
+primal curse; wherefore, to thee, Immaculate, the Mother of God and
+Virgin in very sooth, we cry aloud unceasingly the Ave of the Angel,
+"Hail, O Lady, protection and shelter and salvation of our souls!"
+
+BYZANTINE.
+
+The silences of the Holy Scriptures have always provoked speculation as
+to what is left untold. The devout imagination has played about the
+hints we receive and woven them into stories which far outrun any true
+implication of the facts. Thus has much legendary matter gathered about
+the childhood of our Lord, containing the stories, not always very
+edifying according to our taste, which are set down in the Apocryphal
+Gospels. The same eagerness to know more than we are told has produced
+the developed legend of the childhood of our Lady. We can of course
+place no reliance on most of the statements that are there made; perhaps
+the most that we can lay hold of is the fact that S. Mary's father was
+Joachim and her mother Anna. The rest may be left to silence.
+
+But if the facts of the external life of Mary of Nazareth cannot be
+hoped for, certain general truths evidently follow from God's plan for
+her and from her relation to our Blessed Lord. There are certain
+inferences from her vocation which are irresistible and which the
+theologians of the Church did not fail to make as they thought of her
+function in relation to the Incarnation. We know that the work of
+Redemption by which it was God's purpose to lead back a sinful world to
+Himself was a purpose that worked from the very beginning of man's fatal
+separation from the source of his life and happiness. The essential
+meaning of Holy Scripture is that it is a history of the origin of God's
+purpose and of His bringing it to a successful issue in the mission of
+our Lord. In the Scriptures we are permitted to see the unfolding of the
+divine purpose and the preparation of the instruments by which the
+purpose is to be effected. We see the divine will struggling with the
+human will, and in appearance baffled again and again by the selfishness
+and the stupidity of man. We see too that the divine will is in the long
+run successful in securing a point of action in humanity, in winning the
+allegiance of men of good will to co-operation with the purpose of God.
+We see spiritual ideals assimilated, and sympathy with the work of God
+generated, until we feel that that work has gained a firm and enduring
+ground in humanity from which it can act. God is able to consummate His
+purpose, and men begin to understand in some measure the nature of the
+future deliverance and to look forward to the coming of One Who should
+be the embodiment of the divine action and the Representative of God
+Himself with a completeness which no previous messenger of God had
+ever attained.
+
+It we would understand the Old Testament we must find that its intimate
+note is preparation, just as the intimate note of the New Testament is
+accomplishment. God is working to a foreseen end, and is working as fast
+as men will consent to co-operate and become the instruments of His
+purpose. The purpose is not one that can be achieved by the exercise of
+power; it is a purpose of love and can be effected only through
+co-operating love. And as we watch the final unfolding of that purpose
+in the Incarnation of God, we more and more become conscious of the
+preparation of all the instruments of the purpose which are working in
+harmony for the revelation of the meaning of God.
+
+Of all the instruments of this divine purpose, one figure has
+preeminently fascinated the devout imagination because of her unique
+beauty, and has been the object of profound speculation because of the
+intimacy of her relation to God,--Mary of Nazareth. The vocabulary of
+love and reverence has exhausted itself in the attempt to express our
+estimate of her. The literature of Mariology is immense. And no one who
+has at all entered into the meaning of the Incarnation, of what is
+involved in eternal God taking human flesh, can wonder at this. Here at
+the crisis of the divine redeeming action, when the crowning mystery
+which angels desire to look into is being accomplished, we find the
+figure of a village maiden of Israel as the surprising instrument of the
+advent of God. We wonder: and we instinctively feel, that as all the
+other steps and instruments in God's redemption of man had from the
+beginning been carefully prepared, so shall we find preparation here. We
+understand that as God could not come in the flesh at any time, but only
+when the "fulness of time" had come; so He could not come of any woman,
+but only of such an one as He had prepared to be the instrument of His
+Incarnation.
+
+It is involved in the very intimacy of the relation which exists
+between our Lord and His blessed Mother that she should be unique in the
+human race. We feel that we are right in saying that the Incarnation
+which waited for the preparation of the world socially and spiritually,
+must also be thought of as waiting for the coming of the woman who would
+so completely surrender herself to the divine will that in her obedience
+could be founded the antidote to the disobedience which was founded in
+Eve. The race waited for the coming of the new mother who should be the
+instrument in the abolishing of the evil of which the first mother was
+the instrument. And from the very beginning of the thought of the Church
+about blessed Mary there was no doubt that it was implied in her office
+in bearing the God-Man that she should be without sin--sinless in the
+sense of never having in any least degree consented to evil the thought
+of the Church has ever held her to be. It was held incredible that she
+who by God's election bore in the sanctuary of her womb during the
+months of her child-bearing Him who was Lord and Creator and was come to
+save the world from all the stain and penalty of sin should herself be a
+sinner. Without actual sin, therefore, was Mary held to be from the time
+that the thought of the Church was turned upon her relation to our
+Blessed Lord[6].
+
+[Footnote 6: It is true that a few writers among the Fathers see in
+blessed Mary traces of venial sin; who think of her intervention at Cana
+as presumptuous &c. But such notices are not of sufficient frequency or
+importance to break the general tradition.]
+
+For some time this seemed enough. It was not felt that any further
+thought about her sinlessness was needed. But as the uniqueness of Mary
+forced itself more and more upon the brooding thought of theologians and
+saints they were compelled to face the fact that her freedom from actual
+sin was not a full appreciation of her purity, was not an exhaustive
+treatment of her relation to our Lord. The doctrine of the nature of sin
+itself had been becoming clearer to the minds of Christian thinkers. All
+men are conceived and born in sin, it was seen. After S. Paul's
+teaching, the problem of _sin_ was not the problem of sins but the
+problem of sinfulness. The matter could not be left with the statement
+that all men do sin; the reason of their sinning must be traced out. And
+it was traced out, under S. Paul's guidance, to a ground of sin in
+nature itself, to a defect in man as he is born into the world. He does
+not become a sinner when he commits his first sin: he is born a sinner.
+In other words, the problem of man's sinfulness is the problem of
+original sin.
+
+What then do we mean by original sin? Briefly, we mean this. At his
+creation man was not only created innocent, but he was created in union
+with God, a union which conferred on him many supernatural gifts, gifts,
+that is, which were not a part of his nature, but were in the way of an
+addition to his nature. "By created nature man is endowed with moral
+sense, and is thus made responsible for righteousness; but he is unequal
+to its fulfilment. The all-righteous Creator could be trusted to
+complete His work. He endowed primitive man with superadded gifts of
+grace, especially the supernatural gift, _donum supernaturale_, of the
+Holy Spirit[7]."
+
+[Footnote 7: Hall, Dogmatic Theology, V, 263.]
+
+Our purpose does not require us further to particularize these gifts and
+our time does not permit it. We are concerned with this: the effect of
+man's sin was, what the effect of sin always is, to separate man from
+God. To sin, man has to put his will in opposition to the will of God.
+This our first parents did; and the result of their act was the
+destruction of their union with God and the loss of their supernatural
+endowments. They lapsed into a state of nature, only it was a state in
+which they had forfeited what had been conferred upon them at their
+creation. This state of man, with only his natural endowments, is the
+state into which all men, the descendants of Adam, have been born. This
+is the state of original sin. "Original sin means in Catholic theology a
+state inherited from our first human parents in which we are deprived of
+the supernatural grace and original righteousness with which they were
+endowed before they sinned, and are naturally prone to sin." (Hall,
+Dogmatic Theology, Vol. V, p. 281.) We can state the same fact
+otherwise, and more simply for our present purposes, by saying that by
+sin was forfeited the grace of union or sanctifying grace; and when we
+say that a child is born in sin we mean that it is born out of union
+with God, or without the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace. You
+will note here no implication of original sin as an active poison handed
+on from generation to generation. It will be important to remember this
+presently.
+
+When, therefore, the thought of the Church began to follow out what was
+involved in its belief in the actual sinlessness of blessed Mary, in its
+holding to the fact that her relation to God was of such a close and
+indeed unique character that her actual sinfulness would be
+incomprehensible; it was at length compelled to ask, What, in that case
+are we to think of original sin? If the first Eve was created in
+innocence and endowed with supernatural gifts, are we to think that she
+whom the Fathers of the Church from the earliest times have constantly
+called the second Eve, she whom God chose to be the Mother of His Son,
+should be less endowed? Is it a fact any more conceivable that the
+virgin Mother of God should be born in original sin than that she should
+be the victim of actual sin? If by the special grace of God she was kept
+from sin from the time that she was able to know good and evil, is it
+not probable that the freedom from sin goes further back than that, and
+is a freedom from original as well as from actual sin? What is the
+meaning of the Angelic Salutation, "Hail, thou that art _full of
+grace_," unless it refer to a superadded grace, to such _donum
+supernaturale_ as the first Eve received? There is indeed no precedent
+to guide in the case: the prophet Jeremiah and S. John Baptist had been
+preserved from sin from the womb, but this did not involve freedom from
+original sin. Still the fact that there was no precedent was not in
+anywise fatal; the point of the situation was just that there was no
+precedent for the relation to God into which Blessed Mary had been
+called. It was precisely this uniqueness of vocation which was leading
+theological thought to the conclusion of the uniqueness of her
+privilege: and this uniqueness of privilege seemed to call for nothing
+less than an exemption from sin in any and all forms. So a belief in the
+Immaculate Conception grew up despite a good deal of opposition while
+its implications were being thought out, but was found more and more
+congenial to the mind of the Church. She whose wonderful title for
+centuries had been Mother of God could never at any moment of her
+existence have been separate from God. She must, so it was felt, have
+been united to God from the very first moment of her existence.
+
+But what does this exemption from the common lot of men actually mean? I
+think that the simplest way of getting at it is to ask ourselves what it
+is that happens to a child at baptism. Every human child that is born
+into the world is born in original sin, that is, is born out of union
+with God, without sanctifying grace. It is then brought to the font and
+by baptism regenerated, born again, put in a relation to God that we
+describe as union, made a partaker of the divine nature. This varying
+description of the effect of baptism means that the soul of the child
+has become a partaker of sanctifying grace, the grace of union with God.
+Original sin, we say, is forgiven: that is, the soul is placed in the
+relation to God that it would have had had sin not come into existence,
+save that there remains a certain weakness of nature due to its sinful
+heredity. This that happens to children when they are baptised is what
+is held to have happened to Blessed Mary at her creation. Her soul
+instead of being restored to God by grace after her birth, was by God's
+special grace or favour created in union with Him, and in that union
+always continued. The uniqueness of S. Mary's privilege was that she
+never had to be restored to union with God because from the moment of
+her existence she had been one with Him. This would have been the common
+lot of all men if sin had not come into the world.
+
+In view of much criticism of this belief it is perhaps necessary to
+emphasize the fact that a belief in Mary's exemption from original sin
+does not imply a belief that she was exempt from the need of redemption.
+She is a creature of God, only the highest of His creatures: and like
+all human beings she needed to be redeemed by the Blood of Christ. The
+privileges which are our Lord's Mother's, are her's through the foreseen
+merits of her Son--she, as all others, is redeemed by the sacrifice and
+death of Christ. There is in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
+no shadow of encroachment on the doctrine of universal redemption in
+Christ; there is simply the belief that for the merits of the Son the
+Mother was spared any moment of separation from the Father.
+
+It will, of course, be said that this doctrine is but the relatively
+late and newly formulated doctrine of the Latin Church and is of no
+obligation elsewhere; that we are in no wise bound to receive it. In
+regard to which there are one or two things to be said. That we are not
+formally bound to believe a doctrine is not at all the same thing as to
+say that we are formally bound not to believe it. I am afraid that the
+latter is a not uncommon attitude. There is no obligation upon us to
+disbelieve the Immaculate Conception of blessed Mary; there is an
+obligation upon us to understand it and to appreciate its meaning and
+value. We must remember that a doctrine that is not embodied in our
+Creed may nevertheless have the authority of the Church back of it. The
+doctrine of the Real Presence is not stated in the Creed; yet it is and
+always has been the teaching of the Church everywhere in all its
+liturgies. Though any particular statement of the Real Presence is not
+binding, the fact itself is binding on all Christians, and may not
+be doubted.
+
+In much the same way it will be found that theological doctrines of
+relatively late creedal formulation yet have behind the formulation a
+long history of actual acceptance in the teaching of the Church. They
+are theologically certain long before they are embodied in authoritative
+formulae. What the individual Christian has to do is to try to
+assimilate the meaning of theological teaching and to find a place for
+it in his devotional practice and experience. His best attitude is not
+one of doubt and scepticism, but of meditation and experiment. It is
+through this latter attitude that each one is helping to form the mind
+of the Church, and aiding its progressive appreciation of
+revealed truth.
+
+I do not see how any one who has entered into the meaning of the
+Incarnation can feel otherwise than that the uniqueness of the event
+carries with it the uniqueness of the instrument. It can of course be
+said that truth is not a matter of feeling but of revelation. But is it
+not true that God reveals Himself in many ways, and that our feelings as
+well as our intellects are involved in our perception of the truth
+revealed? Do we not often feel that something must be true far in
+advance of our ability to prove it so? And in truths of a certain order
+is there not an intuitive perception, a perception growing out of a
+sense of fitness, of congruity, which outruns the slow advance of the
+intellect? Love and sympathy often far outrun intellectual process. This
+is not to say that feeling is all; that a sense of fitness and
+conformity is a sufficient basis of doctrine. There is always need of
+the verification of the conclusions of the affections by the intellect;
+and the intellect in the last resort will have to be the
+determining factor.
+
+And I think it can be said without hesitation that the intellectual work
+of theological students has quite justified the course that the
+affections of Christendom have taken in their spontaneous appreciation
+of Mary, the Ever-Virgin Mother of Our Lord. What the heart of
+Christendom has discovered, the mind of Christendom has justified. But
+here more than in any other doctrinal development it is love that has
+led the way, often with an eagerness, an _élan_, with which theology has
+found it difficult to keep up.
+
+And as we to-day try to appreciate the place of Blessed Mary in the life
+of the Church of God must we not feel it to be our misfortune that our
+past has been so wrapped in clouds of controversy that we have been
+unable to see her meaning at all clearly? Must we not feel deep sadness
+at the thought that the very mention of Mary's name, so often stirs, not
+love and gratitude, but the spirit of suspicion and dislike? We no doubt
+have passed beyond such feelings, but the traces of their evil work
+through the centuries still persist. They persist in certain feelings of
+reserve and hesitation when we find that our convictions are leading us
+to the adoption of the attitude toward her which is the common attitude
+of all Catholicity, both East and West. When we feel that the time has
+actually come to abandon the narrowness and barrenness of devotional
+practice which is a part of our tradition, we nevertheless feel as
+though we were launching out on strange seas and that our next sight of
+land might be of strange regions where we should not feel at home. If
+such be our instinctive attitude, it is well to remember that progress,
+spiritual as well as other, is conquest of the (to us) new; but that the
+acquisition of the new does not necessarily mean the abandonment of the
+old. We shall in fact lose nothing of our hold on the unique work of our
+Lord because we recognise that His Blessed Mother's association with it
+implies a certain preparation on her part, a certain uniqueness of
+privilege. There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the
+Man Christ Jesus; and all who come to God, come through Him. But they
+come also in the unity of the Body of many members and of many offices.
+And the office of her who in God's providence was called to be the
+Mother of the Incarnate is surely as unique as is her vocation. She
+surely is entitled to receive from us the deep affection of our hearts
+and the highest honour that may be given to any creature.
+
+
+     THE GARLAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARIE.
+
+     Here are five letters in this blessed name,
+     Which, changed, a five-fold mystery design,
+     The M the Myrtle, A the Almonds claim,
+     R Rose, I Ivy, E sweet Eglantine.
+
+     These form thy garland, when of Myrtle green
+     The gladdest ground to all the numbered five,
+     Is so implexéd fine and laid in, between,
+     As love here studied to keep grace alive.
+
+     Thy second string is the sweet Almond bloom
+     Mounted high upon Selines' crest:
+     As it alone (and only it) had room,
+     To knit thy crown, and glorify the rest.
+
+     The third is from the garden culled, the Rose,
+     The eye of flowers, worthy for her scent,
+     To top the fairest lily now, that grows
+     With wonder on the thorny regiment.
+
+     The fourth is the humble Ivy intersert
+     But lowly laid, as on the earth asleep,
+     Preserved in her antique bed of vert,
+     No faiths more firm or flat, then, where't doth creep.
+
+     But that, which sums all, is the Eglantine,
+     Which of the field is cleped the sweetest briar,
+     Inflamed with ardour to that mystic shine,
+     In Moses' bush unwasted in the fire.
+
+     Thus love, and hope, and burning charity,
+     (Divinest graces) are so intermixt
+     With odorous sweets and soft humility,
+     As if they adored the head, whereon they are fixed.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE ANNUNCIATION I
+
+     And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art
+     highly favoured, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou
+     among women.
+
+                  S. Luke, I. 28
+
+Oh God, whose will it was that thy Word should take flesh, at the
+message of the Angel, in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, grant to
+us thy suppliants that, we who believe her to be truly the Mother of
+God, may be assisted by her intercession with thee. Through &c.
+
+ROMAN.
+
+When we attempt to reconstruct imaginatively any scene of Holy
+Scripture it is almost inevitable that we see it through the eyes of
+some great artist of the past. The Crucifixion comes to us as Dürer or
+Guido Reni saw it; the Presentation or the Visitation presents itself to
+us in terms of the imagination of Raphael; we see the Nativity as a
+composition of Corregio. So the Annunciation rises before us when we
+close our eyes and attempt to make "the composition of place" in a
+familiar grouping of the actors: a startled maiden who has arisen
+hurriedly from work or prayer, looking with wonder at the apparition of
+an angel who has all the eagerness of one who has come hastily upon an
+urgent mission. The surroundings differ, but artists of the Renaissance
+like to think of a sumptuous background as a worthy setting for so
+great an event.
+
+We keep close to the meaning of Scripture if we set the Annunciation in
+a room in a cottage of a Palestinian working man. And I like to think of
+S. Mary at her accustomed work when Gabriel appeared, not with a rush of
+wings, but as a silent and hardly felt presence standing before her whom
+the Lord has chosen to be the instrument of His coming. Wonder there
+would have been, the kind of awe-struck wonder with which the
+supernatural always fills men; and yet only for a moment, for how could
+she who was daily living so close to God fear the messenger of God? The
+thought of angels and divine messengers would be wholly familiar to her.
+They had been the frequent agents of God in many a crisis of her
+people's history, and appeared again and again in the story of her
+ancestors on whose details she had often meditated. Yet in her humility
+she could but think it strange that an angel should have any message to
+bear to her.
+
+It is a striking enough scene, as the artists have felt when they tried
+to put it before us. But no artist has ever been able to go below the
+surface and by any hint lead us to an appreciation of the vast
+implications of the moment. This moment of the Annunciation is in fact
+the central moment of the world's history. No moment before or since has
+equalled it in its unspeakable wonder, in its revelation of the meaning
+of God. Not the moment of the creation when all the Sons of God sang
+together at the vision of the unfolding purpose of God; not the morning
+of the Resurrection when the empty tomb told of the accomplished
+overthrow of death and hell. This is the moment toward which all
+preceding time had moved, and to which all succeeding ages will look
+back--the moment of the Incarnation of God.
+
+It is well to ask ourselves at this point what the Incarnation means,
+because our estimate of Blessed Mary as the chosen instrument of God's
+grace will be influenced by our estimate of that which she was chosen to
+do. One feels the failure to grasp her position in the work of our
+redemption often displays a weak hold upon that which is the very heart
+of God's work--the fact of God made man. The moment of the Annunciation
+is the moment of the Incarnation: God in His infinite love for mankind
+is sending forth His Son to be born of a woman in the likeness of our
+flesh. God the Son, the second Person of the ever adorable Trinity, is
+entering the womb of this maiden, there to wrap Himself in her flesh and
+to pass through the common course of a human child's development till He
+shall reach the hour of the Nativity. When we try to grasp the reach of
+the divine Love, its depth, its self-forgetfulness, we must stand in the
+cottage in Nazareth and hear the angelic salutation. And then surely our
+own hearts cannot fail to respond to the revelation of the divine love;
+and something of our love that goes out to our hidden Lord, goes out too
+to the maiden-mother who so willingly became God's instrument in His
+work for our redemption. In imagination I see S. Gabriel kneeling before
+her who has become a living Tabernacle of God Most High, and repeating
+his "Hail, thou that art highly favoured," with the deepest reverence.
+
+"Hail, thou that art full of grace." We linger over this Ave of S.
+Gabriel, and often it rises to our lips. Perhaps it is with S. Luke's
+narrative, almost naked in its simplicity, in our hands as we try once
+more to push our thought deep into the meaning of the scene, that we may
+understand a little better what has resulted in our experience from the
+Incarnation of God, and our thought turns to S. Mary whom God chose and
+brought so near to Himself. Perhaps it is when, with chaplet in hand,
+we try to imagine S. Mary's feelings at this first of the Joyful
+Mysteries when the meaning of her vocation comes clearly before her.
+Hail! thou that art full of grace, of the Living Grace, the very
+Presence of the divinity itself. The plummet of our thought fails always
+to reach the depth of that mystery of Mary's Child. It was indeed
+centuries before the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit
+thought out and fully stated the meaning of this Child; it was centuries
+before it fully grasped the meaning of Mary herself in her relation to
+her divine Son: and after all the centuries of Spirit-guided statement
+and saintly meditation it still remains that many fail to understand and
+to make energetic in life the fact of the Incarnation of God in the womb
+of the Virgin Mary.
+
+And what was S. Mary's own attitude toward the announcement of the
+Angel? Her first instinctive word--the word called out by her imperfect
+grasp of the meaning of the message of S. Gabriel, is: How can this be
+seeing I know not a man? Are we to infer from these words, as many have
+inferred, that in her secret thoughts S. Mary had resolved always to
+remain a virgin, that she had so offered herself to God in the virgin
+state? Possibly when we remember that such was God's will for her it is
+not going too far to assume that she had been prompted thus to meet and
+offer herself to the divine will. Be that as it may there is an obvious
+and instantaneous assumption that the child-bearing which is predicted
+to her lies outside the normal and accustomed way of marriage. She
+clearly does not think that the archangel's words look to her
+approaching union with S. Joseph, even if the nominal nature of that
+marriage were not agreed upon. It is clear that her instantaneous
+feeling is that as the message is supernatural in character, so will its
+fulfilment be, and the wondering _how_ arises to her lips.
+
+The answer to the how is that what is worked in her is by the power of
+the Holy Spirit: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of
+the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which
+shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
+
+As so often in the dealing of God with us, that which is put forward as
+an explanation actually deepens the mystery. It was no abatement of
+Mary's wonder, nor did it really put away her _how_ when she was told
+that the Holy Ghost should come upon her and that the child should be
+the Son of the Highest. And yet this was the only answer to such a
+question that was possible. Our questions may be met in two ways: either
+by a detailed explanation, or by the answer that the only explanation is
+God--that what we are concerned with is a direct working of God outside
+the accustomed order of nature and therefore outside the reach of our
+understanding. Such acts have no doubt their laws, but they are not the
+laws in terms of which we are wont to think.
+
+The question of S. Mary was not a question which implied doubt. It is
+therefore the proper question with which to approach all God's works.
+There is a stress with which such questions may be asked which implies
+on our part unbelief or at least hesitation in belief. It is a not
+uncommon accent to hear to-day in questions as to divine mysteries. Our
+recitation of the creed is not rarely invaded by restlessness, shadows
+of doubt, which perhaps we brush aside, or perhaps let linger in our
+minds with the feeling that it is safer for our religion not to follow
+these out. I am afraid that there are not a few who still adhere to the
+Church who do so with the feeling that it is better for them to go on
+repeating words that they have become used to rather than to raise
+questions as to their actual truth; who feel that the faith of the
+Church rests on foundations which in the course of the centuries have
+been badly shaken, but that it is safer not to disturb them lest they
+incontinently fall to pieces.
+
+In other words there is a wide-spread feeling that such stories as this
+of the Annunciation and of the Virgin birth of our Lord are fables. When
+we ask, why is there such a feeling? the only answer is that the modern
+man has become suspicious of the supernatural. Has there anything been
+found in the way of evidence, we ask, which reflects upon the truth of
+the story in S. Luke? No, we are told; the story stands where it always
+did, its evidence is what it always was. What has changed is not the
+story or the evidence for it but the human attitude toward that and all
+such stories. The modern mind does not attempt to disprove them, it just
+disapproves of them, and therefore declines to believe them. It sets
+them aside as belonging to an order of ideas with which it no longer
+has any sympathy.
+
+It is no doubt true that we reach many of our conclusions, especially
+those which govern our practical attitude towards life, from the ground
+of certain hardly recognised presuppositions, rather than from the basis
+of thought out principles. The thought of to-day is pervaded by the
+denial of the supernatural. It insists that all that we know or can know
+is the natural world about us. It rules out the possibility of any
+invasions of the natural order and declines to accept such on any
+evidence whatsoever. All that one has time to say now of such an
+attitude is that it makes all religion impossible, and sets aside as
+untrustworthy all the deepest experiences of the human soul. If I were
+going to argue against this attitude (as I am not able to now) I should
+simply oppose to it the past experience of the race as embodied in its
+best religious thought. I should stress the fact that what is noblest
+and best in the past of humanity is wholly meaningless unless humanity's
+supposition of a life beyond this life, and of the existence of
+spiritual powers and beings to whom we are related, holds good. No
+nation has ever conducted its life on the basis of pure materialism,
+save in those last stages of its decadence which preluded its downfall.
+
+But without going so far as to reject the supernatural and reject the
+truth of the immediate intervention of God in life, there are multitudes
+of men and women whose whole life never moves beyond the natural order.
+They have no materialistic theory; if you ask them, they think that
+they are, in some sense not very well defined, Christians. But they have
+no Christian interests, no spiritual activities of any sort. For all
+practical purposes God and the spiritual order do not exist for them.
+They are not for the most part what any one would call bad people;
+though there seems no intelligible meaning of the word in which they can
+be called _good_. The best that one can say of them is that they have a
+certain usefulness in the present social order though they are not
+missed when they fall out of it. They can be replaced in the social
+machine much as a lost or broken part can in an engine. And just as the
+part of an engine which has become useless where it is, can have no
+possible usefulness elsewhere, so we are unable to imagine them as
+capable of adaptation to any other place than that which they have
+filled here. Perhaps that is what we mean by hell--incapacity to adapt
+oneself to the life of the future.
+
+All this implies a temper of mind and soul that has rendered itself
+incapable of vision. For just as our ordinary vision of the beauty of
+this world depends not only on the existence of the world but on a
+certain capacity in us to see it, so that the beauty of the world does
+not at all exist for the man whose optic nerve is paralysed; so the
+meaning and beauty, nay, the very existence of the supernatural order
+depends for us upon a capacity in us which we may call the capacity of
+vision. The sceptic waves aside our stories of supernatural happenings
+with the brusque statement, "Nobody to-day sees angels. They only appear
+in an atmosphere of primitive or mediæval superstition, not in the
+broad intellectual light of the twentieth century." But it may be that
+the fact (if it be a fact) that nobody sees angels in the twentieth
+century is due to some other cause than the non-existence of the angels.
+After all, in any century you see what you are prepared to see, what in
+other words, you are looking for. It is a common enough phenomenon that
+the man who lives in the country misses most of the beauty of it. In his
+search for the potato bug he misses the sunset, and disposes of the
+primrose on the river's brim as a common weed. It is true that in order
+to see we need something beside eyes, and to hear we need something
+beside ears. When on an occasion the Father spoke from heaven to the Son
+many heard the sound, and some said, "It thundered"; others got so far
+as to say, "An Angel spake to him."
+
+Let us then in the presence of narratives of supernatural happenings ask
+our _how_ with a good deal of reverence and a good deal of modesty, not
+as implying a sceptical doubt on our part, but as a wish that we may be
+admitted deeper into the meaning of the event. Scepticism simply closes
+the door through which we might pass to fuller knowledge. The
+questioning of faith holds the door open. To those who have not closed
+the door upon the supernatural it is evident that it is permeated with
+forces and influences which are not material in their origin or their
+effects; that God acts upon the world now as He has ever acted upon it.
+If we cannot believe this I do not see that we can believe in God at all
+in any intelligible sense. There is to me one attitude toward the
+supernatural that is even more hopeless than the attitude of
+materialistic scepticism which says, "Miracles do not happen"; and that
+is the attitude which says, "Miracles happened in Bible times, but have
+never happened since." As the one attitude seems to imply that God made
+the world, but after He had made it left it to go on by itself and no
+more expresses any interest in it; so the other implies that after God
+put the Christian religion in the world He left that to go on by itself
+and no longer pays any attention to it. Either to me is wholly
+unintelligible and inconceivable.
+
+And what is worse, is wholly out of touch with the revelation of God
+made in Holy Scripture. That displays God working in and through the
+material universe, and it displays God working in and through the spirit
+of man; and it in no place implies that either the material world or the
+human order is so perfect as to need no further divine action.
+Revelation implies the constant presence and action of God in nature and
+in the Church; it implies that both have a forward look and are not ends
+in themselves but are moving on toward some ultimate perfection. "The
+whole creation groaneth and travaileth ... waiting for the adoption,
+that is, the redemption of our body." We look for a new heaven and a new
+earth; and human society looks to a perfect consummation in the
+fellowship of the saints in light.
+
+Looking out on life from the spiritual point of vantage, we may
+hopefully ask our _how_, and there will be an answer. To blessed Mary S.
+Gabriel replied: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of
+the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which
+shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."--An answer that
+was full of light and of deepest mystery. The immediate question--the
+mode of her conception--was cleared up; it would be through the direct
+action of God the Holy Spirit: but the nature of the Child to be born is
+filled with mystery. We can imagine S. Mary in the days to come finding
+her child-bearing quite intelligible in comparison with the mystery that
+brooded over His nature.
+
+This is the common fact in our dealing with God. We express it when we
+say that we never get beyond the need of faith. We pray that one thing
+may be made clear, and the result of the clearing is the deepened sense
+of the mystery of the things beyond, just as any increase in the power
+of the telescope clears up certain questions which had been puzzling the
+astronomers only to carry their vision into vaster depths of space,
+opening new questions to tantalize the imagination. We find it so
+always. The solution of any question of our spiritual lives does not
+lead as perhaps we thought it would lead to there being no longer any
+questions to perplex us and to draw on our time and our energy; rather
+such solution puts us in the presence of new and, it may well be, deeper
+and more perplexing questions. "Are there no limits to the demands of
+God upon us," we sometimes despairingly ask? And the answer is, "No:
+there are no limits because the end of the road that we are travelling
+is in infinity." The limit that is set to our perfecting is the
+perfection of God, and if we grow through all the years of eternity we
+shall still have attained only a relative perfection.
+
+So the successful passing of one test cannot be expected to relieve us
+from all tests in the future. It is the dream of the child that manhood
+will set it free; and he reaches manhood only to find that it imposes
+obligations which are so pressing that he reverses his dream and speaks
+of his childhood as the time of his true freedom. The meeting of
+spiritual tests is but the proving of spiritual capacity to meet other
+tests. To our Lady it might well seem that the acceptance of the
+conditions of the Incarnation was the severest test that God could
+assign her; that in the light of the promise she could look on to joy.
+But the future concealed a sword which should pierce her very heart. The
+promise contained no doubt wonderful things--this wonder of God's
+blessing that she was now experiencing in the coming of the Holy Ghost,
+in the very embrace of God Himself: this is but the first of the Joyful
+Mysteries which were God's great gifts to her. But her life was not to
+be a succession of Joyful Mysteries, ultimately crowned with the
+Mysteries of Glory. There were the Sorrowful Mysteries as well. They
+were as true, and shall we not say, as necessary, as valuable, a part of
+her spiritual training as the others. She, our Mother, was now near God,
+with a nearness that was possible for no other human being, and it is
+one of the traditional sayings of our Lord: "He that is near Me is near
+fire." And fire burns as well as warms and lights. She is wonderful, the
+Virgin of Nazareth, in this moment when she becomes Mother of God: and
+we share in the rapture of the moment when in the fulness of her joy she
+hardly notices S. Gabriel's departure: but we feel, too, a great pity
+for her as we think of the coming days. So we kneel to her who is our
+Mother, as well as Mother of God, and say our _Ave_, and ask her
+priceless intercession.
+
+     Gabriel, that angel bright,
+     Brighter than the sun is light,
+     From heaven to earth he took his flight,
+       Letare.
+
+     In Nazareth, that great city,
+     Before a maiden he kneeled on knee,
+     And said, "Mary, God is with thee,
+       Letare."
+
+     "Hail Mary, full of grace,
+     God is with thee, and ever was;
+     He hath in thee chosen a place.
+       Letare."
+
+     Mary was afraid of that sight,
+     That came to her with so great light,
+     Then said the angel that was so bright,
+       "Letare."
+
+     "Be not aghast of least nor most,
+     In thee is conceived of the Holy Ghost,
+     To save the souls that were for-lost.
+       Letare."
+
+     Fifteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ANNUNCIATION II
+
+And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according
+to thy word.
+
+S. Luke I. 38
+
+O God, who through the fruitful virginity of blessed Mary didst bestow
+on mankind the rewards of eternal salvation: grant, we beseech thee,
+that we may experience her intercession for us through whom we were made
+worthy to receive the author of life, even Jesus Christ thy Son
+our Lord.
+
+Roman.
+
+S. Mary's momentary hesitation had been due to the surprise that she
+felt at the nature of the angelic message and the difficulty that there
+was in relating it to her state of life. That she, a virgin, should bear
+a son was vastly perplexing; but the answer of S. Gabriel speedily
+cleared away the difficulty: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and
+the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee."
+
+Blessed Mary had no difficulty about the supernatural; she was not
+afflicted with the modern disease that there are no things in heaven and
+earth save such as are contained in our philosophy. She was not of those
+who "cannot believe what they do not understand," It was enough for her
+that a message had come from God: and no matter how little she was able
+to understand the mode of God's proposed action within her, she was
+willing to offer herself to be the instrument of the will of God. No
+doubt that was an habitual attitude and not one taken up on the spur of
+the moment. It is indeed very rarely that what seem spontaneous actions
+are really such; and S. Mary's first word was nearer spontaneity than
+the second. Her exclamation in answer to the angelic _Ave_ was the
+natural expression of her surprise at so unexpected a message: its
+variance from all her thought about her life was the thing that struck
+her; and therefore her instinctive, "How can this be?"
+
+In this second word we have a quite different attitude. Here is
+revealed to us the profound and perfect humility of the Blessed Virgin.
+This answer comes from the experience of her whole life. It is of such
+utterances that we say that they are revealing. What we at any time say,
+does in fact reveal what we are--what we have come to be through the
+experience of our past life. And no doubt it is these instinctive
+utterances which are called out by some unexpected occurrence that
+reveal more of us than our weighed and guarded words. Back of every word
+we utter is a life we have lived. We have been spending years in
+preparing for that word. Perhaps when the time comes to speak it, it is
+not the word we thought we were going to speak, it was not the prelude
+to the action we thought that we were going to perform; it reveals a
+character other than the character that we thought we had. How often the
+Gospel brings that before us! We see the young Ruler come running with
+his brave and perfectly sincere words about inheriting eternal life; and
+then we see him going away when the testing of our Lord demonstrated
+that he only partly meant what he said. It was not S. Peter's brave
+words, "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee," that
+revealed the truth about the Apostle; but the words that were called out
+by the accusation that he was of the company of Jesus: "Then began he to
+curse and swear, saying, I know not the man." We have no doubt that he
+knows himself better when he catches the eye of the Master turned upon
+him and goes and weeps bitterly. And it is true, is it not, that it is
+through words called out and thoughts stirred by the unexpected that we
+often get new insight into our real state. A sudden temptation reveals a
+hidden weakness, and we go away shamed and crushed, saying, "I did not
+suppose that I was capable of that."
+
+But, thank God, the revelation is sometimes the other way; the testing
+uncovers unexpected strength. Of many a man, after some strong trial, we
+say, "I did not know that he had so much courage, or so much patience."
+The quiet unassuming exterior was the mask of an heroic will of which
+very likely not even the possessor suspected the true quality. The
+annals of martyrdom are full of these revelations of unsuspected
+strength. Here in the case of Blessed Mary the quality revealed is that
+of humility so perfect that it dreams not of revolt from the most
+searching trial. It reveals the character of our Mother better than
+pages of description can do. What we see in response to the bewildering
+messages brought by S. Gabriel is the instinctive movement of the soul
+toward God. There is utter absence of any thought of self or of how she
+may be affected by the purpose of God; it is enough that that purpose is
+made plain.
+
+It seems well to insist on this instinctive movement of the soul in
+Blessed Mary because it is one item of the evidence that the Catholic
+Church has to offer for its belief in her sinlesssness. Any momentary
+rebellion, no matter how soon recovered from, or how sincerely
+regretted, against the will of God, would be evidence of the existence
+of sin. But where sin is not, where there is an unstained soul, there
+the knowledge of the will of God will send one running to its
+acceptance; there will be active acceptance and not just submission to
+God's will. Submission implies a certain effort to place ourselves in
+line with the will of God; it often seems to imply that we are accepting
+it because we cannot do anything else. But with Blessed Mary there is a
+glad going forth to meet God; the word "Behold" springs out to meet the
+will of God half-way. It is as though she had been holding herself
+ready, expectant, in the certainty of the coming of some message, and
+now she offers herself without the shadow of hesitation, as to a purpose
+which was a welcome vocation: "Behold the Handmaid of the Lord; be it
+unto me according to thy word." How wonderful is the humility of
+obedience!
+
+And humility--we must stress this--is not a virtue of youth; it is not
+one of the virtues which ripen quickly, but is of slow development and
+delayed maturity. Modesty we should expect in a maiden, and lack of
+self-assertion; and perhaps obedience of a sort. But those do not
+constitute the virtue of humility. We are humble when we have lost self;
+and Mary's wondering answer reveals the fact that she is not thinking of
+herself at all, but only of the nature of the divine purpose. That that
+purpose being known she should at all resist it would seem to her a
+thing incredible, for all her life she had had no other motive of
+action. Her will had never been separated from the will of God.
+
+This state of union which was hers by divine election and privilege, we
+achieve, if we achieve it at all, by virtue of great spiritual
+discipline. We are, to be sure, brought into union with God through the
+sacraments, but the union so achieved is, if one may so express it, an
+unstable union; it is union that we have to maintain by daily spiritual
+action and which suffers many a weakening through our infidelity, even
+if it escape the disaster of mortal sin. We sway to and fro in our
+struggle to attain the equilibrium of perfection which belonged to
+Blessed Mary by virtue of the first embrace of God which had freed her
+from sin. Our tragedy is that we have almost universally lost the first
+engagements of the Spiritual Combat before we have at all understood
+that there is any combat. The circumstances of life of child and youth
+are such that we become familiar with sin before we have the
+intelligence to understand the need of resisting, even if we are
+fortunate enough to have such an education as to awaken a sense of sin
+as opposition to God. There is nothing more appalling than the tragedy
+of life thus defiled and broken and put at a disadvantage before it even
+understands the ideals that should govern its course. When the vision of
+perfection comes and we face life as the field where we are to acquire
+eternal values, we face it with a poisoned imagination and a depleted
+strength. Our battle is not only to maintain what we have, but to win
+back what we have lost.
+
+Under such conditions there is much consolation in learning that we do
+not fight alone but have the constant help and sympathy of those who are
+endued with the strength of perfect purity. Their likeness to us in
+that they have lived the life of the flesh assures us of their
+understanding, and it assures us too of their active co-operation. We
+cannot understand the saints standing outside human life and from the
+vantage point of their achievement looking on as indolent spectators.
+The spectacle offorded by the Church Militant must call out the active
+intercession of all the saints; but especially do we look for helpful
+sympathy from her who is our all-pure Mother, whose very purity gives
+her intercession unmeasured power. She is not removed from us through
+her spotlessness, but by virtue of her clearer understanding of the
+meaning of sin and of separation from God that it brings her, she is
+ready to fly to the help of all sinners by her ceaseless intercession.
+
+The difficulty of our spiritual lives rises chiefly out of the clash of
+wills. A disordered nature, a tainted inheritance, a corrupt environment
+conspire to make the life of grace tremendously difficult. It is only in
+a very limited sense that we can be said to be free, and there is no
+possibility at all of overcoming the handicap of sin, except firm and
+careful reliance on the grace of God. That grace, no doubt, is always at
+our disposal as far as we will use it. Grace moves us, but it does not
+compel us; and we are free always to reject the offer of God. We have
+only to open our eyes upon the world about us to see how rarely is the
+grace of God accepted in any effective way. Even in convinced Christians
+the attempt to live the divided life is the commonest thing possible. It
+sometimes seems as though the prevalent conception of the Christian
+life were that it is sufficient to offer God a certain limited
+allegiance and that the remainder of the life will be thereby ransomed
+and placed at our disposal to use as we will. We find the theory well
+worked out in the current attitude of Christians toward the observance
+of the Lord's Day. It appears to be held that an attendance at Mass or
+Matins is a sufficient recognition of the interests of religion and that
+the rest of the day may be regarded, not as the Lord's Day, but as
+man's--as a day of unlimited amusement and self-indulgence. The notion
+of consecration is abandoned. The only possible outcome of such theories
+of life is what we already experience, spiritual lawlessness and moral
+degradation. I suppose that it will only be through social disaster that
+society will come (as usual, too late) to any comprehension that the
+will of God is what it is because it is only by following the road that
+it indicates that human life can reach a successful development. God's
+laws are not arbitrary inflictions; they are the expression of the
+highest wisdom in the guidance of human life.
+
+Our elementary duty therefore as sane persons is to find what is the
+will of God in any given circumstances; there should be no action until
+there has been an effort to ascertain that will. It were as sensible to
+set about building a house without ascertaining what strength of
+foundation would be needful, or without knowing the sort of material we
+were going to use. One has heard of a house being built in which it
+turned out that there was a room with no doorway, or floor to which no
+stair led up; but we do not commend such exploits as the last word in
+architecture, nor would we commend a farmer who planted his crops
+without attention to the nature of the soil. There are certain
+elementary principles of common sense which we pretty uniformly hold to
+in every matter with the exception of religion; that seems to be held to
+be a separate department of human activity with laws of its own, and in
+which the principles which govern life elsewhere do not hold. We do not
+profess this theory, of course, but we commonly act upon it, while we
+still profess to respect the will of God. It is strange too that after
+having habitually neglected that will, we are greatly disappointed, not
+to say indignant, when after a life of disobedience and scorn of God's
+thought for us we do not find ourselves in possession of the fruits of
+righteousness. If it were not so tragic it would be amusing to hear men
+declaim against the justice of a God whose existence they have
+habitually disregarded.
+
+But, it is often said, it is not by any means easy to find out God's
+will. You talk about it as though it were as easy to know God's will as
+it is to know the multiplication table. Well, at least it can be said
+that one does not get to know the multiplication table without effort!
+What objections as to the obscurity of the will of God will seem to mean
+is that it does take effort to ascertain it. I do not know of any reason
+for regarding that as unjust. If the will of God is what religion
+maintains that it is, of primary importance to our lives, we might well
+be glad that it is ascertainable at all, at the expense of
+whatever effort.
+
+An Almighty God has implanted within every human heart the knowledge
+that His will exists and is important; that is, He has endowed every man
+with a conscience which is the certainty of the difference between right
+and wrong, and the conviction that we are responsible for our conduct to
+some power outside ourselves; that we are not at liberty to conduct life
+on any lines we will. Having so much certainty, it surely becomes us to
+set about ascertaining the nature of the power and the details of the
+will. The very nature of conscience, as a sense of obligation, rather
+than a source of information, should create a desire for a knowledge of
+what God's will is in detail, that is, what is the content of the notion
+of right and wrong.
+
+And while it is true that such content can only be ascertained by work,
+it is not true that the work is a specially difficult one. The
+Revelation of God's mind made through Holy Scripture and through the
+life of His Incarnate Son is an open book that any one can study; and to
+any objection that such study has led chiefly to difference of opinion
+and darkness rather than light, the answer is that such disaster follows
+for the most part only when the guidance of the Catholic Church is
+repudiated; when, that is, we pursue a course in this study which we
+should not pursue in relation to any other. If we were studying geology
+we should not regard it as the best course to scorn all that preceding
+students have done, and betake our unprepared selves to field work! But
+that is the "Bible and the Bible only" theory of spiritual knowledge. If
+we want to know the meaning of the Biblical teaching, we must make use
+of the helps which the experience of the Church has richly provided.
+
+But the nature of the divine will and the particulars of our obligation
+are not merely, perhaps one ought to say, not chiefly, to be assimilated
+through our brains. The best preparation for the doing of the will of
+God and the progressive entering into His mind, is an obedient life.
+Purity of character will carry us farther on this path than cleverness
+of brains. Our Lord's own rule is: _He that doeth the will shall know of
+the doctrine._ In other words, we understand the mind of God and attain
+to the illumination of the conscience, through sympathetic response to
+the will so far as we have seen it. And each new response, in its turn,
+carries us to a deeper and clearer understanding of the will. That is to
+say, our conscience, by habitual response to God's will, so far as it
+knows it, is so illumined as to be able to make trustworthy judgments on
+new material submitted to it.
+
+This is, of course, to be otherwise described as the working of God the
+Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit that dwelleth in us and directs us to
+right judgments if we will listen. Our danger is that self-will
+constantly crops up and complicates the case by representing that the
+line suggested by the Holy Spirit is not in reality in accord with our
+interests. This opposition between the seeming interests suggested by
+self-will, which indeed often contribute to our immediate gratification,
+and our true interests as indicated by the monitions of the Holy
+Spirit, constitutes the real struggle of the life during the period of
+probation. The will of God in every circumstance is usually plain
+enough; but it is silenced by the clamour of the passions and desires
+demanding immediate gratification: and we are all more or less children
+in our insistence on the immediate and our incapacity to wait. But I
+must insist again that it is not knowledge that is wanting but sympathy
+with the course that knowledge directs. We pursuade ourselves that we do
+not know, when the real trouble is that we know only too well. One feels
+that much that is put forward as inability to understand religion is at
+bottom merely disinclination to obey it.
+
+Not that there is not room for genuine perplexity. Often it happens that
+we are not at all certain in this or that detail of conduct. In that
+case it is well to consider whether it is necessary to act before we can
+attain certainty through study or advice. But if act we must, we can at
+least act with honesty, not making our will the accomplice of our
+passions or interests.
+
+I do not believe that there are many cases in which we shall go wrong if
+we make use of all the means at our disposal. A diligent doing of the
+will of God does undoubtedly bring light on unknown problems and
+unexpected situations in which we from time to time find ourselves. If
+our constant attitude has been one of free and glad obedience we need
+not fear to go astray. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord," Blessed Mary
+said; and such an attitude has never failed to meet the divine approval
+and call out the help of God. Just to put ourselves utterly at God's
+disposal is the clearing of all life. "Into Thy hands," is the solution
+of all difficulties.
+
+     I sing a maiden
+       That is matchless;
+     King of all kings
+       To her Son she ches.
+
+     He came all so still
+       To His Mother's bower,
+     As dew in April
+       That falleth on the flower.
+
+     Mother and maiden
+       Was never none but she;
+     Well might such a lady
+       God's Mother be.
+              English, Fifteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+     THE VISITATION I
+
+     And Mary arose in those days, and went into
+     the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah;
+     and entered into the house of Zacharias, and
+     saluted Elizabeth.
+
+                          S. Luke I. 39, 40.
+
+     Grant, we beseech thee, O Lord God, to us thy servants, that
+     we may evermore enjoy health of mind and body, and by the
+     glorious intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be
+     delivered from present sorrows and enjoy everlasting
+     gladness. Through.
+
+     ROMAN.
+
+Those who were faithful in Israel and were looking forward to the
+fulfilment of God's promises would be drawn together by close bonds of
+sympathy. It oftentimes proves that the bonds of a common ideal are
+stronger than the bonds of blood. It was to prove so many times in the
+history of Christianity when in accordance with our Lord's words the
+closest blood relation would be broken through fidelity to Him, and a
+man's foes be found to be those of his own household. But also it is
+true that the possession of common ideals becomes the basis of relations
+which are stronger than race or family. We may be sure that the members
+of that little group of which we catch glimpses now and then in the
+progress of the Gospel story found in their expectation of the Lord's
+deliverance of Israel such a bond. We feel that S. Mary and S. Joseph
+must have been members of this group and that they were filled with the
+hope of God's manifestation. Another family which shared the same hope
+was that of the priest Zacharias whose wife Elizabeth was the cousin of
+Mary of Nazareth. It is to their house in the hill country of Judah we
+now turn our thoughts.
+
+It was a part of the angelic message to S. Mary that her cousin
+Elizabeth had "conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth
+month with her who was called barren." Overwhelmed as S. Mary was by the
+vocation which had come to her, perplexed as to what should be her next
+step, she may well have seized upon the words of the angel as a hint as
+to her present course. She must confide in some one, and that some one,
+we instantly feel, must be a woman. In her own great joy she would need
+some one with whom to share it. In her unprecedented case she would need
+a counselor, and who better could afford aid than her cousin whose case
+was in so many respects like her own, who was already cherishing a child
+whose conception was due to the intervention of God? We understand
+therefore, why it is that without waiting for the further development of
+events, Mary arises, and goes "with haste" to the home of her cousin.
+
+It is just now a house full of joy. For many years there had been
+happiness there, but a happiness over which a cloud rested. The
+affliction of barrenness was their sorrow. To the Hebrew there was no
+true family until the love of the father and the mother was incarnated
+in the child; and through many weary days Zacharias and Elizabeth had
+waited until hope quite failed as they found themselves beyond the
+possibility of bearing a child to cheer them and to hand on their name.
+We may be sure that they were reconciled to the will of God, for it is
+written of them that they were righteous, and the central feature of
+righteousness is the acceptance of the divine will. But though one
+cheerfully accepts the divine will there may still remain a
+consciousness of a vacancy in life; and therefore we can understand the
+joy that came to Zacharias when the angel appeared to him in the temple
+when he was exercising the priest's office and offering the incense of
+the daily sacrifice with the message that he should have a son. It was a
+joy that would be unclouded by the God-sent dumbness which was at once a
+punishment for his lack of immediate faith and a sign of the
+faithfulness of God. It was a joy that would hasten his steps homeward
+with the glad tidings, a joy that would fill the heart of Elizabeth when
+she heard the message of God. Soon the consciousness of the babe in her
+womb would be a growing wonder and a growing happiness. There would be a
+new brightness in the house where the aged mother waits through the
+months and the dumb father with his writing tablet at his side meditates
+upon the meaning of the providence of God and upon the prophecies of the
+angel as to his child's future. But what that future would be he could
+hardly expect to witness; he was too old to live to the day of his
+child's showing unto Israel.
+
+It is to this house that we see S. Mary hastening, sure of finding there
+a heart in which she can confide. She "entered into the house of
+Zacharias and saluted Elizabeth." We are not told what the words of her
+salutation were, but no doubt it was the customary Jewish salutation of
+peace. There could have been no more appropriate salutation exchanged
+between these two in whose souls was abiding the peace of a perfect
+possession of God. The will of God to which they had been accustomed to
+offer themselves all their lives was being accomplished through them in
+unexpected ways; but it found them as ready of acceptance as they had
+been in any of the ordinary duties of life wherein they had been
+accustomed to wait upon God. We may seem sometimes to go beyond Holy
+Scripture in our interpretations of feelings and thoughts which we are
+sure must have been those of the actors in the drama of salvation
+unfolded to us in the Scriptures; but are we not entitled to infer from
+God's actions a good deal of the nature of the instruments He uses? Are
+we not quite safe in the case of S. Mary in the deduction from the
+nature of her vocation of the spiritual perfection to attribute to her?
+Does not God's use of a person imply qualities in the person used? It is
+on this ground that I feel that we are quite safe in inferring the
+spiritual attitude of S. Mary and of S. Elizabeth from the choice God
+made of them to be the instruments of His purpose of redemption.
+
+But we are not inferring, we have the record with us, when we think of
+the joy of the mothers transcended in the joy of the children. The
+unborn Forerunner becomes conscious of the approach of Him of whom he is
+to say later: "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the
+world"; and there is an instantaneous movement that can only be that of
+recognition and worship. The movement of the child is at once understood
+and translated by S. Elizabeth: "And she spake out with a loud voice,
+and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy
+womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come
+to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine
+ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy."
+
+In the presence of such joy and such sanctity we feel that our proper
+attitude is the attitude of adoring wonder that S. Elizabeth expresses.
+We worship our hidden Lord as the unborn prophet worships Him. We have
+no question to ask, nor curiosity at the mode of God's action. We are
+quite content to accept His action as it is revealed to us in Scripture;
+a revelation of the divine presense in humanity which has been
+abundantly verified in all the history of the Church. That verification
+in experience--a verification that we ourselves can repeat--is worth
+infinitely more than all the argument that the centuries have seen.
+
+"Blessed art thou among women," S. Elizabeth cries; and in doing so she
+is but repeating the words of the angel of the Annunciation. This word,
+too, we presently hear S. Mary taking up, and under the inspiration of
+the Holy Ghost saying: "From henceforth all generations shall call
+me blessed."
+
+And so they have. All generations, that is, that have been faithful to
+the Gospel teaching and have assimilated in any degree the consequences
+of S. Mary's nearness to God. When we speak of "Blessed" Mary we are but
+doing what angels and holy women have done, and it is great pity if in
+doing so we have to make a conscious effort, if the words do not spring
+spontaneously from our lips. Surely, we have not gone far toward the
+mastery of God's coming in the Incarnation if we have not felt the
+purity of the instrument through whom God enters our nature. The outward
+and visible sign of our understanding is found in our ability to
+complete the _Ave_ as the Holy Spirit has taught the Church to complete
+it: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour
+of our death."
+
+This reiterated attribution of blessedness to Mary our Mother calls us
+to pause and ask just what blessedness means. It is of course the
+characteristic Scripture locution for those who in some way enjoy the
+special favour of God. Blessedness is the state of those who have
+received special divine gifts of favour. A characteristic scriptural
+description of the blessedness of the righteous in contrast with the
+disaster of the unrighteous may be studied in the first Psalm. In the
+New Testament we naturally turn to the Sermon on the Mount where the
+Beatitudes give us our Lord's thought about blessedness. I think that we
+can describe the notion of blessedness there presented as being the
+state of those who have taken God at His word and chosen Him, and by
+that act of choice, while they have forfeited the world and the world's
+favour, have attained to the spiritual riches of the Kingdom of God.
+They are those to whom God is the Supreme Good, in whose possession they
+gladly count all things but loss. These are they who here in the pilgrim
+state have already attained to the enjoyment of God because they want
+nothing other or beside Him.
+
+Supremely blessed, therefore, is Mary our Mother, who never for a moment
+even in thought was separate from God. From the earliest moment of her
+existence she could say, "My beloved is mine and I am His." We try to
+think out what such a fact may mean when translated into terms of
+spiritual energy, and it seems to mean more than anything else boundless
+power of intercession such as the Church has attributed to S. Mary from
+the earliest times. We see no other way of estimating spiritual power
+save as the power of prayer. It is through prayer that we approach
+God--for we remember that sacrifice is but the highest form of prayer.
+The blessedness of S. Mary, that peculiar degree of blessedness which
+seems signalized by the reiterated attribution of the quality to her,
+must for our purposes to be understood as "power with God," power of
+intercession. It means that our Lord has chosen her to be a special
+medium of approval to Him, and that through her prayers He wills to
+bestow upon men many of His choicest gifts. Naturally, her prayers, like
+our prayers, are mediated by the merits of her divine Son; nevertheless
+they have a peculiar power which is related to her peculiar blessedness
+in that she is the mother of Incarnate God, and by special privilege is
+herself without sin. Of all those to whom we are privileged to turn in
+the joys and tragedies of our lives for the sympathy which helps through
+enlightened, loving prayer, we most naturally resort to her who is all
+love and all sympathy, Mary, the Mother of Jesus, blessed among
+women forever.
+
+Although we are told nothing of these days that S. Mary spent with her
+cousin Elizabeth, we do gather that she remained with her until her
+child was born and that she saw S. John in his mother's arms, and was a
+partaker in the joy of the aged parents. She was present when Zacharias,
+his speech restored, uttered the _Benedictus_ in thanksgiving for the
+birth of his son. It was then, having seen her own Son's Forerunner that
+S. Mary went back to Nazareth filled more than ever with the sense that
+God's hand was in the events that were taking place, and of the approach
+of some crisis in her nation's history. It must have been that she
+talked intimately with Zacharias and Elizabeth and with them tried to
+imagine what was the future in which these two children were so closely
+concerned. When we consider the _Magnificat_ and the _Benedictus_ not as
+the "Gospel Canticles" to be sung in Church but as the utterances of
+pious Israelites under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, we feel how
+very vivid must have been their expectation of God's action in the
+immediate future, and with what intense love and interest they thought
+of the parts to be taken by their children in the deliverance God was
+preparing. How often they must have pondered the God-inspired saying:
+"He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the
+Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he
+shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there
+shall be no end." "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the
+Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his
+ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of
+their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the Dayspring
+from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness
+and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way
+of peace."
+
+We think too of a more intimate sympathy that there would have been
+between these two women, drawn now so close together, not only by the
+blood bond, but by the bond of a common experience. What wonderful
+hours of communing during these three months! The peace of the hills of
+Judah is all about them and the peace of God is in their souls. What
+ecstatic joy, what ineffable love was theirs in these moments as they
+thought of the children who were God's precious gift to them. I fancy
+that there were many hours when they ceased to think of the mystery that
+hung over these children's destiny, and became just mothers lost in love
+of the coming sons.
+
+As we try to think out their relation to each other it presents itself
+to us as a relation of sympathy. Sympathy is community of feeling; it is
+maimed and thwarted when there is feeling only on one side. We speak of
+our sympathy in their affliction for others whom we do not know and who
+do not know us, but that is a very imperfect rendering of the perfect
+thing. No more than love does sympathy reach its perfection in solitude.
+But here in this village of Judah we know that we have the perfect
+thing--sympathy in its most exquisite form.
+
+This capacity for sympathy is one of the greatest of human endowments,
+and, one is glad to think, not like many human endowments, rare in its
+manifestation. In its ordinary manifestation it is instinctive, is
+roused by the spectacle of need calling us to its aid. There come to our
+knowledge from time to time instances of what seem to us very grievous
+failures in sympathy, but investigation shows that ignorance is very
+commonly at the bottom of them. When human beings are convinced of a
+need they are quite ready to respond. Indeed this readiness to respond
+makes them the easy victims of all sorts of impostures, of baseless
+appeals which play upon sentiment rather than convince the
+understanding. And just there lies the weakness of sympathy in that it
+is so easily turned to sentimentality. But the sentimentalist who gushes
+over ills, real or imaginary, can commonly be brought to book easily
+enough. For one thing the sentimentalist is devoted to publicity. He
+loves to conduct campaigns and drives, to "get up" a demonstration or an
+entertainment. I do not mean that he is a hypocrite but only that he
+loves the lime-light. When any tragedy befalls man his impulse is to
+organise a dance in aid of it. It is extraordinary how many people there
+are who will aid a charity by dancing to whom one would feel it quite
+hopeless to appeal for the amount of the dance tickets. And yet they are
+not wholly selfish people; there does lie back of the dance a certain
+sympathetic impulse. We easily deceive ourselves about ourselves, and it
+is well to be sure that we have true sympathy and not just sentiment. It
+is not so difficult to find out. We can test ourselves quickly enough by
+examining our giving. Do we give only when we are asked? Do we yield to
+spectacular appeals or only to those that we have examined and found
+good? Do we put the spiritual interests of humanity first? Is there any
+appreciable amount of quiet spontaneous giving which is known to no one?
+Do we prefer to be anonymous? Such tests soon reveal what we are like.
+One who never gives spontaneously, without being asked, we may be sure
+is lacking in sympathy.
+
+But of course one does not mean that sympathy is so closely related to
+what we call charity as what I have just said, if left by itself, would
+seem to imply. That is indeed the common form assumed by sympathy which
+has to be called out. But the best type of sympathy is the expression of
+our knowledge of one another; it is based on our knowledge of human
+nature and our interest in human beings. Because it is based on
+knowledge it is not subject to be swept away by the sweet breezes of
+sentimentalism. To its perfect exercise it is needful to know
+individuals not merely to know about them. The ordinary limitations of
+sympathy come from this, that we do not want to take time and pains to
+know one another. That, for example, is where the Church falls short in
+its mission to constitute a real brotherhood among its members--they
+have no time nor inclination really to know one another, or they find
+the artificial walls that society has erected impassable. It is, in
+fact, not very easy to know one another, and it is impossible to develop
+the complete type of sympathy with a crowd. For one must insist that
+this highest type of sympathy requires, what the word actually does
+mean, mutual sharing in life, the participation in the lives of our
+fellows and their partaking in our lives.
+
+So we understand why perfect sympathy is conditioned on spirituality.
+Unless we are spiritually developed and spiritually at one we cannot
+share in one another's lives fully. Where there are lives separated by a
+gulf of spiritual differences the completest sympathy is impossible. And
+we understand why Incarnate seems so much nearer to us than God
+unincarnate. It is true that "the Father Himself loveth you"; it is
+true that it is the love of the Blessed Trinity that is expressed in the
+Incarnation. The Incarnation did not create God's love and sympathy, it
+only reveals it. Yet it is precisely the Incarnation that enables us to
+lay hold on God's sympathy with a certainty and sureness of grasp that
+we would not otherwise have. The sight of "God in Christ reconciling the
+world unto Himself" is more to us in the way of proof than any amount of
+declaration can be. To be told of the sympathy of God is one thing, to
+see how it works is another.
+
+Our personal need in this matter is to find the sympathy that will help
+us in something outside ourselves, outside the limitations of human
+nature. Much as we value human sympathy, precious as we find its
+expression, yet we do find that it has for the higher purposes of life
+serious limitations. It has very little power to execute what it finds
+needs to be done. A man may understand another's weakness and may
+utterly sympathise with it; he may advise and console, but in the end he
+finds that he cannot adequately help. The case is hopeless unless he can
+point the sufferer to some source outside himself on which he can draw,
+unless he can lead him to the sympathy of God. God can offer not only
+consolation, not only the spectacle of another life which has triumphed
+under analogous circumstances, but He can give the power to this present
+weak and discouraged life to triumph in the place where it is. He can
+"make a way of escape."
+
+But there is another form of sympathy which we crave and need which is
+just the communion of soul with soul. We are not asking anything more or
+other than to show ourselves. We are overwhelmed with the loneliness of
+life. It comes upon us in the most crowded places, this sense of
+separation from all about us. Oh, that I might flee away and be at rest,
+is our feeling. It is here that we specially need our Lord. Blessed are
+we if we have learned to find in Him the rest we need for our souls, if
+we have learned to open the door that leads always to Him; or, perhaps
+to knock appealingly at that door which He will never fail to open. It
+is then that we find the joy of the invitation "Come unto me all ye that
+are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."
+
+But Christ, the perfect Sympathiser, has associated others with Himself.
+If we can go to him, so can others; the Way is open to all. And those
+who go and are associated with Him are gathered into a family. Here
+among those who have followed the interests which are ours, and have
+pursued the ends that we are pursuing, and cultivated the qualities
+which we value, we feel sure of that sympathetic understanding of life
+which we seek. And especially among those members of the Body who have
+gone on to the end in fidelity to the ideals of the life which is hid
+with Christ in God shall we look for understanding and help. It is from
+this point of view that the Communion of Saints will mean so much to us.
+We value the strength of mutual support which inevitably grows out of
+associated life. We cannot think of the saints of God as having passed
+beyond us into some place of rest where they are content to forget the
+problems of earth: rather we are compelled to think of them as still
+actively sharing in those interests which are still the interests of
+their divine Head. Until, Jesus Himself cease to think of us who are
+still in the Pilgrim Way, and cease to offer Himself on our behalf, we
+cannot think of any who are in Him as other than intensely interested in
+us of the earthly Church, or as doing other than helping by prayer for
+us that we with them may attain our end. And especially shall we feel
+sure that at any moment of our lives we may turn to the Mother in
+confident expectancy of finding most helpful sympathy and most ready
+aid. Her life to-day is a life of intercession, of intercession which
+has all the power of perfect understanding and perfect sympathy. Let us
+learn to go to her; let us learn that as God is praised and honoured in
+His saints, as our Lord choses to work through those who are united to
+Him, so it is His will that great power of prayer shall be hers of whom
+He assumed our nature, that nature through which He still distributes
+the riches of His grace.
+
+     As I lay upon a night,
+     My thought was on a Lady bright
+     That men callen Mary of might,
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     To her came Gabriel so bright
+     And said, "Hail, Mary, full of might,
+     To be called thou art adight;"
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     Right as the sun shineth in glass,
+     So Jesus in His Mother was,
+     And thereby wit men that she was
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     Now is born that Babe of bliss,
+     And Queen of Heaven His Mother is,
+     And therefore think me that she is
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     After to heaven He took His flight,
+     And there He sits with His Father of might,
+     With Him is crowned that Lady bright,
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     English, Fifteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE VISITATION II
+
+And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath
+rejoiced in God my Saviour.
+
+S. Luke I. 46, 47.
+
+Forasmuch as we have no excuse, because of the multitude of our sins,
+we plead through thee, O Virgin Mother of God, with Him whom thou
+didst bear.
+
+Lo, great is thine intercession, strong and acceptable with our Saviour.
+
+O Stainless Mother, reject not us sinners in thine intercession with Him
+Whom thou didst bear.
+
+COPTIC.
+
+Wonderful was this day in the little town of Judah where these two
+women, each in her way an instrument of God in the upbuilding of His
+Kingdom, met and rejoiced together. There is revealed to us something of
+the possibilities of our religion when we try to follow the thought of
+these two women. They are so utterly devoted to God that God can speak
+to them. I think that it is well for us to dwell on this fact for a
+moment. We are apt to look upon inspiration, what is described as being
+filled with the Holy Ghost, as somewhat of a mechanical mode of God's
+operation. Our mistaken view is that God takes control of the faculties
+of a human being and uses them for His own purposes.
+
+But that is quite to misunderstand God's method. God uses the faculties
+of a man in proportion as the man yields himself to Him; and one who is
+living a sincere religion becomes in a degree the medium of God's
+self-expression. This possibility of expressing God increases as we
+increase in sanctity. Those who have completely yielded themselves to
+God in a life of sanctity become in a deep sense the representatives of
+God: they have, in S. Paul's phraseology, His mind. To be capable of so
+becoming the divine instrument it is necessary, not only to offer no
+opposition to God's purposes, but to make ourselves the active
+executants of them. Our Christian vocation is thus to be the instrument
+of God, to be the visible demonstrations of His power and presence.
+There is a true inspiration, a true speaking for God to-day, no doubt,
+as true as at any time in the Church's history, wherever there is
+sanctity. What is lacking to present day utterances of sanctity is not
+the action of the Holy Spirit, but authentication by the Church: that is
+given only under certain special circumstances and for special purposes.
+But there is no need to limit the inspiring action of the Holy Spirit to
+such utterances as for special reasons have received official
+recognition.
+
+What we need to feel is the constant action of the Holy Spirit--that He
+wants to speak through every man. And it helps to clear our minds if we
+go to our Bibles with the expectation of finding here, not exceptions to
+all rules which obtain in common life, but types of the divine action.
+The isolation of Bible history has done much to create a feeling of its
+unreality. What has happened only in the Bible can, we are apt to feel,
+safely be disregarded in daily life in the twentieth century. But if
+what we find there is customary modes of divine action in life,
+exceptional in detail rather than in principle, the attitude we shall
+take will be wholly different. We shall then study them with the feeling
+expressed in S. Paul's saying, "These things are written for our
+learning," and we shall expect to find in us and about us the same order
+of divine action, we shall learn to look on our lives as having their
+chief meaning in the fact that they are possible instruments of God; we
+shall learn to regard failure as failure to show forth God to the world.
+
+In a way we can read our facts backward: the fact that "Elizabeth was
+filled with the Holy Ghost," and the fact that Mary under the same
+divine impulse gave utterance to the words of the Magnificat, is a
+revelation of the character of these two women which would satisfy us of
+their sanctity had we no other evidence of it. The choice of them by God
+to be His instruments is evidence of the divine approval; and that
+approval can never be false to the facts; what God treats as holy
+must be holy.
+
+So we come to holy Mary's Song with the feeling that in studying it we
+shall find in it a revelation of S. Mary herself. She is not an
+instrument on which the Holy Spirit plays, but an intelligent being
+through whom He acts. She, like S. Elizabeth, is filled with the Holy
+Spirit--she had never been in the slightest degree out of union with
+God--but still the Magnificat is her utterance; it represents her
+thought; it is the measure, if one may so put it, in modern terminology,
+of her degree of spiritual culture. Much that we say about S. Mary, her
+simplicity, her social place, and so on, seems to carry with it the
+implication of the ignorance and spiritual dullness that we associate
+with the type of poverty we are accustomed to to-day. But the poor folk
+whom we meet in association with our Lord are neither ignorant nor
+spiritually dull; and it would be a vast mistake to think of Blessed
+Mary as other than of great intelligence and spiritual receptivity, or
+as deficient in understanding of the details of her ancestral religion.
+We have no reason to be surprised that she should sing Magnificat, or to
+think that the Holy Spirit was speaking through her thoughts which were
+quite beyond her comprehension. Inspired she was, but inspired, no
+doubt, to utter thoughts that had many times filled her mind.
+
+Her spiritual attitude as revealed in the Magnificat is but the attitude
+which must have been hers habitually--the attitude that exalts God and
+not self. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in
+God my Saviour." That is the starting-place of all holy souls--the
+adoration of God. True humility is never self-conscious because self is
+lost in the vision of God. S. Mary was bearing in her pure body the very
+Son of God. Admit, if you will, that as yet she did not understand the
+full reach of her vocation; but she did know that she had been chosen by
+God in a most signal manner to be the instrument of His purpose. That
+which S. Elizabeth spoke under divine impulse,--"Whence is this that the
+mother of my Lord should come to me?"--must have had clear meaning for
+her. But the wonder of all that God is accomplishing through her only
+brings her to God's feet. That "He that is mighty hath done me great
+things," is but the evidence of His sanctity, not of her greatness.
+
+One never gets through wondering at the beauty of humility; and it is
+one of the marks of how far we are from spiritual apprehension when we
+find this splendid virtue unattractive. It does indeed cut across many
+of the instinctive impulses of our nature; it can hardly be said to have
+dawned on humanity as a virtue until the Incarnation of God. Therein it
+has revealed to us God's attitude in His work and, by consequence, the
+natural attitude of all such as would associate themselves with God. It
+is not so much a self-denying as a self-forgetting virtue. It is ruined
+by the very consciousness of it. Such phrases as "practicing humility"
+seem self-contradictory--when one begins to practice humility it becomes
+something else. We do not conceive of our Lady as setting out to be
+humble, of thinking of what a humble person would do under such and such
+circumstances. She does not, as I was saying, think of herself at all,
+but thinks of God. The "great things" she has are His gift. That He has
+looked upon her low estate, and that in consequence of His visitation
+"all generations shall call her blessed," is a manifestation of the
+divine glory and goodness, not an occasion of pride to the recipient of
+God's gifts.
+
+We who are so self-seeking, who are so greedy of praise, who are
+constantly wanting what we feel is our due, who hunger to be
+"appreciated," who are full of proud boasting about our accomplishment,
+will do well to meditate upon this point of view. We acknowledge the
+supremacy of God with our lips, but in our acts we are quite prone to
+assume that we are independent actors in the universe where whatever we
+have is due to our own creative powers. We claim a certain lordship over
+life, a certain independent use of it. We resent the pressure of
+religious principle as setting up a sort of counter-claim to control
+that which it is ours to dispose of as we will. Most of our difficulties
+come from this godless attitude which claims independence of life. It
+results in a religion which is willing to pay God tribute, but is not
+willing to belong to God. But the humble person has nothing of his own
+and moreover wants nothing; he wants simply that God shall use him, that
+he shall be found a ready instrument in God's hands.
+
+It is this readiness that we find in Blessed Mary when she answered the
+astonishing announcement of the angel with her, "Behold the Handmaid of
+the Lord." It is that quality which we find in her here when she
+construes God's purpose in terms which go out far beyond her individual
+life and sees in her experience but one item in God's dealing with
+humanity in His age-long work of "bringing His wanderers home." We
+should have far less difficulty and find our lives far more significant
+if we could get rid of our wretched egotism and find it possible to lose
+ourselves in the work of God. We should then find the work important
+because it is God's work and not because we are associated with it. We
+should also find it less easy to be discouraged because we should not
+understand our failure to be the failure of God. Discouragement is but
+one of the aspects of egotism, and not the most attractive.
+
+We cannot rise to anything like a passion of holiness unless we have
+found God to be all in all. Only so can we lose ourselves in God. And I
+must, at whatever risk of over-dwelling, stress the fact that we can
+only attain this point of view by dwelling on God and not on self. Let
+God be the foreground of our thought. Let our souls magnify the Lord.
+Let us dwell upon the "great things" God has done for us. In every life
+there is such a wonderful manifestation of the divine goodness--only we
+do not take time to look for it. It is well to take the time: to write
+out, if need be, our spiritual history. We shall then find abundant
+evidence of the goodness of God. It may be that it is a goodness that is
+seen chiefly in offers, in opportunities to be something which we have
+declined or have only imperfectly realized. Be that as it may, there is
+no life, I am quite convinced, that has not a spiritual history which is
+a marvellous history of what God at least wanted to do for it. It is
+also a history of what He actually has done: a history of graces, of
+rich gifts, of deliverances. It matters not that we have been so
+heedless as to miss most of what God has done. The facts stand and are
+discoverable whenever we care to pay enough attention to them to
+ascertain their true meaning. When we do that, then surely we shall be
+compelled to do, what blessed Mary never needed to do, fall at God's
+feet in an act of penitence, seeing ourselves, perhaps for the first
+time, in the light of God's mind.
+
+The Magnificat, if we consider it as a personal expression, is a
+wonderful expression of selfless devotion, where the perception of the
+glory and majesty of God excludes all other thoughts. It is, too, a
+thanksgiving for the personal gift which is her vocation to be the
+Mother of the Saviour. Out of her lowliness she has been exalted--how
+highly she herself cannot at the time have dreamed. We can see what was
+necessarily involved in God's choice of her, and to-day we think of her
+as in her perfect purity exalted in heaven far above all other
+creatures. Mother of God most holy we call her, and in the words of her
+canticle ever repeat her thanksgiving as our thanksgiving, too, for the
+vocation that God sent her and for the gift which through her has
+come to us.
+
+But there is a more universal aspect of the Magnificat. Essentially it
+is the presentation of the constant antithesis which runs through all
+revelation between the flesh and the spirit, between the Kingdom of God
+and the Kingdom of this world. It embodies the conception of God
+striving to save a world which has revolted from Him, and now at last
+entering upon that stage of His work which is the beginning of a triumph
+over all the powers of the adversary. In Mary's song the contrasted
+powers are still presented under the Old Testament terminology which was
+the natural form of her thought. The adversaries of God are the proud,
+the mighty, the rich; while those who are on God's side are the humble,
+the god-fearers, the hungry. The form of the thought and its essential
+meaning remain the same through the centuries, though our terminology
+changes somewhat. Presently in the pages of the New Testament we shall
+get the presentation as the contrast between the children of this world
+and the sons of God. We shall find the briefest expression of the latter
+to be the saints.
+
+We no longer feel that rich and poor express a spiritual contrast. Nor
+do we, who are quite accustomed to the action of labour leaders, regard
+social position as being the exclusive seat of arrogancy. But we know
+that the spiritual values which are expressed in the varying terminology
+are constant; we know that the warfare between God and not-God is still
+the most important phenomenon in the universe. And it happens as we look
+out on the battlefield where the forces of good and evil contend, where
+before our eyes they seem to sway back and forth on the field of human
+life with every varying fortunes, that we not seldom feel that the
+battle is not obviously falling to the side of righteousness. There come
+moments when we are oppressed by what seems to us the lack of power in
+the ideals of righteousness. The appeal of the proud and of the rich is
+so dazzling; the splendour of the visible kingdom of the world is so
+intoxicating, the contagion of the crowd which follows the uplifted
+banner of Satan is so penetrating, that we hardly wonder to see the new
+generations carried away in the sweep of popular enthusiasm. Here is
+excitement, exhilarating enjoyment, the throb and sting of the flesh,
+the breathless whirl of gaiety, the physical quiet of satisfied desires.
+What is there to appeal on the other side? As the crowds troop past to
+the sound of music and dancing they for a moment raise their eyes, and
+above them rises a hill whereon is a Cross and on the Cross an emaciated
+Victim is nailed, and at the foot of the Cross a small group of
+discouraged folk--S. John, The blessed Mother, the other Mary--stunned
+by the grief born of the death of Son and Friend.
+
+These two utterances stand in eternal contrast: "All these things will
+I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me": and, "I, if I be
+lifted up, will draw all men unto me." As yet the appeal made from an
+"exceeding high mountain" visibly seems to prevail against that made
+from "the place which is called Calvary."
+
+And what have we to counteract the depression which is the natural
+reaction from the spectacle of the world-rejection of Christ? We have
+the truth which is embodied in Mary's Magnificat, we have the fact of
+Mary's vocation to be the Mother of God. The revelation of God's meaning
+and purpose is a basis of optimism which no promise of Satan can
+overthrow. When all is said, the view from the exceeding high mountain
+is a view of the Kingdom of this world only; from the place called
+Calvary you can see the Kingdom of God as well. From this point of
+vantage alone the permanent values of life are visible; and to the taunt
+flung at us, the taunt so terrifying to the young, "You are losing
+life," the enigmatic reply from the Cross is that you have to lose life
+to gain it; that permanent and eternal values are acquired by those who
+have the self-restraint and the foresight not to sacrifice the substance
+to the shadow, nor to mistake the toys of childhood for the riches of
+manhood. "In the meantime life is passing and the shadows draw in and
+you have not attained" so they say. True: we count not ourselves to have
+yet attained; but we press on toward the mark of our high calling in
+Christ Jesus our Lord. We are not in a hurry, because the crown we are
+seeking is amaranthine, unfading. We are not compelled to compress our
+enjoyment within a given time; we do not awake each morning with the
+thought that we may not outlast the daylight; we are not hurried and
+fevered with the sense of our fragility. The kingdoms of the world and
+the glory of them must be seized now: Satan cannot afford to wait
+because his kingdom has an end. But God can afford to wait because of
+His Kingdom there is no end.
+
+We are content then with _promises_ and with such partial fulfilment as
+we find on our pilgrim-way. We are content because we see the end in the
+beginning. To those who in the first days of the Church objected that
+though the promises were wonderful and abundant the fulfilment was
+small; to those who said we do not yet see the perfection of the
+kingdom; the answer of inspiration was: True, we do not yet see the
+accomplishment of all of God's promises, but we do see Jesus. And there
+is where we stand to-day. The work that God has to do in the
+spiritualising of the human race is tremendous; but we actually see its
+beginning in Jesus, and we are content to wait with God for the perfect
+accomplishment.
+
+And we must remember when we think of the work of God in terms of time,
+that the length of time that is required to accomplish the
+spiritualisation of the human race is not to be estimated in terms of
+the divine will but in terms of the human will. It is not divine power
+but human resistance which is the determining factor, for God will not
+compel us to obey Him, nor would compelled obedience have any spiritual
+value. And we can estimate something of the human resistance that has to
+be overcome by concentrating attention upon one unit of that resistance.
+That is, we can learn from the study of our own life what is the
+resistance of one human being to the triumph of the will of God; and,
+taking oneself as a fair sample of the race can multiply our resistance
+to God's will by the numbers of the race. We are perfectly certain of
+the will of God: God wills that all men shall come to the knowledge of
+the truth and be saved. "This is the will of God, even your
+sanctification." So far as we are thwarting that will we are playing
+into the hands of the power of evil. But that power is of limited
+existence; it draws to its end. Its death knell was struck when the
+noon-day darkness lifted from Calvary.
+
+Therefore the rejoicing of blessed Mary, whose Song reads the necessary
+end in the beginning, is well considered; and we rejoice with her and in
+her. It is our privilege--and it is a vast privilege--to rejoice in
+blessed Mary as the instrument of God in bringing the triumph of His
+Kingdom one stage nearer its accomplishment. And in especial we rejoice
+because we see in her one more, and the most marked, illustration of the
+divine method. "He hath regarded the low estate of His Handmaiden." "He
+hath exalted them of low degree." "He hath filled the hungry." The
+method of God is to work to His results through those who are
+spiritually receptive. The less of self there is in us the more room
+there is for God. "The Kingdom of God is within you," that is, the
+starting-point of God's work in the building of the Kingdom is within
+the soul of man. He must master the inner man, must win the allegiance
+of our souls, before His work can make any progress at all. The Kingdom
+of God cometh not "with observation," that is, from the outside in an
+exhibition of power; it must of necessity come from the inside in
+demonstration of the Spirit. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God,
+they are the sons of God."
+
+In blessed Mary we see the new starting-point in this last stage of the
+work of God. For the foreseen merits of her Son she is brought into
+union with God and spared the taint of sin, and becomes the second Eve,
+the Mother of the new race. Acting upon her pure humanity, the Holy
+Spirit produces that humanity which joined to the divinity in the Second
+Person of the Blessed Trinity becomes the Christ, the Son of the Living
+God. In Mary's rejoicing in this so great fact, the bringing of human
+redemption, we rightly share. It is with a right understanding of her
+Song that the Church throughout the ages has embodied it in its worship
+and through it constantly rejoices in God its Saviour. The actual
+detailed accomplishment of God's work in man's redemption is going on
+under our eyes. It is regrettable that human stupidity seems to prefer
+dwelling upon what seem God's failures, and are actually our own, rather
+than upon the constant triumphs of grace. But God reigns; and we can
+always find grounds of optimism if we can find that He is day by day
+reigning more perfectly in us. When we pray "Thy Kingdom Come," the
+field to examine for the fulfilment of our prayers is the field of our
+own souls.
+
+     Our Lady took the road
+     To Zachary's abode;
+     O'er mountain, vale and lea,
+     Full many a league sped she
+     Toward Hebron's holy hill,
+     By God's command and will.
+
+     Full light did Mary, make
+     Of trouble for his sake.
+     God's Very Son of yore
+     Within her breast she bore;
+     And angels bright and fair,
+     Unseen, her fellows were.
+
+     She, ere she took her way,
+     An orison would say,
+     That God her steps might tend
+     Safe to their journey's end;
+     And there, in manner meet,
+     Her cousin she 'gan greet.
+
+     Elizabeth full fain
+     Eft bowed her head again;
+     She wist 'twas God's own Bride,
+     As, worshipful she cried:
+     'O Lady, Full of Grace,
+     Whence do I see thy face?'
+
+     O House and Home of bliss,
+     O earthly Paradis--
+     Nay, Heaven itself on ground
+     Wherein the Lord is found,
+     The Lord of Glory bright,
+     In goodness great and might--
+
+     Clean Maiden thou that art,
+     Come, visit this my heart;
+     And bring me chief my Good,
+     God's Son in Flesh and Blood;
+     Bless body, soul; and bide
+     For ever by my side.
+
+     From the Köln Gesang-Buch. XVI Cent.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+S. JOSEPH
+
+     Joseph, her husband, being a just man--
+
+     S. Matt. I. 19.
+
+     O God, our refuge and our strength, look down in mercy upon
+     thy people who cry to thee; and by the intercession of the
+     glorious and immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God, of St.
+     Joseph her spouse, and of thy blessed apostles Peter and
+     Paul, and of all saints, in mercy and goodness hear our
+     prayers for the conversion of sinners, and for the liberty
+     and exaltation of our holy mother the church. Through.
+
+     ROMAN.
+
+When we read the Gospels, not simply as a record of events but as
+revelation of the method of God, we are constantly impressed with what
+we cannot otherwise describe than as the care of God for detail. There
+is a curious type of mind which finds it possible to think of God as
+Creator and Ruler of the universe, but impossible to conceive Him as
+interested in or concerning Himself with the minutiae of human life; who
+can conceive God as caring for a solar system or a planet, but not as
+caring for a baby. Surely it is a strange notion of God that thinks of
+Him as estimating values in terms of weight and measure: surely much
+more intelligible is the Gospel presentation of Him as concerned with
+spritual values and exercising that minute care over human life which is
+best expressed by the word _Father_. It is very significant that as the
+volume of revelation unrolls, the earlier notions of God as Ruler,
+Governor, King, give way to the notion of Father, until in our Lord's
+presentation of the character of God it is His Fatherhood which stands
+in the forefront. What our Lord emphasises in the character of God are
+precisely the qualities of love and care and sympathy which the word
+Father connotes.
+
+And nowhere do we see this loving care of God which we call His
+Providence better set out for our study than in the detailed preparation
+which preceded and attended the birth of His Son into this world. There
+was that preparation of the Mother who was to be the source of the
+humanity of the Child Jesus which we have been dwelling upon; there was
+also the preparation for the proper guardianship of both Mother and
+Child during the years of Jesus' immaturity. There are certain things
+which are self-evident when once we turn our minds to them; and it is
+thus self-evident that the care of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother
+would require the preparation of the man to whom they should be
+committed. In the state of society into which our Lord was born, He and
+His Mother would need active guardianship of a peculiar nature. The man
+who should provide for our Lord's infancy must be a man, in the nature
+of the case, who was receptive of spiritual monitions and devoted to the
+will of God. It was a delicate matter to live before the world as the
+husband of Mary of Nazareth, and to live before God as the guardian of
+her virginity and as the foster-father of her divine Son. Only a very
+choice nature could respond to the demands thus made upon it, a nature
+which had been habitually responsive to the will of God and long
+nurtured by the richness of His grace.
+
+We know very little of St. Joseph; but God's choice of him for the
+office he was to fulfil near the blessed Virgin Mary and her Son reveals
+the nature of the man. He is described to us as "a just man," one whose
+judgment would not be swayed by prejudices, but who would be open to the
+consideration of any case upon its merits: a man who would not view
+events in the light of their effect upon himself and his plans, but who
+can calmly consider what in given circumstances is due to others. Such
+men are rare at any time for their production is a matter of slow
+discipline.
+
+We gather that both S. Joseph and S. Mary were of the same lineage, were
+descended from the same ancestor, David. We gather also that S. Joseph
+was much older than his bethrothed wife, for he had been already married
+and had a family. All the notices of these brothers and sisters of the
+Lord imply that they were considerably older than the Child of Mary, and
+that they felt that they had the sort of authority over Him which
+commonly belongs to the elder children of a family; the sort of doubt
+and criticism of His course which would be the instinctive attitudes of
+elders toward the unprecedented course of a younger. We have, I think, a
+right to infer from the terms of the narrative, that S. Joseph would
+have been well acquainted with S. Mary and was not taking a wife who was
+a stranger to him. Indeed, considering the actual development of the
+situation, I myself feel quite certain that those are right who maintain
+that the proposed marriage was intended to be merely a nominal union,
+the ultimate design of which was the protection of the virginity of
+Mary. I find it impossible to think of that virginity as other than of
+deliberate purpose from the beginning, and prompted by the Spirit of God
+for the purposes of God for which it served. There is, to be sure, no
+revelation of this in Holy Scripture, but there are facts which suggest
+themselves to the devout meditations of saints which we feel that we may
+safely take on the authority of their spiritual intuitions. Such a fact
+is this of Mary's purposed virginity which I am content to accept on the
+basis of its congruity with S. Mary's life and vocation. Of the fact of
+her perpetual virginity there can be no dispute among Catholic
+Christians.
+
+To S. Joseph thus preparing himself to be the guardian of the blessed
+Virgin it could only come as a tremendous shock that she should be found
+with a child. Our character comes out at such times of trial as when
+something that we had taken quite for granted fails us, and we are left
+breathless and bewildered in in the face of what would have seemed
+impossible even had we thought of it. What was S. Joseph's attitude? The
+beauty and sanity of his character at once shows itself. Grieved and
+disheartened as he must have been, disappointed as he could not but be,
+he yet thinks at once of his bethrothed, not of himself. How far could
+he save her?--that was his first thought. He would at least avoid
+publicity. "Being a just man, and not willing to make her a public
+example, he was minded to put her away privily." It is the quality that
+we express by the word benevolence--the quality of mature and deliberate
+wisdom. We feel that such a man could be trusted under any
+circumstances of life.
+
+We feel, too, that God would not leave S. Joseph in doubt as to the
+course he was to pursue, or as to the character of Mary herself. There
+could no shade of suspicion be permitted to rest upon her. Hence "while
+he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto
+him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take
+unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the
+Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his
+name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins."
+
+It is not difficult to imagine the joy of S. Joseph at this angelic
+message. We all know the sense of relief which comes when, after facing
+a most trying situation, and being forced to make up our minds to act
+when action either way is almost equally painful, we find that we are
+delivered from the necessity of acting at all, that the whole state of
+things has been utterly misunderstood. It was so with S. Joseph; and in
+his case there was the added joy which springs from the nature of the
+coming Child as the angel explains it to him. He who had accepted the
+charge of Mary was now to add to that charge the charge of her Child:
+and the Child is the very Saviour whom his soul and the souls of all
+pious Israelites had longed for. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he
+shall save his people from their sins." We cannot expect that S. Joseph
+would have taken in the full meaning of this message, but he would have
+understood that he was called to a wondrous co-operation with God in the
+work of the redemption of Israel.
+
+As we think of S. Joseph it is this co-operation which is the
+significant thing in his life. As we study human life in the only way in
+which it is much worth while to study it, in the light of revelation, it
+becomes clear to us that there is purpose in all human life. Often we
+observe a purpose that we are not able to grasp, but in the light of
+what we know from revelation we do not doubt of its presence. Even lives
+that seem obscure and insignificant we feel sure must have a divine
+meaning; and the pathetic thing about most human life is that it never
+dreams of its own significance. We are consumed with the notion that
+God's instruments must be great, while it is on the face of revelation
+that they are commonly humble and of seeming insignificance. It is the
+work that is important, and the instrument becomes important through its
+relation to the work. We all at least have the common vocation of the
+Christian, and it would be difficult to exaggerate the spiritual
+significance of that. S. Joseph seems to us at once set apart by his
+vocation to be the guardian of the divine Child, to protect and to
+nurture the years of His human immaturity. This is no doubt a unique
+vocation, but is it quite so far separated from ordinary Christian
+experience as we assume? You and I are also constituted guardians of the
+divine Presence. This very morning, it may be, we have received within
+the Tabernacle of our breast the same Presence that S. Joseph
+guarded--the Presence of Incarnate God. In that Presence of His humanity
+our Lord abode with us but a few minutes and then the Presence withdrew:
+but He left behind Him a real gift, the gift of an increase in
+sacramental grace.
+
+Was that a light thing: Was it indeed so much less than the vocation of
+S. Joseph? And how have we guarded this Presence? Those few moments
+after the reception of our Incarnate Lord at the altar--how do we
+habitually spend them? Do we spend them in guarding the Presence? There
+is much to be learned about the meaning and the value of guarding the
+Eucharistic Gift. Our thanksgiving after Communion is fully as important
+as our preparation for receiving it. I am more and more inclined to
+think that much of the fruitlessness of communions which is so sad a
+side of the life of the Church is due to careless reception and
+inadequate thanksgiving. It is the adoration of our Lord within the
+Tabernacle of our body and thanksgiving to Him for having come to us
+that is the _appropriation_ of the Gift of the Sacrament. He comes to us
+and offers Himself to us with all the benefits of His life and death;
+and then having offered Himself "He makes as though he would go
+farther," and he does actually go, unless we are awake to our spiritual
+opportunity, and constrain Him, saying, "abide with us, for it is toward
+evening and the day is far spent."
+
+We think of S. Joseph then, as with a relieved and rejoicing heart he
+enters upon his new realised vocation as the head of the Holy Family.
+The marriage which he had been upon the point of abandoning he now
+enters that he may give S. Mary and her coming Child his full
+protection.
+
+So S. Joseph "took unto him his wife; and knew her not till she had
+brought forth her first-born Son." These words have been so
+misunderstood as to imply that the marriage of S. Joseph and S. Mary was
+consummated after the birth of our Lord. Grammatically they convey no
+such implication; the mode of expression is perfectly simple and well
+known by which a fact is affirmed to exist up to a certain time without
+any implication as to what happens after. And the meaning of the passage
+which is not at all necessitated by its grammatical construction is
+utterly intolerable in Catholic teaching. The constant teaching of the
+Church is the perpetual virginity of Mary--that she was a virgin "before
+and in and after her child-bearing." There was to be sure an heretic
+named Helvidius who taught otherwise, but he was promptly repudiated by
+all Catholic teachers and but served to emphasize the depth and
+clearness of the Catholic tradition. Upon this point there has never
+been any wavering in the mind of the Church, and to hold otherwise shows
+a lamentable lack of a Catholic perception of values and but a
+superficial grasp upon what is involved in the Incarnation.
+
+The impression we get of S. Joseph is that of a man of great simplicity
+and gentleness of character--that childlikeness which was later praised
+by his foster Son. Such qualities do not produce much impression on the
+superficial observer, but they are of great spiritual value. They are
+the concomitants of a special type of open-mindedness. Open-mindedness
+is a quality much praised and little practiced. But the open-mindedness
+which is commonly praised is not the open-mindedness which is
+praiseworthy. What is at present meant by open-mindedness is in reality
+failure to have any mind at all upon a given subject. It is the attitude
+of doubt which never proceeds so far as to arrive at a solution. To have
+an open mind means to the contemporary man to hold all conclusions
+loosely, to consider all things open to question, to be ready to
+abandon what now appears to be true in favour of something which
+to-morrow may appear to be more true. In other words, we are invited to
+base life on pure scepticism.
+
+Now no life can be so conducted. We live by a faith of some sort,
+whether it be a faith in God or no. The most sceptical mind has to
+believe something to act at all. It cannot even doubt without affirming
+a belief in its own intellectual processes. The open mind that never
+reaches any certainty to fill it is a very poor possession indeed. And
+it is not at all what we mean when we say of S. Joseph that he was
+open-minded. We mean that he was receptive of new spiritual impressions
+and capable of further spiritual development. There are minds, and they
+are not unusual among people of a certain degree of spiritual
+development, which we can best describe as having reached a given stage
+of growth and then shut up. Or, to vary the figure, they impress one as
+having a certain capacity, and when that has been reached, being able to
+contain nothing further. They come to a stop. From that point they try
+to maintain the position they have acquired. But that is impossible:
+they inevitably fall away unless they are going forward. When the power
+of spiritual assimilation is dead, we are spiritually in a dying
+condition.
+
+What we mean by having an open and childlike mind, then, is that one has
+this power of spiritual assimilation and, consequently, a power of
+growth. The sceptic is afflicted with spiritual indigestion; he is an
+invalid who is quite certain that any food that is offered him is
+indigestible. His soul withers away through its incapacity to believe.
+The open-minded saint has a healthy spiritual digestion. This does not
+mean that, in vulgar parlance, he can, "swallow anything"; it does mean
+a power of discrimination between food offered him,--that he assimilates
+what is wholesome and rejects the rest. The sceptic is pessimistic as to
+the existence of any wholesome food at all; he starves his soul for fear
+that he should believe something that is not true. The saint, with the
+test of faith, sorts the food proposed to him, and grows in grace, and
+consequently in the knowledge and the love of God.
+
+Open-mindedness is sensitiveness to spiritual impressions, readiness for
+spiritual advance, even when such impressions cut across much that has
+seemed to us well settled, and such advance involves the upset of his
+established ways of thought. What distinguishes the evolution in the
+thought of the sceptic from that in the thought of the saint is that in
+the one case the result is destructive and in the other constructive.
+The sceptic is like a man who starts to build a house, and then
+periodically tears down what he has so far built and begins again on a
+new plan; the saint is like the house builder who broadens his plan in
+the course of construction, and who finds that within the limits of his
+general scheme there is room for indefinite improvement. The one never
+gets any building at all; the other gets a palace of which the last
+stages are of a more highly decorated school of architecture than he
+had conceived, or indeed, could conceive, when he began his work.
+
+In S. Joseph's case nothing could be more revolutionary in appearance
+than the truth he was asked to accept. He was asked to believe in the
+virgin-motherhood of his bethrothed, and in the fact that the Child soon
+to be born was He Who was to save Israel from his sins. He was asked to
+accept these incredible statements and to act upon them by taking Mary
+to wife as he had proposed. And he did not hesitate to accept the
+evidence of a dream and act in accordance with it. How could he do this?
+Because the required action which seemed so revolutionary of all his
+previous notions was, in fact, quite in accordance with his knowledge of
+God and of the promises of God. Though a simple man, perhaps because he
+was a simple man, he would know something of the teaching of the
+prophets. That teaching would have given him thoughts about God which
+would have, unconsciously, prepared him for these new acts of God.
+Though we cannot see before how a prophecy is to be fulfiled, after the
+event we can see that this is what is intended by it. We were actually
+being prepared by the prophecy for what was to take place. And thus, no
+doubt, S. Joseph's mind, being filled with the teaching of the
+Scriptures which he had heard read in the Synagogue every Sabbath day,
+would find that this new act of God on which he was asked to rely was,
+in fact, but a new step in the unfolding of that Providence which had
+for centuries been shaping the history of his nation.
+
+It is a quality to cultivate, this simple open-mindedness which is
+ready to respond to new spiritual impulses. It is precisely what
+prevents that deadly attitude of soul which proceeds as though religion
+were for us exhausted: as though we had reached the limit of expectancy.
+But to expect nothing is to receive nothing, because it is only
+expectancy that perceives what is offered. We move in a world which is
+thronged with spirtual impulses and energetic with spiritual powers. God
+is trying to lead us on to new spiritual experiences by which we may
+attain to a better understanding of Him. There is no assignable limit to
+our possible growth. But we fix a limit when we close our souls to
+further experiences by the practical denial that they exist. If we are
+childlike, we are always expecting new things of our Father; if we are
+open-minded we are alive to the activities of the spiritual world. We
+are conscious of possessing a growing religion, a religion truly
+evolutionary, constantly bringing to our knowledge unsuspected riches
+stored in the very principles whose meaning we had assumed that we had
+exhausted.
+
+Perhaps one of the treasures of our religion of which we have not
+achieved full consciousness is God's choice of us to be the guardians of
+His revelation. It is our charge "to keep the faith." I suppose that
+this responsibility is commonly regarded as belonging to some vaguely
+imagined Church which hands it on from generation to generation, to us
+among others, but without imposing on us an obligation of any active
+sort. But we are the Church--members in particular of the Body of
+Christ. And in the dissemination of the faith the last appeal is to us,
+not to some outside tribunal. When the Church wishes to discover its
+faith and make it articulate, its place of search is in the minds and
+hearts of the faithful. Our responsibility is to testify to the Catholic
+Faith, not so much by positively asserting it as by making it active and
+vivid in our lives so that its presence and power can by no means be
+mistaken. You, for instance, in common with the rest of the faithful,
+are the custodians of this truth of the perpetual virginity of the
+Blessed Virgin Mary. It may seem a small matter, but it is not. That it
+is not is readily seen from this fact, that when the perpetual virginity
+of our Blessed Mother is denied then also the Incarnation of her Son is
+denied or is held only in a half-hearted way. The Church stresses such
+facts, not only because they are facts, but because by their character
+they form a hedge about the truth of the Incarnation of our Lord. And we
+who are Catholic Christians must feel an obligation to hold fast this
+fact. We ought actively to show our firm adherence to it. How? Chiefly
+by our attitude towards Blessed Mary herself, by the devotion that we
+show her. If we are quite indifferent to devotion to Blessed Mary, if we
+show her no honour, if we likewise fail in honour to her guardian, S.
+Joseph, is it not to be expected that our grasp upon the truths which
+are enshrined in such devotion will be feeble, and that we shall hold
+them as of small moment? The whole system of Catholic thought is so
+nicely articulated, so consistently held together, that failure to hold
+even the smallest constituent indicates a faulty conception of the
+whole. Catholics are constantly accused of over-stressing devotion to
+blessed Mary and the saints and thereby encroaching upon the honour due
+to our Lord. The answer to the reproach is to be found in the question:
+Who to-day are defending to the very death the truth of our Lord's
+Incarnation and the truths that hang upon it? Are they those who deny
+the legitimacy of invocation, or those in whose religious practise it
+holds an important and vital place?
+
+
+     A PANEGYRICK ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.
+
+     I do not tremble, when I write
+     A Mistress' praise, but with delight
+     Can dive for pearls into the flood,
+     Fly through every garden, wood,
+     Stealing the choice of flow'rs and wind,
+     To dress her body or her mind;
+     Nay the Saints and Angels are
+     Nor safe in Heaven, till she be fair,
+     And rich as they; nor will this do,
+     Until she be my idol too.
+     With this sacrilege I dispense,
+     No fright is in my conscience,
+     My hand starts not, nor do I then
+     Find any quakings in my pen;
+     Whose every drop of ink within
+     Dwells, as in me my parent's sin,
+     And praises on the paper wrot
+     Have but conspired to make a blot:
+     Why should such fears invade me now
+     That writes on her? to whom do bow
+     The souls of all the just, whose place
+     Is next to God's, and in his face
+     All creatures and delights doth see
+     As darling of the Trinity;
+     To whom the Hierarchy doth throng,
+     And for whom Heaven is all one song.
+     Joys should possess my spirit here,
+     But pious joys are mixed with fear:
+     Put off thy shoe, 'tis holy ground,
+     For here the flaming Bush is found,
+     The mystic rose, the Ivory Tower,
+     The morning Star and David's bower,
+     The rod of Moses and of Jesse,
+     The fountain sealèd, Gideon's fleece,
+     A woman clothèd with the Sun,
+     The beauteous throne of Salomon,
+     The garden shut, the living spring,
+     The Tabernacle of the King,
+     The Altar breathing sacred fume,
+     The Heaven distilling honeycomb,
+     The untouched lily, full of dew,
+     A Mother, yet a Virgin too,
+     Before and after she brought forth
+     (Our ransom of eternal worth)
+     Both God and man. What voice can sing
+     This mystery, or Cherub's wing
+     Lend from his golden stock a pen
+     To write, how Heaven came down to men?
+     Here fear and wonder so advance
+     My soul, it must obey a trance.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE NATIVITY
+
+     She brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in
+     swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there
+     was no room for them in the inn.
+
+     S. Luke II. 7.
+
+     It is very meet to bless thee who bore the Christ, O ever
+     Blessed and Immaculate Mother of God. More wondrous than the
+     Cherubim and of greater glory than the Seraphim art thou who
+     remaining Virgin didst give birth to God the Word. Verily, do
+     we magnify thee, O Mother of God. In thee, O full of grace,
+     all creation exults, the hierarchy of angels and the race of
+     men. In thee sanctified temple, spiritual paradise, glory of
+     virgins, of whom God took flesh, through whom our God Who was
+     before the world became a Child. Of thy womb He made a
+     throne, and its dominion is more extensive than the heavens.
+     In thee, O full of grace, all creation exults: glory to thee.
+
+     RUSSIAN.
+
+We see a man and a woman on the road to Bethlehem where they are going
+to be taxed according to the decree of Augustus. Bethlehem would be
+known to them as the home of their ancestors, for they were both of the
+lineage of David. It was a painful journey for them for Mary was near
+the time of her delivery. We follow them along the road and into the
+village, as the twilight fades, and see them seeking shelter for the
+night. Bethlehem is a small place and the inn is crowded with those who
+have come on the errand with them, and the only place where they can
+find refuge for the night is a stable. But they are not used to luxury,
+and the stable serves their purpose.
+
+It also serves God's purpose. One understands as one reads this
+narrative of the Nativity what is meant by the Providential government
+of the world. We see how various lines of action, each free and
+independent, yet converge to the production of a given event. The
+different characters in the drama are all pursuing their own courses and
+yet the result is a true drama, not an unrelated series of events.
+Caesar's action, Joseph's lineage, our Lord's conception, all working
+together, bring about the fulfilment of prophecy by the birth of the
+Messiah in Bethlehem. There is in the universe an over-ruling will which
+works to its ends by co-operating with human freedom, and not
+destroying it. We are not the sport of chance, not the slaves of fate,
+but free men; and yet through our freedom, through our blunders and
+rebellions and sins as well as through our obedience, the work of God is
+moving to its conclusion. Man did all that he could to defeat the ends
+of God and to thwart God's purpose of redemption. Yet on a certain night
+in Bethlehem of Judea the light of God overcame the human darkness, and
+the voices of God's angels pierced the human tumult, and Jesus Christ
+was born. "God of the substance of his Father begotten before all
+worlds, man of the substance of his mother, born in the world; perfect
+God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."
+
+The manifestation came to certain shepherds watching their flocks in the
+fields about Bethlehem; simple men, quite unable to take in the meaning
+of what they see and hear. One cannot help thinking of what it would
+have meant in the way of an intellectual revolution if to some Greek or
+Roman philosopher, speculating on the destiny of humanity, the truth
+could have come that the future of the world was not in the court of
+Augustus, that it was not dependent on the Roman armies or Greek
+learning, but that it was bound up in the career and teaching of a Baby
+that night born in a stable in an obscure village in Judea. As we
+imagine such a case we see in the concrete the meaning of the revolution
+set in motion by this single event; and we are led to adore the ways of
+God in that He has chosen for the final approach to man for the purpose
+of redemption, this way of simplicity and humbleness. Man would not
+have thought of this as the best path for God to follow in this purpose
+of rescue, but we can be wise after the event and see that this Child
+born in poverty and obscurity would have fewer entanglements to break
+through, fewer obstacles to overcome.
+
+But these thoughts are far away from the night in Bethlehem. In the
+stable there where a Baby is lying in Mary's arms and Joseph stands
+looking on, there is no speculation about the world-consequences of the
+event. There is rather the splendour of love: the love of the mother in
+the new found mystery of this her Child; the love of God who has given
+her the Child. And all is a part of the great mystery of love, of the
+love wherewith God loves the world. "God so loved the world that He gave
+His only begotten Son." Here is the Son, lying in Mary's arms, wrapped
+in swaddling clothes, and Mary looks into His face as any human mother
+looks into the face of her child. But through the eyes that smile up
+into Mary's face, God is looking out on a world of sorrow and pain and
+sin that He has come to redeem, and for which, in redeeming it, to die.
+Presently, the shepherds come in and complete the group, the
+representatives of universal humanity at the birth of their King, We
+have the whole world-problem in small, but here there is no
+consciousness of it. No echo of world-politics or of movements of
+thought break in here. But we know that here is the beginning of that
+which will set at naught world-politics and revolutionise movements of
+thought, that here is the centre about which humanity will move in the
+coming time. Here is that which is fundamental and abiding because here
+is the one invincible power of the universe--love. All else will fail:
+prophecies, systems of philosophy, religions, political and social
+structures; each in the time of its flourishing, proclaiming itself the
+last word of human wisdom,--these in bewildering succession have arisen
+and passed away. But love has survived them all. Love never faileth;
+through the slow succession of the centuries it is winning the world
+to God.
+
+It were well if we could learn to look on the happenings of this world
+as the miracles of divine love. We think of the power, the justice, the
+judgment of God as visible in this world's history; but these are but
+the instruments of love, and all that He does has its foundation in love
+and receives its impulse from love. This Nativity is the divine love
+coming into the world on its last adventure, determined to win man, all
+other means failing, by the extremity of sacrifice. The final word about
+this Child will be that having loved his own He loved them unto the
+uttermost, he loved them without stinting, with the uttermost capacity
+of love. Understanding this meaning of the love of God, we are prepared
+for the further fact that God uses all sorts of instruments as the
+instruments of His love. He shares Himself. He pours Himself into human
+life. He takes men into partnership in the work of redemption. Whenever
+a soul is mastered by love, it becomes a tool in God's hands. The
+progress of the Church--of God's Kingdom--might be described as the
+accumulation of these tools wherewith God works--souls who are so
+devoted to Him as to be the medium of bringing His power, the power of
+love, to bear on the souls of their brethren.
+
+To be the highest, the most perfect, of all the instruments of
+redemption God chose Mary of Nazareth to be the Mother of His Son. She
+is the most complete human embodiment of God's love. She, in her perfect
+purity, can transmit that love as power with the least loss of energy in
+the process of transmission. When we think of the saints as the means of
+God's action, we think of blessed Mary as the highest of the saints and
+the means most perfectly adapted to God's ends. Here at Bethlehem she
+holds God in her arms and looks into the human face that He has taken
+for this present work and all her being is absorbed in love. Oblivious,
+we think her, of her mean surroundings, of the animals that share with
+her their stable, of the shepherds who come in and look on in wonder, of
+S. Joseph standing by in sympathy. Love is all. Love is a passion
+consuming her being--what can the attendant circumstances matter? And
+to-day, after all these centuries: to-day the Child is the Ascended and
+Enthroned Redeemer, His risen and glorified humanity, transmitting
+something of the divine glory, seated at the right hand of the Majesty
+of God. And Mary, the Mother? Can we have any other thought than that
+she who on the first Christmas morning looks into the face of her Baby,
+still, to-day, looks up into the face of her divine Son, and the look is
+the same look of love? And can we think of the look that comes back to
+her from eyes that are human, taken from her body, though they be in
+very truth the eyes of God--can we think, I say, of the eyes of her
+Child and her God bringing anything else than the message of love? Can
+we think that when in answer to our invocation she presents our prayers
+in union with her own, that love will fail?
+
+But let us come back to earth--to Bethlehem--on that first Christmas eve
+and listen to the songs of the angels as they sing over the star-lit
+fields. How near heaven seems! How real is God! How joyful is this
+season of peace to men of good will! The message is of peace, but that
+peace will need to have its nature explained in the coming years if
+men's hearts are not to fail them and their faith wither away. It is not
+a general peace to the world that is being proclaimed. Later on our Lord
+will say: "My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I
+unto you." It is such a gift as can be enjoyed only by men of good will;
+converted men, that is to say, men whose will is close set with the will
+of God. For how should there be peace in any world on any other terms?
+How can there be peace for those who are in rebellion against God? Our
+Lord can promise peace, and can fulfil His promise because He is
+bringing a new potency into human life. He is a new way of approach to
+God, a new way into the Holiest of all. Through His humanity God is
+united to man, and through it man, any man, can be united to God. And
+one of the results of that union is this gift of peace, and the fact
+that it arises from the union explains its new character, why our Lord
+calls it His peace.
+
+This peace is the Christmas gift of the divine child to us. This is the
+method of God's work, from the inside out; from the spiritual fact to
+its external result. We do not begin by finding peace with this world:
+"in the world ye shall have tribulation." And most of the failure to
+attain peace, and much of men's loss of faith is due to repudiation of
+the divine method. We live in a disordered and pain-stricken world where
+human life is uniformly a life of trial and struggle, and our easy
+yielding to temptation is an attempt at some sort of an adjustment with
+the world such as we think will produce peace and quiet. We constantly
+demand of religion that it should effect this for us. So far as one can
+see much of the revolt against religion to-day has its ground in the
+failure of religion to meet the demands made upon it for a better world.
+Men look out on a world seething with unrest and filled with injustice,
+and they turn upon the Church and ask, "Why have you not changed all
+this? Are you not, in fact, neglecting your duty in not changing it? Or
+if you are not neglecting your duty, you must at least confess to your
+impotence. Your self-confessed business is to make a better world."
+
+True; but only on the conditions which love imposes. Religion does not
+propose to improve the world by a more skilful application of the
+principles of worldliness. It does not propose to turn stones into bread
+at the demand of any devils whatsoever. It does not say, "If you will
+support me and give me a certain superficial honour, I will bless your
+efforts and increase the success of your undertakings." Religion
+proposes to improve the world on the condition that the principles of
+religion shall be accepted as the working principles of life; on
+condition, that is, that love shall be made the ground of human
+association. Religion can make a better world, it can make the kingdoms
+of God and of His Christ; but it can only do so on the condition that it
+is whole-heartedly accepted and thoroughly applied. The proof that it
+can do this is in the fact that it can and does make better individuals.
+Wherever men and women have lived by the principles of the Gospel they
+have brought forth the fruits of the Gospel. It has done this, not under
+some specially favourable circumstances, but it has done it under all
+circumstances of life and in all nations of men. What has been done in
+unnumbered individual cases, can be done in whole communities when the
+communities want it done. It is quite pointless in times of great social
+distress to ask passionately, "why does not God make a better world?"
+The only question which is at all to the point is, "why has God not made
+_me_ better?" The problem of God's dealing with the world is, in
+essence, the problem of God's dealing with me. If He has not reformed
+me, if I do not, in my self-examination, find that I am responding to
+the ideals of God, as far as I know them, there is small point in
+declamations about the state of society. Society that is godless, is
+just a mass of godless individuals; and I can understand why God does
+not reform the world perfectly well from the study of my own case. What
+in me prevents the full control of God is the same that prevents that
+control over the whole of society: and I know that that is not lack of
+knowledge, but lack of love. Men ignore the primary obligation of life:
+"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... and thy neighbour as thyself." As
+long as they ignore that, there can be no reformed world, no world
+reflecting the divine purpose, no society,--whatever may be its widely
+multiplied legislation,--securing to men conditions of life which are
+sane and satisfactory.
+
+Therefore the Child who is born of Mary in Bethlehem while the angels
+are singing their carols over the fields where the shepherds watch, the
+Child Who brings peace to men of good will, still, after nearly two
+thousand years, finds His gift ignored and His longing to lift men to
+God unsatisfied. "He came unto His own and His own received Him
+not"--and the conditions are not vitally changed to-day. When we think
+of a world of fifteen hundred million human beings, the number of those
+who profess and call themselves Christians is comparatively small; the
+number of actually practicing Christians, of men and women who do live
+by the Gospel, without reserve and without compromise, is vastly
+smaller. The resistance of the principles of the Gospel is to-day
+intense; the demand for compromise is insistent. We are asked to throw
+over a system which has obviously failed, and to accept as the
+equivalent and to permit to pass under the same name a system which is
+fundamentally different; a system whose end is man and not God, whose
+means are natural and not supernatural, which seek to produce an
+adjustment with this world that means comfort, rather than an adjustment
+with the spiritual world which means sanctity.
+
+The ideal achievement of peace is here in Bethlehem where the mother
+holds the Holy Child to her breast, while her spirit is utterly in union
+with Him Who is both man and God. There is never any break in the pure
+peace of S. Mary because there is never any moment when her will is
+separated from the will of God, when her union with Him fails. This
+peace of perfect union has, through the merits of her Son, been hers
+always; she has never known the wrench of the will that separates itself
+from God. She has always been poor; she has been perplexed with life;
+she has suffered and will suffer intensely, suffer most where she loves
+most; but peace she has never lost, because her will has never wavered
+in its allegiance. What visibly she is doing in these moments of her
+great joy, holding God to her breast in a passion of love, she in fact
+is doing always--always is she one with God.
+
+That undisturbed peace of a never broken union is never possible for us.
+We have known what it is to reject the will of God and go our own way
+and indulge the appetites of our nature in violation of our recognised
+standards of life. If we are to come to peace it must be along the rough
+road of repentance. And it is wholly just that it should be so; that we
+should win back to God at the expense of shame and suffering; that we
+should retrace the road that we have travelled, with weary feet and
+bleeding heart. This after all does not much matter: what does matter
+immensely is that there is a road back to God and that we find it. What
+matters is that we discover that repentance and reformation are the only
+road to peace. We are offered many other roads alleged to lead to the
+same place; but not even a child should be deceived by the modern
+substitutes for repentance, by the shallow teaching whereby it is
+attempted to persuade men of the innocence of sin. They are never worth
+discussing, these modern substitutes for repentance. Men accept them,
+not because they are rational or convincing, but because they offer a
+justification for going the way that they have already made up their
+minds to go. But it is plain that whatever else they do they do not
+afford a basis for peace. They are no rock foundation for eternity.
+Other foundation for peace can no man lay or has laid than the
+acceptance of the salvation offered in Jesus Christ. He is our peace;
+and when we discover that, He makes peace in us by the application to
+our souls of the Blood of His Cross. This is the peace He came to bring.
+This the peace that the angels announced as they sang over Bethlehem.
+This is the peace which is ceaselessly proclaimed from the altars of the
+Christian Church, the peace of God which passeth understanding, the
+peace which is offered to all men of good will.
+
+How shall we attain it? By being men of good will, plainly. But what
+constitutes good will in a man? That which I have already discussed,
+perhaps abundantly, simplicity and childlike obedience of character. S.
+Joseph, the guardian of Mary and her Child here in Bethlehem, is the
+best example we can have of a man of good will, a man who under the most
+difficult circumstances responded with perfect readiness and complete
+obedience to the heavenly message that came to him. This is to be his
+course through the few years that he will live, to give himself to the
+will of God in the care of Jesus. We are men of good will if we do
+whatsoever our Lord says to us, if we are seeking first of all the
+Kingdom of God and its righteousness, if our estimate of values
+corresponds to our Lord's.
+
+There is our trouble--that old trouble of feebly trying to live the life
+of the Kingdom when what we actually want is the offer of this world.
+There is, there can be, no peace in a divided life. There is a certain
+spiritual sloth which has the exterior look of peace, as a corpse looks
+peaceful, but it has no relation to the peace which God gives. It is in
+fact the wages of sin, wages easily earned and long enjoyed. But so long
+as we are spiritually alive, so long we cannot enjoy whole-heartedly
+even the most fascinating of sins because there is lurking in the
+background the sense of the transitoriness of our sin and of the
+imminence of death and judgment. There is the skeleton in every man's
+closet until he finally makes choice on one side or the other. For we
+are not ignorant of the spiritual obligations of life. We always know
+more than we have achieved. When we talk about our ignorance and
+perplexity, we are not meaning ignorance and perplexity about the
+obligation to live in a certain way, and to perform certain duties, on
+this particular day: rather we are making this alleged ignorance of the
+future an excuse for not taking action in the present, action which we
+know to be obligatory.
+
+And peace is so wonderful a gift! To feel oneself in harmony with God,
+to know that one is carefully seeking His will and making it one's first
+and highest duty to perform it. To have found the peace of the forgiven
+soul as the result of absolution, at the expense of much shame and
+repugnance, it may be, but with what marvellous compensations when we go
+away with a sense of restored purity and the friendship of God--life
+looks so different when we look at it through purified eyes! The old
+life has held us so tightly, the old sins have clung so close; and then
+there was a day when we gave up self and turned to God and the Gift of
+God in Jesus Christ; and then we saw how miserable and vile and naked we
+had been all through the time of our boasted freedom; and we came as
+children to Mary's Child and offered ourselves to Him for cleansing. We
+kneel and offer to Him our wills and ask that they may be made good, and
+kept good in union with His most holy will. Then we find how true this
+word is: "In Me ye shall have peace: in the world ye shall have
+tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." It is
+true, is it not? not only as we commonly interpret, that the disciples
+of Christ shall have tribulation in this world; but that much that we,
+giving ourselves to the world, counted joy, was in reality tribulation,
+and we are glad to be rid of it.
+
+     A babe is born to bliss us bring.
+     I heard a maid lulley and sing.
+     She said: "Dear Son, leave Thy weeping:
+     Thy, Father is the King of bliss."
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Lulley," she said and sung also,
+     "My own dear Son, why are Thou wo?
+     Have I not done as I should do?
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Nay, dear mother, for thee weep I nought,
+     But for the woe that shall be wrought
+     To Me ere I mankind have bought.
+     Was never sorrow like it i-wis."
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Peace, dear Son! Thou grievest me sore:
+     Thou art my child, I have no more.
+     Should I see men mine own Son slay?
+     Alas, my dear Son, what means all this?"
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "My hands, Mother, that ye now see,
+     Shall be nailed to a tree;
+     My feet also fast shall be,
+     Men shall weep that shall see this."
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Ah, dear Son, hard is my happe
+     To see my child that lay in my lap,--
+     His hands, His feet that I did wrappe,--
+     Be so nailed; they never did amisse."
+       Now sing we with Angelis:
+       Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Ah, dear Mother, yet shall a spear
+     My heart asunder all but tear:
+     No wonder if I care-ful were
+     And wept full sore to think on this."
+       Now sing we with Angelis:
+       Gloria in excelsis.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE MAGI
+
+Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the
+king, Behold, there came Magi from the East to Jerusalem, Saying, Where
+is he that is born king of the Jews?
+
+S. Matt. II, i.
+
+Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, which hath borne for us God the
+Word. We give thee salutation with the Angel Gabriel, saying, Hail, thou
+that art full of grace; the Lord is with thee.
+
+Hail to thee, O Virgin, the very and true Queen; hail, glory of our
+race. Thou hast borne for us Emmanuel.
+
+We pray thee, remember us, O thou our faithful advocate with our Lord
+Jesus Christ, that He may forgive us our sins.
+
+COPTIC.
+
+Out of the East, over the desert, we see coming to Bethlehem the train
+of the star-led Magi. The devout imagination of the Church, dwelling
+upon the _significance_ rather than the bare historical statements of
+the Gospel, have seen them as the representatives of the whole Gentile
+world. We often think of the treatment of the sacred story by the
+teachers and preachers of the Church as embroidering the original
+narratives with legendary material. We can look at it in that way; and
+by so doing, I think, miss the meaning of the facts. What we call
+ecclesiastical legend will often turn out on examination to be but the
+unfolding of the meaning of an event in terms of the creative
+imagination. The object is to present vividly what the event actually
+means when the meaning is of such widely reaching significance as far to
+overpass the simple facts. It is thus, I take it, that we must
+understand the story of the Magi as it takes shape in pious story. That
+the Magi were kings, and that they were three in number, emphasises the
+felt importance of their coming to the cradle of our Lord. Actually,
+they were understood to represent the Gentile world offering its
+allegiance to our blessed Lord, and therefore they would naturally
+represent the three branches of the Gentile world as it was understood
+at the time. The importance of their mission was reflected in the
+presentation of them as kings--no less persons were required to fill
+the dignity of the part. There was, too, a whole mass of prophecy to be
+reckoned with and interpreted in its relation to the event, the most
+obvious of which was that of Isaiah: "And the Gentiles shall come to thy
+light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising."
+
+The Church story is essentially true, is but a dramatic rendering of the
+Gospel story. We may however content ourselves with the more simple
+rendering. We can hardly think of the stable as the setting of the
+reception of the Eastern Sages. Just when they came we cannot tell; but
+we seem compelled to put the Epiphany where the Church puts it in her
+year, somewhere between the Nativity and the Presentation, and the scene
+of it will still be, the Gospel implies, Bethlehem. "Now when Jesus was
+born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Behold, there
+came Magi from the East to Jerusalem." And at the direction of Herod,
+and guided by the Star they came to Bethlehem and offered their gifts
+and their worship. "They saw the young child with Mary his mother, and
+fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures,
+they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh."
+
+We try to get before us what would have been the mind of S. Mary through
+all these happenings which attended the birth of her Child. What is
+written of her here is no doubt characteristic: "Mary kept all these and
+pondered them in her heart." Wonder at the ways of God had been hers for
+so many months now--wonder, with devout meditation upon their meaning.
+Where there is no resistance to God's will but only the desire to know
+it more fully there is always the gradual assimilation of the truth. S.
+Mary moves in a realm of mystery from the moment of the Annunciation to
+the very end of her life. It is so difficult to understand what is the
+meaning of God in this unspeakable gift of a Son conceived by the power
+of the Holy Spirit, and in the constant accompaniment of pain and
+disaster and disappointment which is the unfolding experience of her
+life in relation to Him. But we feel in her no speculation, no
+rebellion, no insistence on knowing more; but we feel that there must
+have been a growing appreciation of the work of God, unhesitating
+acceptance of His will. Just to keep things in one's heart is so often
+the best way of arriving at an understanding of them; is the best way,
+at least, of arriving at the conviction that what we in fact need to
+understand is not so much what God does as that it is God Who does it.
+Our true aim in life is to understand God, and through that
+understanding we shall sufficiently understand life. Failure in human
+life is commonly due to an attempt to understand life without any
+attempt to understand it in relation to God. It is like an attempt to
+understand a work of art without an attempt to understand the artist, to
+estimate in terms of mechanical effort, rather than in terms of mind. A
+work of art means what the artist means when he creates it: life means
+what God means in His creation and government of it, and it is hopeless
+to expect to understand it without reference to the mind of God.
+
+Therefore Mary's way is the right way--the way of acceptance and
+meditation. So she sought to follow the mind of God. We are told little
+of her, but we are told quite enough to understand this. We know well
+her method, that she kept things in her heart. And we have one splendid
+example of the result of the method in the Magnificat. There the results
+of her communion with God break forth in that Canticle which ever since
+has been one of the priceless treasures of the Church. The Gospels never
+tell us very much; but if we will follow Mary's method they tell us
+enough to let us see the very hand of God in the working out of our
+salvation; they give us sample events from which we easily infer God's
+meaning otherwhere.
+
+And we may be sure that the months that followed the Annunciation would
+have been months of ever-deepening spiritual communion, resulting in a
+rapidly advancing spiritual maturity. One necessary result would have
+been to prepare the blessed Mother to receive new manifestations of
+God's Providence, and to fit them into the whole body of her experience.
+She would not at any time be lost in helpless surprise before a new
+development of the purpose of God. Surprised as she must have been when
+the Eastern Sages came to kneel before the Child she carried at her
+breast, and hail Him as born King of the Jews, she would have set to
+work to fit this new experience into what her acquired knowledge of the
+divine meaning had become. And one can have no doubt that these visitors
+from afar would have told her enough of the grounds of their action to
+illumine for her the prophecies concerning her Son.
+
+The special incidents that the Gospel select for record leave us always
+conscious that they _are_ a selection and therefore must have special
+significance. That we are told that the Magi offered certain gifts,
+rather than told the words of homage wherewith they presented them turns
+our attention to the nature of the gifts as presumably having a
+significance in themselves rather than because of any actual value. In
+the gifts of these Gentiles come from afar to kneel before Him Whom they
+recognise as King of the Jews, we are compelled to see a certain
+attitude of humanity toward Him Who is revealed to be not only the King
+of the Jews, but Lord of Heaven and earth; they give what humanity needs
+must always give--the gold of a perfect oblation, the incense of
+perpetual intercession, the myrrh of a humble self-abandonment.
+
+These which are offered as the ideal tribute of humanity by the star-led
+Magi are found in their highest human perfection exemplified in the
+Mother of the Child to Whom the tribute is made. Perfect are they in our
+Lord; and she who is nearest Him in nature is nearest Him in the
+perfection of nature. We turn from God's ideal as set out in our blessed
+Lord to see it reflected as in a glass in the life of her whose
+perfection is the perfect rendering of His grace. Mary is so perfect
+because, by God's election, she is "full of grace."
+
+We, alas! limp after the ideal at a long distance. One pictures the
+life of sanctity under the familiar symbol of the race course, where
+many start in the race, and many, one by one, fall out by the wayside.
+Those who go on the race's end, go on because of certain qualities of
+endurance that we discover in them. In those who run the spiritual race
+for the amaranthine crown these qualities of endurance are not natural,
+but supernatural: they come not of birth but of rebirth. They are
+qualities which we draw from God. "It is not of him that willeth, nor of
+him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." The hand that sets the
+race confers the gifts that enable one to win it. "So run that ye
+may obtain."
+
+And perhaps the chiefest of all those gifts is that which makes us, the
+children of God, capable of the adoration of our Father. Worship is no
+other than the utter giving of ourselves, giving as Christ gave, "Who
+being originally in the form of God, thought it not a thing to be
+grasped at to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, and took upon Him
+the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men"; giving as
+the blessed Virgin gave when she gave, as she must have thought and have
+been willing to give, her whole reputation among men in response to the
+call of God; giving complete, in which there is no withholding. That is
+worship, sacrifice, the pure gold of self-oblation.
+
+But it is possible to think of the power of worship from another point
+of view. God never takes but He gives. What He appears to take He gives
+back with His blessing, and we find the restored gift multiplied
+manifold. So in the very act of our worship God confers on us power.
+
+For it is true, is it not, that in the very act of worship we
+experience, not exhaustion but exhilaration. In the very act of giving
+ourselves to God, God gives Himself to us, and in overflowing abundance.
+That is what we find to be true in our highest act of worship, the
+blessed Eucharist. Here God and man meet in a perfect communion. Here we
+offer ourselves in sacrifice--ourselves, our souls and bodies--in union
+with the sacrifice of our Lord; and here our Lord, Who is the sacrifice
+itself, not only offers Himself, but also He imparts Himself to those
+who are united with Him. And out of this sacrifice, thus issuing in an
+act of union, there flows the perpetual renewing of the vitality of the
+spiritual life. We are sustained from day to day by this sacrificial
+feeding; our strength which is continually being drawn upon by the
+demands of life, by the temptations we have to resist, by the exertion
+that is called for in all spiritual exercise, is renewed by our
+participation in the Body and Blood of our Lord. I am sure that all
+those who are accustomed to frequent communion feel the drain upon their
+strength when at any time they are deprived of their great privilege. I
+am also sure that many who feel that their spiritual life is but
+languid, or those other many who seem only dimly to feel that there are
+spiritual problems to be met, and spiritual strength needed for the
+meeting of them, would find themselves immensely helped, would find
+their minds illumined and their strength sustained in more frequent
+participation in the sacrificial worship and feasting of the Church.
+The attitude of vast numbers of those who are regarded as quite sincere
+Christians is wholly incomprehensible. The life of God is day by day
+poured out at the altars of the Church, and they go their way in seeming
+unconsciousness of its presence, of its appeal, of its virtue, or of
+their own sore need of it. The Magi come from a far distance on a
+hazardous journey into an unknown country that they may offer the gold
+of their adoration to an infant King; and the Christian feebly considers
+whether he is not too tired to get up of a morning and go a short
+distance to receive the Body and Blood of the Redeemer of his soul!
+
+The Magi came also bringing the incense of their intercession. Their
+privilege was that they were admitted to the very Presence Chamber of
+the great King. That the Infant in Mary's arms did not show any sign of
+kingship, the humble room where they were received bore no resemblance
+to the presence chamber of such kings as they were accustomed to wait
+upon, was to them of no consequence. They were endowed with the gift of
+faith, and believed the supernatural guiding rather than the outward
+seeming. The faith that had followed the star from so great a distance
+was not likely to be quenched by the antithesis of what must have been
+their imagination of the reality, of all the pictures that had been
+filling their minds as they pushed on across the desert. It was no more
+incredible that the King Whom they were seeking should be found in
+humble guise in a peasant's cottage than that they should have been
+guided to Him by a heavenly star. The gift of God to them was that they
+should be permitted to enter the presence of the King.
+
+This right of admission to the divine Presence is the precious gift of
+God to us. Since the heavens received the ascending Lord the Kingdom of
+heaven has been open to all believers. Prayer is a very simple and
+common thing in our experience; and yet when we try to think out its
+implications we are overwhelmed with the wonder of it. It implies a God
+Who waits upon our pleasure: it reveals to us a Father Who is ever ready
+to listen to the voice of His children. No broken hearted sinner,
+overwhelmed with the conviction of his vileness, cries out in the agony
+of his repentance but God is ready to hear. "He is more ready to hear
+than we to pray." No man pours out his thanksgivings for the abundant
+blessings he discovers in his life but the heart of God is glad in his
+gladness. No child kneels at night to repeat his simple prayer but God
+bends over him and blesses him. The wonder of it is summed up in our
+Lord's words: "The Father Himself loveth you," which are as an open door
+into the inner sanctuary, an invitation to enter to those who are
+hesitating on the threshold of the Holy of Holies.
+
+And there is no danger of tiring God: we come ceaselessly, endlessly.
+The cries of earth go up to Him, pitiful, ignorant, foolish cries; but
+they find God ready to hear and answer, fortunately not according to our
+ignorance but according to His great mercy. We think of the clouds of
+prayer in all ages, from all nations, in all tongues, and the very
+vastness of them gives us an index of the divine love.
+
+And it is not simply for ourselves that we pray, nor do we pray by
+ourselves; it is of God's love that in the work of prayer we are
+associated with one another. There is nothing further from the divine
+plan of life than our present individualism. Our temptation is to be
+egotistic and self-centred; to want to approach God alone with our
+private needs and wishes. We incline to travel the spiritual way by
+ourselves; we want no company; we want no one between our souls and God.
+But that precisely is not the divine method. We come to God through
+Christ; we come in association with the members of the Body. Our
+standing as Christians before Him is dependent upon our corporate
+relation to one another in His Son.
+
+Important issues are involved. We attain through this associated life of
+the Christian the power of mutual intercession. We find that it is our
+privilege to share our prayers with others, and to be interested in one
+another's lives. We have common interests and we work them out in
+common. Therefore when we try to put before us an ideal picture of the
+power of prayer, it will not be the solitary individual offering his
+personal supplications to the Father, but it will be the community of
+the faithful assembled for the offering of the divine Sacrifice. It is
+the praying Body that best satisfies our ideal of prayer, where we are
+conscious of helping one another in the work of intercession. We
+remember, too, when we think of prayer as prayer of the Body of Christ,
+that it is not just the visible congregation that is participating in
+it, but that all the Body share in the intercessions, wherever they may
+individually be. Our thoughts go up from the little assembly in the
+humble church and lose themselves in the splendour of the heavenly
+intercession where we are associated with prophets and apostles and
+martyrs, and with Mary the Mother of God.
+
+There was a third gift that the Magi brought to Him Whom they hailed
+King, a gift that is more perplexing as a gift to royalty than the other
+two. That gold and incense should be offered a King is clearly His royal
+right; but what has he to do with the bitterness of myrrh? But to this
+King myrrh is a peculiarly appropriate gift, for it is the symbol of
+complete self-abandonment. He who came to do not His own will but the
+will of Him that sent Him; Who laid aside the robes of His glory,
+issuing from the uncreated light that He might clothe Himself with the
+humility of the flesh, is properly honoured with the gift of myrrh.
+
+And as it was the symbol of His humility, so is it the symbol of our
+humanity in relation to Him. It suggests to us that uttermost of
+Christian virtues, the virtue of entire abandonment to the will of God.
+This is a most difficult virtue to acquire. We cling to self. We are
+devoted to our own wills. We rely on our own judgment and wisdom. We are
+impatient of all that gets in the way of our self-determination. We have
+in these last days made a veritable religion out of devotion to self, a
+cult of the ego.
+
+But he who will enter into the sanctuary of the divine life, he who
+will seek union with God, he who will be one with the Father in the Son,
+must abandon self. He must lose his life in order to save it. He must
+let go the world to cling to the Lord of life. This will of the man
+which is so insistent, so persistent, so assertive, so tenacious, must
+be laid aside and the Will of Another adopted in its place. Often this
+is bitter. Very true of us it is that when we were young we girded
+ourselves and walked whither we would; but it must be in the end, if we
+make life a spiritual success, that when we are old another shall gird
+us and carry us whither we would not.
+
+The secret of life is found when the bitterness of myrrh is turned to
+sweetness in the discovery that the outcome of the sacrificial life is
+not that it be narrowed but enlarged; and that for the life which we
+have entrusted to Him God will do more than we ask or think. When our
+will becomes one with the will of God we are surprised to find that we
+have ceased to think of what we once called our sacrifices, because life
+in Christ reveals itself to us as of infinite joy and richness, so that
+we forget the things that are behind and gladly press on.
+
+     Queen of heaven, blessed may thou be
+     For Godes Son born He was of thee,
+     For to make us free.
+          Gloria Tibi, Domine.
+
+     Jesu, Godes Son, born He was
+     In a crib with hay and grass,
+     And died for us upon the cross.
+           Gloria Tibi, Dominie.
+
+     To our Lady make we our moan,
+     That she may pray to her dear Son,
+     That we may to His bliss come.
+          Gloria Tibi, Dominie.
+
+     Sixteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PRESENTATION
+
+And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were
+accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.
+
+S. Luke II. 22.
+
+O come let us worship the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the
+Holy Ghost,--we the Christian nations, for He is our true God.
+
+And we hope in Holy Mary, that God will have mercy upon us through her
+prayers.
+
+Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, who hath borne for us God the Word.
+
+     COPTIC
+
+The reading of a story in the Gospels is often like looking through a
+window down some long arcade; there is in the foreground the group of
+actors in whom we are presently interested, and beyond them is the whole
+background of contemporary life to which they belong, of which they are
+a part. If we have time to think out the meaning of this surrounding
+life we gain added insight into the meaning of our principal characters.
+It is so now as we watch this group of humble peasant folk coming up to
+the temple to fulfil the demands of the law of Moses. In the precincts
+of the temple they are merged in a larger group whose interests are
+clearly identical with their own, and whom we easily see to be the local
+representatives of a party--the name, no doubt, suggests an organisation
+which they had not--scattered throughout Judea. Their interest was the
+redemption of Israel. They were the true heirs of the prophets, and
+among them the prophecies which concerned the Lord's Christ were the
+subject of constant study and meditation. Amid the movements and
+intrigues of political and religious parties, they abode quietly in the
+temple, as Simeon and Anna, or in their homes, as Zacharias and
+Elizabeth, _waiting_. Their power was the silent power of sanctity, the
+power that flows from lives steeped in meditation and prayer. They
+constitute that remnant which is the depository of the hopes of Israel
+and the saving salt which prevents the utter putrefaction of the body of
+the nation.
+
+We cannot for a moment doubt that Mary and Joseph were of this remnant,
+and that they were in complete sympathy with those whom they found here
+in the temple when the Child Jesus was brought in "to do for him after
+the custom of the law." The actual ceremony of the purification was soon
+over, the demands of the law satisfied. Neither Jesus nor Mary had any
+inner need of these observances; their value in their case was that by
+submission to them they associated themselves closely with their
+brethren, our Lord thus continuing that divine self-emptying which he
+had begun at the Incarnation. We are impressed with the completeness of
+this stooping of God when we see the offering that Mary brings, "A pair
+of turtle doves," the offering of the very poor. Our Lord has accepted
+life on its lowest economic terms in order that nothing in His mission
+shall flow from adventitious aids. He must owe all in the accomplishment
+of His work to the Father Who gave it Him to do. It will be the essence
+of the temptation that He must soon undergo that He shall consent to
+call to His aid earthly and material supports and base His hopes of
+success on something other than God.
+
+Accidentally, there is this further demonstration contained in the
+poverty of the Holy Family, that, namely, the completest spiritual
+privilege, the fullest spiritual development, is independent of
+"possessions." It is no doubt true that "great possessions" do not of
+necessity create a bar in all cases to spiritual accomplishment; but to
+many of us it is a consolation to know that the completest sanctity
+humanity has known has been wrought out in utter poverty of life. We
+shall have occasion to speak more of this later; we now only note the
+fact that those whom we meet in the pages of the New Testament as
+waiting hopefully for the redemption of Israel are waiting in poverty
+and hard work.
+
+What we find in S. Mary as she passes through the ceremony of her
+purification from a child-bearing which had in no circumstance of it
+anything impure, is the spirit of sacrifice which submission to the law
+implies. She has caught the spirit of her Son, the spirit of selfless
+offering to the will of God. It is the central accomplishment of the
+life of sanctity. The life of sanctity must be wrought out from the
+centre, from our contact with God. No one becomes holy by works,
+whatever may be the nature of the works. Works, the external life, are
+the expression of what we are, they are the externalization of our
+character. If they be not the expression of a life hid with Christ in
+God they can have no spiritual value, whatever may be their social
+value. The kind of works which "are done to be seen of men" "have their
+reward," that is, the sort of reward they seek, human approval; they
+have no value in the realm of the spirit.
+
+But the life that is lived as sacrifice, as a thing perfectly offered to
+God, is a life growing up in God day by day. It is our Lord's life,
+summed up from this point of view in the "I come to do thy will, O
+God." Its most perfect reflection is caught by blessed Mary with her
+acceptance of God's will: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord." But it is
+the life expression of all sanctity; for the saint is such chiefly by
+virtue of his sacrificial attitude. It is the completest account of the
+life of sanctity that it "leaves all" to follow a divine call. It is the
+response of the Apostles who, as James and John, leave their father
+Zebedee and the boats and the nets and the hired servants, to follow
+Jesus. It is the answer of Matthew who rises from the receipt of custom
+at the Master's word. It is the answer of all saints in all times.
+Sanctity means the abandonment of all for Christ: it means the embracing
+of the poverty of Jesus and Mary.
+
+Is sanctity then, or the possibility of it, shut within the narrow
+limits of a poor life? Well, even if it were, the limits would not be so
+very narrow. By far the greater part of the human race at any time has
+been poor, as poor as the Holy Family. Unfortunately, Christianity is
+forgetting its vocation of poverty and becoming a matter of
+well-to-do-ness. But we need not forget that the poor are the majority.
+However, the fact is not that economical poverty is automatically
+productive of spirituality, but that accepted and offered poverty is the
+road to the heart of God. It is not denied that the rich man may
+consecrate and offer his goods to God and make them instruments of God's
+service; but in the process he runs great risk of deceiving himself and
+of attempting to deceive God--the risk of quietly substituting for the
+spirit of sacrifice the spirit of commercial bargaining, and attempting
+to buy the favour of God, and of ransoming his great possessions by a
+well-calculated tribute. It is not so much our possessions as the way we
+hold them that is in question; it is a question whether the inner motive
+of our life is the will to sacrifice or the will to be rich. "They that
+desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many
+foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition,"
+
+These dangers S. Paul noted as the besetting dangers of riches are
+counteracted by the possession of the spirit of sacrifice which holds
+all things at the disposal of God, and views life as opportunity for the
+service of God. And in so estimating life, we must remember that money
+is not the only thing that human beings possess. As I pointed out the
+vast majority of the human race have no money: it by no means follows
+that they have no capacity or field for the exercise of the spirit of
+sacrifice. There is, for instance, an abundant opportunity for the
+exercise of that spirit in the glad acceptance of the narrow lot that
+may be ours. Probably many, indeed most, poor are only economically
+poor; they fall under S. Paul's criticism in that "they desire to be
+rich," and are therefore devoid of the spirit of sacrifice that would
+transform their actual poverty into a spiritual value. But all the
+powers and energies of life do in fact constitute life's capital. A poor
+boy has great possessions in the gifts of nature that God has granted
+him. He may use this capital as he will. He may be governed by "the
+desire to be rich," or by the desire to consecrate himself to the will
+and service of God--and the working out of life will be accordingly. He
+may become very rich economically, or he may devote his life to the
+service of his fellows as physician, teacher, missionary, or in
+numberless other paths. Once more, the meaning of life is in its
+voluntary direction, and whatever may be his economic state, he may, if
+he will, be "rich toward God."
+
+If what we are seeking is to follow the Gospel-life, if we are seeking
+to express toward man the spirit of the Master, we find abundant field
+for the exercise of this spirit of sacrifice in our daily relations with
+others. S. Paul's rule of life: "Look not every man to his own things,
+but every man also to the things of others," is the practical rule of
+the sacrificed will. It seeks to fulfil the service of the Master by
+taking the spirit of the Master--His helpfulness, His consideration, His
+sympathy--with one into the detail of the day's work. It is one of the
+peculiarities of human nature that it finds it quite possible to work
+itself up to an occasional accomplishment, especially in a spectacular
+setting, of spiritual works, which it finds itself quite impotent to do
+under the commonplace routine of life. The race experience is accurately
+enough summed up in the cynical proverb: "No man is a hero to his
+valet." It expresses the fact that in ordinary circumstances, and under
+commonplace temptations, we do not succeed in holding life to the
+accomplishment which is ours when we are, as it were, on dress parade.
+In other words, we respond to the opinions we desire to create in
+others; and the spirit of sanctity is a response not to public opinion,
+but to the mind and thought of God. When we seek the mind of Christ, and
+seek to reproduce that mind in our own lives, seek to be possessed by
+it, then we shall gladly render back to God all life's riches which we
+have received from Him, and acknowledge in the true spirit of poverty
+that "all things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we
+given Thee."
+
+The world has got into a very ill way of thinking of God as _force_.
+Force seems in the popular mind to be the synonym of _power_. The only
+power that we understand is the power that _compels_, that secures the
+execution of its will by physical or moral constraint. With this
+conception of power in mind men are continually asking: "Why does not
+God do this or that? If he be God and wills goodness, why does He not
+execute goodness, use power to accomplish it?"
+
+It ought to be unnecessary to point out that such a conception of power
+is quite foreign to the Christian conception of God. Goodness that is
+compulsory is not goodness. Human legislation, in its enforcement of
+law, looks not to the production of goodness but to the production of
+order, a quite different thing. But God's heart is set upon the
+sanctification of His children and is satisfied with nothing less than
+that. "This is the will of God, even your sanctification." But
+sanctification cannot be compelled. The divine method is, that "when the
+fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born
+under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might
+receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth
+the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Through
+this method we "were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." The
+result is not that we are compelled to obey, but that "the love of
+Christ constraineth us." The account of the apostolic authority is not
+that it is a commission to rule the universal Church, but "now then we
+are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray
+you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."
+
+The study of this divine method should put us on the right track in the
+attempt to estimate the nature of sanctity and the results we may expect
+from it. We shall expect nothing of spiritual value from force. We shall
+be quite prepared to turn away from the governing parties in Jerusalem
+as from those who have repudiated the divine method and are therefore
+useless for the divine ends. We shall turn rather to those who gather
+about the temple and there, in a life of prayer and meditation, wait for
+the redemption. It is to these, who are the real temple of the Lord,
+that the Lord "shall come suddenly," that the manifestation of God will
+be made. And their hearts will overflow with joy as they behold the
+fulfilment of the promises of God.
+
+The power of God is the power of love; and it is that love, and that
+love alone, that has won the victories of God. It is a very slow method,
+men say. No doubt. But it is the only method that has any success. The
+method of force seems effective; but its triumphs are illusory. Force
+cannot make men love, it can only make them hate. The world is being won
+to God by the love of God manifested in Christ Jesus our Lord. And it is
+as well to remember, when we are tempted to complain of the slowness of
+the process, that the slowness is ours, not God's. The process is slow
+because men will not consent to become the instruments of God's love for
+the world, will not transmit the crucified love of God's Son to their
+fellows. They continually, in their impatience, revert to force of some
+sort, for the attainment of spiritual ends. They become the tools of all
+sorts of secular ambitions which promise support in return for their
+co-operation. And the result may be read by any one not blinded by
+prejudice in the futility and incompetence of modern religions of all
+sorts. It is seen perhaps most of all in the pride of opinion which
+keeps the Christian world in a fragmentary condition, and which
+approaches the undoing of the sin of a divided Christendom with the
+preliminary announcement that no separated body must be required to
+admit that it has been in the wrong. Human disregard of the divine
+method of love and humility can hardly go farther; and the only
+practical result that can be expected to follow is such as followed from
+the negotiations of Herod and Pontius Pilate--a new Crucifixion of the
+Ever-sacrificed Christ.
+
+We have risen to the divine method when we have learned to rely for
+spiritual results upon God alone. Then is revealed to us the power of
+sanctity. We turn over the pages of the lives of the saints, of those
+who have been great in the Kingdom of God, and we are struck by the
+growing influence of these men and women. They are simple men and women
+whose life's energy is concentrated on some special work; they are
+confessors or directors; they work among the very poor; they lead lives
+of retirement in Religious Houses; they are preachers of the Gospel;
+they are missionaries. The one thing that they appear to have in common
+is utter consecration to the work in hand. And we see, it may be with
+some wonder, that as they become more and more absorbed in their special
+work, they become more and more centres of influence. Without at all
+willing it they draw people about them, become centres of influences,
+arouse interest, become widely known. In short, they are, without
+willing it, centres of energy. Of what energy? Obviously, of the energy
+of love: the love of God manifested in them draws men to God. The man at
+whose disposal is unlimited force compels men to do his will; but he
+draws no one to him except the hypocrite and the sycophant who expect to
+gain something by their servility. The saint draws men, not to himself,
+but to God; for obviously it is not his power but God's power that is
+being manifested through him.
+
+Unless we are very unfortunate we all know people whose attractiveness
+is the attractiveness of simple goodness. They are not learned nor
+influential nor witty nor clever, but we like to be with them. When we
+are asked why, we can only explain it by the attractiveness of their
+Christlikeness. What we gain from intercourse with them is spiritual
+insight and power. Their influence might be described as sacramental:
+they are means our Blessed Lord uses to impart Himself. They are so
+filled with the mind of Christ that they easily show Him to the world;
+and withal, quite unconsciously. For great love is possible only where
+there is great humility.
+
+And this power of sanctity which is the outcome of union with God is a
+permanent acquisition to the Kingdom of God. God's Kingdom is ultimately
+a Kingdom of saints. The sphere of God's self-manifestation in human
+life increases ever as the saints increase; and the power of sanctity
+necessarily remains while the saint remains, that is, forever. The saint
+remains a permanent organ of the Body of Christ, a perdurable instrument
+of the divine love. To speak humanly, the more saints there are, the
+more the love of God can manifest itself; the wider its influence on
+humanity. And the greater the Saint, that is, the nearer the Saint
+approaches the perfection of God, to which he is called--Be ye therefore
+perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect--the more influential he
+must be; that is the more perfectly he will show the divine likeness and
+transmit the divine influence. When we think of the power of the saints
+as intercessors that is what actually we are thinking of,--the
+perfection of their understanding of the mind of Christ.
+
+But to return to this world and to the gathering in the temple on the
+day of the Purification. These are they in whom the hope of Israel
+rests. Israel is not a failure because it has brought forth these. God's
+work through the centuries has not come to naught because in these
+there is the possibility of a new beginning. The consummate flower of
+Israel's life is the Blessed Mother through whom God becomes man; and
+these who meet her in the temple are the representatives of those hidden
+ones in Israel who will be the field wherein the seed of the Word can be
+sown and where it will bring forth fruit an hundredfold. Jesus, this
+Child, is God made man; and these around Him to-day, Mary and Joseph,
+Simeon and Anna, are those who will receive His love and will show its
+power in the universe forever.
+
+And so it will remain always; the good ground wherein the seed may be
+sown and bring forth unto eternal life is the spiritual nature of man,
+made ready by humility and love,--"In quietness and confidence shall be
+your strength." In the quietness that waits for God to act, the
+confidence that knows that He will act when the time comes. It is well
+if our aspiration is to be of the number of those who live lives hid
+with Christ in God; who are seeking nothing but that the love of God may
+be shed abroad in their hearts; who are "constrained" by nothing but the
+love of Jesus. It is true that this simplicity of motive and aim will
+bring it about that our lives will be hidden lives, lives of which the
+world will take no note. We may be quite sure that none of the rulers of
+Israel thought much about old Simeon who passed his time praying in the
+temple. And if we want to be known of rulers it is doubtless a mistake
+to take the road that Simeon followed. But the reward of that way was
+that he saw "the Lord's Christ," that it was permitted him to take in
+his arms Incarnate God, and then, in his rapture, to sing _Nunc
+Dimittis_. We cannot travel two roads at once. When the Holy Family goes
+out from the temple it can go, if it will, to the palace of Herod, or it
+can go back to Bethlehem. It cannot go both ways and we know the way
+that it took. And we in our self-examination to-night can see two roads
+stretching out before us. We can go the way of the world, the way that
+seeks (whether it finds or no) popularity and prominence, or we can join
+the Holy Family and in company with Jesus and Mary and Joseph go back to
+the quietness and hiddenness of the House of Bread where the saints
+dwell. With them, sheltered by the Sacrifice of Jesus and the prayers of
+Mary and Joseph we can wait for the Redemption in the full manifestation
+of the life of God in us, and for the time when the love of God shall be
+fully "shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given us."
+
+     O Sion, ope thy temple-gates;
+     See, Christ, the Priest and Victim, waits--
+        Let lifeless shadows flee:
+     No more to heaven shall vainly rise
+     The ancient rites--a sacrifice
+        All pure and perfect, see.
+
+     Behold, the Maiden knowing well
+     The hidden Godhead that doth dwell
+        In him her infant Son:
+     And with her Infant, see her bring
+     The doves, the humble offering
+        For Christ, the Holy One.
+
+     Here, all who for his coming sighed
+     Behold him, and are satisfied--
+        Their faith the prize hath won:
+     While Mary, in her breast conceals
+     The holy joys her Lord reveals,
+        And ponders them alone.
+
+     Come, let us tune our hearts to sing
+     The glory of our God and King,
+        The blessed One and Three:
+     Be everlasting praise and love
+     To him who reigns in heaven above,
+        Through all eternity.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+EGYPT
+
+The angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and
+take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt.
+
+S. Matt. II, 13.
+
+Deliver us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, from all evils past, present, and
+to come: and at the intercession for us of Blessed Mary who brought
+forth God and our Lord, Jesus Christ; and of the holy apostles Peter,
+and Paul, and Andrew; and of blessed Ambrose Thy confessor, and bishop,
+together with all Thy saints, favorably give peace in our days, that,
+assisted by the help of Thy mercy, we may ever be both delivered from
+sin, and safe from all turmoil. Fulfil this, by Him, with Whom Thou
+livest blessed, and reignest God, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for
+ever and ever.
+
+AMBROSIAN.
+
+Those who live in intimate union with God, the peace of whose lives is
+untroubled by the constant irruption of sin, are peculiarly sensitive to
+that mode of the divine action that we call supernatural. I suppose that
+it is not that God wishes to reveal Himself to souls only at crises of
+their experience or under exceptional conditions, but that only souls of
+an exceptional spiritual sensitivity are capable of this sort of
+approach. Communications of the divine will through dream or vision of
+inner voice are the accompaniment of sanctity; one may almost say that
+they are the normal means in the case of advanced sanctity. Most of us
+are too much immersed in the world, are too much the slaves of material
+things, to be open to this still, small voice of revelation. Our eyes
+are dimned by the garish light of the world, and our ears dulled by its
+clamour, so that our powers of spiritual perception are of the
+slightest. This is quite intelligible; and we ought not to fall into the
+mistake of assuming that our undeveloped spirituality is normal, and
+that what does not happen to us is inconceivable as having happened at
+all. If we want to know the truth about spiritual phenomena we shall put
+ourselves to school to those whose spiritual natures have attained the
+highest development and in whose experience spiritual phenomena are of
+almost daily happening.
+
+To the man "whose talk is of oxen," whose whole life is absorbed in the
+study of material things, a purely spiritual manifestation comes as a
+surprise. His instinctive impulse is to deny its reality as a thing
+obviously impertinent to his understanding of life. But one whose life
+is based on spiritual postulates, who is, however feebly, attempting to
+shape life in accordance with spiritual principles, though he may never
+have attained anything that can be interpreted as a distinct revelation
+from God by vision or voice or otherwise, yet must he by the very basic
+assumptions of his life be ready to regard such manifestations of God as
+intelligible, and indeed to be expected. So far from regarding divine
+interventions in life as impossible, we shall regard the Christian life
+which has no experience of them as abnormal, as not having realised its
+inheritance. The degree and kind of such intervention in life will vary;
+but it is the fact of the intervention that is important: the mode in a
+special case will be determined by the needs of that case. As we think
+along these lines we reach the conclusion that what we call the
+supernatural is not the unnatural or the abnormal, but is a higher mode
+of the natural.
+
+We are not surprised therefore to find that those whose spiritual
+development was such as to make it possible for God to choose them to
+fulfil special offices in relation to the Incarnation; who could be
+chosen to be, in the one case, the Mother of God-incarnate, and in the
+other, to be the guardian of the divine Child and His Blessed Mother,
+have the divine will in regard to the details of the trust committed to
+them, imparted to them in vision and in dream. So far from such vision
+and dream suggesting to us "a mythical element" in the Gospel
+narratives, they rather confirm our faith in that they harmonize with
+our instinctive conclusions as to what would be natural under the
+circumstances. We are prepared to be told that at this crisis in the
+Holy Child's life "the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream,
+saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into
+Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will seek
+the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child
+and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt."
+
+Thus early in our Lord's life is the element of tragedy introduced. The
+Incarnation of God stirs the diabolic powers, the rulers of "this
+darkness" to excited activity. The companion picture of the Nativity, of
+the Holy Child lying in Mary's arms, of the wondering shepherds, of the
+Magi from a far country,--the shadow of all this idyllic beauty is the
+massacre of the Innocents, the wailing of Rachel for her children. It
+is, as it were, the opening of a new stage in the world-old conflict
+where the powers of evil appear to have the advantage and can show the
+bodies of murdered infants as the trophies of their victory.
+
+But are we to think of the death of a child as a disaster? Has any
+actual victory redounded to the Prince of Power of the Air? One
+understands of course the grief and sense of loss that attends the death
+of any child, the breaking of the dreams which had gathered about its
+future. What the father and the mother dreamed over the cradle and
+planned for the future does not come to pass--all that is true. But in a
+consideration of the broader interests involved, does not the death of a
+baby have a meaning far deeper than a disappointment of hopes and
+dreams? It is true, is it not? that the coming of the child brought
+enrichment into the life of its parents? There was a new love born for
+this one child which is not the common property of all the children of
+the family, but is the peculiar possession of this child and its
+parents. Life--the life of the parents--is better and nobler by virtue
+of this love. They understand this, because when they stand by the side
+of the child's coffin they never feel that it had been better that this
+child had not come into existence. And more than that: as they commit
+this fragile body to the grave they know that there is no real sense in
+which they can say that they have lost this child. Rather, the child is
+a perpetual treasure, for the moment contemplated through tears, but
+presently to be thought of with unclouded joy. It is so wonderful a
+thing to think of this pure soul caught back to God; to think of it
+growing to spiritual maturity in God's very presence; to think of it
+following the Lamb withersoever He goeth. Yes: to think of it also as
+our child still, with our love in its heart, knowing that it has a
+father and a mother on earth, and, that, just because of its early
+death, it can be to them, what otherwise they would have been to it--the
+guard and helper of their Jives. In God's presence are the souls of
+children as perpetual intercessors for those whom they have left on
+earth; and they may well rejoice before God in that what appeared the
+tragedy of their death was in fact a recall from the field of battle
+before the testing of their life was made. We wept as over an
+irreparable loss,
+
+     While into nothingness crept back a host
+     Of shadows unexplored, of sins unsinned.
+
+The artists have imagined the souls of those who first died for Jesus
+attending Him on the way to Egypt as a celestial guard. In any case we
+are certain that the angels who watched about Him so closely all His
+life were with the Holy Family as they set out upon the way of exile. It
+would have been a wearisome march but that Jesus was there. His presence
+lightened all the toils of the desert way. Egypt, their place of refuge,
+would not have seemed to them what it seems to us, a land of wonder, of
+marvellous creations of human skill and intelligence, but a place of
+banishment from all that was dear, from the ties of home and religion.
+The religion which lay wrapped in the Holy Child was to break down
+barriers and hindrances to the worship of God; but the time was not yet.
+For them still the Holy Land, Jerusalem, the Temple, were the place of
+God's manifestation, and all else the dwelling place of idols. They must
+have shuddered in abhorrence at those strange forms of gods which rose
+about them on every hand. We cannot ourselves fail to draw the contrast
+between the statues which filled the Egyptian sanctuaries and before
+which all Egypt, rich and poor, mighty and humble, prostrated
+themselves, and this Child sleeping on Mary's breast. The imagination of
+the Christian community later caught this contrast and embodied it in
+the legend that when Jesus crossed the border of Egypt, all the idols of
+the land of Egypt fell down.
+
+We cannot follow the thought of the Blessed Mother through these strange
+scenes and the experiences of these days. No doubt in the Jewish
+communities already flourishing in Egypt there would be welcome and the
+means of livelihood. But there would be perplexing questions to one
+whose habit it was to keep all things which concerned her strange Child
+hidden in her heart, the subject of constant meditation. Why, after the
+divine action which had been so constant from His conception to His
+birth, and in the circumstances which attended His birth, this reversal,
+this defeat and flight? Why after Bethlehem, Egypt? Why after
+Gabriel, Herod?
+
+It brings us back again to the primary fact that the Incarnation is
+essentially a stage in a battle, and that the nature of God's battles is
+such that He constantly appears to lose them. He "goes forth as a giant
+to run His course"; but the eyes of man cannot see the giant--they see
+only a Babe laid in a manger. We are tricked by our notion of what
+is powerful.
+
+     "They all were looking for a king
+     To slay their foes and lift them high;
+     Thou cam'st, a little baby thing
+     That made a woman cry."
+
+The battle presents itself to us as a demand that we choose, that we
+take sides. The demand of Christ is that we associate ourselves with
+Him, or that we define our position as on the other side. "The
+friendship of the world is enmity with God" is a saying that is true
+when reversed: The friendship of God is enmity with the world. An open
+disclosure of the friendship of God sets all the powers of the world
+against us. This may be uncomfortable; but there does not appear to be
+any way of avoiding the opposition.
+
+Our Lord, in His Incarnation, not only stripped Himself of His glory,
+took the servant form, and in doing so deliberately deprived Himself of
+certain means which would have been vastly influential in dealing with
+men, but He also declined, in assuming human nature, to assume it under
+conditions which would have conferred upon Him any adventitious
+advantage in the prosecution of His work. He would display to men
+neither divine nor human glory: He would have no aid from power or
+position, from wealth or learning. He undertook His work in the strength
+of a pure humanity united with God. He declined all else. And He found
+that almost the first event of His life was to be driven into exile.
+
+And they who are associated with Him necessarily share His fortunes.
+Unless they will abandon the Child, Mary and Joseph must set out on the
+desert way. They had no doubt much to learn; but what is important is
+not the size or amount of what we learn, but the learning of it. When we
+are called, as they were, to leave all for Christ, it often turns out
+as hard, oftentimes harder, to leave property as riches; and the reason
+is that what we ultimately are leaving is neither poverty nor riches,
+but self: and self to us is always a "great possession."
+
+Therein, I suppose, lies the solution of the problem of the relation of
+property and Christianity in the common life. Idleness is sin; every one
+is bound to some useful labour, no matter what his material resources
+may be. And if we work for our living, if our labour is to be such as
+will support us, then there at once arises the problem of possessions.
+Useful, steady labour will ordinarily produce more than "food and
+raiment." Under present social arrangments accumulated property is
+handed on to heirs. A man naturally wants to make some provision for his
+family. Or he finds himself in possession of considerable wealth and the
+impulse is to spend in luxuries of one sort or another,--modern
+invention has put endless means of ministering to physical or aesthetic
+comfort within his reach. He can have a motor car, a country house, an
+expensive library; he can have beautiful works of art. And then he is
+confronted with the picture of the Holy Family which can never have
+lived much beyond the poverty line. He realises the nature of our Lord's
+life of poverty and ministry. And though the plain man may not feel that
+he can go very far in imitating this life, he does feel that there is a
+splendour of achievement in those who take our Lord at His word and sell
+all to follow Him.
+
+But the literal abandonment of life to the ideal of poverty is clearly
+not what our Lord contemplated for the universal practice of His
+followers. He nowhere indicates that all gainful labour is to be
+abandoned, or that having gained enough for food and raiment we are to
+idle thereafter, or even give ourselves to some ungainful work. The
+Kingdom of heaven does not appear to be society organised on the lines
+of socialism or otherwise. Our Lord contemplated life going on as it is,
+only governed by a new set of motives. It has as the result of the
+acceptance of the Gospel a new Orientation; and as a result of that it
+will view "possessions" in a new way. The acceptance of the Gospel means
+the self surrendered utterly to the will of God, and all that self
+possesses held at the disposal of that will. We may expect that God's
+will for us will be manifested in the events of life and its
+opportunities, and we shall hold ourselves alert and ready to embrace
+that will. It may be that the call will come to sell all, and we need to
+beware lest the thoroughness of the demand terrify us into the
+repudiation of our Lord's service; lest the thought of the sacrificed
+possessions send us away sorrowing. Ordinarily the call is less
+searching than that; or perhaps the mercy of God spares us from demands
+that would be beyond our strength. In any case, the truly consecrated
+self will regard luxury as a dangerous thing, replete with entanglements
+of all kinds, that it were well to avoid at the expense of any
+sacrifice. One does well to hold "possessions" in a very loose grip,
+lest the hold be reversed, and we become their servants rather than
+they ours. And it is well to emphasise again that the mere size of
+possessions is of small importance. There is a not very rational
+tendency to think of this as being a matter of millions, for the man of
+moderate income to think that there is no problem for him. The problem
+is as pressing for him as for any man. His minimum of comfort may be as
+tightly grasped as the other man's maximum. The only solution of the
+problem will be found in the converted self. Those who have really given
+themselves to God hold all things at His disposal. They are not thinking
+how they can indulge self but how they can glorify God.
+
+Egypt to many will stand for another sort of abandonment which much
+perplexes the immature Christian: that is, the sort of isolation in
+which the new Christian is quite likely to find himself when first he
+attempts to put Christian principles into practice. We imagine one
+brought up in the ordinary mixed circles of society, where there are
+unbelievers and lax Christians mingled together, and where there are no
+principles firmly enough held to interfere with any sort of enjoyment of
+life which offers. Such an one--a young woman, let us suppose--in the
+Providence of God becomes converted to our Lord, and comes to see that
+the lax and indifferent Christian life she had been leading was a mere
+mockery of Christian living. Speedily does she find when she attempts to
+put into action the principles of living which she now understands to be
+the meaning of the Gospel that a breach of sympathy has been opened
+between her and her accustomed companions; that many things which she
+was accustomed to do in their society and which made for their common
+fund of amusement are no longer possible to her. The careless talk, the
+shameless dress, the gambling, the drinking, the Sunday amusements--such
+things as these she has thrown over; and she finds that with them she
+has thrown over the basis of intimacy with her usual companions. It is
+not that they are antagonistic but simply that their points of contact
+have ceased to exist. Her own inhibitions exclude her automatically from
+most of the activities of her social circle. She finds herself much
+alone. Her friends are sorry for her and think her foolish and try to
+win her back, but it is clear to her that she can only go back by going
+back from Christ.
+
+This is the common case of the young whether boy or girl to-day, and the
+practical question is, Can they endure the isolation? It is easy to say:
+Let them make Christian friends; but that is not always practical,
+especially in the present state of the Church when there is no cohesion
+among its members, no true sense of constituting a Brotherhood, of being
+members of the same Body. We have to admit that the attempt to hold a
+high standard usually ends in failure, at least the practical failure of
+a weak compromise. But there are characters that are strong enough to
+face the isolation and to readjust life on the basis of the new
+principles and to mould it in accord with the new ideals. The period of
+this readjustment is one of severe testing of one's grasp on principles
+and one's strength of purpose. But the battle once fought out we attain
+a new kind of freedom and expansion of life. We look back with some
+amusement at the old life and the things that fascinated us in the days
+of our spiritual unconsciousness much as we look back at the games that
+amused us in our childish hours. The desert of Egypt that we entered
+with trepidation and fearful hearts turns out not to be so dreadful as
+we imagined, and indeed the flowers spring up under our feet as we
+resolutely tread the desert way.
+
+These trials must be the daily experience of those who attempt to put
+their religion into practice, and these perplexities must assail them so
+long as the Christian community continues to show its present social
+incompetence; so long, that is, as we attempt to make the basis of our
+social action something other than the principles of the spiritual life.
+A Christian society, one would naturally think, would spring out of the
+possession of Christian ideals; and doubtless it would if these ideals
+were really dominant in life, and not a sort of ornament applied to it.
+Any social circle contains men and women of various degrees of
+intellectual development and of varying degrees of experience of life;
+what holds them together is the pursuit of common objects, the objects
+that we sum up as amusement. Now the Christians in a community certainly
+have a common object, the cultivation of the spiritual life through the
+supernatural means offered by the Church of God. One would think that
+this object would have a more constraining power than the attractions of
+motoring or golf; but in fact we know that this is not so save in
+individual cases. There is not, that is to say, anywhere visible a
+Christian community which is wrought into a unity by the solidifying
+forces of its professed ideals. Those very people whose paths converge
+week by week until they meet at this altar, as they leave the altar,
+follow diverging paths and live in isolation for the rest of their time.
+
+One of the constant problems of the Church is that of the loss of those
+who have for a time been associated with it--of those who have for a
+time seemed to recognise their duty to God, and their privileges as
+members of His Son. They drift away into the world. We pray and meditate
+and worry over this and try to invent some machinery which will overcome
+it. But it cannot be overcome by machinery, especially by the sort of
+machinery which consists in transferring the amusements that people find
+in the world bodily into the Church itself. It cannot and will not be
+overcome until a Christian society has been created which is bound
+together by the interests of the Kingdom of God, and in which those
+interests are so predominant as to throw into the shade and practically
+annihilate other interests. And especially must such spiritual interests
+be strong enough to break down all social barriers so that the cultured
+and refined can find a common ground with the uneducated and socially
+untrained in the spiritual privileges that they share in common. When
+the banker can talk with his chauffeur of their common experience in
+prayer, and the banker's wife and her cook can confer on their mutual
+difficulties in making a meditation, then we shall have got within
+sight of a Christian society; but at present, while these have no
+spiritual contact, it is not within sight. The primitive Christian
+community in Jerusalem made the attempt at having all things in common.
+Their mistake seems to have been that they, like other and more modern
+people, by "all things" understood money. You cannot build any society
+which is worth the name on money, a Church least of all. It is
+unimportant whether a man is rich or poor; what is important is his
+spiritual accomplishment: and it is common spiritual aims and
+accomplishments which should make up the "all things" which possessed in
+common will form the basis of an enduring unity. But not until
+accomplishment becomes the supreme interest of life can we expect to get
+out of the impasse in which we at present find ourselves; in which, that
+is, the person can be converted to Christianity and enter into union
+with God in Christ and become a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, and
+wake to find himself isolated from his old circle by his profession of
+new principles; but not, by his new principles, truly united to his
+fellow citizens in the Kingdom of God! One is tempted to write, What a
+comedy; but before one can do so, realises that it is in fact a tragedy!
+
+     Mother of God--oh, rare prerogative;
+     Oh, glorious title--what more special grace
+     Could unto thee thy dear Son, dread God, give
+     To show how far thou dost all creatures pass?
+     That mighty power within the narrow fold
+     Did of thy ne'er polluted womb remain,
+     Whom, whiles he doth th' all-ruling Sceptre hold,
+     Not earth, nor yet the heavens can contain;
+     Thou in the springtide of thy age brought'st forth
+     Him who before all matter, time and place,
+     Begotten of th' Eternal Father was.
+     Oh, be thou then, while we admire thy worth
+     A means unto that Son not to proceed
+     In rigour with us for each sinful deed.
+
+     John Brereley, Priest (Vere Lawrence Anderton, S.J.) 1575-1643
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+NAZARETH
+
+     And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was
+     subject unto them.
+
+     S. Luke II, 51.
+
+     The Holy Church acknowledges and confesses the pure Virgin
+     Mary as Mother of God through whom has been given unto us the
+     bread of immortality and the wine of consolation. Give
+     blessings then in spiritual song.
+
+     ARMENIAN.
+
+After the rapid succession of fascinating pictures which are etched for
+us in the opening chapters of the Gospel there follows a space of about
+twelve years of which we are told nothing. The fables which fill the
+pages of the Apocryphal Gospels serve chiefly to emphasise the
+difference between an inspired and an uninspired narrative. The human
+imagination trying to develop the situation suggested by the Gospel and
+to fill in the unwritten chapters of our Lord's life betrays its
+incompetence to create a story of God Incarnate which shall have the
+slightest convincing power. These Apocryphal stories are immensely
+valuable to us as, by contrast, creating confidence in the story of
+Jesus as told by the Evangelists, but for nothing more.
+
+We are left to use our own imagination in filling in these years of
+silence in our Lord's training; and we shall best use it, not by trying
+to imagine what may have occurred, but by trying to understand what is
+necessarily involved in the facts as we know them. We know that the home
+in Nazareth whither Mary and Joseph brought Jesus after the death of
+Herod permitted them to return from Egypt was the simple home of a
+carpenter. It would appear to have been shared by the children of
+Joseph, and our Lady would have been the house-mother, busy with many
+cares. We know, too, that under this commonplace exterior of a poor
+household there was a life of the spirit of far reaching significance.
+Mary was ceaselessly pondering many things--the significance of all
+those happenings which, as the years flowed on without any further
+supernatural intervention, must at times have seemed as though they were
+quite purposeless. Of course this could not have been a settled feeling,
+for the insight of her pure soul would have held her to the certainty
+that such actions of God as she had experienced would some day reveal
+the meaning which as yet lay hidden.
+
+In the meantime other things did not matter much, seeing she had Jesus,
+the object of endless love. Every mother dreams over the baby she cares
+for and looks out into the future with trembling hope; so S. Mary's
+thoughts would go out following the hints of prophecy and angelic
+utterances, unable to understand how the light and shadow which were
+mingled there could find fulfilment in her Child. But like any other
+mother the thought would come back to her present possession, the
+satisfaction of her heart that she had in Jesus. With the growth of
+Jesus there would come the unfolding of the answering love, which was
+but another mode in which the love of God she had experienced all her
+life was manifesting itself. Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and we are
+able to enter a little into the over-flowing love of Mary as she watched
+the advance, this unfolding from day to day. The wonder that was hers in
+guiding this mind and will, in teaching our Lord His first prayers, in
+telling Him the story of the people of whom He had assumed our nature!
+There was here no self-will, no resistance to guidance, no perversity to
+wound a mother's heart. In the training of an ordinary child there are
+from time to time hints of characteristics or tendencies which may
+develop later into spiritual or moral disaster. There are growls of the
+sleeping beast which make us tremble for the future: there are hours of
+agony when we think of the inevitable temptations which must be met, and
+suggestions of weakness which colour our imagination of the meeting of
+them with the lurid light of defeat. But as Mary watched the unfolding
+character of Jesus she saw nothing there that carried with it the least
+suggestion of evil growth in the future, no outcropping of hereditary
+sin or disordered appetite. A constantly unfolding intelligence, and
+growing interest in the things that most interested her, an eagerness to
+hear and to know of the will and love of the eternal Father, these are
+her joy. That would have been the centre--would it not?--of the
+unfolding consciousness of Jesus: the knowledge of the Father.
+
+Training by love, so we might describe the life in the Home at Nazareth.
+And we must not forget the grave ageing figure who is the head of the
+household. _The Holy Family_--that was the perfect unity that their love
+created. There is a wonderful picture of these three by Sassaferato
+which catches, as no other Holy Family that I know of does, the meaning
+of their association. S. Mary whom the artistic imagination is so apt,
+after the Nativity, to transform into a stately matron, here still
+retains the note of virginity which in fact she never lost. It is the
+maiden-mother who stands by the side of the grave, elderly S. Joseph,
+the ideal workman, who is also the ideal guardian of his maiden-wife.
+And Jesus binds these two together and with them makes a unity,
+interpreting to us the perfection of family life.
+
+Family life is a tremendous test, it brings out the best and the worst
+of those who are associated in it. The ordinary restraints of social
+intercourse are of less force in the intimacy of family life: there is
+less need felt to watch conduct, or to mask what we know are our
+disagreeable traits. It is quite easy for character to deteriorate in
+the freedom of such intercourse. It is pretty sure to do so unless there
+is the constant pressure of principle in the other direction. The great
+safeguard is the sort of love that is based on mutual respect,--respect
+both for ourselves and for others. We talk a good deal as though love
+were always alike; as though the fact that a man and a woman love each
+other were always the same sort of fact. It does not require much
+knowledge of human nature or much reflection to convince us that that is
+not the case. Love is not a purely physical fact; and outside its
+physical implications there are many factors which may enter, whose
+existence constitute the _differentia_ from case to case. It is upon
+these varying elements that the happiness of the family life depends.
+One of the most important is that character on either side shall be such
+as to inspire respect. Many a marriage goes to pieces on this rock; it
+is found that the person who exercised a certain kind of fascination
+shows in the intimacy of married life a character and qualities which
+are repulsive; a shallowness which inspires contempt, an egotism which
+is intolerable, a laxity in the treatment of obligations which destroys
+any sense of the stability of life. A marriage which does not grow into
+a relation of mutual honour and respect must always be in a state of
+unstable equilibrium, constantly subject to storms of passion, to
+suspicion and distrust.
+
+And therefore such a marriage will afford no safe basis on which to
+build a family life. But without a stable family life a stable social
+and religious life is impossible. It is therefore no surprise to those
+who believe that the powers of evil are active in the world to find that
+the family is the very centre of their attack at the present time. The
+crass egotism lying back of so much modern teaching is nowhere more
+clearly visible than in the assertion of the right of self-determination
+so blatantly made in popular writings. By self-determination is
+ultimately meant the right of the individual to seek his own happiness
+in his own way, and to make pleasure the rule of his life. "The right to
+happiness" is claimed in utter disregard of the fact that the claim
+often involves the unhappiness of others. "The supremacy of love,"
+meaning the supremacy of animalism, is the excuse for undermining the
+very foundations of family life. No obligation, it appears, can have a
+binding force longer than the parties to it find gratification in it.
+Personal inclination and gratification is held sufficient ground for
+action whose consequences are far from being personal, which, in fact,
+affect the sane and healthy state of society as a whole.
+
+The decline of a civilisation has always shown itself more markedly in
+the decline of the family life than elsewhere. The family, not the
+individual, is the basis of the social state, and no amount of
+theorising can make the fact different. Whatever assails the integrity
+of the family assails the life of the state, and no single family can be
+destroyed without society as a whole feeling the effect. "What," it is
+asked, "is to be done? If two people find that they have blundered, are
+they to go on indefinitely suffering from the result of their blunder?
+If an immature boy or girl in a moment of passion make a mistake as to
+their suitability to live together, are they to be compelled to do so at
+the expense of constant unhappiness?"
+
+It would seem obvious to say that justice requires that those who make
+blunders should take the consequences of them; that those who create a
+situation involving suffering should do the suffering themselves and not
+attempt to pass it on to others. It is not as though the consequences of
+the act can be avoided; they cannot. What happens is that the incidence
+of them is shifted. It is a part of the brutal egotism of divorce that
+it is quite willing to shift the incidence of the suffering that it has
+created on to the lives of wholly innocent people; in many cases upon
+children, in all cases upon society at large. For it is necessary to
+emphasize the fact that society is a closely compact body: so interwoven
+is life with life that if one member suffer the other members suffer
+with it. Breaches of moral order are not individual matters but social.
+This truth is implied in society's constantly asserted right to regulate
+family relations in the general interest even after it has ceased to
+think of such relations as having any spiritual significance. We need
+to-day a more vivid sense of the _community_ lest we shall see all sense
+of a common life engulfed in the rising tide of individual anarchism. We
+need the assertion in energetic form of the right of the community as
+supreme over the right of the individual. We must deny the right of the
+individual to pursue his own way and his own pleasure at the expense of
+the rights of others. And to his insolent question, "Why should I suffer
+in an intolerable situation?" we must plainly answer: "Because you are
+responsible for the situation, and it is intolerable that you should be
+permitted to throw off the results of your wickedness or your stupidity
+upon other and innocent people."
+
+And it is quite clear that should society assert its pre-eminent right
+in unmistakable form and make it evident that it does not propose to
+tolerate the results of the egotistic nonsense of self-determination and
+the right of every one to live his own life, the evils of divorce and of
+shattered families would presently shrink to relatively small
+proportions. The present facility of divorce encourages thoughtless and
+unsuitable marriages in the first place; and in the second place,
+encourages the resort to divorce in circumstances of family disturbance
+which would speedily right themselves in the present as they have done
+in the past if those concerned knew that their happiness and comfort
+for years compelled an adjustment of life. When as at present any one
+who loses his temper can rush off to a court and get a marriage
+dissolved for some quite trivial reason, there is small encouragement to
+practice self-control. If a man and woman know that the consequences of
+conduct must be faced by them, and cannot be avoided by thrusting them
+upon others, they will no doubt in the course of time learn to exercise
+a little self-control.
+
+The family is the foundation of the state because, among other things,
+it is the natural training place of citizens: no public training in
+schools and camps can for a moment safely be looked to as a substitute
+or an equivalent of wholesome family influence. If the family does not
+make good citizens we cannot have good citizens. The family too is at
+the basis of organised religious life; if the family does not make good
+Christians we shall not have good Christians. The Sunday School and the
+Church societies are poor substitutes for the religious influence of the
+family, as the school and the camp are for its social interests.
+
+One is inclined to stress the obvious failure of the family to fulfil
+its alloted functions in the teaching of religion as the root difficulty
+that the Christian religion has to encounter and the most comprehensive
+cause of its relative failure in modern life. The responsibility for the
+religious and moral training of children rests squarely upon those who
+have assumed the responsibility of bringing them into the world, and it
+cannot be rightly pushed off on to some one else. To the protest of
+parents that they are incompetent to conduct such training, the only
+possible reply is a blunt, "Whose fault is that?" If you have been so
+careless of the fundamental responsibilities of life, you are
+incompetent to assume a relation which of necessity carries such
+responsibility with it. It is no light matter to have committed to you
+the care of an immortal soul whose eternal future may quite well be
+conditioned on the way in which you fulfil your trust. It would be well
+as a preliminary to marriage to take a little of the time ordinarily
+given to its frivolous accompaniments and seriously meditate upon the
+words of our Lord which seem wholly appropriate to the circumstance:
+"Whoso shall cause to stumble one of these little ones which believe in
+me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
+and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea." It is the careless
+and incompetent training of children which in fact "causes them to
+stumble" when the presence of word and example would have held them
+straight. It has been (to speak personally) the greatest trial of my
+priesthood that out of the thousands of children I have dealt with, in
+only rare cases have I had the entire support of the family; and I have
+always considered that I was fortunate when I met with no interference
+and was given an indifferent tolerance. It is heart-breaking to see
+years of careful work brought to naught (so far as the human eye can
+see: the divine eye can see deeper) by the brutal materialism of a
+father and the silly worldliness of a mother.
+
+The interplay of lives in a family should be consciously directed by
+those who control them to the cultivation, to the bringing out of the
+best that is in them. Education means the drawing out of the innate
+powers of the personality and the training of them for the highest
+purposes. It is the deliberate direction of personal powers to the
+highest ends, the discipline of them for the performance of those ends.
+The life of a child should be shaped with reference to its final destiny
+from the moment of its birth. It should be surrounded with an atmosphere
+of prayer and charity which would be the natural atmosphere in which it
+would expand as it grows, and in terms of which it would learn to
+express itself as soon as it reaches sufficient maturity to express
+itself at all. It should become familiar with spiritual language and
+modes of action, and meet nothing that is inharmonious with these. But
+we know that the education of the Christian child is commonly the
+opposite of all this. It learns little that is spiritual. When it comes
+to learn religion it is obviously a matter of small importance in the
+family life; if there is any expression of it at all, it is one that is
+crowded into corners and constantly swamped by other interests which are
+obviously felt to be of more importance. Too often the spiritual state
+of the family may be summed up in the words of the small boy who
+condensed his observation of life into the axiom: "Men and dogs do not
+go to Church." In such an atmosphere the child finds religion and morals
+reduced to a system of repression. God becomes a man with a club
+constantly saying, Don't! He grows to think that he is a fairly virtuous
+person so long as he skilfully avoids the system of taboos wherewith he
+feels that life is surrounded, and fulfils the one positive family law
+of a religious nature, that he shall go to Sunday School until he is
+judged sufficiently mature to join the vast company of men and dogs.
+
+Nothing very much can come of negatives. Religion calls for positive
+expression; and it is not enough that the child shall find positive
+expression once a week in the church; he must find it every day in the
+week in the intimacy of the family. He must find that the principles of
+life which are inculcated in the church are practiced by his father and
+his mother, his brother and his sister, or he will not take them
+seriously. If he is conscious of virtue and religious practice as
+repression, a sort of tyranny practiced on a child by his elders, his
+notion of the liberty of adult life will quite naturally be freedom to
+break away from what is now forced upon him into the life of
+self-determination and indifference to things spiritual that
+characterises the adult circle with which he is familiar.
+
+But consider, by contrast, those rare families where the opposite of all
+this is true; where there is the peace of a recollected life of which
+the foundations are laid in constant devotion to our Lord. There you
+will find the nearest possible reproduction of the life of the Holy
+Family in Nazareth. Because the life of the family is a life of prayer,
+there will you find Jesus in the midst of it. There you will find Mary
+and Joseph associated with its life of intercession. In such a family
+the expression of a religious thought will never be felt as a discord.
+The talk may quite naturally at any moment turn on spiritual things.
+There are families in which one feels that one must make a careful
+preparation for the introduction of a spiritual allusion: one does it
+with a sense of danger, much as one might sail through a channel strewn
+with mines. There are other families in which one has no hesitation in
+speaking of prayer, of sacraments, of spiritual actions, as things with
+which all are familiar in practice, and are as natural as food and
+drink. In this atmosphere it produces no smile to say, "I am going to
+slip into the Church and make my meditation"; or, "I shall be a little
+late to-night as I am making my confession on my way home." Religion in
+such a circle has not incurred contempt through familiarity: it still
+remains a great adventure, the very greatest of all indeed; but it is an
+adventure in the open, full of joy and gladness.
+
+The Holy Family was a family that worked hard. It is no doubt true that
+our Lord learned his foster-father's trade, so that those who knew him
+later on, or heard His preaching, asked, "Is not this the carpenter?"
+But the Holy Family was a radiant centre of joy and peace because Jesus
+was in the midst of it. Where Jesus dwells there is the effect of his
+indwelling in the spiritual gladness that results. Mary was never too
+busy for her religious duties nor Joseph too tired with his week's work
+to get up on the Sabbath for whatever services in honour of God the
+Synagogue offered. They were perhaps conscious as the Child "increased
+in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" of a spiritual
+influence that flowed from Him, and sweetened and lightened the life of
+the home. They were not conscious that in His Person God was in the
+midst of them; but that is what we can (if we will) be conscious of. We
+are heirs of the Incarnation, and God is in the midst of us; and
+especially does Jesus wish to dwell, as He dwelt in Nazareth, in the
+midst of the family. He wishes to make every household a Holy Family. He
+is in the midst of it in uninterrupted communion with the soul of the
+baptised child; and the father and mother, understanding that their
+highest duty and greatest privilege is to watch and foster the spiritual
+unfolding of the child's life in such wise that Jesus may never depart
+from union with it, become as Joseph and Mary in their ministry to it.
+There is nothing more heavenly than such a charge; there is nothing more
+beautiful than such a family life.
+
+There is often a pause in God's work between times of great activity--a
+time of retreat, as it seems, which is a rest from what has preceded and
+a preparation for what is to come. Such a pause were these years at
+Nazareth in the life of Blessed Mary. The time from the Annunciation to
+the return from Egypt was a time of deep emotion, of spirit-shaking
+events. Later on there were the trials of the years of the ministry,
+culminating in Calvary. But these years while Jesus was growing to
+manhood in the quietness of the home were years of unspeakable privilege
+and peace. The daily association with the perfect Child, the privilege
+of watching and guarding and ministering to Him, these days of deepening
+spiritual union with Him, although much that was happening to the mother
+was happening unconsciously,--were strengthening her grasp on ultimate
+reality, so that she issued with perfect strength to meet the supreme
+tragedy of her life. How wonderful God must have seemed to her in those
+thirty years of peace! To all of us God is thus wonderful in quiet
+hours; and the quiet hours are much the more numerous in most of our
+lives. But have we all learned to use these hours so that we may be
+ready to meet the hours of testing which shall surely come? No matter
+how quiet the valley of our life, some day the pleasant path will lift,
+and we must climb the hilltop where rises the Cross. It will not be
+intolerable, if the quiet years have been spent in Nazareth with Jesus
+and Mary and Joseph.
+
+     Most holy, and pure Virgin, Blessed Mayd,
+       Sweet Tree of Life, King David's Strength and Tower,
+       The House of Gold, the Gate of Heaven's power,
+     The Morning-Star whose light our fall hath stay'd.
+
+     Great Queen of Queens, most mild, most meek, most wise,
+       Most venerable, Cause of all our joy,
+       Whose cheerful look our sadnesse doth destroy,
+     And art the spotlesse Mirror to man's eyes.
+
+     The Seat of Sapience, the most lovely Mother,
+       And most to be admired of thy sexe,
+       Who mad'st us happy all, in thy reflexe,
+     By bringing forth God's Onely Son, no other.
+
+     Thou Throne of Glory, beauteous as the moone,
+       The rosie morning, or the rising sun,
+       Who like a giant hastes his course to run,
+     Till he hath reached his two-fold point of noone.
+
+     How are thy gifts and graces blazed abro'd,
+       Through all the lines of this circumference,
+       T'imprint in all purged hearts this Virgin sence
+     Of being Daughter, Mother, Spouse of God?
+
+     Ben Jonson, 1573-1637.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE TEMPLE
+
+     And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Know ye
+     not that I must be in my Father's house?
+
+     S. Luke II, 49.
+
+     We give thanks unto thee, O Lord, who lovest mankind, Thou
+     benefactor of our souls and bodies, for that Thou hast this
+     day vouchsafed to feed us with Thy Heavenly Mysteries; guide
+     our path aright, establish us all in Thy fear, guard our
+     lives, make sure our steps through the prayers and
+     supplications of the glorious Mother of God and Ever Virgin
+     Mary and of all Thy saints.
+
+     RUSSIAN.
+
+The time was come when by the law of His people the Boy Jesus must
+assume the duties of an adult in the exercise of His religion. Therefore
+His parents took Him with them to Jerusalem that He might participate in
+the celebration of the Passover. It would be a wonderful moment in the
+life of any intelligent Hebrew boy when for the first time he came in
+contact with the places and scenes which were so familiar to him in the
+story of his nation's past; and we can imagine what would have been the
+special interest of the Child Jesus who would have been so thoroughly
+taught in the Old Testament Scriptures, and who would have felt an added
+interest in the places He was now seeing because of their association
+with His great ancestor, David. Still His chief interest was in the
+religion of His people, and it was the temple where the sacrificial
+worship of God was centred that would have for Him the greatest
+attraction. This was His "Father's House," and here He Himself felt
+utterly at home. We are not surprised to be told that He lingered in
+these courts.
+
+"And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus
+tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and His mother knew it not."
+They had perfect confidence in Jesus; and yet it seems strange that they
+should have assumed that He was somewhere about and would appear at the
+proper time. When the night drew on and the camp was set up there was no
+Child to be found. Then we imagine the distress, the trouble of heart,
+with which Mary and Joseph hurry back to Jerusalem and spend the ensuing
+days in seeking through its streets. We share something of our Lord's
+surprise when we learn that the temple was the last place that they
+thought of in their search. Did they think that Jesus would be caught by
+the life of the Passover crowds that filled the streets of Jerusalem?
+Did they think that it would be a child's curiosity which would hold him
+fascinated with the glittering toys of the bazaars? Did they think that
+He had mistaken the caravan and been carried off in some other direction
+and was lost to them forever? We only know that it was not till three
+days had passed that they thought of the temple and there found Him.
+"And when they saw Him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto Him,
+Son, why has thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have
+sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought
+me? Know ye not that I must be in my Father's house?"
+
+S. Mary and S. Joseph were proceeding on certain assumptions as to what
+Jesus would do which turned out to be untenable. It is one of the
+dangers of our religion--our personal religion--that we are apt to
+assume too much which in the testing turns out to be unfounded. We reach
+a certain stage of religious attainment, and then we assume that all is
+going well with us. When one asks a child how he is getting on he
+invariably answers: "I am all right." And the adult often has the same
+childish confidence in an untested and unverified state of soul. We are
+"all right"; which practically means that we do not care to be bothered
+with looking into our spiritual state at all. We have been going on for
+years now following the rules that we laid down when we first realised
+that the being a Christian was a more or less serious matter. Nothing
+has happened in these years to break the placidity of our routine. There
+has never been any relapse into grievous sin; we have never felt any
+real temptation to abandon the practice o£ our religion. We run along as
+easily and smoothly as a car on well-laid rails. We are "all right."
+
+But in fact we are all wrong. We have lapsed into a state of which the
+ideal is purely static: an ideal of spiritual comfort as the goal of our
+spiritual experience here on earth. We have acquired what appears to be
+a state of equilibrium into which we wish nothing to intrude that would
+endanger the balance. We are, no doubt, quite unconsciously, excluding
+from life every emotion, every ambition, as well as every temptation,
+which appears to involve spiritual disturbance. But we need to be
+disturbed.
+
+For the spiritual life is dynamic and not static; its ideal is motion
+and not rest. Rest is the quality of dead things, and particularly of
+dead souls. The weariness of the way, which is so obvious a phenomenon
+in the Christian life, is the infallible sign of lukewarmness. What we
+need therefore is to break with the assumption that we know all that it
+is necessary to know, and that we have done or are doing all that it is
+necessary to do. It is indeed the mark of an ineffective religion that
+the notion of necessity is adopted as its stimulus, rather than the
+notion of aspiration. The question, "Must I do this?" is a revelation of
+spiritual poverty and ineptitude. "I press on," is the motto of a
+living religion.
+
+Personal religion, therefore, needs constantly to be submitted to new
+tests, lest it lapse into an attitude of finality. Fortunately for us,
+God does not leave the matter wholly in our hands, but Himself, through
+His Providence, applies a wide variety of tests to us. It is often a
+bitter and disturbing experience to have our comfortable routine broken
+up and to find that we have quite miserably failed under very simple
+temptations. And the sort of failure I am thinking of is not so much the
+failure of sin as the failure of ideal. It is the case of those who
+think that they have satisfactorily worked out the problems of the
+spiritual life, and have reached a satisfactory adjustment of duty and
+practice, and then find that if the adjustment changes their practice
+falls off. The outer circumstances of life change and the change is
+followed by a readjustment of the inner life on a distinctly lower
+plane. It is revealed to us that the outer circumstances were
+controlling the spiritual practice, and not the practice dominating the
+circumstances. The ruling ideal was that of comfort, and under the new
+circumstances the spiritual ideal is lowered until it fits in with a new
+possibility of comfort in the altered circumstances. It is well to
+examine ourselves on these matters and to find what is the actual
+ruling motive in our religious practice.
+
+We may have assumed that we have Jesus, when all the assumption meant
+was that we thought that He was somewhere about. After all, it will not
+aid us very much if He is "in the company," if we go on our day's
+journey without Him. It is a poor assumption to build life upon, that
+Jesus exists, or that He is in the Church, or that He is the Saviour. It
+is nothing to us unless He is _our_ Saviour, unless He is personally
+present in us and with us. And it is not wise or safe to let this be a
+matter of assumption, even though the assumption rest on a perfectly
+valid experience in the past; we cannot live on history, not even on our
+own history. That Jesus is with us must be verified day by day, and we
+ought to go no day's journey without the certainty of His presence. We
+can best do that, when the circumstances of life permit, by a daily
+communion. There at the altar we meet Jesus and know that He is with us.
+When the circumstances of life do not permit, (and often they do, when
+we lazily think they do not) there are other modes of arriving at
+spiritual certainty.
+
+It is quite easy to lose Jesus. He does not force His companionship upon
+us, but rather when we meet Him. "He makes as though he would go
+farther." He offers Himself to us; He never compels us to receive Him as
+a guest. And when we have in fact received Him, and asked Him to abide
+with us, He does not stay any longer than we want Him. We have to
+constrain Him. In other words, we lose Jesus, we lose the vitality of
+our spiritual life (though we may retain the routine practice of our
+religion), if we are not from day to day making it the most vital issue
+of our lives. That does not necessarily mean that we are spending more
+time on it than on anything else, but that we are putting it first in
+the order of importance in our lives and are sacrificing, if occasion
+arise, other things to it, rather than it to them. That a man loves his
+wife and child does not necessarily mean that he actually spends more
+time on them than he does on his business, but it does mean that they
+are more important in his life than his business, and if need arise it
+will be the business that is sacrificed to them and not they to the
+business. Spirituality is much less a matter of time than of energy. A
+wise director can guide a man to sanctity who will probably consecrate
+his Sunday, and give the director one half hour on week days to
+dispose of.
+
+To lose Jesus does not require the commission of great sin, as we count
+sin. The quite easiest way to lose Him is to forget Him and go about our
+business as though He did not exist. That is a frequent happening. For
+vast numbers Jesus does not exist except for an hour or so on Sunday.
+They give Him the formal homage of attendance at church on Sunday
+morning and then they go out and forget Him, not only for the rest of
+the week but for the rest of the day. The religion which thus reduces
+itself to a minimum of attendance at Mass on Sunday morning is surely
+not a religion from which much can be expected in the way of spiritual
+accomplishment. If it be true that there is a minimum of religious
+requirement which will ensure that we "go to heaven," then that sort of
+religion may be useful; but I do not know that anywhere such a minimum
+_is_ required. The statement that I find is "Thou shalt love the Lord
+thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
+mind, and with all thy strength." The outstanding characteristic of love
+is surely not niggardliness, but passionate self-giving. All things are
+forgiven, not to those who are careful to keep within the limits
+required, but to those who "love much."
+
+The study of many cases, the experience of over thirty years in the
+confessional, convinces me that the chief cause of spiritual failure
+among Christians is not the irresistible impact of temptation but the
+lack of spiritual vision. The average man or woman is not consciously
+going anywhere; but they are just keeping a rule which is the arbitrary
+exactment of God. It might just as well be some other rule. That is, in
+their minds, the practice of the spiritual life has no immediate ends;
+it is not productive of spiritual expansion; it is not a ladder set up
+on earth to reach heaven on which they are climbing ever nearer God, and
+on the way are catching ever broader visions of spiritual reality as
+they ascend. The knowledge and the love of God are to them phrases, not
+practical goals, invitations to paths of spiritual adventure. Hence,
+having no immediate ends to accomplish, they find the whole spiritual
+routine dull and unattractive and naturally tend to reduce it to a
+minimum. It is not at all surprising that in the end they drop religion
+altogether, as why should one keep on travelling a road that leads
+nowhere? How can one love and serve a Jesus whom one has lost?
+
+The problem of personal religion is the problem of finding Jesus, of
+bringing life into a right relation to Him. The plain path is to follow
+the example of His parents who sought Him "sorrowing." Sorrow for having
+lost Jesus is the true repentance. Repentance which springs from fear of
+consequences, or from disgust with our own incompetence and stupidity
+when we realise that we have made a spiritual failure of life, is an
+imperfect thing. True repentance has its origin in love and is therefore
+directed toward a person. It is the conviction that we have violated the
+love of our Father, our Saviour, our Sanctifier. Sorrow springing from
+love is sorrow "after a godly sort." It is easy for us to drift into
+ways of carelessness and indifference which seem not to involve sin, to
+be no more than a decline from some preceding standard of practice which
+we conclude to have been unnecessarily strict; but the result is an
+increasing disregard of spiritual values, a growing obscuration of the
+divine presence in life. Then the day comes when some quite marked and
+positive spiritual failure, a failure of which we cannot imagine
+ourselves to have been guilty, when we were living in constant communion
+with our Lord, arouses us to the fact that for months our spiritual
+vitality has been declining and that we have ended in losing Jesus. It
+is a tremendous shock to find how fast and how far we have been
+travelling when we thought that we were only slightly relaxing an
+unnecessarily strict routine: that when we thought that we were but
+acting "in a common sense way," we were in reality effecting a
+compromise with the world. Well is it then if the surprise of our
+disaster shocks us back to the recovery of what we have lost, if it send
+us into the streets of the city, sorrowing and seeking for Jesus.
+
+Mere spiritual laziness is at the bottom of much failure in religion.
+There is no success anywhere in life save through the constant pressure
+of the will driving a reluctant and protesting set of nerves and muscles
+to their daily tasks. The day labourer comes home from his work with his
+muscular strength exhausted, but he has to go back to the same
+monotonous task on the morrow: his family has to be fed and clothed and
+he cannot permit himself to say, "I am tired and will stay away from
+work to-day." The business or professional man comes back from his
+office with a wearied brain that makes any thought an effort, but he
+must take up the routine to-morrow; the pressure of competitive business
+does not permit him to work when and as much as he chooses. But the
+Christian who is engaged in the most important work that is carried on
+in this world, the work of preparing an immortal soul for an unending
+future, is constantly under the temptation "to take a day off"--to let
+down the standard of accomplishment till it ceases to interfere with the
+business or the pleasure of life; is constantly too tired or too busy to
+do this or that. In short, religion is apt to be treated in a manner
+that would ensure the bankruptcy of any material occupation in life. Why
+then should it not ensure spiritual bankruptcy?
+
+Surely, to retain Jesus with us, to live in the intimacy of God, is the
+most pressingly important of our duties; it is worth any sort of
+expenditure of energy to accomplish it. And it cannot be accomplished
+without expenditure of energy. The view of religion which conceives it
+as a facile assent to certain propositions, the occasional and formal
+participation in certain actions, the more or less strict observance of
+certain rules of conduct, is so far from the fact that it is not worth
+discussing. Religion is the realised friendship of God; it is a personal
+relation of the deepest and purest sort; and, like all personal
+relations, is kept alive by the mutual activities of those concerned.
+The action of one party will not suffice to keep the relation in healthy
+state. The love of God itself will not suffice to maintain a being in
+holiness and carry him on to happiness who is himself quite indifferent
+to the entire spiritual transaction--whose attitude is that of one
+willing to be saved if he be not asked to take much trouble about it.
+That lackadaisical attitude can never produce any result in the
+spiritual order; it can only ensure the spiritual decline and death of
+one who has not thought it worth while to make an effort to live.
+
+Jesus can be found; but the finding depends upon the method of the
+seeking. There are many men who claim, and quite honestly, to be in
+pursuit of truth: to find the truth is the end of all their efforts. Yet
+they do not succeed in finding it. Why is this? I think that the
+principal reason is that they are constituting themselves the judges of
+the truth; they first of all lay down certain rules which God must obey
+if He wishes them to believe in Him! They insist on having, before they
+will believe, a kind of evidence that is impossible of attainment. They
+assert that this or that is impossible, and the other thing incredible.
+They partially ascertain the laws that govern the material universe, and
+they deny to the Maker of the universe the power to act otherwise than
+in accord with so much of the order of nature as they have discovered!
+They deny to God the sort of personal action in this world that they
+themselves constantly exercise.
+
+The method is not a method that can be hopeful of success. And it is
+worth noting that it is not a method that these same men followed in
+their investigations of the natural world. They have not accumulated
+information about natural law by first laying down rules as to how
+natural law must act, and refusing to listen to any evidence which does
+not fall in with these rules: rather, they have set themselves to
+observe how nature does act, and then deduced rules from their
+observation. Why not pursue the same method in religion? Why not in an
+humble spirit observe how God does act? Why start by saying, "Miracles
+do not happen?" Why reject as incredible the Virgin Birth and the
+Resurrection? Why not get a bigger notion of God than that of a
+mechanician running a machine, and think of Him as a Person dealing with
+persons? The relation of persons cannot be mechanical or predetermined;
+they are and must be free and spontaneous: they have their origin, not
+in the pressure of invariable law but in the impulse of love.
+
+Nor is the search for Jesus that is inspired by mere curiosity likely
+to be a success. There are many people who are curious about religion,
+and they want to know why we believe thus and so; and particularly why
+we act as we do. Why do you keep this day? What do you mean by this
+ceremony? Do you think that it is wrong to do this or that? Such people
+wander about observing; but their observation we understand is the
+observation of an idler who does not expect to be influenced by what he
+observes, but only to be amused. These are they who run after the latest
+thing in heresy, the newest thing in thought. What is observable about
+them is that they never seriously contemplate doing anything themselves.
+They are like those multitudes who followed our Lord about for awhile
+but were dispersed by the test of hard sayings.
+
+But Jesus can be found. He is found of all those who seek Him humbly and
+sincerely, putting away self and desiring simply to be led: who do not
+challenge Him with Pilate's scornful, "What is truth?" but rather say,
+"Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief." He is easily found of those
+who know where to look for Him. There is no mystery about that,--He will
+certainly be in His Father's House. The surprise of Joseph and Mary that
+He had thus dealt with them is answered by Jesus' surprise that they did
+not certainly know where He would be: "Wist ye not that I must be in My
+Father's House?"
+
+In the House of God, the Church of God, is the ready approach to Jesus.
+It is in the last degree foolish to waive aside the Church in which are
+stored the treasures of more than nineteen centuries of Christian
+experience as though it did and could have nothing to say in the matter.
+A seeker after information as to the meaning of the constitution of the
+United States would be considered a madman if he impatiently turned from
+those of whom he made enquiry when they suggested the decrees of the
+Supreme Court as the proper place to seek information. Surely, from any
+point of view, the Church will know more about Jesus than any one else:
+if in all the centuries it has not discovered the meaning of Him Whom it
+ceaselessly worships there is small likelihood that that meaning will be
+discovered by an unbeliever studying an ancient book! If the Church
+cannot lead us to Jesus, and if it cannot interpret to us His will,
+there is small likelihood that any one else will be able to do so. And
+if during all these centuries His will has been unknown it can hardly be
+of much importance to discover it now. If His Church has failed, then
+His Mission is discredited.
+
+For us who have accepted His revelation as made to the Church and by it
+unfailingly preserved, who have learned to find Him there where He has
+promised to be until the end of time, there is another sense in which we
+think of His words as words of encouragement and consolation. There are
+hours in life which press hard upon us; there are other hours when the
+sense of God's love and goodness fills us with thankfulness and joy. In
+such hours we crave the intimacy of personal communion: we want to tell
+our grief or our joy. And then we take our way to the temple, and know
+that we shall find Him there in His Incarnate Presence in His Father's
+House. We go in and kneel before the Tabernacle and know that Jesus is
+here. Here in the silence He waits for us. Here in the long hours He
+watches; here is the ever-open door leading to the Father where any man
+at any time may enter. He who humbled Himself to the hidden life of
+Nazareth now humbles Himself to the hidden life of the Tabernacle: and
+we who believe His Word, have no need to envy Joseph and Mary the
+intimacy of their life with Jesus, because here for us, if we will, is a
+greater intimacy--the intimacy of those of whom it can be said: They
+evermore dwell in Him and He in them.
+
+     Lady of Heaven, Regent of the Earth,
+      Empress of all the infernal marshes fell,
+     Receive me, thy poor Christian, 'spite my, dearth,
+      In the fair midst of thine elect to dwell:
+      Albeit my lack of grace I know full well;
+     For that thy grace, my Lady and my Queen,
+     Aboundeth more than all my misdemean,
+      Withouten which no soul of all that sigh
+     May merit heaven. 'Tis sooth I say, for e'en
+      In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+     Say to thy Son, I am his--that by his birth
+      And death my sins be all redeemable--
+     As Mary of Egypt's dole he changed to mirth,
+      And eke Theophilus', to whom befell
+      Quittance of thee, albeit (so men tell)
+     To the foul fiend he had contracted been.
+     Assoilzie me, that I may have no teen,
+      Maid, that without breach of virginity
+     Didst bear our Lord that in the Host is seen:
+      In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+     A poor old wife I am, and little worth:
+      Nothing I know, nor letter aye could spell:
+     Where in the church to worship I fare forth,
+      I see heaven limned with harps and lutes, and hell
+      Where damned folk seethe in fire unquenchable:
+     One doth me fear, the other joy serene;
+     Grant I may have the joy, O Virgin clean,
+      To whom all sinners lift their hands on high,
+     Made whole in faith through thee, their go-between:
+      In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+
+
+
+     ENVOY
+
+
+     Thou didst conceive, Princess most bright of sheen,
+     Jesus the Lord, that hath no end nor mean,
+     Almighty that, departing heaven's demesne
+       To succour us, put on our frailty,
+     Offering to death his sweet of youth and green:
+     Such as he is, our Lord he is, I ween:
+       In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+CANA I
+
+     And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee;
+     and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus was called,
+     and his disciples, to the marriage.
+
+     S. John II, 1.
+
+     Grant, O Lord, we beseech thee, that we thy servants may
+     enjoy constant health of body and mind, and by the glorious
+     intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be delivered
+     from all temporal afflictions, and come to those joys that
+     are eternal. Through.
+
+     Having received, O Lord, what is to advance our salvation;
+     grant we may always be protected by the patronage of blessed
+     Mary, ever a virgin, in whose honor we have offered this
+     sacrifice to thy majesty. Through.
+
+     Old Catholic.
+
+"There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was
+there." To S. John Blessed Mary is ever the "mother of Jesus." He never
+calls her by her name in any mention of her. Jesus who loved him and
+whom he loved and loves always with consuming passion, held the
+foreground of his consciousness; all other persons are known through
+their relation to Him. As he is writing his Gospel-story toward the end
+of his life, the Blessed Virgin has long been gone to join her Son in
+the place of perfect love. We cannot conceive of her living long on
+earth after His Ascension. Her "conversation" would in a special way be
+"in heaven." Whatever the time she remained here awaiting the will of
+God for her, we may be sure that the days she spent under the protection
+of S. John were wonderful days for him, wherein their communing would
+have been the continual lifting of their hearts and souls to Him, Child
+and Friend, who is also God enthroned at the Right Hand of the Father.
+It is not unlikely that the marvellous spiritual maturity of which we
+are conscious in the writings of S. John was aided in its unfolding by
+the intimacy of his relations with S. Mary. But always she remained to
+him what she was because of what Jesus was; she remained to the end "the
+mother of Jesus."
+
+Here at the marriage of Cana the way in which she is mentioned suggests
+that she was staying in the house where the marriage was celebrated: she
+was simply there; Jesus and the disciples were called, invited, to the
+wedding. Some relationship, it has been suggested, between S. Mary and
+the bride or groom led to her presence in the house. That however is
+mere conjecture. The marriage in any case was a wonderful one, for both
+Jesus and Mary were there. It was therefore the ideal of all weddings
+which seem to lack the true note of the new matrimony which springs from
+the Incarnation if they take place without such guests. As in
+imagination we follow Mary as she goes quietly about the house, which
+like her own was a home of the poor, helping in the arrangements of the
+wedding, one cannot help recalling many weddings with which one has had
+something to do, and in the arrangements of which we cannot think of
+Mary as having any part. They were the arrangements of the weddings of
+Christians, and the weddings took place in a Christian church; but
+neither is Mary there nor Jesus called. We are unable to think of Mary
+as present amid the tumult of worldiness and frivolity, the endless
+chatter over dress and decoration, which so commonly precedes the
+celebration of a sacrament which is the symbol of "the mystical union
+that there is betwixt Christ and His Church." That deep piety which puts
+God and God's will before all else would strike a jarring note here,
+where the dominant note is still the pagan note of the decking of the
+slave for her new master. It is perhaps not without significance of the
+direction of the movement of the modern mind that the protests of the
+emancipated woman are against the Christian, not the pagan elements in
+matrimony: she tends to regard marriage as a state of temporary luxury
+rather than the perfect union of two souls in Christ. Clearly in
+marriages which are regarded as purely temporary engagements, dependent
+on the will of the parties for their continuance, there is no place for
+the mother of Jesus. The purity that emanates from her will be a silent
+but keenly felt criticism on the whole conception underlying a vast
+number of modern marriages. Even as I write I read that in a certain
+great city in the United States the number of divorces granted was one
+fourth of the number of the marriages celebrated.
+
+Clearly at marriages which are surrounded with this atmosphere of
+paganism, be they celebrated where they may, there is no place for the
+Blessed Mother; and neither is Jesus called. His priest, unfortunately,
+is often called, and dares celebrate a sacrament which in the
+circumstances he can hardly help feeling is a sacrilege. There are many
+cases in which what purports to be Christian marriage is between those
+who are not Christians, or of whom only one is a Christian in any
+complete sense. One hears frequently of the sacrament of matrimony being
+celebrated when only one of the parties is baptised. It is of course
+possible for any priest to act on the authority conferred upon him by
+the state and in his capacity as a state official perform marriages
+between those whom the state authorises to be married: but why do it
+under the character of a priest? or why throw about the ceremony the
+suggestions of a sacrament?
+
+If Jesus is really to be called to a marriage, it means that the
+preparations for the marriage will be largely spiritual. The parties to
+the marriage will approach the marriage through other sacraments. They
+will both be members of the Church of God by baptism; and they will be,
+or look forward to becoming, communicants. They will prepare for the
+sacrament of matrimony by receiving the sacrament of penance, and
+receiving the communion. What better preparation for starting a new
+life, for setting out to create a new family in the Kingdom of God, a
+family in which the ideals of the life at Nazareth are to be the ruling
+ideals, than that cleansing of soul that fits them for the beginning of
+a new life? A priest has great joy when he knows that those who are
+kneeling before him to receive the nuptial blessing are souls pure in
+God's sight, dwellings ready and adorned for the coming of Christ.
+
+For it is the normal and fitting crown of the ceremonies of marriage
+that Jesus be there, that the Holy Mass be celebrated and that those who
+have just been indissolubly united may as their first act partake of the
+Bread of Heaven which giveth life to the world. I myself would rather
+not be asked to celebrate a wedding unless it is to be approached with
+the purity of Mary, and sealed by the partaking of Jesus. It is so great
+and wonderful a thing, this sacrament of matrimony. Here are two human
+beings setting out to fulfil the vocation of man to build up the Kingdom
+of God, to set up a new hearth where the love of God may be manifest and
+where children may be trained in the knowledge and love of God; where
+the life of Christ may find contact with human life and through it
+manifest God to the world--how wonderful and beautiful and holy all
+that is! And then to remember what commonly takes place is to be
+overcome with a sense of what must be the pain of God's heart.
+
+We go back to look into the home where Mary seems to be directing the
+arrangements of the wedding feast. It was a poor home and not much could
+be provided; the wine, so essential to the feast, failed. What was to be
+done? To whom would Mary look? She could have no money to buy wine. One
+feels that after Joseph's death she had come more and more to look to
+Jesus for help of all sorts. The deepening of their mutual love, the
+completeness of their understanding, would make this the natural thing.
+S. Mary feels that if there is any help in these embarrassing
+circumstances, any way of sparing the feelings of the bridegroom, Jesus
+will know it and help. There is no doubt in her mind; but the certainty
+that He can help. So she turns to Him with her "they have no wine." The
+words as we read them contain at once an appeal and a suggestion: an
+appeal for help, advice, guidance, with the hint that Jesus can
+effectually help if He will. It is not as some have rather crudely
+thought a suggestion that He perform a miracle, but the appeal of one
+who has learned to have unlimited trust in Him.
+
+The reply of our Lord cannot fail to shock the English reader; and the
+very nature of the shock ought to indicate that there is something wrong
+with the translation. The words sound brusque and ill-mannered; and our
+Lord was never that nor could be, least of all to His blessed Mother.
+The dictionaries all tell us that the word translated woman is quite as
+well translated lady, in the sense of mistress or house mother. There is
+really a shade of meaning that we have no word for. Perhaps we best
+understand what it is that is missed if we recall the fact that when our
+Lord addressed S. Mary from the Cross He used the same word: "Woman,
+behold thy son." In such circumstances we understand that the word on
+our Lord's lips is a word of infinite tenderness. I do not believe that
+we could do better than to translate it mother. We might paraphrase our
+Lord's saying thus: "Mother, we are both concerned with the trouble of
+these friends; but do not be anxious; I will act when the time comes."
+His words are perfectly simple and courteous, though they do, no doubt,
+suggest that her anxiety is unnecessary and that He will act in due
+time. If we are to understand that our Lady was suggesting that He
+perform a miracle, then He certainly yielded to her intercession.
+
+Indeed, this short aside in the rejoicing of the marriage celebration is
+suggestive of wide reaches of thought. It suggests, which concerns us
+most here, something of the mode of prayer. Prayer is not a force
+exercised upon God, it is an aspiration that He answers or not as He
+sees fit, according as He sees our needs to be: and if He answers, He
+answers in His own way and at His own time--when His hour is come. The
+intercession of the saints, and of the highest saint of all, the holy
+Mother, must thus be conceived as aspiration not as force. We hardly
+need to remind ourselves that Blessed Mary though the highest of
+creatures is still a creature and infinitely removed from the uncreated
+God. When we think of her prayers or the prayers of the saints as having
+"influence" or "power" with God, we must remember the limitations of
+human language. It is quite possible through inaccurate use of language
+to create the impression that we believe the prayers of the saints to be
+prevailing with God because of some peculiar spiritual energy that
+belongs to them, or, still worse, because we regard them as a sort of
+court favourites who have special influence and can get things done that
+ordinary people cannot. We need only to state the supposition to see
+that we do not mean it. When we think what we mean by the influence of
+the prayers of the saints, of their prevailingness with God, we know
+that we mean that the superior value of the prayers of the saints is due
+to the superior nature of their spiritual insight, to their better
+understanding of the mind and purpose of God. Blessed Mary is our most
+powerful intercessor because by her perfect sanctity she understands God
+better than any one else. No educated Christian believes that she can
+persuade God to change His mind or alter His judgment, or that she or
+any saint would for a moment want to do so. Nor do we who cry for aid in
+the end want any other aid than aid to see God's will and power to do
+it: we have no wish or hope to impose our will on God. Prayer is
+aspiration, the seeking for understanding, the submitting our desires to
+the love of God; and the prayer of the saints helps us because they are
+our brothers and sisters, of the same household, and join with us in the
+offering of ourselves to God that we may know and do His holy will. And
+we can see here in this incident at Cana the whole mode of prayer. There
+is the just implied suggestion of the need, the hint of her own thought
+about the matter, in the way in which S. Mary presents the case to
+Jesus. There is the divine method which approves the end sought but
+reserves the time and method of fulfilling it to the "hour" which the
+divine wisdom approves. There is the ideal Christian attitude which
+accepts the divine will perfectly, and says to the servants: "Whatsoever
+he saith unto you, do it."
+
+"They have no wine": S. Mary's word expresses the present weakness of
+humanity, Man is born in sin, that is, out of union with God. That hoary
+statement of dogmatic theology seems to stir the wrath of the modern
+mind more than any other dogma of the Christian Faith, except it be the
+dogma of eternal punishment. It is rather an amusing phenomenon that
+those who have no visible basis for pride are likely to be the most
+consumed with it. The pride of Diogenes was visible through the holes in
+his carpet; the pride of liberalism is visible in its irritability
+whenever the subject of sin, especially original sin, is mentioned. Yet
+the very complacency of liberalism about the perfection of man, is but
+another evidence (if we needed another) of his inherent sinfulness, his
+weakness in the face of moral ideals. If we confess our sins we are on
+the way to forgiveness; but if we say that we have no sin the truth is
+not in us.
+
+This boasting of capacity to be pure and strong without God,
+theologically the Pelagian heresy, is sufficiently answered by a
+cursory view of what humanity has done and does do. Even where the
+Christian religion has been accepted the accomplishment is hardly ground
+for boasting. The plain fact is (and you may account for it how you
+like, it remains in any case a fact) that human beings are terribly weak
+in the face of moral and spiritual ideals. They are not sufficiently
+drawn by them to overcome the tendency of their nature toward a quite
+opposite set of ideals. We do run easily and spontaneously after ideals
+which the calm and enlightened judgment of the race, whether Christian
+or non-Christian, has continuously disapproved. We know that Buddha and
+Mahomet and Confucius would repudiate Paris and Berlin and New York and
+London with the same certainty if not with the same energy as Christ. We
+live in a time when a decisive public opinion gets its way; and
+therefore we are quite safe in saying that the misery and sin which go
+unchecked in the very centres of modern civilisation exist and continue
+because there is no decided public opinion against them.
+
+All attempts at reform which are merely attempts to reform machinery are
+futile, they can produce only passing and superficial results. There is
+only one medicine for the disease of the world, and that medicine is the
+Blood of Christ. Ultimately, one believes, that will be applied; but
+evidently it will not be applied in any broad way as a social treatment
+till all the quack remedies have demonstrated their uselessness. The
+last two centuries have been the flowering time of quacks. The mere
+history of their theories fills volumes. Our own time shows no decline
+in productiveness, nor decline in hopefulness in the efficacy of the
+last remedy to bid for support. But the time of disillusionment must
+some time come.
+
+When that time comes all men will lift their eyes, as individual men
+have always lifted them, up to the hills whence cometh their help.
+Except they had kept their eyes so resolutely fastened on the earth at
+their feet they would have seen, what has always been visible to those
+who lift up their eyes, a crucified Figure on the one supreme hill of
+earth,--the hill called Calvary. There "one Figure stands, with
+outstretched hands" saying, with inextinguishable optimism, the
+indestructible optimism of God, "and I, if I be lifted up, will draw all
+men unto me."
+
+What in the end will prevail with them, what will make them turn to the
+Tree which is for the healing of the nations, is the perception that in
+it is the remedy for the weakness that they have either sought to heal
+by other means, or have resolutely denied to exist at all. There are men
+whose wills are so strong that even in the grip of some serious disease
+they will long go on about their business asserting that there is
+nothing the matter with them and overcoming bodily pain and weakness by
+sheer will power; but the end comes finally with a collapse that is
+perhaps beyond remedy. We live in a society which has the same
+characteristics, but it may be that it will see its state and turn to
+healing. For God cannot heal except with our co-operation. Christ pleads
+from the Cross, but he can do no more. He will not submit to our tests;
+He will not come down that we may believe in Him. We must come to Him,
+laying aside all our pride and self-will, and kneel by the Cross to
+ask His help.
+
+We know, do we not? that that is the law for the individual; that we
+found the meaning of Christ, and what He can do in life, when we laid
+aside pride and self-will and humbly asked help and pardon. It may be
+that we resisted a long while, struggling against the pull of the divine
+magnet; but if we have attained to spiritual peace it is because the
+Cross won, because we found ourselves kneeling at the feet of Jesus.
+Perhaps we have not got there yet, but are only on the way. Perhaps our
+religion as yet is a formality and not a devotion. Perhaps our pride
+still struggles against the Catholic practice of religion. Then why not
+give way now, to-night? Let Mary take you and lead you to Jesus. She
+will bring you to him with her half-suggestion, half-prayer: "He has no
+wine." He has got to the end of his strength, and he has found the
+weariness of self, he is ready for healing. O my divine Son, is not this
+your opportunity, your "hour"?
+
+Jesus loves to have us bring one another to Him. It is so obviously the
+response to His Spirit, that carrying out of His teaching, so to love
+the brother that we may bring him to the healing of the Cross. To care
+for the spiritual needs of the brother is a real ministry: it is an
+extension of Christ in us that clothes us with the power to aid other
+souls in work or prayer. What a beautiful picture of this work there is
+in the Gospel of St. John. "And there were certain Greeks among them
+that came up to worship at the feast: the same came therefore to Philip,
+which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we
+would see Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and
+Philip tell Jesus." And this work of presenting souls to Jesus which is
+so clearly one of our chief privileges, how should not that be also the
+privilege of all the saints, and especially of the Holy Mother? Blessed
+Mary, we may be sure, delights in leading souls who so hesitatingly come
+to her, to the presence of her Son,--just presenting them in their need
+and with her prayer, which is all the plea that is needed to attract the
+love and mercy of Jesus. "Why not," ask certain people who have not
+thought out the meaning of Catholic dogma, "why not go at once to our
+Lord; why go in this roundabout way?" Why not? Because of our human
+qualities. Because we need company and sympathy. For the same reason
+precisely that makes us ask one another's prayers here. "The Father
+Himself loveth you." Why in this roundabout way ask me to pray? You do
+not come to me because you lack faith in God or in God's love; you come
+to me because you feel, if only implicitly, that in the Body of Christ
+association in love and sympathy and work is a high privilege, and that
+it is God's will that we should work together and "bear one another's
+burdens." And the frontiers of the Kingdom of God are not the frontiers
+of the Church Militant, and its citizens are not only the citizens of
+the Church here below, but--we believe in the Communion of saints.
+
+The hour of God strikes for any soul when that soul yields to
+prevenient grace and places itself utterly at the disposal of God,
+confiding wholly in His divine wisdom. When our Lord had answered His
+Blessed Mother she turned away satisfied. She did not have to concern
+herself any further; it was now in Jesus' hands to provide as He would.
+It remained but to see that His will should be carried out when He
+made it known.
+
+Submission is a difficult attitude to acquire; but it is such a happy
+attitude when once one has acquired it. The critics of it wholly mistake
+it and confound it with fatalism. It is not fatalism, or passive
+acquiescence in another's will--a will that we have no part in forming
+and cannot reject. Submission is the acceptance of God's will as the
+expression of the highest wisdom for us. It is not true that we have no
+part in forming it; it is at any time an expression of God's will for us
+which is determined by the way in which we hitherto have corresponded to
+that will. Submission means that we have put ourselves in a position of
+active co-operation with that will, that we have made it ours: because
+it is the expression of a divine wisdom and love we make it wholly ours.
+And we have found in the acceptance of it not bondage but liberty. It is
+wonderful how our preconceived notion of God and religion vanishes
+before the first gleams of experience. To the unregenerate the service
+of God is utter bondage; to the regenerate it is perfect freedom. And
+the difference seems to be accounted for by the reversal of ideals, by a
+new direction of affections. "I will run the way of thy commandments,
+when thou hast set my heart at liberty,"
+
+A true conversion is, perhaps, signified, more than in any other way, by
+the liberty of the heart,--by this change in the object of our love.
+That has been the constant exhortation to us, to love that which is
+worthy of love. "Set your affection on things above." "Love not the
+world, neither the things that are in the world." And we, loving the
+world and the things that are in the world, listen impatiently. But
+there is no possibility of a sincere conversion without a change of
+love. "A change of heart" conversion is often called, and so inevitably
+it is. And as we go through our self-examination one of the most
+profitable questions we can ask is, "What do I love?" That will commonly
+tell the whole story of the life, for "where a man's treasure is, there
+will his heart be also."
+
+Richard Rolle said: "Truly he who is stirred with busy love, and is
+continually with Jesu in thought, full soon perceives his own faults,
+the which correcting, henceforward he is ware of them; and so he brings
+righteousness busily to birth, until he is led to God and may sit with
+heavenly citizens in everlasting seats. Therefore he stands clear in
+conscience and is steadfast in all good ways the which is never noyed
+with worldly heaviness nor gladdened with vainglory."
+
+
+     CANA I
+
+
+     O Glorious Lady, throned in light,
+     Sublime above the starry height,
+     Whose arms thine own creator pressed,
+     A Suckling at thy sacred breast.
+     Through the dear Blossom of thy womb,
+     Thou changest hapless Eva's doom;
+     Through thee to contrite souls is given
+     An opening to their home in heaven.
+     Thou art the great King's Portal bright,
+     The shining Gate of living light;
+     Come then, ye ransomed nations, sing
+     The Life Divine 'twas hers to bring.
+     Mother of Love and Mercy mild,
+     Mother of graces undefiled.
+     Drive back the foe, and to thy Son
+     Lead thou our souls when life is done.
+     All glory be to thee, O Lord,
+     A Virgin's Son, by all adored,
+     With Sire and Spirit, Three in One,
+     While everlasting ages run.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+CANA II
+
+     And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus saith unto him,
+     They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I
+     to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.
+
+     S. John II, 3, 4.
+
+     We, the faithful, bless thee, O Virgin Mother of God, and
+     glorify thee as is thy due, the city unshaken, the wall
+     unbroken, the unbreakable defence and refuge of our souls.
+
+     BYZANTINE.
+
+"Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." These words have often been
+called the Gospel according to S. Mary. They certainly sum up her whole
+attitude in life. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me
+according to thy word," she had said in reply to the message S. Gabriel
+brought her: and that is the meaning of her whole life-story, that she
+is at all times ready to accept the will of God, to give herself to the
+fulfilment of the divine purpose. There is no more perfect attitude, for
+it is the attitude of her divine Son whose meat it was to do the will of
+the Father and to finish His work, whose whole life's attitude was
+compressed into the words of His self-oblation in Gethsemane, "Not my
+will, but thine be done."
+
+And this is the virtue that Jesus Christ inculcates upon us. "When ye
+pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven ... thy will be done." There
+is no true religion possible without that attitude. And therefore one is
+deeply concerned about the immediate future inasmuch as the spirit of
+obedience, the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of Mary, is so rare. As one
+looks into the social development of the Christian era, one feels that
+the life and example of S. Mary has been of immense influence in the
+development of the ideal of womanhood. The rise of woman from a wholly
+subordinate and inferior condition to a condition of complete equality
+with man has owed more to S. Mary than to any other factor. I am not
+concerned with political equality; that under our present conditions of
+social development women should have that equality if they want it seems
+to me just, but I am by no means satisfied that in the long run it will
+prove a boon either to them or to society at large. But I am at present
+thinking of their spiritual equality, which after all is the basis of
+their other claims; and this comes to them through the Gospel, and was
+shown to the mind of the Church largely through S. Mary. In the earliest
+records of the Church woman stands on the same level of privilege as
+man, and the same sort of spiritual accomplishment is expected of her.
+
+There are many members of the Body of Christ and there is a certain
+spiritual equality among them; but "all members have not the same
+office." In the Holy Spirit's distribution of functions within the Body
+there is a difference. Some functions, by the allotment of God, women
+are not called to exercise: these are sacramental and ruling functions.
+Others, as prophecy (the daughters of S. Philip), and ministry (the
+deaconess), are given them. For centuries she recognised this allotment
+and gave her best energies to her appointed works. She showed herself a
+true daughter of Mary in her loyal acceptance of the divine will and her
+zeal in its accomplishment. And what was the result? The Calendar of
+Saints, filled with the names of women, is the answer. There are no more
+wonderful works of God than the women whose names are commemorated at
+the altars of the Church and whose intercession is constantly asked
+throughout Catholic Christendom. There can be no thought of narrowness
+of opportunity or limitations in life as we study that wonderful series
+of women who have illumined the history of the Church from the day of S.
+Gabriel's message to this very moment when there are many many women who
+are faithfully following their vocation and doing God's will, and who
+will one day be our intercessors about the throne of God and of the
+Lamb, as they are our intercessors in the Church on earth to-day. Why
+any woman should complain of lack of opportunity and of the narrowness
+of the Church--the Church that has nourished S. Mary and S. Monica, S.
+Catherine of Genoa and S. Theresa; the foundresses of so many and so
+varied Religious Orders, so many who have devoted their lives to
+teaching, nursing, conducting works of charity, I am at a loss to
+understand. To-day we are witnessing all over the world a revolt of
+women against the Church; we hear not infrequent threats of what is to
+be done to the Church by those revolted members. I am afraid that woman
+is on the edge of another tragedy. She is once more looking fascinated
+at the fruit which "is good for food, and pleasant to the eyes and to be
+desired to make one wise," and listening to a voice that whispers: "Thou
+shalt be as God."
+
+The question which is becoming more urgent everywhere is, What are the
+women of the future to be,--the daughters of Eve, or the daughters of
+Mary? It is not a question for declamation, but a question that calls
+for immediate action: and the action must be the action of women. If
+women clamour for work in the Church of God, here it is, and here it is
+abundantly; and to accomplish it there is no need that they "seek the
+priesthood also." The work in the Church of God is in the first place a
+work that God has given mothers to do; it is the primary duty of a
+mother to bring up her children, and especially her daughters, in fear
+of the Lord. That she can always succeed I do not for a moment claim;
+there are many adverse factors in the situation that she has to deal
+with. But she is inexcusable if she does not give her effort to the work
+as the most important work of her life. She is utterly inexcusable and
+must answer to God for the result if she turn her children over to the
+care of maids and teachers while she occupies herself with society or
+any exterior work.
+
+In the second place the work of the Church of God is a work that ought
+to appeal to all women and a work that any woman can help in. All women
+can help the spiritual progress of the Church by meditating upon the
+life of Blessed Mary and fashioning their lives upon her example. We are
+all tremendously affected by example, and that is especially true of
+young girls. Their supreme terror seems to be that they should be caught
+doing or saying something different from what all other girls say or do
+or wear. Their opinions are as imitative as their clothes. Hence the
+need of the pressure of a strong Christian example, which would result
+most readily in the union of Christian women in a single ideal. Our
+present difficulty is that so many of our women who are devout members
+of the Church in their private capacity, so far succumb to the
+group-mind in their social relations that they are possessed by the same
+terror as the young girl in the face of the possibility of being
+different. Therefore are they careful to hide their real feeling for
+religion and their devotion to spiritual things under the mask of
+worldly conformity which evacuates their example of much of the power
+that it might have. I am quite convinced that fear of the world is about
+as strong an impulse toward evil as love of the world.
+
+We need that women should clear their ideals and realise their public
+responsibility for the presentation of them. We need terribly at this
+moment insistence on the purity and simplicity of the Holy Mother of
+God. One is stunned at the abandonment of the ideal of reserve and
+modesty that the last few years have seen. Women seem to take it quite
+gaily: men, one notes, take it much more seriously. I have been
+consulted by more than one father during the past year as to the
+possibility of sending a boy to a school where he would be kept out of
+the society of half-naked girls. Have mothers no longer any sense of the
+value of purity? Or have they simply abandoned all responsibility that
+normally goes with being a mother? One recognises how helpless a man is
+under the circumstances, that his intervention in such matters simply
+casts him for the part of family tyrant; but why should a mother abandon
+her duty simply because her daughter says: "You don't understand. Girls
+are not as they were when you were young. All the girls do this. No
+other mother takes the line that you do. You are not modern."
+
+One knows, of course, that the whole matter of decline in manners and
+morals is but a part of the world-wide revolt against the morality of
+Jesus Christ that we are witnessing everywhere. Social and religious
+teachers, students of history and social movements have seen the
+approach of this revolt for a long time, have been watching its rise and
+growth. When they have pointed out the end of the path that we have been
+travelling, they have been disposed of by calling them pessimists. These
+"pessimists" pointed out long ago that the denial of the obligation to
+believe would be followed by an abandonment of all moral standards. They
+pointed out to the devotees of "liberal religion" that they are in
+reality the leaders of a moral revolt, that if it does not make any
+difference what you believe it will soon come to make no difference what
+you do. It is a rather silly performance to blow up the dam which holds
+back the mass of water of an irrigation system and imagine that no more
+water will flow out than you want to flow out. When the Protestant
+revolt blew up the restraining dams of the Catholic Religion they had no
+right to expect that only so much denial of Catholic truth as it suited
+them to dispense with would be the result. Through the broken dams the
+whole religion of Christ has been flowing out and it is mere empty
+pretence to claim that all that is of any value is left. It is
+impossible to maintain anything of the sort now that all the moral
+content of the Christian system is openly thrown overboard by vast
+numbers of the population of the world, in every country that claims to
+be civilised. It is useless to say that there has always been evil in
+the world and that the maintenance of the Catholic religion has never
+anywhere abolished sin. That is true, but it is not to the present
+point. The social situation is one where there are definite religious
+and moral ideals strongly maintained and universally recognised, though
+there are many men and women who violate them; it is quite another
+situation when the ideals themselves are repudiated and set aside as
+superstitions. That is our case to-day. The Christian theory is
+confronted with a theory of naturalism in morals, and those who follow
+that theory do not do so with a feeling that they are violating accepted
+ideals, but with the assumption that they are missionaries setting forth
+a new faith. Those who have revolted from the Kingdom of God have now
+set up another kingdom and proclaimed openly, "We will not have this Man
+to reign over us." The revolt which began with a breach in the dogmatic
+system of the Church and denial of the authority of the Catholic Church
+in favour of the right of private judgment, has ended, as it could not
+help but end, in open abandonment of the life-ideal of the Gospels. We
+now have the application of the right of private judgment in the theory
+that one's morals are one's own concern. Such things have happened
+before. "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every one did
+what was right in his own eyes." The social state depicted in the Book
+of Judges reflects this revolt. The result of the same repudiation of
+authority is seen in modern society where what is right in one's own
+eyes is the whole Law and Gospel. Are we to remain quiescent, or are we
+to make the attempt to generate moral force?
+
+But how can Christendom generate any more moral force? The teaching of
+the Gospel which it proclaims is perfectly plain. True, but is the
+adherence of the Church to its statements perfectly plain? Is there no
+falling away, no compromise, there?
+
+When one speaks thus of the Church one is conscious of a confusion of
+thought in the use of the word. The teaching of the formal documents of
+the Church is not here in question; what we necessarily mean is the
+effect that the existing membership of the Church is having upon
+contemporary life. What we have especially in mind is the attitude of
+the clergy and the action of the congregation in the way of moral force.
+What sort of a front is the church presenting to the world, what sort of
+moral influence is it exercising?
+
+It seems to me perfectly evident that all along the line the conventions
+of contemporary society have been accepted in the place of the
+life-ideals of the Gospel of Jesus. We have accepted plain departures
+from or compromises with Christian teaching as the recognised law of
+action. This is due largely to the natural sloth of the human being and
+his disinclination to struggle for superior standards. He feels safe and
+comfortable if he can succeed in losing himself in a crowd: thus he
+escapes both trouble and criticism. A violation of law may become so
+common that there is no public spirit to oppose it. The same thing may
+happen in morals,--violations of the Christian standard, if sufficiently
+widespread, command almost universal acquiesence. What is actually
+uncovered in the process is the fact that the plain man has no morals of
+his own, but imitates the prevailing morality; and if fashion sets
+against some particular ruling of the Christian Religion he feels quite
+secure in following the fashion. The _vox dei_ in Holy Scripture and in
+Holy Church affect him not at all if he be conscious that he is on the
+side of the _vox populi_.
+
+It is easy to illustrate this. The non-Catholic Christian world has the
+Bible, and boasts of its adherence to it as the sole guide of life; but
+in the matter of divorced persons it utterly disregards its teachings.
+By this acceptance of an unchristian attitude it has vastly weakened the
+fight for purity in the family relation which the Catholic Church, at
+least in the West, has always waged. It deliberately divides the
+Christian forces of the community and to a large extent thereby
+nullifies their action. The divisions of Christendom are terrible from
+every point of view; but there are certain questions on which a united
+mind might well be presented, and in relation to which an united mind
+would go far to control the attitude of society. An united Christian
+sentiment against divorce would go far to reduce the evil.
+
+On the other hand the progress of the movement to abolish the evils
+growing out of the use of alcohol has had its strength in the Protestant
+bodies. On the whole (there were no doubt individual exceptions) the
+Churches of the Catholic tradition have been lukewarm in the matter. It
+is quite evident that the reform could never have been carried through
+if left to them, and especially if left to the bishops and clergy of the
+Roman and Anglican Communions. It is a plain case of failure to support
+a vast moral reform because of the pressure of opinion in the social
+circles in which they move, combined with a purely individualistic
+attitude toward a grave social question.
+
+Another instance is ready at hand in the practical abandonment of the
+religious observance of Sunday. To Christians Sunday is the Lord's day,
+and is to be observed as such. It is not true that an hour in the
+morning is the Lord's day, and is to be given to worship, and that the
+rest of the day is given to us to do what we will with. But in our own
+Communion do we get any strong protest in favour of the sanctity of the
+day? Or are not the clergy compromising in the hope that if they
+surrender the greater part of the day to the world they will be able to
+save an hour or two for God? But is anything actually saved by this sort
+of compromise? Do we not know that the encroachments of worldliness that
+have narrowed down Sunday observance to an hour a day will ultimately
+demand that hour, that is, will deny any obligation other than the
+obligation of inclination? Are we not bound to stand by the Lord's day?
+Are we to be made lax by silly talk about puritanism? Those who talk
+about the "Puritan Sunday" would do well to read a little of the
+Medieval legislation of the Church. Are we to keep silent in the pulpit
+because wealthy and influential members of the congregation want to
+play golf and tennis on Sunday afternoons, or children want to play ball
+or go to the movies? Are we to be taken in by talk of hard work during
+the week and consequent need of rest? It is no doubt well that a man
+should arrange his work with a view to an adequate amount of rest; but
+it is also well that he should rest in his own time and not in God's.
+The Lord's day is not a day of rest. It ought to be, and is intended to
+be, a very strenuous day indeed.
+
+One could easily spend hours in pointing out where and how the Gospel
+standard of life has been abandoned or compromised, and the life of the
+Christian in consequence conformed to the world. The result would only
+strengthen the position that has been already sufficiently indicated
+that a wholly different standard of living has been quietly substituted
+throughout the Western world for the standard that is contained in Holy
+Scripture. Now we are either bound to be Christians or we are not; and
+we are not Christians solely by virtue of certain beliefs more or less
+loosely held. Our Lord's word is: "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever
+I command you." And the Gospel view of life is a perfectly plain one,
+and is as far removed from the common life of Christians to-day as it
+possibly can be. The Gospel conception of the Christian life is
+contained first of all in our Lord's life. That is the perfect human
+life; and the New Testament optimism is well illustrated by its
+conviction that that life in its essential features can, with the grace
+of God, be imitated by man. And by those who have approached it in this
+spirit of optimism it has been found imitable. Innumerable men and women
+have lived the Christian life in the past and are living it in the
+present. To-day the possibility of living the Christian life, of
+bringing life approximately to the standard of the Gospel, is declared
+to be an impracticable piece of optimism, and our Lord's teaching
+hopelessly out of touch with reality. When people talk of the difficulty
+of living the Christ-life under modern conditions, the plain answer is
+that there is in fact only one difficulty in the matter, and that is the
+difficulty of wanting to do it. It is a confession of utter spiritual
+incompetence to say that we cannot follow the Gospel standards under
+modern conditions because of the isolation in which we at once find
+ourselves if we attempt it. If the attempt to be a Christian isolates
+us, it tells a pretty plain tale about our chosen companionship. It is
+asserting that it is hard for us to be Christians because we are devoted
+to the society of those who are not Christians, of those who ignore it
+and habitually insult the teachings of our Saviour. That is surely an
+extraordinary confession for a Christian to make! Can we imagine a
+Christian of the first period of the Church excusing himself for
+offering incense to the divinity of Augustus on the ground that if he
+did not do so certain court festivities would be closed to him, and that
+his friends would think him odd!
+
+"Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you," "The friendship
+of this world is enmity with God." We have to choose. It is not that we
+may choose. It is not that it is possible to have a little of both. As
+Christians it is quite impossible in any real sense to have the
+friendship of the world, though many Christians think that they can.
+What really is open to us is the enmity of the world if we are sincere
+and strict in our profession, and the contempt of the world if we are
+not. You have not to read very deep in contemporary literature to learn
+what the world thinks about the Christian who ignores or compromises his
+standards. The world knows perfectly well what constitutes a Christian
+life, and it shows a well merited scorn of those who, not having the
+courage openly to abandon it, yet show by their lives that they do not
+value it. We may not show the same sort of contempt for the "weak
+brother" as S. Paul calls him, but we ought to make it plain that we
+have no sort of approval of the brother who pleads weakness as an excuse
+for laxity.
+
+There is one law of life and only one; and that is summed up in our
+Lady's direction to the servants at Cana in Galilee: "Whatsoever he
+saith unto you, do it." There is no ground for pleading that our Lord's
+will is an obscure will, or that circumstances have so changed that much
+that He set forth in word and example has no application to-day in the
+America of the twentieth century. Perhaps if any one feels that there is
+some truth in the last statement, he would do well to examine the case
+and to find out just what and how much of the Gospel teaching is
+obsolete, and how much has contemporary application, and to ask himself
+whether he is constantly putting in action that part which he thinks
+still holds good. It will, I think, on examination be found that none of
+our Lord's teaching is obsolete, though in some cases changed
+circumstances may have changed its mode of application. Certainly there
+is nothing obsolete in His teaching in the matter of purity. The virtues
+that He dwells upon--humility, meekness and the rest--are universal
+qualities on which time and social change have no effect.
+
+What Christian conduct needs on our part is interest. We have to make
+clear to ourselves that a certain kind of life is like the life of God,
+and therefore is the medium for understanding God, and ultimately for
+enjoying God. The Christian life is not an arbitrary thing; it is the
+highest expression of humanity. Any other life is a distortion of the
+human ideal. People talk as though they thought that by the arbitrary
+will of God they were obliged to be good--a thing wholly contrary to our
+nature and to our present interests. But goodness is the natural
+unfolding of our nature as God made it: we find our true expression in
+the likeness of God. Perfection is what nature aspires to. Religion is
+not a curb on nature; religion is a help to enable nature to express
+itself. Nature reaches its perfect expression when by the grace of God
+it becomes godlike.
+
+And the words of Christ are our guide to the perfect expression of our
+best. Therefore the earnest Christian is willing to give time to the
+careful study of them, and of the whole ideal of life that is contained
+in them. He is not concerned with what they will cut him off from; he is
+concerned with that to which they will admit him. He is concerned to
+find the meaning of Christ's teaching. This that S. Paul says is
+fundamental is his rule of life: "Be not conformed to this world: but be
+ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is
+that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."
+
+     Of one that is so fayr and bright
+       _Velut maris stella_,
+     Brighter than the day is light,
+       _Parens et puella_;
+     I crie to thee, thou see to me,
+     Levedy, preye thi Sone for me,
+       _Tam pia_,
+     That I mote come to thee
+       _Maria_.
+
+     Al this world was for-lore
+       _Eva peccatrice_,
+     Tyl our Lord was y-bore
+       _De te genetrice_.
+     With _Ave_ it went away
+     Thuster nyth and comz the day
+       _Salutis_;
+     The welle springeth ut of the,
+       _Virtutis_.
+
+     Levedy, flour of alle thing,
+       _Rosa sine spina_,
+     Thu here Jhesu, hevene king,
+       _Gratia divina_;
+     Of alle thu ber'st the pris,
+     Levedy, quene of paradys
+       _Electa_:
+     Mayde milde, moder _es
+       Effecta_.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+WHO IS MY MOTHER?
+
+Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is
+my brother, and sister, and mother,
+
+S. Matt. XII, 50.
+
+Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we may keep with an
+immaculate heart the sacrament which we have received in honour of the
+blessed virgin mother Mary; so that we who celebrate her feast now, may
+be found worthy when we have left this life to pass into her company.
+Through &c.
+
+SARUM MISSAL.
+
+Our Blessed Lord had begun his ministry of preaching. The mark of the
+early days of that preaching was success. Crowds came about Him wherever
+He taught. The fact that there were frequent miracles of healing no
+doubt added to the popularity that He achieved. It was largely the
+popularity of a new and strange movement, of a preaching cutting across
+the normal roads of instruction to which the Jewish people were
+accustomed. There was a fascination about its form, its picturesque way
+of conveying its meaning, its use of the parable drawn from the everyday
+circumstances of life. There was nothing of hesitation in the words of
+the new Preacher, but the ring of a dogmatic certainty. "He taught as
+one having authority, and not as the scribes." He pushed aside the
+rulings of the traditional teaching with His, "Ye have heard it said ...
+but I say." "Verily, verily, I say unto you." And yet there are people
+who tell us that there was nothing dogmatic about our Lord and His
+teaching! One would infer from much that is written upon the subject of
+our Lord's teaching that He was a very mild giver of good advice but
+evidently the Scribes and Pharisees did not think so. They saw in Him a
+man who was setting himself to undermine their whole authority.
+
+This popularity was at a high point when an interesting event happened
+of which we have an account in the first of the Gospels. "His mother
+and His brethren stood without, desiring to speak with Him." One gathers
+from the whole tone of the narrative that they were anxious about Him,
+that they looked with doubt upon this career of popular teacher that He
+was launched upon and felt that He was going too far. He needed advice
+and restraint, perhaps; it may be that there were already reports of
+possible interference by the national authorities. The fact that His
+"brethren" were present suggests the well meant interference of the
+older members of the family, who must always have thought Jesus rather
+strange. That they had induced His mother to come with them makes us
+think that they were counting on the influence naturally hers, an
+influence which must always have been apparent in their family
+relations. So we reconstruct the incident.
+
+No doubt S. Mary herself was anxious. She must always have been anxious
+as to what would be the next step in the development of her mysterious
+Child. And while there was one side of her relation to Jesus which would
+always have run out into mystery, the mystery of the as yet unrevealed
+will of God; on the other side she was no doubt a very real normal human
+mother, with all a mother's anxiety and need of constant intervention in
+the life of her Child. I do not suppose that S. Mary, any more than any
+other mother, ever understood that her Son had grown up and could be
+trusted to conduct the ordinary affairs of the day without her help. She
+was no doubt as much concerned as any mother with the fact that His feet
+might be wet, or that He might not have had any lunch, or that he might
+have got run over by a passing chariot, or have been taken mysteriously
+ill. It was, we may think, this mother-attitude which brought her along
+with the brethren to give some advice as to how to carry on the
+preaching mission and avoid getting into trouble with the religious
+authorities. "One said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren
+stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said
+unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And
+he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my
+mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father
+which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and
+my brother."
+
+Our Lord had a way of turning the passing incidents of the moment to
+account in His preaching, making them the texts of moral and spiritual
+teaching. One gathers that more than one of the parables and parabolic
+sayings was suggested by something that was before the eyes of His
+hearers. He was quick to seize any spoken word, any question, any
+exclamation, and to turn it to immediate account. It was so now. The
+report that His mother and His brethren were seeking Him, He made the
+occasion of a statement of vast import. When we try to think it out, it
+was not in the least, as it has been perversely understood, an impatient
+rebuff of an untimely interference, an indication that He did not care
+for their intervention in a work that they did not understand. There is
+really nothing of all that, but a seizing of a passing incident as the
+medium of an universal truth. It is the skill of one who knows that the
+human attention is caught by a matter, however trifling, which is
+vividly present. The scene is sharply defined for us: our Lord
+interrupted in His talk; the report of the mother and the brethren
+seeking Him; the obvious interest of the people as to how He will take
+their intervention; and then the rapid seizing of this interest to make
+His declaration: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in
+heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother."
+
+And what are we to understand Him to mean? Surely He is declaring that
+through the revelation of God that He is, there is a new stage in God's
+work for man being entered upon, and that this new stage will be
+characterised by the emergence of a new set of relations, relations so
+important that they throw into the background the ordinary relations of
+life. He is proclaiming to them the advent of the Kingdom of God; and in
+that Kingdom, the service of God will be put first, before all human
+relations. It will not be antagonistic to human relations; indeed, it
+will hallow them and raise them to a higher level; but in case they, as
+not infrequently they will, decline to adjust themselves to the work of
+the Kingdom, or set themselves in opposition to it, then will they be
+brushed aside, no matter what they be. If we can consecrate our human
+relations and bring them into God, then will they be ours still with a
+vast enrichment and a rare spiritual beauty; but if they remain selfish,
+insist on absorbing all attention and energy, then they must be broken.
+The love of father and mother and children is an holy thing wherever we
+find it, but it is capable of becoming a selfish and perverse thing,
+insistent upon its own ends and declining wider responsibilities. In
+that case it must be regarded from the standpoint of a higher good: if
+it stand in the path of the Kingdom it must be swept aside. So our Lord
+declared in one of the most searching of His utterances; one of the
+utterances which we feel could come only from the lips of God: "Think
+not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but
+a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and
+the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her
+mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be those of his own household. He
+that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he
+that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
+
+That is the teaching of the incident before us. Our Lord's primary
+mission is to declare the will of God, and to make known the mind of the
+Father to all who will heed. Their acceptance of this will of the Father
+will bring them into a new relation to Him more important than, and
+transcending, all relations of flesh and blood. But--and this is
+important to mark--it does not exclude relations of flesh and blood; but
+it demands that they shall be put on a new basis and be assimilated to
+the higher relation. In our Lord's case they were in fact so
+assimilated. The blessed Mother and the brethren did not resist God's
+will when they came to understand it. They were, we know, glad of the
+higher relation, the new privilege. There is no ground at all for the
+suggestion of any breach between them. They are of the inner circle
+always in the Kingdom of the regenerate.
+
+This fundamental truth of Christ's teaching, that through Him a new and
+closer relation to the Father becomes possible, and that the Kingdom is
+its embodiment, is one of the truths which have received constant
+lip-service, but have never been really assimilated in the working life
+of the Church. That the Church is the Body of Christ and we His members,
+and that by virtue of this membership in Him we are also members one of
+another; that we are, at our entrance into the Kingdom, made, as the
+Catechism puts it, members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the
+kingdom of Heaven are truths of most marvellous reach and of splendid
+social implications. But can we say that they have very wide or real
+acknowledgment?
+
+In face of a divided Christendom it seems almost farcical to talk of a
+Christian Brotherhood. The baptismal membership of the Church of God has
+fallen into group organisations whose mutual antagonism is of the
+bitterest kind. The so-called "religious press" is perhaps the saddest
+picture of modern Christian life. One could name a half dozen journals
+off hand, organs of this or that group, every one a sufficient
+refutation of the claim of the Christian Religion to be a Brotherhood of
+the Redeemed. There is no possible excuse for the tone of such
+publications.
+
+No doubt it is an inevitable result of the state of a divided
+Christendom that there should be disputes and controversies. We shall
+never reach any expression of the Brotherhood that is the Church by
+saying, Peace, Peace, where there is no Peace. The unity we look to must
+be reached through painful sacrifice and through conflict; and we know
+that the wisdom that is from above is "first pure, and then peaceable,"
+But it is quite possible while holding with all firmness to the truth,
+to hold it in the fear and love of God.
+
+So long as Christendom is thus divided into hostile camps the ideal of
+brotherhood is impossible of realisation. I do not want however to
+discuss this matter from the point of view of Church unity. I want to
+point out that within the groups themselves there is small vision of the
+meaning of the oneness of Christ. For brotherhood is the expression of a
+spiritual reality. It looked for a moment in the early days of the
+Church as though the ideal would be realised. The description of the
+Church was that "all that believed were together, and had all things in
+common: and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all
+men, as every man had need." That was, no doubt, a passing phase of the
+life of the Church in Jerusalem, but we have evidence that elsewhere all
+distinctions based upon social considerations were for the moment swept
+away. There is "neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
+there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
+Our glimpses of the congregations of the early Church are of men and
+women of all classes held together by the bond of a common membership in
+Christ, so strongly felt as to enable them to forget all worldly
+distinctions. Their sense of redemption was strong. They thrilled with
+the joy of deliverance from the old life "after the flesh." They knew
+that they were regenerate, new creations, and that this was the
+distinction of the brother who knelt beside them at their communions. It
+mattered not at all what he was in the world, whether he were Greek or
+Barbarian, whether he were patrician or freedman, whether he were of the
+slaves of Rome or of Caesar's household. The man who knelt to receive
+his communion might be a great nobleman, the priest who communicated him
+might be a slave: that did not matter; the significant thing was that
+they were both one in Jesus Christ.
+
+That did not last. I suppose that it could not be expected to last in an
+unconverted or half converted world. It could only last on condition of
+the fairly complete isolation of the Christian group from the rest of
+society, pending the conversion of society as a whole. But it proved
+impossible to secure the isolation. The only real isolation was in
+monastic groups which naturally could contain only such men and women as
+God called to a special sort of life: the whole of society could not be
+so organised. As the Church grew and took in the various social
+constituents included in the Empire, it took them in differentiated as
+they were. There seems to have been no real effort to break down race
+distinctions or class distinctions. There were no doubt protests, but
+the protests were as ineffective then as now. "You cannot change human
+nature," men say; but that in fact is precisely what Christianity
+claims to do. Unless it can change human nature it is a failure.
+
+The ideal of Christianity is not the abolition of inequality (only a
+certain sort of social theorists are insane enough to expect that). All
+men are born unequal in a variety of ways, physical, intellectual,
+moral; and under any form of society that so far has been invented they
+are born in social classes which remain very hard realities in spite of
+our theories. What Christianity aims at accomplishing is to transcend
+these inequalities, natural and artificial, by raising men to a state of
+spiritual equality, a state which ensures true and full enjoyment of all
+the privileges of the child of God. In this state there is open to all
+the gift of sanctifying grace which is the possession of God now, and in
+the future will unfold into the capacity of the complete participation
+of the life of heaven. This belongs to, is within the grasp of, any
+child, any ignorant peasant, any toiler, as much as it is within the
+grasp of bishop or priest or Religious. And this much--and how much it
+is!--the Church has succeeded in accomplishing. It may be slow in
+offering the riches of the Gospel to the unconverted world, but where it
+has presented the Gospel, it presents it to all men as a Gospel of
+salvation and sanctification. When tempted to discouragement let us
+remember that whatever the shortcoming of the Church, it is yet true
+that every man, woman and child in these United States of America can
+through its instrumentality, become a saint whenever he desires. But,
+naturally, to become a saint, effort is necessary.
+
+Where the Church has failed is not in the offer of salvation and
+sanctity, but in removing some of of the obvious obstacles to its
+attainment by many to whom it appeals, to whom its divine mission is. It
+has not succeeded in convincing us that we are members one of another,
+that is, it has not succeeded in persuading us to act upon what we
+profess in any broad way. The Church is not a fellowship in any
+comprehensive sense. The divisions which run through secular society and
+divide group from group run through it also. The parish which should be
+the exemplification of the Christian brotherhood in action is not so.
+Too often a parish is known as the parish of a certain social group.
+There are parishes to which people go to get "into society." Very likely
+they do not succeed, but that is the sort of impression that the parish
+membership has made upon them. Then there are parishes to which people
+"in society" would not be transferred. There are churches in which no
+poor person would set foot, not that they would be unwelcome, but that
+they would feel out of place. So long as such things are true, our
+practice of brotherhood has not much to commend of it.
+
+And when we go about setting things right I am not sure that we do not
+mostly make them worse. I do not believe that it is the business of the
+Church to set about the abolition of inequalities and the getting rid of
+the distinctions between man and man. Apart from the waste of time due
+to attempting the impossible, what would be gained? Pending the arrival
+of the social millenium we need to do something; and that something, it
+seems to me a mistake to assume must be social. "We must bring people
+together": but what is gained by bringing people together when they do
+not want to be together, and will not actually get together when you
+force them into proximity. There is nothing more expressive of the
+failure of well-meant activity than a church gathering where people at
+once group themselves along the familiar lines and decline to mix,
+notwithstanding the utmost endeavours of clergy and zealous ladies to
+bring them together. The thing is an object lesson of wrong method.
+
+Is there a right method? There must be, though no one seems to have
+found it yet. There is in any case a right point of departure in our
+common membership in Jesus Christ. Suppose we drop the supposition that
+we make, I presume because we think it pious, that if they are both
+Christians a dock labourer ought to be quite at home at a millionaire's
+dinner party, or a scrub-woman in a box at the Metropolitan opera house.
+Suppose we drop the attempt to force people together on lines which will
+be impossible till after the social revolution has buried us all in a
+common grave, and fasten attention on the one fact that, from our
+present point of view, counts, the fact that we are Christians. Suppose
+one learns to meet all men and all women simply on the basis of their
+religion; when that forms the bond that unites us when we come together,
+we have at once common grounds of interest in the life and activities of
+the Body of Christ. Suppose the millionaire going down town in his motor
+sees his clerk walking and stops and picks him up, and instead of
+talking constrainedly about the weather or about business, he begins
+naturally to talk to him about spiritual matters. Why could they not
+talk about the Mission that has just been held, or the Quiet Day that is
+in prospect? One great trouble, is it not? is that we fight shy of
+talking to our fellow-Christians of the interests that we really have in
+common and try to put intercourse on some other ground where we have
+little or nothing in common. The things that should, and probably do,
+vitally interest us, we decline to talk about at all. We are so stiff
+and formal and restrained in all matter of personal religious experience
+that we are unable to express the fact of Christian Brotherhood. The
+fact that you smile at the presentment of the case, that you cannot even
+imagine yourself talking about your spiritual experience with your clerk
+or your employer, shows how far you are from a truly Christian
+conception of Brotherhood.
+
+Our Lord's words that we are making our subject indicate the paramount
+importance that He laid upon the acceptance of God's will as the
+ultimate rule of life. "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which
+is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother." "Ye
+are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." That is the common
+ground on which we are all invited to stand, the ground of a common
+loyalty to God, of intense zeal for the cause of God. Our Lord gave His
+whole life to that cause. As His disciples watched Him on an occasion,
+they remembered that it was written: "The zeal of thine house hath
+eaten me up." Zeal is not a very popular quality because it is always
+disturbing the equanimity and self-complacency of lukewarm people. And
+then, we dislike to be thought fanatics. But I fancy that there will
+always be a touch of the fanatic about any very zealous Christian, and
+it is not worth while to suppress our zeal for fear of the world's
+judgment upon it. What we have to avoid is the misdirection of zeal.
+There is, no doubt, a zeal which is "not according to knowledge." We
+need to be sure, in other words, that our zeal is a zeal for God, and
+not a zeal for party or person or cause. It is no doubt quite easy to
+imagine that we are seeking to do God's will when we are merely seeking
+to impose on our own will. Self-seeking is quite destructive of the
+friendship and service of God. The Kingdom whose interests we are
+attempting to forward may turn out to be a Kingdom in which we expect to
+sit on the right hand or the left of the throne because of the
+brilliance of the service rendered.
+
+Life is simplified very much when the will of God thus becomes its
+guiding principle, and all other relations of life are subordinated to
+our relation to our heavenly Father. Then have we brought life to that
+complete simplicity which is near akin to peace. When we have learned in
+deciding any line of action not to think what our neighbours and friends
+will feel, or what the world will think, but only what God will think,
+we have little difficulty in making up our minds. Suppose that a boy has
+to make up his mind whether he will study for the priesthood, the vital
+thing on which to concentrate his thought and prayer is whether God is
+calling him to that life, and if he is convinced that he is being called
+the whole question should be settled. In fact in most cases it is far
+from being settled because this simplicity has not been attained. There
+is a whole social circle to be dealt with, who urge the hardness of the
+life, the scant reward, the greater advantages of a business career, and
+so on; all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the question to
+be decided. It is so all through life. In most questions of life's
+decisions, no doubt, there is no sense of any vocation at all, of a
+determining will of God; but is not that because we assume that God has
+no will in such matters, and leaves us free to follow our own devices?
+Such an assumption is hardly justified in the case of One to Whom the
+fall of a sparrow is a matter of interest. It is our weakness, or the
+sign of our spiritual incompetence, that we have unconsciously removed
+the greater part of life from the jurisdiction of the divine will. We do
+not habitually think of God as interested in the facts of daily
+experience; we do not take Him with us into offices and factories.
+Perhaps we think that they are hardly fit places for God, and I have no
+doubt that He has many things to suffer there. But He is there, and will
+suffer, until we recognise His right there, and insist upon His there
+being supreme.
+
+Let us go back for a moment to Our Lady standing outside the place where
+Jesus was preaching, perplexed and worried at the course He was taking.
+I suppose that it is always easier to surrender ourselves unreservedly
+into God's hands than it is to so surrender some one we love. I suppose
+that S. Mary so trusted in God that she never thought with anxiety of
+what His providence was preparing for her; but she would not quite take
+that attitude about her Son; or rather, while she did intellectually, no
+doubt, take that attitude, her feelings never went the whole distance
+that her mind went. But surrender to the will of God means complete
+surrender of ourself and ours. It means absolute confidence in God, it
+means lying quiet in his arms, as the child lies still in the arms of
+his mother. It means that we trust God.
+
+      Rose-Mary, Sum of virtue virginal,
+      Fresh Flower on whom the dew of heaven downfell;
+     O Gem, conjoined in joy angelical,
+      In whom rejoiced the Saviour was to dwell:
+      Of refuge Ark, of mercy Spring and Well,
+     Of Ladies first, as is of letters A,
+      Empress of heaven, of paradise and hell--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.
+
+     O Star, that blindest Phoebus' beams so bright,
+      With course above the empyrean crystalline;
+     Above the sphere of Saturn's highest height,
+      Surmounting all the angelic orders nine;
+      O Lamp, that shin'st before the throne divine,
+     Where sounds hosanna in cherubic lay,
+      With drum and organ, harp and cymbeline--
+     Mother, of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     O Cloister chaste of pure virginity,
+      That Christ hath closed 'gainst crime for evermo';
+     Triumphant Temple of the Trinity,
+      That didst the eternal Tartarus o'erthrow;
+      Princess of peace, imperial Palm, I trow,
+     From thee our Samson sprang invict in fray;
+      Who, with one buffet, Belial hath laid low--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     Thy blessed sides the mighty Champion bore,
+      Who hath, with many a bleeding wound in fight,
+     Victoriously o'erthrown the dragon hoar
+      That ready was his flock to slay and smite;
+      Nor all the gates of hell him succour might,
+     Since he that robber's rampart brake away,
+      While all the demons trembled at the sight--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     O Maiden meek, chief Mediatrix for man,
+     And Mother mild, full of humility,
+     Pray to thy Son, with wounds that sanguine ran,
+       Whereby for all our trespass slain was he.
+       And since he bled his blood upon a tree,
+     'Gainst Lucifer, our foe, to be our stay,
+       That we in heaven may sing upon our knee--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     Hail, Pearl made pure; hail, Port of paradise;
+       Hail, Ruby, redolent of rays to us;
+     Hail, Crystal clear, Empress and Queen, hail thrice;
+       Mother of God, hail, Maid exalted thus;
+       O Gratia plena, tecum Dominus;
+     With Gabriel that we may sing and say,
+       Benedicta tu in mulieribus--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.
+
+     William Dunbar,
+
+     XV-XVI. Cents.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+HOLY WEEK I
+
+Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.
+
+S. Matt. XXVI, 56.
+
+Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God, accept, O Lord, our
+prayers and save us.
+
+May the Holy Mother of God and all the saints be our intercessors with
+the Heavenly Father, that He may deign to be merciful to us, and in pity
+save His creatures. Lord God all-powerful! save us and have mercy
+upon us.
+
+Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God, the Immaculate
+Mother of Thine only Son, and through the prayers of all the saints,
+receive, O Lord, our supplications; hear us, O Lord, and have mercy upon
+us; pardon us, bear with us, and blot out our sins, and make us worthy
+to glorify Thee, together with Thy Son and the Holy Ghost, now and ever,
+world without end. Amen.
+
+Armenian.
+
+We try to see our Lord's passion through the eyes of His Blessed
+Mother. We feel that all through Holy Week she must have been in direct
+touch with the experiences of our Lord. Her outlook would have been that
+of the Apostolic circle the record of which we get in the Gospels. Our
+Lord's ministry had showed a period of popularity during which it must
+have seemed to those closest to Him that they were moving rapidly to
+success; and then, after the day at Caeserea Phillipi, when His
+Messianic claims had been acknowledged, they would have been filled with
+enthusiasm for the mission the meaning of which was now defined. Then
+came a period of disappointment. Our Lord declined to become a popular
+leader, and by the nature of His preaching, the demands that He made
+upon those who were inclined to support Him lost popularity till it was
+a question to be considered whether the very Apostles would not desert
+Him. Then came the flash of renewed enthusiasm which is evidenced by the
+Palm Sunday entry, bringing, no doubt, renewed hopes to those nearest
+our Lord who seem to have been utterly unable to accept the view of His
+failure and death that He kept before them. But the hope vanished as
+quickly as it was roused. In less than a week the rejoicing group of
+Sunday followed Him from the Upper Chamber to the shades of Gethsemane.
+The betrayal, the trial, the end, come quickly on.
+
+This to S. Mary was the piercing of the sword through the very heart.
+These were the days when the meaning of close association with Incarnate
+God, with God Who was pursuing a mission of rescue, came out. The
+mission of the Son for the Redemption of man meant submitting to the
+extremity of insult and torture, and it meant that those who were
+closest associated with Him should be caught into the circle of His
+pain. As our Lord was displaying the best of which humanity is capable,
+so was He calling out the worst of which it is capable. These last days
+of the life of Jesus show where man can be led when he surrenders
+himself to the dominion of the Power of Evil and becomes the servant of
+sin. The triumph of demoniac malice through its instruments, the Roman
+governor, the Jewish authorities, of necessity swept over all who were
+related to our Lord. The storm scattered the Apostolic group and left
+the Christ to face His trial alone. Yet not alone: He himself tells us
+the truth. "Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be
+scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am
+not alone, because the Father is with me." It was what the Prophet had
+foreseen: "All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is
+written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered."
+
+We do not know where S. Mary was during these days, but we are sure that
+she was as near our Lord as it was possible for her to be. We know that
+her own thought would be of the possibility of ministering to Him. We
+know that she would not have fled with the Apostles in their momentary
+panic. She was at the Cross, and she was at the grave, and she would
+have been as near Him in the agony and the trial as it was possible for
+her to be. And she too was in agony. Every pang of our Lord found echo
+in her. Every blow that fell upon His bleeding back, she too felt. Every
+insult that the soldiers inflicted, hurt her. Our Lord in the
+consciousness of His mission is constantly sustained by the thought that
+His Passion and Death is an offering to the will of the Father,--an
+offering even for these miserable men who are brutally treating a man
+whom they know to be innocent. Her sorrow is the utter desolation of
+seeing the One Whom she loves above all else suffer, while she can bear
+Him no alleviation in His suffering, cannot so much as wipe the blood
+from off His wounded brow, cannot even touch His hand, and look her love
+into His eyes. She follows from place to place while our Lord is being
+hustled from Caiaphas to Pilate and from Pilate to Herod and back again;
+from time to time hearing from some one who has succeeded in getting
+nearer, how the trial is going on, what the accusation is, how Jesus is
+bearing Himself, what answers He has made, what the authorities have
+said. Once and again, it may be, catching a distant glimpse of Him as He
+is led about by the guards, seeing Him always more worn and weary,
+always nearer the point of collapse. Herself, too, nearer collapse; yet
+going on still with that strength that love gives to mothers, determined
+at the cost of any suffering to be near Him, as near as she can be, till
+the very end. So we see her on that day in the streets of Jerusalem,
+and think of the distance travelled since the morning when Gabriel said
+to her, wondering: "Hail thou that art highly favoured.... Blessed art
+thou among women."
+
+We, too, follow. We have so often followed, with the Gospel in our
+hands, and wondered at the method of God. We have tried hour after hour
+to penetrate the meaning of the Passion, to find what personal message
+it brings, to discover what light it throws on our own lives. We have
+gone out into Gethsemane and placed ourselves with the three chosen
+Apostles while our Lord went on to pray by Himself; and we have
+discovered in ourselves the same weariness, the same tendency to sleep,
+in the presence of what we tell ourselves is the most important of all
+interests. We call up the scene under the olives, and find that we
+wander and are inattentive and idle when we most want to be attentive
+and alert. We place ourselves in the group that surrounds our Lord when
+the soldiers, led by Judas, come, and ask ourselves shall I too run
+away? And our memory flashes the answer: You have run away again and
+again: you have in the face, not of grave dangers, but of insignificant
+trifles--how insignificant they look now--for fear of criticism, for
+fear of being thought odd, for fear of the opinion of worldly
+companions, for fear of being pitied or laughed at, over and over again
+you have run away. The things that seemed important when they were
+present seem pitifully insignificant in the retrospect.
+
+We follow out of the garden to the meeting-place of the Sanhedrin, to
+the Judgment seat of Pilate, to the palace of Herod. Any impulse to
+criticise S. Peter is speedily suppressed: we have denied so often under
+such trifling provocation. S. Peter was frightened from participation in
+the act of our Lord's sacrifice through mortal fear of his life. We have
+stayed away from the offering of the Holy Sacrifice, how often! from
+mere sloth, from disinclination to effort, from the fact that our
+participation would prevent us from joining in some act of worldly
+amusement. S. Peter, following to the high Priest's palace to see the
+end, looks heroic beside our frivolity. We follow through the details of
+the trial, we go to Herod's palace and see the brutal treatment of our
+Lord, and we remember of these men that their conduct was founded in
+ignorance. We do not for a moment believe that they would have spit upon
+our Lord and buffeted Him, and crowned Him with a crown of thorns, if
+they had believed that He was God. But we believe that He is God. Our
+desertion of Him when we sin, our contempt of His expressed ideals when
+we compromise with the world, our departure from His example when we
+excuse ourselves on the ground of very minor inconveniences from keeping
+some holy day or fasting day, are not founded in ignorance at all. They
+can hardly be said to be founded in weakness, so slight is the
+temptation that we do not resist. As we meditate on the Passion, as we
+keep Good Friday, very pitiful all our idleness and subterfuges appear
+to us. But we so easily shake off the effect! We emerge from our
+meditation almost convinced that the stinging sense of the truth of our
+conduct which we are experiencing is the equivalent of having reformed
+it. We go out with a glow of virtue and by night realise that we have
+sinned again!
+
+It is no doubt well that we should not be permanently depressed about
+our spiritual state, but only because we have taken all the pains we can
+to heal the wounds of sin. There is no need that any one should abide in
+a state of sin because there has been in the Precious Blood a fountain
+opened for sin and for uncleanness, and by washing therein, though our
+souls were as scarlet, they shall become white as snow. We have the
+right to a certain optimism about ourselves if it be founded on actual
+spiritual activity which ceaselessly tries to reproduce the
+Christ-experience in us, even the experience of the Passion by the
+voluntary self-discipline to which we subject ourselves. A brilliant
+writer has spoken of those whose view of their lives is drawn from "that
+fountain of all optimism--sloth." That is a true saying: our optimism is
+often no more than an idle refusal to face facts; a quaint and
+good-natured assumption that nothing very much matters and that
+everything will be all right in the end!
+
+This easy going optimism is commonly as far as possible from
+representing any spiritual fact. If we are seeking any serious and
+fruitful relation to the Passion of our Lord, we must seek it along the
+Way of the Cross. To follow His example means to follow His experience,
+to treat life as He treated it. The content of our lives is quite
+different, but the treatment of the given fact must be essentially the
+same. We need the same repulse of temptation, the same quiet disregard
+of the appeals of the world, whether it offer the alleviation of
+difficulty or the bestowal of pleasure as the reward of our allegiance.
+And we, sinners in so manifold ways, need what our Lord did not need,
+repulsion from our sins as the necessary preliminary to forgiveness.
+
+My experience makes me feel very strongly that we are apt to be
+deficient in the first step in repentance--contrition. As we follow the
+Way of Sorrows we know that our Lord is suffering _for us_; and we feel
+that the starting point of our repentance must lie in our success in
+making that a personal matter. In our self examination, in our approach
+to the sacrament of penance, we are compelled to ask ourselves, Am I in
+fact sorry for my sins? It surely is not enough that we fear the results
+of sin, or that we are ashamed at our failure. This really is not
+repentance but a sort of pride. There must, I feel, be sorrow after a
+godly sort. That is, true contrition, true sorrow for sin, is the sort
+of sorrow which is born of the Vision of God; it has its origin in love.
+I have found in our Lord love giving itself to me, and I must find in
+myself love giving itself to Him. To my forgiveness it is not enough
+that God loves me. I know that He loves me and will love me to the end,
+whether I repent or not; but the possibility of forgiveness lies in my
+love of Him, whether it takes such hold on me as actually to stimulate
+me to forsake sin. I shall never really forsake sin through shame or
+fear; one gets used to those emotions after a little and disregards
+them. But one does not get used to love; it grows to be an increasing
+force in life, and so masters us as to draw us away from sin.
+
+Contrition then will be the offspring of love. It will be born when we
+follow Christ Jesus out on the Sorrowful Way and understand that He is
+going out for us. Then we want to get as near Him as possible: we want
+to take His Hand and go by His side. We want to stand by Him in His
+trial and share His condemnation. We want constantly to tell Him how
+sorry we are that we have brought Him here. We shall not be content that
+He feel all the pain. We are convinced that we ought to share in the
+pain as we share in the results of the Passion. When we have achieved
+this point of view we shall feel that our approach to Him to ask His
+forgiveness needs, it may be, much more care than we have hitherto
+bestowed upon it. We have thought of penance as forgiveness; now we
+begin to see how much the attitude which precedes our entrance to the
+confessional counts, and that we must value the gift of God enough to
+have made sure that we are ready to receive it. We kneel down,
+therefore, and look at our crucifix, and say: "This hast Thou done for
+me," and make our act of love in which we join ourselves to the Cross of
+Jesus. We tell ourselves that love is the beginning and end of our
+relation to Him.
+
+It is to be urged that every Christian should be utterly familiar with
+the life of our Lord, and should spend time regularly in meditation upon
+His life, and especially upon His Passion. Love is the constant
+counteractive of familiarity; and it is kept fresh in our souls by the
+contemplation of what our Lord has actually done for us. A general
+recalling of what He has done has not the same stimulating force as the
+vivid placing before us of the actual details of His work. To most of us
+visible aids to the realisation of our Lord's action for us are most
+helpful. A crucifix on the wall of one's room before which one can say
+one's prayers, and before which also we stop for a moment time and again
+in the course of the day, just to say a few words, to make an act of
+love, of contrition, or of union, keeps the thought of the Passion
+fresh. We gain in freshness and variety of prayer by the use of such
+devotions as the litany of the Passion or the Way of the Cross. A set of
+cards of the Stations help us to say them in our homes. It is much to be
+desired that we accustom ourselves to devotional helps of all sorts. We
+are quite too much inclined to think that there is something of
+spiritual superiority in the attempt to conduct our devotional life
+without any of the helps which centuries of Christian experience have
+provided. It is the same sort of feeling that makes other Christians
+assume that there is a superiority in spiritual attainment evidenced by
+their dispensing with "forms," especially with printed prayers. It is
+just as well to remember that we did not originate the Christian
+Religion, but inherited it; and that the practices of devotion that have
+been found helpful by generations of saints, and after full trial have
+retained the approval of the greater part of Christendom, can hardly be
+treated as valueless, much less as superstitious. The fact that saints
+have found them valuable and one has not, may possibly not be a
+criticism of the saints.
+
+The meditation upon the Way of the Cross, the vision of Jesus scourged,
+spitted upon, crowned with thorns, may well give us some searchings of
+heart in regard to our own easy-going, luxurious life. Nothing seems to
+disturb the modern person so much as the suggestion that the chief
+business of the Christian Religion is not to look after their comfort.
+They hold, it would appear, to the pre-Christian notion that prosperity
+is an obvious mark of God's favour, and that by the accumulation of
+wealth they are giving indisputable evidence of piety. It is well to
+recall that there is no such dangerous path as that of continual
+success. I do not in the least mean to imply that success is sinful or
+indicates the existence of sin, but I do mean to insist very strongly
+that the successful man needs to be a very spiritually watchful man. He
+is quite apt to think that he may take all sorts of liberties with the
+laws of God. There are, no doubt, evident dangers to the unsuccessful
+man, but the Holy Scriptures have not thought it worth while to spend
+much time in denouncing him. It has a good deal to say of the danger,
+not so much of wealth, as of prosperity in general: "Behold, this was
+the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and
+prosperous ease were in her." When we find ourselves in a satisfied and
+comfortable home life, so comfortable that we find it difficult to get
+up to a week-day Mass, and disinclined to go out to a service after
+dinner, we need watching.
+
+And the best watchman is oneself; and the best method of
+self-examination is by the Cross. Is there any sense in which we can be
+said to be following our Lord on the Sorrowful Way? Have we taken up the
+Cross to go after Him, or are we assuming that we can just as well drift
+along with the crowd of those who only look on? We all need from time to
+time to consider the Catholic teaching as to mortification and
+self-discipline. I am quite aware that to insist on this is not the way
+of popularity, but nevertheless I learned a long time ago that about the
+only way that a priest can take if he wishes to be saved is the way of
+unpopularity. And therefore I am going to insist that the practice of
+rigorous self-discipline is essential to any healthy Christian life. We
+cannot dispense ourselves from this, for the mere fact that we are
+dispensing ourselves is the proof that we need that upon which we are
+turning our back. Briefly, what I mean is that the assumption of the
+Cross by a Christian means that he is taking into his life, voluntarily,
+personal acts of self-sacrifice which he offers to our Lord as the
+evidence and the means of his own Cross-bearing.
+
+The unruliness of our nature can only be kept in order by continual acts
+of self-discipline. We, no doubt, recognise the need of the discipline
+of the passions, but our theory, so far as we can be said to have one,
+would seem to be that the discipline of the passions means resistence to
+special temptations as they arise. We may no doubt sin through the
+passions, and therefore we need a minimum of watchfulness to meet
+temptations which come our way. I submit that such a way of conducting
+life is quite sufficient to account for the vast amount of failure we
+witness or, perhaps, experience. When from time to time the country gets
+alarmed about its health, when it is threatened with some epidemic such
+as influenza, the papers are full of medical advice the sum of which is
+you cannot dodge all the disease germs that are in the air, but you can
+by a vigorous course of exercise and by careful diet, keep yourself in a
+state of such physical soundness that the chances are altogether
+favourable for your withstanding the assaults of disease. No doubt the
+vast majority of people prefer not to follow this advice. A considerable
+number of them resort to various magic cults, such as letting sudden
+drafts of cold air in upon the inoffensive bystander with a view to
+exorcising the germs. But it remains that the medical advice is sound:
+it amounts to saying, "Keep yourself in the best physical condition
+possible and you will run the minimum chance of being ill."
+
+The Catholic treatment of life and its recommendation of discipline and
+mortification has precisely the same basis as the physical advice--an
+ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. We are exposed to
+temptation constantly, and we need to recognise the fact and prepare
+ourselves to meet it; and the best preparation is the preparation of
+self-discipline for the purpose of keeping rebellious nature under
+control. Good farming does not consist in pulling up weeds; it consists
+in the choice and preparation of the ground in which the seed is to be
+sown; it looks primarily to the growth of the seed and not to the
+elimination of the weeds. Our nature is a field in which the Word of God
+is sown; its preparation and care is what we need to focus attention on,
+not the weeds.
+
+Self-discipline is the preparation of nature, the discipline of the
+powers of the spiritual life with a view to what they have to do. And
+one of the important phases of our preparation is to teach our passions
+obedience, to subject them to the control of the enlightened will. If
+they are accustomed to obey they are not very likely to get out of hand
+in some time of crisis. If they are broken in to the dominion of
+spiritual motive, they will instinctively seek that motive whenever they
+are incited to act. Hence the immense spiritual value of the habitual
+denial to ourselves of indulgence in various innocent kinds of activity.
+I do not at all mean that we are never to have innocent indulgences: I
+do mean that the declining of them occasionally for the purpose of
+self-discipline is a most wholesome practice. How frequently it is
+desirable must be determined by the individual circumstances. It is
+utterly disastrous to permit a child to have everything it wants because
+there is sufficient money to spend, to permit it to run to soda
+fountains or go to the picture houses as it desires. Any sane person
+recognises that; but does the same person recognise the sane principle
+as applying in his own life? Does he feel the value of going without
+something for a day or two, or staying from places of amusement for a
+time, or of abandoning for a while this or that luxury?
+
+The principle is of course the ascetic principle of self-mastery. It is
+best brought before us by the familiar practice of fasting, which is
+very mildly recommended to us in its lowest terms in the table in the
+Book of Common Prayer. Naturally, its value is not the value of going
+without this or that, but the value of self-mastery. The very fact that
+our appetites rebel at the notion shows their undisciplined character.
+The child at the table begins to ask, not for a sensible meal founded on
+sound reasons of hygiene, but for various things that are an immediate
+temptation to the appetite. The adult is not markedly different save
+that he preserves a certain order in indulgence. The principle of
+fasting is that he should from time to cut across the inclination of
+appetite, and either go without a meal altogether, or select such food
+as will maintain health without delighting appetite. So man gains the
+mastery over the animal side of his nature and shows himself the
+child of God.
+
+The actual practice of the ascetic life really carries us much farther
+than these surface matters of a physical nature that have been cited. It
+applies in particular to the disposition of time and the ruling of daily
+actions. The introduction of a definite order into the day actually
+seems to increase the time at one's disposal. I know, I can hear you
+saying: "If you were the head of a family, and had children to look
+after, you would not talk that way. You would know something of the
+practical difficulties of life." But indeed I am quite familiar with the
+situation. And if I were so situated I am certain that I should feel
+all the more need of order. Families are disorderly because we let them
+be; because we do not face the initial trouble of making them orderly. A
+school or a factory would be still more disorderly than a family if it
+were permitted to be. Any piece of human mechanism will get out of order
+if you will let it. That is precisely the reason for the insistence on
+the ascetic principle--this tendency of life to get out of order; that
+is the meaning of all that I have been saying, of the whole Catholic
+insistence on discipline. Time can be controlled; and, notwithstanding
+American experience, children can be controlled; and control means the
+rescuing of the life from disorder and sin, and the lifting it to a
+level of order and sanity and possible sanctity.
+
+We cannot hope to meet successfully the common temptations of life
+except we be prepared to meet them, except there be in our life an
+element of foresight. An undisciplined and untried strength is an
+unknown quantity. The man who expects to meet temptation when it occurs
+without any preparation is in fact preparing for failure. I do not
+believe that there is any other so great a source of spiritual weakness
+and disaster as the going out to meet life without preceding discipline,
+thus subjecting the powers of our nature to trials for which we have not
+fitted them. Self-control, self-discipline, ascetic practice, are
+indispensible to a successful Christian life.
+
+     O STAR of starrès, with thy streamès clear,
+     Star of the Sea, to shipman Light or Guide,
+     O lusty Living, most pleasant t'appear,
+     Whose brightè beames the cloudès may not hide:
+     O Way of Life to them that go or ride,
+     Haven from tempest, surest up t'arrive,
+     O me have mercy for thy Joyès five.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     O goodly Gladded, when that Gabriel
+     With joy thee gret that may not be numb'rèd,
+     Or half the bliss who couldè write or tell,
+     When th' Holy Ghost to thee was obumbrèd,
+     Wherethrough the fiendès were utterly encombrèd?
+     O wemless Maid, embellished in his birth,
+     That man and angel thereof hadden mirth.
+
+     John Lydgate of Bury,
+     XV Cent.
+     From Chaucerian and Other
+     Poems, edited by W. W. Skeat,
+     1894.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+HOLY WEEK II
+
+And after they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put
+his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.
+
+S. Matt. XXVII, 31.
+
+     Forgive, O Lord, we beseech thee, the sins of thy people:
+     that we, who are not able to do anything of ourselves, that
+     can be pleasing to thee, may be assisted in the way of
+     salvation by the prayers of the Mother of thy Son. Who.
+
+     Having partaken of thy heavenly table, we humbly beseech thy
+     clemency, O Lord, our God, that we who honour the Assumption
+     of the Mother of God, may, by her intercession, be delivered
+     from all evils. Through.
+
+OLD CATHOLIC.
+
+The way of the Cross is indeed a Sorrowful Way. We have meditated upon
+it so often that we are familiar with all the details of our Lord's
+action as He follows it from the Judgment Seat of Pilate to the Place of
+a Skull. I wonder if we enough pause to look with our Lord at the crowds
+that line the way, or at those who follow Him out of the city. It is not
+a mere matter of curiosity that we should do so, or an exercise of the
+devout imagination; the reason why we should examine carefully the faces
+of those men who attend our Lord on the way to His death is that
+somewhere in that crowd we shall see our own faces: it is a mirror of
+sinful humanity that we look into there. All the seven deadly sins are
+there incarnate.
+
+It is extremely important that we should get this sort of personal
+reaction from the Passion because we are so prone to be satisfied with
+generalities, to confess that we are miserable sinners, and let it go at
+that! But to stop there is to stop short of any possibility of
+improvement, because we can only hope to improve when we understand our
+lives in detail, when we face them as concrete examples of certain sins.
+
+There was pride there. It was expressed by both Roman and Jewish
+officialism which looked with scorn on this obscure fanatic who claimed
+to be a king! Pilate had satisfied himself of His harmlessness by a very
+cursory examination. This Galilean Prophet with His handful of
+followers, peasants and women, who had deserted Him at the first sign of
+danger, was hardly worth troubling about. The only ground for any action
+at all was the fear that the Jewish leaders might be disagreeable. Those
+Jewish leaders took a rather more serious view of the situation because
+they knew that through the purity of His teaching and His obvious power
+to perform miracles, a power but just now once more strikingly
+demonstrated in the raising of Lazarus, He had a powerful hold on the
+people. They, these Jewish leaders, declined a serious examination of
+the claims of such a man in their pride of place and knowledge of the
+Scriptures. They were concerned to sweep Him aside as a possible leader
+in a popular outbreak, not as one whose claim to the Messiahship needed
+a moment's examination.
+
+This intellectual pride is one of the very greatest sins to which
+humanity is tempted. It goes very deep in its destructive force because
+it is a sin, preeminently, of the spiritual nature, of that in us which
+is akin to God, His very image. It is, you will remember, the sin on
+which our Lord centres His chief denunciation. And common as it has
+always been, it has never been so common as it is to-day. Pilate and the
+chief priests are duplicated in every community in the thousands who
+reject Christianity without any adequate examination as incredible in
+view of what they actually hold, or as inconvenient in view of what they
+desire to practice. We have only to read very superficially in the
+current literature of the day, we have only to examine the teaching in
+colleges, to be completely convinced of the vast extent of the revolt
+against the Christian Religion. This revolt is for the most part a
+revolt without adequate examination. It assumes that the Christian
+Religion is contrary to science, or to something else that is
+established as true. It looks at Christianity superficially through the
+eyes of those who reject it and are ignorant of it. The fact is that
+Christianity cannot be understood in any complete sense of the word by
+those who do not practice it. Its "evidence" is no doubt of great force;
+of sufficient force to lead men to experiment; but the actual
+comprehension of Christ as the Saviour of man is an experience. The
+operation of the Holy Spirit in life is necessarily proved, and only
+completely proved, by the action of the Spirit Himself.
+
+Another demonstration of the same pride is seen in the refusal, without
+adequate examination, to accept the Catholic Religion, and the picking
+and choosing among articles of belief and sacraments and practices as to
+what we will use or observe. Men do not like this or that, and they
+therefore decline it. The whole attitude is one of self-will and pride.
+Whatsoever comes to us with a great weight of Christian experience back
+of it certainly deserves careful consideration; it demands of us that we
+treat it as other than a matter of taste. Pride is the commonest of sins
+and the most dangerous for it attacks the very heart of the spiritual
+life. It runs, to be sure, through a broad range of experience and not
+all manifestations of pride are mortal sin; but all manifestations of it
+are subtle and insidious and capable of expansion to an indefinite
+degree. For there is no difference in nature between the spiritual
+attitude of the person who says, "I do not see any sense in that and
+will not do it," when the matter in question may be the Church's rule of
+fasting, and that of the man who before Pilate's Judgment Seat cried
+out, "We have no king but Caesar."
+
+It was in fact because they found their own power and place threatened
+that the Jewish authorities were so determined on our Lord's death.
+Their sin from this point of view was the sin of covetousness. This sin
+reaches its highest point when it is greed for power over other men's
+lives and destinies, when it is ready to sacrifice the lives of others
+in order to gain or maintain its ends. In this broad sense it is the
+most socially destructive of sins. The wars of the world for these many
+years have been wars for commercial supremacy. The world is being
+continually exploited by commercial enterprises which will stop at
+nothing to gain their ends. Some day a history of the last two hundred
+years will be written which will tell the story of the commercial
+expansion of the world we call civilised, and it will be the most
+horrible book that has ever been written. It will contain the story of
+the Spanish colonisation of America. It will contain the history of the
+slave trade. It will contain the history of the Belgian Congo, and of
+the rubber industry in South America. It will contain the history of the
+American Indian and of the opium trade of India--and of many
+like things.
+
+But while we shudder at the world-torturing ways of the pursuit of
+wealth, of the world-wide seeking of money and power, we need not forget
+that the sin of covetousness is as common as any sin can be. It is so
+common and so subtle that it is almost impossible to know how far one is
+a victim of it. It is deliberately taught to us as children under the
+guise of thrift, which if it be a virtue is certainly one that the
+saints have overlooked. We are constantly called on to strike a balance
+between what are the proper needs of life and what is an improper
+concentration of attention upon ourselves. Waste of money, like waste of
+any other energy, is a sin; but it is a very nice question as to what is
+waste. I think it a pretty safe rule to give expenditure the benefit of
+the doubt when it is for others, and to deny it when it is for self.
+
+However, I imagine that those who are conscientiously trying to conduct
+their lives as the children of God will have little difficulty in this
+matter. The real trouble is not in the matter of expenditure but in the
+matter of gain. The ethics of business are very far from being the
+ethics of the Gospel, and we are often frankly told by those engaged in
+business that it cannot be successfully conducted on the basis of the
+ethics of the Gospel, That it is not so conducted is sufficiently
+obvious from a cursory scanning of the advertising columns of any
+newspaper or magazine. The ideal of the business world is success.
+Naturally, one cannot carry on an unsuccessful business, but need it be
+success by all means and to all extents? Are there no limits to the
+methods by which business is to be pushed, except legal limits? If there
+is no room for Christian ethics in the business world there can be but
+one end; competitive business will lead the civilisation that it
+controls to inevitable disaster. Our Lord said: "Take heed and beware of
+covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the
+things that he possesseth." And He went on to speak a parable which has
+come to be known as the Parable of the Rich Fool. The "practical man"
+may be as angered as he likes by this teaching, but in his soul he knows
+that our Lord was right. When such things are pointed out from the
+pulpit the "practical man" says: "What would become of the Church were
+it not for the rich and the successful?" I think that the answer is that
+in that case the Church would no more represent the rich and would have
+a fair chance of once more representing Jesus Christ.
+
+It may seem at the first sight that of the mortal sins lust was not
+represented here upon the Sorrowful Way; but that, I think is but a
+superficial analysis of the nature of lust, thinking only of some
+manifestations of it. There is however one sin that has its roots deep
+in lust which psychologists tell us is one of its commonest
+manifestations, and that is cruelty. Lust is not always, but commonly,
+cruel; and the desire to inflict pain on others is a very common form of
+its expression. There are sights we have seen or incidents we have read
+of, it may be a boy torturing an animal or another child, it may be a
+shouting mass of men about a prize-ring, it may be soldiers sacking a
+town,--when the action seems so senseless that we are at a loss to
+account for it; but the account of it lies in the mystery of our
+sensual nature, in the ultimate animal that we are. The savage joy that
+is being expressed by the participants in such scenes is ultimately a
+sensual joy. These men who delighted in the torture of our Lord were
+sensualists; and there are few of us who if we will watch our selves
+closely will not find traces of the animal showing itself from time to
+time. Of this crowd about the Cross relatively few could have known
+anything about the case of our Lord; but they were fascinated by the
+spectacle of a man's torture. If the executions of criminals were public
+to-day there would undoubtedly be huge crowds to gaze upon them.
+
+It is one of the lessons we learn from the study of sin that what we had
+thought was the essence of the sin was in fact but one of the
+manifestations of it, and that we have to carry our study far before we
+arrive at the ideal, Know thyself. It is always dangerous to assume that
+we know when we have not been at the pains to look at a subject on all
+sides. Our sensual nature needs a very careful discipline, and the mere
+freedom from certain forms of the sin of lust is not the equivalent of
+that purity which is the medium of the Vision of God.
+
+It is the sin of gluttony which is the least obvious in the Way of the
+Cross. There are no doubt plenty of gluttons there, but that is not what
+we are trying to find; we are trying to see how each sin contributed to
+this final act in the drama of our Lord's life, how each sin contributed
+to put men in opposition to our Lord. It is not the actual sin of
+gluttony that we shall find in operation here but certain inevitable
+effects of it, What is the effect of gluttony on the soul of man?
+Absorption in the pursuit of the pleasures that spring from material
+things; the indulgence of the appetite, and the natural result of such
+indulgence which is to render the soul insensitive to the spiritual. The
+man whose motto is, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," puts
+himself out of touch with the spiritual realities of life. He is
+materialistic, whatever may be his philosophy. He wants immediate
+results from life. When he is confronted with our Lord, when he is told
+that our Lord makes demands upon life for self-restraint and
+self-discipline, that He demands that the appetites be curbed rather
+than indulged, he declines allegiance. One can have no doubt that in our
+Lord's time as to-day indifference to His teaching and failure even to
+take in what the Gospel means or how it can be a possible rule of life
+is largely due to the dull spiritual state, outcome of the indulgence of
+the appetite for meat and drink. Men whose brains are clogged by over
+eating, and whose faculties are in a deadened state through the use of
+alcohol, cannot well understand the Gospel of God.
+
+There is abundant evidence of anger all along the Way of the Cross. The
+constant thwarting of the purpose of the Jewish authorities by our Lord,
+His unsparing criticism of them before the people, had stirred them to
+fury. If our Lord had seemed to them to threaten their "place and
+nation" we can understand that they would show toward Him intense
+hostility. Their attitude toward the people whose religious interests
+they were supposed to have in charge was one of utter contempt: "This
+people which knoweth not the Law is cursed." Our Lord's attitude was
+the opposite of all this. It was not, to be sure, as to-day it is
+represented to be an appeal to the people. He was not bidding for
+popular support, but he showed unbounded sympathy with the people; He
+cast His teaching in a form that would appeal to them and draw them to
+him. He made a popular appeal in that He showed Himself understanding of
+the popular mind and without social prejudice of any sort. This setting
+aside of the arrogant authorities of Israel roused them to implacable
+wrath. They felt that our Lord was setting Himself to undermine their
+authority, and as they felt that their authority was "of God" their
+indignation translated itself into terms of zeal for God.
+
+This anger that manages to wear a cloak of virtue is peculiarly
+dangerous to the soul. When we are just ordinarily mad over some offence
+committed against us it is no doubt a sin; but it is not a sin of the
+same malignity as when we feel that we can go any lengths because we are
+not angry on our own behalf, then our anger almost becomes an act of
+religion in our eyes. We have become the defenders of a cause. No doubt
+there is such a thing as "righteous indignation," but it is not a virtue
+that we are compelled to practice, and we would do well to leave it
+alone as much as possible lest our indignation exceed our righteousness,
+and we indentify our personal interests with the cause of God.
+
+The worst feature of tempermental flare-ups is the testimony they bear
+to our lack of discipline. When we excuse ourselves or others on the
+ground that action is "temperamental" we are in fact no more than
+restating the fact that there is sore need of discipline; and there is
+no more ground for excusing one variety of temperament for its lack of
+discipline than an other. In fact, the more inclined a temperament is to
+certain sins, the more necessity there is for the appropriate sort of
+training. People without self-control, who are constantly losing their
+temper, are public nuisances and ought to be suppressed. There is the
+worst kind of arrogance in the assumption that I do not have to control
+myself and can speak and act as I like. No one, whatever his position,
+has the right to ignore the feelings of others; and the more the
+position is one of authority, exempting him from a certain kind of
+criticism, the more is he bound to criticise himself and examine himself
+as to this particular sin.
+
+There are sins under this caption which do not contain much malice but
+are disturbing to life, and they are especially disturbing to one's
+spiritual life. There are peevish, complaining people, who do not seem
+to mean much harm, but keep themselves in a state of dissatisfaction
+which renders their spiritual growth impossible. They grow old without
+any of the grace and beauty of character which should mark a Christian
+old age. One knows old people who have been in intimate contact with the
+Church and the sacraments for many years but do not show any signs of
+having reached our Lord through them. They are dissatisfied and
+complaining and critical and generally disagreeable so that the task of
+those who take care of them is rendered very disheartening. What is the
+trouble? Has there never been any true spiritual discipline, but only a
+certain superficial conformity to a spiritual rule? When old age comes
+the will is weakened and the sense of self-respect undermined, with the
+result that what the person has all along been in reality, now comes to
+the surface and is, perhaps for the first time, visible to every one.
+
+Envy is closely related to pride on the one hand and to covetousness on
+the other. It begins in the perception of another's superiority, and
+carries its victim through the feeling of hurt pride at the contrast
+with himself to desire for that which is not his own. The envious person
+covets the qualities of possessions of another, while vividly denying
+that they are in fact superior to his own, except, it may be, in certain
+apparent and not very valuable aspects. The contrast between the
+superior and the inferior has one of two results: either the inferior is
+stirred to admiration, or he is stirred to a greater or less degree
+of envy.
+
+It was thus that contact with our Lord _revealed_ the reality of men. It
+was a very true judgment to associate with him. His apostles were simple
+men who never thought of putting themselves in comparison with Him: the
+more they knew Him the more wonderful He seemed to them. We feel all
+through the Gospel story what an overwhelming impression His personality
+made upon men. There is no criticism raised on His character from any
+point of view. His enemies fell back on the accusation of blasphemy
+growing out of His claims, an accusation that would be true, if the
+claims were not true. What we really discover in those who oppose Him is
+envy, envy of the influence He exercises over others, envy stirred by
+His obvious superiority to themselves.
+
+Envy is one of the sins of which we are least conscious. When people
+affirm that they envy others this or that: their leisure, their beauty,
+or what not, they clearly do not envy them at all, but are mildly
+covetous of the things that they see others possess. Where envy does
+show its presence and where we do not recognise its nature, is in that
+horrible inclination to depreciate others which is visible in certain
+characters. They seem never to hear another mentioned but they try to
+think of something which limits the praise bestowed upon him, or
+altogether counteracts it. It seems to be an instinctive hostility to
+superiority as involving an implied criticism of one's own inferiority.
+It is that curious love of the worst that lies at the root of gossip.
+
+And what about the last of the deadly sins, the sin of sloth? One is
+almost tempted to say that it is at once the least obvious and the most
+destructive of all the deadly sins. That would no doubt be somewhat of
+an exaggeration, but it would not be very far off the truth. It is
+spiritual sloth that prevents us from considering as we should the
+spiritual problems that are presented to us, and therefore prevents us
+from gaining their promise. It is the quality in humanity that blocks
+the consideration of the new on the ground that we already know and can
+gain nothing by further exertion. The Jewish religious leaders declined
+the intellectual and spiritual effort of considering our Lord's claims;
+they just set them aside unconsidered. And is not that just what we are
+constantly doing, and what constitutes the most pressing danger of the
+spiritual life? We will not consider the future as the field of
+constantly new opportunity and therefore new stages of growth. We do not
+want to make the effort that is implied in that attitude.
+
+Our sloth binds us hand and foot and delivers us to the enemy. There are
+no doubt some who cry out: "But I am not at all slothful; I am busy from
+morning to night; of whatever else I may be guilty, it is not of sloth!"
+My friend, busy people are quite often the most slothful people that
+there are. They are busy dodging their rightful duties and the
+opportunities that God offers them, all day long. Have you never
+discovered that when you had something that you ought to do and do not
+want to do, that the easiest method by which you can still your
+conscience is to make yourself terribly busy about something else, and
+then to tell yourself that the reason why you have not done what you
+know that you ought to have done is that really you have not had time?
+Do you not know that being busy is one of the most effective screens
+that you can put between your conscience and your obligation? Do you not
+know that tens of thousands of men and women to-day are putting the
+screens of good works, of social service of some sort, between their
+souls and the worship of God and the practice of the sacraments? Beware
+lest while you wear yourself out with activity your besetting sin be
+found to be sloth!
+
+And shall we find there on the Way of Sorrow the virtues that are the
+opposite of the Seven Sins? Perhaps, if we had time to look, or had
+sufficient knowledge of the crowd that lines the way. There are certain
+women over there wailing and lamenting; perhaps they could help us. In
+any case we know that there is one woman who has succeeded in keeping
+near whose love of Jesus is so intense that it will enable her to
+overcome all obstacles and be near Him to the very last. Jesus as He
+staggers along the way and falls at length under the intolerable weight
+of the Cross is the embodiment of all virtues and of all spiritual
+accomplishment, and his blessed Mother through His grace has been kept
+pure from all sin. She will show the perfection of purely human
+accomplishment. She is the best that humanity in union with the
+Incarnate Son has brought forth. We have seen--we have caught glimpses
+of her life through what the Scriptures tell us of her--how completely
+she has responded to grace in all the actions of her life. Not much do
+the Scriptures say, but what they do say is like the opening of windows
+through which we catch passing aspects of her life which we feel are
+perfectly characteristic and revealing.
+
+And we have seen there, or we may see, may we not? the virtues which are
+the work of the Holy Spirit enabling us to overcome the deadly sins. We
+have seen the humility with which, without thought of self, she answered
+God's call to be the Mother of His Son. We have seen the liberality with
+which she places her whole life at God's disposal, withholding nothing
+from the divine service. Purity undefiled had been God's gift to her
+from the first moment of her existence. Hers too was that meekness
+which willingly accepted all that the appointment of God brought her,
+showing in her acceptance no withholding of the will, no trace of
+self-assertion. Hers was the great virtue of temperance, the power of
+self-restraint and self-discipline, which suppressed all movements of
+nature that would be contrary to God's will. There too was the love of
+the brother and of the neighbour which is the contrary of envy; and
+there was the eagerness in fulfilling the will of God which is the
+opposite of sloth.
+
+We have then two spotless examples,--how shall we not be stirred to
+follow them! There is Jesus manifesting the qualities of His sinless
+life, of the life of God's election, of humanity as God wills it to be,
+and as it ultimately will be when it gives itself to His will; and Mary
+in whom we see the work of God's grace perfectly accomplished by virtue
+of her perfect response to the love of her Sen. We look at these two
+lives and we see what is possible for us. We do not say, we cannot say,
+these things are too wonderful and great for me. We can only say,
+through the grace of God which is given me, "I can do all things." It is
+not my inevitable destiny that I should abide a sinner. I have the
+choice of being a sinner or a saint.
+
+     MARY: Ever I cried full piteously:
+     "Lordings, what have ye i-brought?
+     It is my Son I love so much:
+     For God's sake bury Him nought."
+     They would not stop though that I swooned,
+     Till that He in the grave were brought.
+     Rich clothes they around him wound:
+     And ever mercy I them besought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     They said there was no better way
+     But take and bury him full snel.
+     They looked on my cousin John
+     For sorrow both a-down we fell--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     By Him we fell that was My Child.
+     His sweet mouth well full oft I kissed.
+     John saw I was in point to spill,
+     That nigh mine heart did come to break.
+     He held his sorrow in his heart still
+     And mildly then to me did speak:
+     "Mary, if it be thy will
+     Go we hence; the Maudeleyn eke."
+     He led me to a chamber then
+     Where my Son was used to be,--
+     John and the Maudeleyn also;
+     For nothing would they from me flee.
+     I looked about me everywhere:
+     I could nowhere my Sonè see.
+     We sat us down in sorrow and woe
+     And 'gan to weep all three.
+
+     From St. Bernard's Lamentation on Christ's Passion. Engl. version,
+     probably 13th Cent, by Richard Maydestone.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+     THE CRUCIFIXION
+
+     And they crucified him.
+
+     S. Matt. XXVII, 35.
+
+     In as much as we have no confidence because of our many sins,
+     do thou, O Virgin Mother of God, beseech him who was born of
+     thee; for a Mother's supplication availeth much to gain the
+     benignity of the Master. Despise not the prayers of sinners,
+     O all-august, for merciful and mighty to save is he, who
+     vouchsafed to suffer for us.
+
+     BYZANTINE.
+
+We have followed the Way of Sorrows to the very end and now stand on
+Calvary watching by the Cross, waiting for the death of the Son of God.
+The mystery of iniquity is consummated here where man in open rebellion
+against his God crucifies the Incarnate Son. Here is fulfilled the
+saying: "He came unto His own and His own received Him not." All that
+man can do to prove his own degredation he has done. In the person of
+Pilate he has condemned to death a man whom he knows to be innocent. The
+representative of human justice has denied justice for the sake of his
+own personal ends. In the person of Herod he has permitted the insult
+and abuse of One of whom he knows no ill, and has displayed toward Him
+wanton and brutal cruelty. In the person of the Jewish authorities he
+has rejected the Messenger of the God whom he recognises as his God, and
+will not listen to the voice of prophecy because he finds his personal
+ends countered by the fulfilment of the promises of the religion whose
+subject he professes to be. In the person of the disciples he shows
+himself too cowardly and self-regarding to stand by his innocent Master
+and to throw in his lot with Him. In the person of the people he shows
+himself cruel, hardened, indifferent to suffering and to justice, ready
+to be made the tool of unscrupulous politicians, unstable and ignorant.
+As we look on, we succeed in retaining any shred of respect for
+humanity only through the contemplation of the exceptions--of S. John
+and the little group of women who are faithful to the end: above all in
+the sight of blessed Mary standing by the Cross of her Son.
+
+It is the will of God that our Lord should follow the human lot to the
+very depth of its possible sufferings. There are no doubt many
+sufferings of humanity that our Lord does not share, they are those
+which spring out of personal sin. He in Whom was no sin could not suffer
+those things which spring from one's own wrong doing. That is one broad
+distinction between the burdens of the crosses on Calvary, a distinction
+which the penitent thief caught easily when he said to his reviling
+fellow-criminal, "Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same
+condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our
+deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss." And in as much as a great
+part of what we suffer is plainly just, the pain we bear is intensified
+by the knowledge that what we are is the outcome of what we have been.
+But our Lord, while He does not suffer as the result of His own sin,
+does suffer as the result of sin in that He wills to bear the result of
+men's sin by putting Himself at their mercy. He bears the burden of sin
+to the uttermost, looking down from the Cross at the faces of these men
+whose salvation He is making possible if in the days to come they will
+associate themselves with Him. One wonders how many of those who saw Him
+crucified came, before they died, to accept Him as the Saviour and their
+God. There must have been many wonderful first Communions in the early
+Church when those who had rejected Jesus in His humility came to receive
+Him glorified.
+
+But as we look at this scene of the dying we feel that the powers of
+evil are working their uttermost, they are driving their slaves to
+incredible sins. One feels the tremendous power that evil is as one
+looks at these human beings who are body and soul wholly under its
+dominion. The Power of Darkness appears utterly in control of the world
+of humanity; but we know that this moment in which its triumph seems
+most complete is in fact the moment in which its defeat is at hand. The
+victory that is being won is the victory of the Vanquished: and the
+moment when the victory of evil seems assured by the dying of Jesus, is
+in fact the moment when the chains of the slaves of sin are broken, and
+men who will to be free are henceforth free indeed. From that moment a
+new freedom is within the reach of men, the freedom which comes to them
+through their participation in the redemption wrought for them by God.
+Presently S. John will announce the great message of freedom to the
+Church, a message that he will tell in his own wonderful simplicity, a
+simplicity which almost deceives us as to its unfathomable depth of love
+and mystery: "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and
+this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.... We
+know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not: but He that was begotten
+of God keepeth him, and the evil one toucheth him not. And we know that
+we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one. And we know
+that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we
+may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His
+Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life."
+
+This is what the dying of Jesus achieved for us, that we should be free
+as men had never been free, and that we should be strong as men had
+never been strong.
+
+On their crosses the thieves agonise in the realisation of the sin that
+has brought them there; but our Lord, Who is free from sin, looks out on
+the scene before Him in a wonderful detachment from His personal
+suffering. Being without sin our Lord is without egotism, and never
+treats life from that purely personal standpoint that we are constantly
+tempted to adopt. Our own needs, our own interests, occupy the
+foreground and determine the judgment; and we are rarely able to see in
+dealing with the concrete case that our own interests are ultimately
+indentical with the interests of the whole Body. The lesson that if one
+member suffer, all the members suffer with it, that we are partners in
+joy and sorrow alike, is almost impossible of assimilation by the
+radical individualists that we are. Our theories break down before the
+test of actuality. But our Lord was not an individualist. He, in His
+relations with men, is the Head of the Body; and He admits no division
+of interests between His members. He therefore can think of the needs of
+others while He Himself is undergoing the last torture of death. He can
+impartially judge the separate cases of His members; He can attend to
+the spiritual welfare of a needy soul; He can think of His own death as
+an act of sacrifice willed by God, and not as a matter concerning
+Himself alone; and in doing these things He teaches us a much-needed
+lesson of the handling of life.
+
+No lesson is to-day more needed because we are more and more being
+influenced to treat life as a private matter. I have spoken of this
+before and need not elaborate it now; but I do want to insist, at
+whatever risk of repetition, that a Christian must, if his religion mean
+anything at all, look on the interests of the Body, not as a separate
+group of interests to which he is privileged or obligated to contribute
+such help as seems to him from time to time appropriate, but as in fact
+his own primary interests because his true significance in the world is
+gained through his membership in the Body. His life is hid with Christ
+in God and his conversation is in heaven. The life that he now lives in
+the flesh he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him and
+gave Himself for him. To assert separate interests is to break the
+essential relation of his life. He is nothing apart from the Body but a
+dry and withered branch fit for the burning. No doubt our egotism rebels
+against this view of life, but it is certain that it is the view of the
+Christian Religion. If we would realise the ideals of the Religion we
+must act as those who are in constant relations with the other members
+of the Body and whose life gets its significance through those
+relations.
+
+There is no more outstanding lesson of our Lord's life than this. It is
+true from whichever angle you look at it. If you think of our Lord as a
+divine Person it is at once evident how much of His meaning is included
+in His relations to the other Persons of the Blessed Trinity. He claims
+no independent will; it is the will of the Father that He has come to
+do. He claims no original work: it is the work that the Father has given
+Him to do that He is straightened until He accomplish. He has no
+individual possession, but all things that the Father has are His.
+Considered as God, our Lord is One Person in the one divine nature, no
+Unitarian interpretation of Him is possible. On the other hand, if you
+look at Him as Incarnate, as having identified Himself with humanity, He
+is in that respect made one with His brethren. He has made their
+interests His, and as their new Head is opening for them the gate of the
+future. He is inviting them into union with Himself, that in the status
+of His "brethren" and "friends" they may be also the true children of
+the heavenly Father. There is no hint anywhere that these things may be
+accomplished apart from Him, in individual isolation: indeed, if they
+could be so accomplished the Incarnation would be meaningless. He is the
+Way and no one cometh to the Father but by Him. He is the Truth, and no
+one knows the Father but he to whom the Son reveals Him. He is the Life,
+and no one spiritually lives except through His self-impartation. "He
+that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life. He that
+eateth me, even he shall live by me." In this outlook from the Cross
+which we recognise in our Blessed Lord when, forgetting His own
+sufferings in His appreciation of the needs of others, we see Him still
+fulfilling His ministry of mercy and of sympathy, we are certain that
+His eyes would rest upon one group which could not fail to pierce His
+heart with its pathos and tragedy. Our Lord's love is not a general,
+impersonal love of humanity; it is always love of a person. He no doubt
+felt a special love for this thief who appealed to Him from the cross by
+His side. In the whole course of His life our Lord had shown His oneness
+with us in that He loved special people in a special way. He loved
+Lazarus and his sisters, He loved S. John. Above all others He loved His
+Blessed Mother. And now looking down from the Cross He sees that the
+disciple whom He loved was succeeded in leading His mother into the very
+shadow of the Cross. How S. Mary had made her way there we do not know:
+only love knows how it triumphs over its obstacles and comes forth
+victorious. There is Blessed Mary, looking up into the face so scarred
+and bleeding, and there is the Son, looking down through the blinding
+blood into the face of the mother. This is the supreme human tragedy of
+Calvary. We can only stand and watch the exchange of love.
+
+And then comes the word--the word, by the way, which when it was spoken
+years ago in Cana of Galilee, men have interpreted as a harsh and
+rebuking word, with how much truth this scene tells--then comes the
+word: "Woman, behold thy son." In His love He gives her that which He
+had so much loved, the friendship of S. John. He brings together those
+who had so supremely loved Him in an association which would support
+them both in the trial of their loss. "Woman, behold thy son; behold thy
+mother." Bitter as was their sorrow in this hour, we know that they were
+marvellously comforted by this power of love which is able to transcend
+suffering and death. We know, because we know how utterly our Lord is
+one with us, that it was much to Him to look on the face that bent over
+Him in the Manger in Bethlehem. We know, because we know the perfect
+woman that was Mary, that there was deep joy as well as deep agony in
+being able to stand there at the last beneath the Cross.
+
+Do you think that we are going too far when we see in S. Mary not simply
+the mother of our Lord, but when we also see in her a certain
+representative character? Does she not represent us in one way and S.
+John represent us in another, in this supreme exchange of love? Do we
+not feel that in S. John we have been recommended to the love and care
+of Mary who is our mother? Do we not feel that in S. John the mother has
+been committed to our love and care? Surely, because we are members of
+her Son we have a special relation to S. Mary, and a special claim upon
+her, if it be permitted to express it in that way. It is no empty form
+of words when we call her mother, no exaltation of sentimentalism. The
+title represents a very real relation of love. It brings home to us that
+the love of Mary is as near infinite as the love of a creature can be,
+and that like the love of her Son it is an unselfish love. She is
+necessarily interested in all the members of the Body, and their cares
+and joys and sorrows she is glad to make her own. She is very close to
+us in her love and sympathy; she is very ready to help us with her
+prayers. We never go to her for succour but she hears us. "Behold thy
+son," her divine Son said to her on the Cross in His agony, and all who
+are members of that Son are her sons too. Her place in heaven above all
+creatures, most highly favoured as she is, is a place to which our
+prayers penetrate, and never penetrate unheard. For that other Son,
+through whose merits she is what she is, whose Face she ever beholds as
+the Face alike of her Redeemer and her Child, is ever ready to hear her
+intercessions for us because they come to Him with the power and the
+insight that perfect purity and perfect sympathy alone can give. So for
+us there is intense personal consolation in this word: "Behold
+thy mother."
+
+But there is another side to this committal. It is mutual: "Behold thy
+son." If we can see ourselves in S. John, committed to the Blessed
+Mother, we can also see ourselves in S. John to whom the blessed mother
+is committed. "Behold thy mother." There is a sense in which the blessed
+mother is committed to us; to-day she is our care. We see the
+fulfillment of this trust in the love and reverence wherewith
+Christendom from the beginning has surrounded S. Mary. It has accepted
+the charge with a passionate devotion. The growth of devotion to her is
+recorded in the vast literature of Mariology which comes to us from all
+parts and all eras of the Catholic Church. The details of the expression
+of this devotion have been wrought out through the centuries with
+loving care, and the result is that wherever there is a Catholic
+conception of religion, either in East or West, there is a grateful
+response to our Lord's trust of His Blessed mother to His Church in the
+person of S. John.
+
+We feel, do we not? that it is one of the great privileges of our
+spiritual life that we have found a personal part in this trust, that it
+is permitted us to preserve and hand on this reverence for Blessed Mary,
+and in so doing to gain personal contact with her as a spiritual power
+in the Kingdom of God. It means much to us that we can have the love and
+sympathy which are blended with her intercession, that we can associate
+our prayers with hers in the time of our need. Much as we value the
+sympathy and prayers of our friends here, we cannot but feel that in
+Mary we have a friend whose helpfulness is stimulated by a great love
+and directed by deep spiritual insight into the reality of our needs. We
+turn therefore to her with the certainty of her co-operation.
+
+Our Lord on the Cross had now fulfilled His mission in the care of
+individual persons, had prayed for His tormentors, had forgiven the
+penitent thief, and had commended those who were the special objects of
+His love to one another, and could now turn His thoughts away from earth
+to the love of the Father. His last words are intimate words to Him.
+They express the agony that tears His soul as the Face of the Father is
+for a moment hidden, and the peace of an accomplished work as He
+surrenders Himself into the hands of the Father that sent Him. He who
+had been our example all His life, showing us how to meet life, is our
+example in death, showing us how to meet death.
+
+But just wherein does the dying of Christ become an example for us? This
+final surrender to the Father of a will that had never been separate
+from the Father,--what can we derive from all that? There are many lines
+of approach and application. I can only touch on one or two:--
+
+"I have glorified Thee on the earth," our Lord said in the last
+wonderful prayer, "I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do."
+And here on the Cross He repeats, "It is finished." When we think of
+this we are impressed with the steadiness with which our Lord pursued
+His purpose, with the way He concentrated His whole life upon His work.
+He declined to be drawn aside by anything irrelevant to it. People came
+to Him with all sorts of requests, from the request that He will settle
+a disputed inheritance to the request that He will become their king;
+and He puts them all aside as having no pertinence to His mission. It is
+interesting to go through the Gospel and note just what are the details
+of this winnowing process; mark what our Lord accepts as relevant to His
+mission and what not. He is never too occupied or tired to attend to
+what belongs to His work. An ill old woman or idiot child is important
+to Him and He attends to them; but He declines the sort of work that
+will involve Him and His mission in controversy and politics. He is not
+a reformer of society but a reformer of men. He knows that only by the
+reformation of men can society be reformed.
+
+There is no doubt much to be learned from the study of our Lord's method
+of the limits of the social and political activity of His Church. It has
+constantly fallen a victim to the temptation to undertake the reform of
+the world by some other means than the conversion of it. It has shown
+itself quite willing to be made "a judge and divider." It has not always
+declined the invitation it has received to assume the purple. "Your
+business is to reform this miserable world which so sadly and so
+obviously needs you," men say to it; "You are not living up to your
+principles and you are neglecting your duty by not supporting this great
+movement for the betterment of the race," others say. Still others urge,
+"You are losing great masses of men through your inexplicable failure to
+adopt their cause." And the Church in the whole course of its history
+has constantly yielded to this temptation, and has not seen until too
+late that in so doing it was making itself the tool or the cat's-paw of
+one interest or another whose sole interest in religion was the
+possibility of exploiting the influence of the Church. In the stupid
+hope of forwarding its spiritual interests the Church has entangled
+itself with the responsibilities of temporal power; it has made itself
+the backer of "the divine right of kings"; and it has found itself bound
+hand and foot in the character of a national or state Church; and with a
+curious incapacity to learn anything from experience is now
+enthusiastically cheering for democracy! Poor Church, whose leaders are
+so constantly misleaders.
+
+It is all due to the hoary temptation to try to get to one's end by some
+sort of a short cut: "All these things will I give you if you will fall
+down and worship me." Our Lord knew that Satan could not really give Him
+the ends He was seeking; but His followers are constantly confident that
+he can, and are therefore his constant and ready tools for this or that
+party or interest. They sell themselves to monarchy or democracy, to
+capital or labour, with the same guileless innocence of what is
+happening to them, with the same simple-minded incapacity to learn
+anything from the lessons of the past. There are no short cuts to
+spiritual ends, and those ends can never be accomplished by secular
+means. The interests of the Kingdom of God can never be forwarded by
+alliance with the powers of this world; the interests of particular
+persons or parties in the Church may be--but that is quite
+another thing.
+
+The lesson is one that is not without application to the individual
+life. There again the tendency to mind something other than one's own
+business is almost ineradicable. We have before us the work of building
+our spiritual house, of finishing the work that the Father has given us
+to do, of carrying to a successful conclusion the work of our
+sanctification. In view of the experience of nearly two thousand years
+of Christianity and of our own personal experience, that would seem a
+sufficiently difficult and obligatory work to occupy the undivided
+energies of a life-time. But we are accustomed to treat this primary
+business of life quite as though it were a parergon, a thing to play
+with in our unoccupied hours, the fad of a collector rather than the
+supreme interest of an immortal being. That spiritual results are no
+oftener achieved than they are can occasion no surprise when one
+understands the sort of spirit wherewith they are approached. If the
+average man adopted toward his business the attitude he adopts toward
+his religion he would be bankrupt within a week,--and he knows it. You
+know that the attention you are paying to religion and the sort of
+energy and sacrifice you are putting into it are insufficient to secure
+any sort of a result worth having. Spiritually speaking, your life is an
+example of misdirected and dissipated energy. There is no spiritual
+result because there is no continuous and energetic effort in a
+spiritual direction. You are not like a master-builder planning and
+erecting a house. You are like a child playing with a box of blocks who
+begins to build a house with them and, when it is half built, is
+attracted by something else and runs after that--not even waiting to put
+the blocks back into the box!
+
+Life, no doubt, this modern city life into which we are plunged, is
+terribly distracting. Concentration upon a single aim is hard to attain.
+So we plead in our excuse, but the excuse is a false one and we know it.
+We know it because we know many people who have achieved the sort of
+concentration and simplicity of aim that we complain of as so difficult.
+They to be sure have other ends than those we claim to be ours, but that
+would not seem to be important. By far the greater part of the male
+population of this city is intensely concentrated in money making. I do
+not believe that I have overheard during the last year two men talking
+in a car or on the street who were not talking about money. There is a
+good enough example of the possibility of concentrating on a single end
+under the conditions of our life. There are other people, you know some
+of them, whose lives are devoted in the most thorough manner to the
+pursuit of pleasure. They find no difficulty in such concentration, and
+they afford an even better example of what we are discussing than the
+money-makers. The money-maker says, "I have to live and my family has to
+live, and we cannot live unless I devote myself to business. It is all
+very well to talk about spiritual interests, but those are the plain
+common sense facts. A man who spends all his time on religion will find
+it pretty difficult to live in New York." Very well, that seems
+unanswerable. But go back to the men and women whose sole interest is
+amusement--how do they live? In some way they seem to have so succeeded
+in subordinating business to pleasure that they get what they want, and
+they somehow escape starvation!
+
+There, I fancy, is the explanation--they get what they want. In a broad
+way we all get what we want. We accomplish in some degree at least the
+ends which we make the supreme ends of life. We are back therefore where
+we started: What are our supreme ends? Are they in fact spiritual? Have
+we mastered the technique of the Christian life sufficiently to be
+single-eyed and pure-hearted in our pursuit of life's ends? Are we
+devoted to the aim of manifesting the glory of God and finishing the
+work that He has given us to do?
+
+This, once more, was the secret of our Lord's life, and it is the secret
+of all those who have at all succeeded in imitating Him. They have
+followed Him with singleness of purpose. They have felt life to be
+before all else a vocation to manifest the will of God and to finish a
+given work. That was the attitude of our Blessed Mother; she began on
+that note: "Behold the hand-maid of the Lord; be it unto me according to
+thy word." It was the Gospel that she preached: "Whatsoever he saith
+unto you, do it." Her whole life was a response--the response of love
+to love.
+
+That no doubt, goes to the heart of the spiritual problem. If we are to
+accomplish anything at all in the way of spiritual development, if we
+are to conduct life in simplicity toward spiritual ends, it will only be
+when the source of life's energy is found in love. He who does not love
+has no compelling motive toward God and no abiding principle to control
+life. If we conceive the Christian life as a task that is forced upon
+us, and which in some way we are bound to fulfil, we may be sure that
+the way in which we shall fulfil it will be weak and halting. We may be
+as conscientious as you please, but we shall not be able to concentrate
+on a work which is merely a work of duty and not the embodiment of a
+great love. Our primary activity should be devout meditation and study
+of our Lord's life, with prayer for guidance and help, till something
+of the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, till we feel our hearts
+burn within us and our spirits glow and we become able to offer
+ourselves, soul and body, a living sacrifice unto Him.
+
+     MARY:       I cried: "Maudeleyn, help now!
+                 My Son hath loved full well thee;
+                 Pray Him that I may die,
+                 That I not forgotten be!
+                 Seest thou, Maudeleyn, now
+                 My Son is hanged on a tree,
+                 Yet alive am I and thou,--
+                 And thou, thou prayest not for me!"
+
+     MAUDELEYN  said: "I know no red,
+                Care hath smitten my heart sore.
+                I stand, I see my Lord nigh dead;
+                And thy weeping grieveth me more.
+                Come with me; I will thee lead
+                Into the Temple here before
+                For thou hast now i-wept full yore."
+
+     MARY:      "I ask thee, Maudeleyn, where is that place,--
+                In plain or valley or in hill?
+                Where I may hide in any case
+                That no sorrow come me till.
+                For He that all my joy was,
+                Now death with Him will do its will;
+                For me no better solace is
+                Than just to weep, to weep my fill."
+                   The Maudeleyn comforted me tho.
+                   To lead me hence, she said, was best:
+                   But care had smitten my heart so
+                   That I might never have no rest.
+
+               "Sister, wherever that I go
+               The woe of Him is in my breast,
+               While my Sone hangeth so
+               His pains are in mine own heart fast.
+               Should I let Him hangen there
+               Let my Son alone then be?
+               Maudeleyn, think, unkind I were
+               If He should hang and I should flee."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+               I bade them go where was their will,
+               This Maudeleyn and everyone,
+               And by myself remain I will
+               For I will flee for no man.
+
+     From St. Bernard's "Lamentation On Christ's Passion."
+
+     Engl. version, 13th Cent., by Richard Maydestone.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE DESCENT AND BURIAL
+
+     And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean
+     linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had
+     hewn out in the rock.
+
+     S. Matt. XXVII, 59, 60.
+
+     It is meet in very truth to bless thee the Theotokos, the
+     ever-blessed and all-immaculate and Mother of our God.
+     Honoured above the Cherubim, incomparably more glorious than
+     the Seraphim, thou who without stain gavest birth to God the
+     Word, and art truly Mother of God, we magnify thee.
+
+     BYZANTINE.
+
+The end had come--so it must have seemed to those who had loved and
+followed our Lord. As they came back from the burial, those of them who
+had remained true to the end, as they came out of their hiding places,
+those others who forsook Him and fled, they met in that "Upper Room"
+which was already consecrated by so many experiences. They came back
+from Joseph's Garden, S. John leading the blessed Mother, the Magdalen
+and the other Mary following, S. Peter came from whatever obscure corner
+he had found safety in. The other Apostles came one by one, a
+frightened, disheartened group, shame-faced and doubtful as to what
+might next befall them. The thing that to us seems strangest of all is
+that no one seems to have taken in the meaning of our Lord's words about
+His resurrection. Not even S. Mary herself appears to have seen any
+light through the surrounding darkness. I suppose that so much of what
+our Lord taught them was unintelligible until after the coming of the
+Holy Spirit that they rarely felt sure that they understood His meaning;
+and when the meaning was so unprecedented as that involved in His
+sayings about the resurrection we can understand that they should have
+been so little influenced by them.
+
+S. Mary's grief would have been so deep, so overwhelming, that she would
+have been unable to think of the future at all save as a dreary waste
+of pain. She could only think that her Son who was all to her, was dead.
+She had stood by the Cross through all the agony of His dying: she had
+heard His last words. That final word to her had sunk very deep into her
+heart. She had once more felt His Body in her arms as it was taken down
+from the Cross; and she had followed to the place where was a Garden and
+a new tomb wherein man had never yet lain, there she had seen the Body
+placed and hastily cared for, as much as the shortness of the time on
+the Passover Eve would permit. And then she had gone away, not caring at
+all where she was taken, with but one thought monotonously beating in
+her brain,--He is dead, He is dead.
+
+It would not be possible in such moments calmly to recall what He
+Himself had taught about death. Death for the moment would mean what it
+had always meant to religious people of her time and circle. What that
+was we have very clearly presented to us in the talk with Martha that
+our Lord had near the place where Lazarus lay dead. There is a fuller
+knowledge than we find explicit in the Old Testament, showing a growth
+in the understanding of the Revelation in the years that fall between
+the close of the Old Testament canon and the coming of our Lord. There
+is a belief in survival to be followed by resurrection at the last day.
+That would no doubt be St. Mary's belief about death. That is still the
+belief of many Christians to-day. "I know that he shall rise again in
+the resurrection at the last day." There are still many who think that
+they have accepted the full Revelation of God in Christ who have not
+appreciated the vast difference that the triumph of Christ over death
+has made for us here and now.
+
+So we have no difficulty in understanding the gloom that fell on the
+Apostolic circle, accentuated as it was by the very vivid fear that at
+any moment they might hear the approaching feet of the Jewish and Roman
+officials and the knock of armed hands upon the door. What to do? How
+escape? Had they so utterly misunderstood and misinterpreted Christ that
+this is the natural outcome of His movement? Had they been the victims
+of foolish hopes and of a baseless ambition when they saw in Him the
+Christ, the one who should at this time restore again the Kingdom to
+Israel? They had persistently clung to this nationalistic interpretation
+of His work although He had never encouraged it; but it was the only
+meaning that they were able to see in it. And now all their expectations
+had collapsed, and they were left hopeless and leaderless to face the
+consequences of a series of acts that had ended in the death of their
+Master and would end, they knew not how, for them. Was it at all likely
+that the Jewish authorities having disposed of the leader in a dangerous
+movement would be content to let the followers go free? Would they not
+rather seek to wipe out the last traces of the movement in blood?
+
+So they would have thought, gathered in that Upper Room, while outside
+the Jewish authorities were keeping the Passover. What a Passover it was
+to them with this nightmare of a rebellion which threatened their whole
+place and power passed away. What mutual congratulations were theirs on
+the clever way in which the whole matter had been handled. There had
+been a moment when they were on the very point of failure, when Pilate
+was ready to let Jesus go free. That was their moment of greatest
+danger; and they took their courage in both hands and threw the
+challenge squarely in the face of the cowardly Governor: "If thou let
+this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend!" The chief priests knew their
+man, and they carried their plan against him with a determined hand,
+declining to accept any compromise, anything less than the death of
+Jesus. Great was the rejoicing; hearty were the mutual congratulations
+in the official circles of Jerusalem. It had been long since they had
+celebrated so wonderful a Passover as that!
+
+So limited, so mistaken, is the human outlook on life. They had but to
+await another night's passing and all would be changed. But in the
+meantime the position of the disciples was pitiful. They were in that
+state of dull, hopeless discouragement that is one of the most painful
+of human states. It is a state to which we who are Christians do from
+time to time fall victims with much less excuse. We are hopeless, we say
+and feel. We look at the future, at the problems with which we are
+fronted, and we see no ray of light, no suggestion of a solution. We
+have been robbed of what we most valued and life looks wholly blank to
+us. For those others there was this of excuse,--they did not know Jesus
+risen, they did not know the power of the resurrection life. For us
+there is no such excuse because we have a sure basis of hope in our
+knowledge of the meaning of the Lord.
+
+Hope is one of the great trilogy of Christian Virtues, the gift to
+Christians of God the Holy Ghost. As Christians we have the virtue of
+hope, the question is whether we will excercise it or no. It is one of
+the many fruits of our being in a state of grace. Many blunder when they
+think of hope in that they confound it with an optimistic feeling about
+the future. We hear of hopeful persons and we know that by the
+description is meant persons who are confident "that everything will be
+all right," when there seems no ground at all for thinking so. They have
+a "buoyant temperament," by which I suppose is meant a temperament which
+soars above facts. That not very intelligent attitude has nothing to do
+with the Christian virtue of hope. Hope is born of our relation to God.
+It is the conviction: "God is on my side; I will not fear what man can
+do unto me." It is the serene and untroubled trust of one who knows that
+he is safe in the hands of God, and that his life is really ordered by
+the will and Providence of God.
+
+This virtue, had they possessed it, would have carried the disciples
+through the crisis of our Lord's death. They had had sufficient
+experience of Him to know that they might utterly rely on Him in all the
+circumstances of their lives. He had always sustained them and carried
+them through all crises. They had often been puzzled by Him, no doubt;
+they had felt helpless to fathom much of His teaching, but they had
+slowly arrived at certain conclusions about Him which He Himself had
+confirmed. On that day at Caesarea Phillipi they had reached the
+conclusion of His Messiahship, a slumbering conviction had broken into
+flame and light in the great confession of S. Peter. The meaning of
+Messiahship was a part of their national religious tradition; and
+although in some important respects mistaken, they yet, one would think,
+have been led to perfect trust in our Lord when they acknowledged His
+Messianic claims. But death? They could not get over the apparent
+finality of death. But, again, perhaps we are not very far beyond this
+in our understanding of it. To us still death seems very final.
+
+But it was just that sense of its finality--of its constituting a
+hopeless break in the continuity of existence--that our Lord was engaged
+in removing during these days which to them were days of hopelessness
+and despair. When they came to know what in these days was taking place;
+and when the Church guided by the Holy Spirit came to meditate upon the
+meaning of our Lord's action it would see death in a changed light. The
+sense of a cataclysmic disaster in death would pass and be replaced by a
+sense of the continuity of life. Hitherto attention had been
+concentrated on this world, and death had been a disappearence from this
+world, the stopping of worldly loves and interests. Presently death
+would be seen to be the translation of the human being to a new sphere
+of activities, but involving no cessation of consciousness or failure of
+personal activities. Men had thought, naturally enough in their lack of
+knowledge, of the effect of death on the survivors, of the break in
+their relations with the dead. Now death would be viewed from the point
+of view of the interests of the person who is dead; and it would emerge
+that he continued under different conditions, and in the end it would
+come to be seen that even in the relations of the survivors with the
+dead there was no necessary and absolute break, but that the new
+conditions of life made possible renewed intercourse under altered
+circumstances.
+
+Our Lord, the disciples learned not long after, during these days went
+to preach to the spirits in prison, which the thought of the Church has
+interpreted to mean that He carried the news of the Redemption He had
+wrought through His dying, to the place of the dead, to the region where
+the souls of the faithful were patiently waiting the time of their
+perfecting. The doors of the heavenly world could not be opened till the
+time when He by His Cross and Passion, by His death and resurrection,
+opened them. The Heads of the Gates could not be lifted till they were
+lifted for the entrance of the King of Glory. But once lifted they were
+lifted forever; and when He ascended up on high He led His troop of
+captives redeemed from the bondage of death and hell.
+
+It is through these lifted Gates that the companies of the sanctified
+have been streaming ever since; and the difference that has been made in
+our view of death has been immense. If we have the faith of a Christian
+death has been transformed. There remains, of course, the natural grief
+which is ours when we part from those whom we love. This grief is
+natural and holy as it is in fact an expression of our love. It is not
+rebellion against the will of God, but is the expression of a feeling
+wherewith God has endowed us. But there is no longer in it the sting of
+hopelessness that we find, for instance, in the inscriptions on pagan
+tombs, nay, on tombs still, though created by Christians and found in
+Christian cemeteries. Rather it is the expression of a love which is
+learning to exercise itself under new conditions. We do not find it
+possible to reverse all our habits in a moment; and the new relation
+with the dead is one to which we have to learn to accustom ourselves. I
+remember a case where a mother and a son had never been separated for
+more than a day at a time, though he was far on in manhood. There came a
+time of indeterminate separation and the mother's grief was intense
+notwithstanding that there was no thought of a permanent separation. It
+took some time for her to accustom herself to the new mode of
+communication by letter. It is not far otherwise in death; it takes some
+time for us to accustom ourselves to the new mode of intercourse through
+prayer, but we succeed, and the new intercourse is very real and very
+precious. In a sense, too, it is a nearer, more intimate intercourse. It
+lacks the homely, daily touches, no doubt; but in compensation it
+reveals to us the spiritual values in life. We speedily learn, we learn
+almost by a spiritual instinct, what are the common grounds on which we
+can now meet. By our intercourse with our dead we get a new grasp on the
+truth of our common life in Christ: it is in and through Him that all
+our converse is now mediated. We have little difficulty in knowing what
+are the thoughts and interests which may be shared under the new
+conditions in which we find ourselves. Our perception of spiritual
+interests and spiritual values grows and deepens, and our communion with
+our dead becomes an indication of the extent of our own
+spiritual growth.
+
+There come times in the spiritual experience of most of us when we seem
+to have got to the end. There is a deepening sense of failure which is
+not, when we analyse it, so much a failure in this or that detail, as a
+general sense of the futility of the life of the Church as expressed in
+our individual lives. It came to those primitive congregations, you
+remember, to which S. Peter was writing; "Where is the promise of his
+coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they
+were from the beginning of creation." It is the weariness of continuous
+effort from which we conclude that we are getting quite
+insufficient results.
+
+No doubt that is true. The results are never what we expect, possibly
+because the effort is never what we imagine it to be. We continually
+underestimate the opposing force of evil, the difficulty of dealing with
+a humanity which falls so easily under the slightest temptation. It is
+not that sinners decline to hear the Word of God, but that those who
+profess themselves to be the servants of God, and who in fact intend to
+be such, are so lamentably weak and ineffective. We think of the effort
+of God in the Incarnation; we have been following that effort in some
+detail through the Passion. We are surprised, shocked, disheartened by
+the spectacle of the hatred that innocence stirs up, at the lengths men
+will go when they see their personal ends threatened. We are horrified
+by Caiphas, Pilate, Herod. But is that the really horrifying thing
+about the Passion of our Lord? To me the supreme example of human
+incomprehension is that all the disciples forsook Him and fled, that He
+was left to die almost alone. There we get the most disheartening
+failure in the tragedy.
+
+For we expect the antagonism of the world, especially that part of the
+world that has seen and rejected Christ. There we find Satanic
+activities. One of the outstanding features of the literature of to-day
+in the Western world, the world that had known from childhood the story
+of Jesus, is its utter hatred of Christianity; its revolt from all that
+Christianity stands for. This is markedly true in regard to the
+Christian teaching in the matter of purity. The contemporary English
+novel is perhaps the vilest thing that has yet appeared on this earth.
+There have been plenty of unclean books written in the course of the
+world's history--we have only to recall the literature of the
+Renaissance--but for the most part they have been written in careless or
+boastful disregard of moral sanctions which they still regarded as
+existing; but the novel of the present is an immoral propaganda--it is
+deliberately and of malice immoral, not out of careless levity, but out
+of deliberate intention. You do not feel that the modern author is just
+describing immoral actions which grow out of his story, but that he is
+constructing his story for the purpose of propagating immoral theory. He
+hates the whole teaching of the Christian Religion in the matter of
+purity. He has thrown it overboard on the ground that it is an
+"unnatural" restraint. To those who have studied the development of
+thought since the Renaissance there is nothing surprising in this.
+
+But what does still surprise those who are as yet capable of being
+surprised is the light way in which the mass of Christians take their
+religion. Occasionally, in moments of frankness, they admit that they
+are not getting anything out of it; but it is harder to get them to
+admit that the reason is that they are not putting anything into it. You
+do not expect to get returns from a business into which you are putting
+no capital, and you have no right to expect returns from a religion into
+which you are putting no energy. What is meant by that is that those
+Christians who are keeping the minimum routine of Christianity, who are
+going to High Mass on Sunday (or perhaps only to low Mass) and then
+making the rest of the day a time of self-indulgence and pleasure; who
+make their communions but rarely; who do not go to confession, or go
+only at Easter; who are giving no active support to the work of the
+Gospel as represented in parish and diocese have no right to be
+surprised if they find that they do not seem to get any results from
+their religion; that it is often rather a bore to do even so much as
+they do, and that they see no point in permitting it further to
+interfere with their customary amusements and avocations. I do not know
+what such persons expect from their religion, but I am sure that they
+will be disappointed if they are expecting any spiritual result.
+Naturally, they will be disappointed if they look in themselves for any
+evidence of the virtue of hope. The most that can be looked for under
+the circumstances is that mockery of hope, presumption.
+
+We are not to be discouraged in our estimate of the Christian Religion
+by this which seems to be the failure of God. We are not to echo the
+cry: "Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were
+from the beginning of the creation." S. Peter pointed out to those
+pessimists that all things do not continue the same, that there are
+times of crisis which are the judgments of God. Such a judgment was that
+of old which swept the wickedness of the world away, "whereby the world
+that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." He goes on to
+state that the present order likewise will issue in judgment: "The
+heavens and the earth which are now ... are kept in store, reserved unto
+fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." What
+renders men hopeless is the feeling of God's inactivity; but this
+declaration of impending judgment certifies the active interest of God.
+God's dealing with the world is a perpetual judgment of which we are apt
+to decline the evidence until the cataclysm reveals the final scene. But
+every society, every individual life, is being judged through the whole
+course of its existence, and there is no need that either society or
+individual should be blind to the fact that such a judgment is taking
+place. There is no failure of God. There is a failure on our part to
+understand the works of God.
+
+We may very well consider the problem an individual one and ask
+ourselves what ground of hope we have. On the basis of our present
+effort can we, ought we, to have more than we have? The spiritual life
+is not an accident that befalls certain people; it is an art that is
+acquired by such persons as are interested in it. It is attained through
+the careful training and exercise of the faculties wherewith we have
+been endowed. The answer to our question is itself a perfectly simple
+one, as simple as would be the answer to the question: "Do you speak
+French?" We speak French if we have taken the trouble to learn French;
+and we have gained results in the way of spiritual development and
+culture if we have taken the trouble to do so. I do not know why we
+should expect results on any other ground than that.
+
+But certain persons say: "I have tried, and have not attained any
+results." Well, I should want to know what the trying means in that
+case. It is well for a person who aspires to spiritual culture to think
+of his past history. What sort of character-development has so far been
+going on? Commonly it happens that there has been no spiritual effort
+that is worth thinking about; but that does not mean that nothing
+spiritual has been happening. It means on the contrary that there has
+been going on a spiritual atrophy, the spiritual powers have been
+without exercise and will be difficult to arouse to activity. In such a
+case as that spiritual awakening will be followed by a long period of
+spiritual struggle against habits of thought and action which we have
+already formed, a period in which unused and immature spiritual powers
+must be roused to action and disciplined to use. The simplest
+illustration of this is the difficulty experienced by the enthusiastic
+beginner in holding the attention fixed on spiritual acts such as the
+various forms of prayer. In all such attempts at spiritual activity
+there will be the constant drag of old habits, the recurrence of states
+of mind and imagination that had become habitual. These hindrances can
+be overcome, but only by steady and rather tedious labour. They call for
+the display of the virtue of patience which is not one of the virtues
+characteristic of spiritual immaturity. Hence reaction and the feeling
+that one is not getting on, the feeling that we have quite possibly made
+a mistake about the whole matter.
+
+This is the place for the exercise of hope; and hope will come if we
+look away from our not very encouraging acquirement to the ground that
+we have for expecting any acquirement at all. If we ask: "Why hope?" we
+shall see that our basis of hope is not in ourselves at all but in God.
+We hope because of the promises of God, because of His will for us as
+revealed in His Son. "He loved us and gave Himself for us"; and that
+giving will not be in vain. "He gave Himself for me," I tell myself,
+"and therefore I am justified in my expectation of spiritual success."
+So one tries to learn from the present failure as it seems; so one
+repents and pushes on; so one learns that it is through tenacity of
+purpose that one attains results.
+
+And again: I am sustained by hope because I see that the results that I
+covet are not imaginary. They exist. I see them in operation all about
+me. I learn of them as I study the lives of other Christians past and
+present. They are reality not theory, fact not dream. And what has been
+so richly and abundantly the outcome of spiritual living in others must
+be within my own reach. The results they attained were not miraculous
+gifts, but they were the working of God the Holy Spirit in lives yielded
+to Him and co-operating with Him.
+
+Once more: is it not true that after a period of honest labour I do find
+results? Perhaps not all that I would like but all that I am justified
+in expecting from the energy I have spent? I do not believe that any one
+can look back over a year's honest labour and not see that the labour
+has born fruit.
+
+In any case the fact that we do not see just what we are looking for
+does not mean that no spiritual work is going on. It may seem that our
+Lord is silent and that to our cries there is no voice nor any that
+answers; but that may mean that we are looking in the wrong place or
+listening for the wrong word. The disciples looked that the outcome of
+our Lord's life should be that the Kingdom should be restored to Israel;
+and when they turned away from the tomb in Joseph's Garden they felt
+that what they had looked for and prayed for was hopeless of
+accomplishment. But the important point was not their vision of the
+Kingdom at all, but that they had yielded themselves to our Lord and
+become His disciples and lovers. This is not what they intended to do,
+but it is what actually had happened: and when the grave yielded up the
+dead Whom they thought that they had lost forever, Jesus came back with
+a mission for them that was infinitely wider than their dream: the
+mission of founding not the old Kingdom of David, but the Kingdom of
+David's Son. All their aspirations and prayers were fulfilled by being
+transcended, and they found themselves in a position vastly more
+important than had been reached even in their dreams.
+
+Something like that not infrequently happens in our experience. We
+conceive a spiritual ambition and work for a spiritual end, and seem
+always to miss it; and then the day comes when God reveals to us what He
+has been doing, and we find that through the very discipline of our
+failure we have been being prepared for a success of which we had not
+thought: and when we raise our eyes from the path we thought so toilsome
+and uninteresting, it is to find ourselves at the very gate of the City
+of God. It will be with us as with the Apostles who in the darkest hour
+of their imagined failure, when they were gathered together in hiding
+from the Jews were startled by the appearence among them of the risen
+Jesus, and were filled with the unutterable joy of His message of peace.
+
+     "His body is wrappèd all in woe,
+     Hand and foot He may not go.
+     Thy Son, Lady, that thou lovest so
+     Naked is nailed upon a tree.
+
+     "The Blessèd Body that thou hast born,
+     To save mankind that was forlorn,
+     His body, Lady, the Jews have torn,
+     And hurt His Head, as ye may see."
+
+     When John his tale began to tell
+     Mary would not longer dwell
+     But hied her fast unto that hill
+     Where she might her own Son see.
+
+     "My sweete Son, Thou art me dear,
+     Oh why have men hanged thee here?
+     Thy head is closed with a brier,
+     O why have men so done to Thee?"
+
+     "John, this woman I thee betake;
+     Keep My Mother for My sake.
+     On Rood I hang for mannes sake
+     For sinful men as thou may see.
+
+     "This game alone I have to play,
+     For sinful souls that are to die.
+     Not one man goeth by the way
+     That on my pains will look and see.
+
+     "Father, my soul I thee betake,
+     My body dieth for mannes sake;
+     To hell I go withouten wake,
+     Mannes soul to maken free."
+
+     Pray we all that Blessed Son
+     That He help us when may no man
+     And bring to bliss each everyone
+     Amen, amen, amen for Charity.
+
+Early English Lyrics, p. 146. From an MS. in the Sloane collection.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE RESURRECTION
+
+And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted; ye seek Jesus of Nazareth,
+which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here.
+
+S. Mark XVI, 6.
+
+     O God, who wast pleased that thy Word, when the angel
+     delivered his message, should take flesh in the womb of the
+     blessed Virgin Mary, give ear to our humble petitions, and
+     grant that we who believe her truly to be the Mother of God,
+     may be helped by her prayers. Through.
+
+     O Almighty and merciful God, who hast wonderfully provided
+     perpetual succour for the defence of Christian people in the
+     most blessed Virgin Mary; mercifully grant that, contending
+     during life under the protection of such patronage, we may be
+     enabled to gain the victory, over the malignant enemy in
+     death. Through.
+
+     OLD CATHOLIC.
+
+Whatever may be our grief, however life may seem to have been emptied
+of all interest for us, nevertheless the routine of life reasserts
+itself and forces us back to the daily tasks no matter how savourless
+they may now seem. We speedily find that we are not isolated but units
+in a social order which claims us and calls on us to fulfil the duties
+of our place. Blessed Mary was led away from the tomb of her Son in the
+prostration of grief; but her very duty to Him would have forced her
+thought away from herself and led her to join in the preparations which
+were being made for the proper care of the Sacred Body. And in that sad
+duty she would find solace of a kind; there is an expression of love in
+the care we give our dead. This body now so helpless and unresponsive,
+has been the medium through which the soul expressed itself to us; it
+has been the instrument of love and the sacrament of our union. How well
+we know it! How well the mother knows every feature of her child, how
+she now lingers over the preparations for the burial feeling that the
+separation is not quite accomplished so long as her hands can touch and
+her eyes see the familiar features. In the pause that the Sabbath forced
+on the friends of Jesus we may be sure that they were making what
+preparations might be made under the restrictions of their religion, and
+that they looked eagerly for the passing of the Sabbath as giving them
+one more opportunity of service to the Master. There was the group of
+women who had followed Him and "ministered of their substance" who were
+faithful still. The Mother had no "substance"; she shared the poverty of
+her Son. Her support during the Sabbath would be the expectancy of
+looking once more upon His Face.
+
+But when the first day of the week dawned it proved to be a day of
+stupendous wonder. They, the Disciples and these faithful women, seemed
+to themselves, no doubt, to have passed into a new world where the
+presuppositions of the old world were upset and reversed. There were
+visions of angels, reported appearances of Jesus, an empty tomb. Through
+the incredible reports that came to them from various sources the light
+gradually broke for them. It was true then, that saying of Jesus, that
+He would rise again from the dead! It was not some mysterious bit of
+teaching, the exact bearing of which they did not catch, but a literal
+fact! And then while they still hesitated and doubted, while they still
+hid behind the closed doors, Jesus Himself came and stood in the midst
+with His message of peace. It is often so, is it not? While we are in
+perplexity and fear, while we think the next sound will be the knock of
+armed hands on the door, it is not the Jews that come, but Jesus with a
+message of peace. Our fears are so pathetic, so pitiful; we meet life
+and death with so little of the understanding and the courage that our
+Lord's promises ought to inspire in us! We stand so shudderingly before
+the vision of death, are so much appalled by the thought of the grave!
+We shudder and tremble as the hand of death is stretched out toward us
+and ours. One is often tempted to ask as one hears people talking of
+death: "Are these Christians? Do they believe in immortality? Have they
+heard the message of the first Easter morning, the angelic announcement
+of the resurrection of Christ? Have they never found the peace of
+believing, the utter quiet of the spirit in the confidence of a certain
+hope which belongs to those who have grasped the meaning of the
+resurrection of the dead?" Here in Jerusalem in a few days the whole
+point of view is changed. The frightened group of disciples is
+transformed by the resurrection experience into the group of glad and
+triumphant missionaries who will be ready when they are endowed with
+power from on high to go out and preach Jesus and the resurrection to
+the ends of the earth.
+
+What in these first days the resurrection meant to them was no doubt
+just the return of Jesus. He was with them once more, and they were
+going to take hope again in the old life, to resume the old mission
+which had been interrupted by the disaster of Calvary. All other feeling
+would have been swallowed up in the mere joy of the recovery. But it
+could not be many hours before it would be plain that if Jesus was
+restored to them He was restored with a difference. A new element had
+entered their intercourse which was due to some subtle change that had
+passed upon Him. We get the first note of it in that wonderful scene in
+Joseph's Garden when the Lord appears to the Magdalen. There is all the
+love and sympathy there had ever been; but when in response to her name
+uttered in the familiar voice the Magdalen throws herself at His Feet,
+there is a new word that marks a new phase in their relation: "Touch Me
+not, for I am not yet ascended."
+
+This new thing in our Lord which held them back with a new word that
+they had never experienced before must have become plainer each day. S.
+Mary feels no less love in her Son restored to her from; the grave, but
+she does not find just the same freedom of approach. S. John could no
+longer think of leaning on His Heart at supper as before. Jesus was the
+same as before. There was the same thoughtful sympathy; the same tender
+love; but it is now mediated through a nature that has undergone some
+profound change in the days between death and resurrection. The humanity
+has acquired new powers, the spirit is obviously more in control of the
+body. Our Lord appeared and disappeared abruptly. His control over
+matter was absolute. And in His intercourse with the disciples there was
+a difference. He did not linger with them but appeared briefly from time
+to time as though He were but a passing visitor to the world. There were
+no longer the confidential talks in the fading light after the day's
+work and teaching was over. There was no longer the common meal with its
+intimacy and friendliness. There was, and this was a striking change, no
+longer any attempt to approach those outside the apostolic circle, no
+demonstration of His resurrection to the world that had, as it thought,
+safely disposed of Him. He came for brief times and with brief
+messages, short, pregnant instructions, filled with meaning for the
+future into which they are soon to enter.
+
+What did it mean, this resurrection of Jesus? It meant the demonstration
+of the continuity of our nature in our Lord. The Son of God took upon
+Him our nature and lived and died in that nature. Our pressing question
+is, what difference has that made to us? How are _we_ affected? Has
+humanity been permanently affected by the resumption of it by God in the
+resurrection? If the assumption of humanity by our Lord was but a
+passing assumption; if He took flesh for a certain purpose, and that
+purpose fulfilled, laid it aside, and once more assumed His
+pre-incarnate state, we should have difficulty in seeing that our
+humanity was deeply affected by the Incarnation. There would have been
+exhibited a perfect human life, but what would have been left at the end
+of that life would have been just the story of it, a thing wholly of the
+past. It is not much better if it is assumed that the meaning of the
+resurrection is the revelation of the immortality of the human spirit,
+that in fact the resurrection means that the soul of Jesus is now in the
+world of the spirit, but that His Body returned to the dust. We are not
+very much interested in the bare fact of survival. What interests us is
+the mode of survival, the conditions under which we survive. We are
+interested, that is to say, in our survival as human beings and not in
+our survival as something else--souls.
+
+A soul is not a human being; a human being is a composite of soul and
+body. It is interesting to note that people who do not believe in the
+resurrection of our Lord, do not believe in our survival as human
+beings, consequently do not believe in a heaven that is of any human
+interest. But we feel, do we not? a certain lack of interest in a future
+in which we shall be something quite different in constitution from what
+we are now. We can think of a time between death and the resurrection in
+which we shall be incomplete, but that is tolerable because it is
+disciplinary and temporary and looks on to our restitution to full
+humanity in the resurrection at the Last Day. And we feel that the
+promise, the certainty of this is sealed by our Lord's resurrection from
+the dead. We are certain that that took place because it is needful to
+the completion of His Work.
+
+The Creed is one: and if one denies one article one speedily finds that
+there is an effect on others. The denial of the resurrection is part and
+parcel of the attempt to reduce Christianity to a history of something
+that once took place which is important to us to-day because it affords
+us a standard of life, a pattern after which we are to shape ourselves.
+Else should we be very much in the dark. We gain from the Christian
+Revelation a conception of God as a kindly Father Who desires His
+children to follow the example of His Son. That example, no doubt, must
+not be pressed too literally, must be adapted to modern conditions; but
+we can get some light and guidance from the study of it. Still, if you
+do not care to follow it nothing will happen to you. It is merely a
+pleasing occupation for those who are interested in such things. The
+affirmation of the resurrection, on the other hand, is the affirmation
+of the continuity of the work of God Incarnate; it is an assertion that
+Christianity is a supernatural action of God going on all the time, the
+essence of which is, not that it invites the believer to imitation of
+the life of Christ, so far as seems practical under modern conditions,
+but that it calls him to union with Christ; it makes it his life's
+meaning to recreate the Christ-experience, to be born and live and die
+through the experience of Incarnate God. It fixes his attention not on
+what Jesus did but on what Jesus is. It insists on a present vital
+organic relation to God, mediated by the humanity of Jesus; and if there
+be no humanity of Jesus, if at His death He ceased to be completely
+human, then there is no possibility of such a relation to God in Christ
+as the Catholic Religion has from the beginning postulated; and unless
+we are to continue human there seems no continuing basis for such a
+relation to one another in the future as would make the future of any
+interest to us. For us, as for S. Paul, all our hope hangs on the
+resurrection of Christ from the dead; and if Christ be not risen from
+the dead then is our faith vain.
+
+For us then, as for the men who wrote the Gospel, and for the men who
+planted the Church and watered it with their blood, the resurrection of
+Jesus means the return of His Spirit from the place whither it had gone
+to preach to the spirits in prison and its reunion with the Body which
+had been laid in the tomb in Joseph's Garden, and the issuing of
+perfect God and perfect man from that tomb on the first Easter morning.
+That humanity had, no doubt, undergone profound changes to fit it to be
+the perfect instrument of the spirit of Christ Jesus henceforward. It is
+now the resurrection body, the spiritual body of the new man. We
+understand that it is now a body fitted for the new conditions of the
+resurrection life, and we also understand that it is the exemplar of
+what our risen bodies will be. They will be endowed with new powers and
+capacities, but they will be human bodies, the medium of the spirit's
+expression and a recognisable means of intercourse with our friends. We
+lie down in the grave with a certainty of preserving our identity and of
+maintaining the capacity of intercourse with those we know and love.
+That is what really interests us in the future which would be
+uninteresting on other terms; and that is what our Lord's appearances
+after the resurrection seem to guarantee. He resumed a human intercourse
+with those whom He had gathered about Him. He continued His work of
+instruction and preparation for the future. And when at length He left
+them they were prepared to understand that His departure was but the
+beginning of a new relation. But also they would feel much less that
+there was an absolute break with the past than if He had not appeared to
+them after the Crucifixion, and they had been left with but a belief in
+His immortality. They would, too, now be able to look on to the future
+as containing a renewal of the relations now changed, to read a definite
+meaning into His promises that where He is there shall His servants be.
+
+It is much to know that we are immortal: it is much more to know that
+this immortality is a human immortality. One feels in studying the
+pre-Christian beliefs in immortality that they had very little
+effectiveness, and that the reason was that there was no real link
+connecting life in this world with life in the next. Death was a fearful
+catastrophe that man in some sense survived, but in a sense that
+separated his two modes of existence by a great gulf. Man survived, but
+his interests did not survive, and therefore he looked to the future
+with indifference or fear. This life seemed to him much preferable to
+the life which was on the other side of the grave. So far as the Old
+Testament writings touch on the future world, they touch upon it without
+enthusiasm. There is an immense difference between the attitude of the
+Old Testament saint toward death and that, for instance, of the early
+Christian martyr. And the difference is that the martyr does not feel
+that death will put an end to all he knows and loves and set him, alive
+it may be, but alive in a strange country. He feels that he is about to
+pass into a state of being in which he will find his finer interests not
+lost but intensified. At the center of his religious expression is a
+personal love of Jesus and a martyr's death would mean immediate
+admission to the presence and love of His Master. He would--of this he
+had no shadow of doubt--he would see Jesus, not the spirit of Jesus, but
+the Jesus Who is God Incarnate, whose earthly life he had gone over so
+many times, Whom he felt that he should recognise at once. Death was not
+the breaking off of all in which he was interested but was rather the
+fulfilment of all that he had dreamed. And this must be true always
+where our interests are truly Christian interests. It is no doubt true
+that we find in Christian congregations a large number of individuals
+whose attitude toward death and the future is purely heathen. They
+believe in survival, but they have no vital interest in it. I fancy that
+there are a good many people who would experience relief to be persuaded
+that death is the end of conscious existence, that they do not have to
+look forward to a continuous life under other conditions. And this not
+at all, as no doubt it would in some cases be, because it was the
+lifting of the weighty burden of responsibility for the sort of life one
+leads, because it was relief from the thought of a judgment to be one
+day faced, but because the world to come, as they have grasped its
+meaning, is a world in which they have no sort of interest. Our Lord in
+His Presentation of the future does actually point us to the natural
+human interest by which our affection will follow that which we do in
+fact value. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." But
+the class of whom I am thinking have no treasures. Notwithstanding some
+sort of conformity to the Christian Religion, conceived most likely
+under the aspect of a compulsory moral code, there is nothing in their
+experience that one can call a love of our Lord, no actually felt
+personal affection for Him that makes them long to see Him. There were
+those with whom they had intimately lived and whom they had loved and
+who have passed through the experience of death, but in the years that
+have passed they have become used to living without them and there is
+no passionate longing to be with them again. There are no interests in
+their lives which when they think of them they feel that they can carry
+with them to the world beyond. Whatever they have succeeded in
+accumulating in life is hardly to be regarded as heavenly treasure!
+
+There then is the vital centre of the Christian doctrine of the world to
+come,--that it is a life continuous with this life, not in bare
+existence, but in the persistence of relations and interests upon which
+we have entered here. At the center of that world as it is revealed to
+us, is Jesus Christ, God in our nature, and about Him ever the saints of
+His Kingdom, who are still human with human interests, and who look on
+to the time when the fulness of humanity will be restored to them by the
+resurrection of the body. The interests that are vital here are also the
+interests that are vital there, the interests of the Kingdom of God. As
+the Christian thinks of the life of the world to come he thinks of it as
+the sphere in which his ambitions can be and will be realised, where the
+ends of which he has so long and so earnestly striven will be attained.
+His life has been a life given to the service of our Lord and to his
+Kingdom, and it had, no doubt, often seemed to small purpose; it has
+often seemed that the Kingdom was not prospering and the work of God
+coming to naught. And then he looks on to the future and sees that the
+work that he knows is an insignificant fragment of the whole work; and
+he thinks with longing of the time when he shall see revealed all that
+has been accomplished. He feels like a colonist who in some outlying
+province of an empire is striving to promote the interests of his
+Homeland. His work is to build up peace and order and to civilise
+barbarous tribes. And there are days when the work seems very long and
+very hopeless; and then he comforts himself with the thought that this
+is but a corner of the empire and that one day he will be relieved and
+called home. There at the centre he will be able to see the whole fact,
+will be able to understand what this colony means, and will rejoice in
+the slight contribution to its upbuilding that it has been his mission
+to make. The heart of the Christian is really in the Homeland and he
+feels acutely that here he is on the Pilgrim Way. But he feels too that
+his present vocation is here and that he is here contributing the part
+that God has appointed him for the upbuilding of the Kingdom, and that
+the more he loves our Lord and the more he longs for Him the more
+faithfully and exactly will he strive to accomplish his appointed work.
+
+They are right, those who are continually reproaching Christians with
+having a centre of interest outside this world; but we do not mind the
+reproach because we are quite sure that only those will have an
+intelligent interest in this world who feel that it does not stand by
+itself as a final and complete fact, but is a single stage of the many
+stages of God's working. We no more think it a disgrace to be thinking
+of a future world and to have our centre of interest there than we think
+it a disgrace for the college lad to be looking forward to the career
+that lies beyond the college boundaries and for which his college is
+supposed to be preparing him. We do not consider that boy ideal whose
+whole time and energy is given to the present interests of a college,
+its athletics, its societies, and in the end is found to have paid so
+little attention to the intellectual work that he is sent there to
+perform that he fails to pass his examinations. Christians are
+interested in this world because it is a province of the Kingdom of God
+and that they are set here to work out certain problems, and that they
+are quite sure that the successful solution of these problems is the
+best and highest contribution that they can make to the development of
+life in this world. They do not believe that as a social contribution to
+the betterment of human life a saint is less valuable than an agnostic
+professor of sociology or an atheistic socialistic leader; nor does the
+Christian believe that strict attention to the affairs of the Kingdom of
+God renders him less valuable as a citizen than strict attention to a
+brewery or a bank. A whole-hearted Christian life which has in view all
+the relations of the Kingdom of God in this or in any other world, which
+loves God and loves its neighbour in God, is quite the best contribution
+that a human being can make to the cause of social progress. If it were
+possible to put in evidence anywhere a wholly Christian community I am
+quite convinced that we should see that our social problems were there
+solved. I think then we shall be right to insist that what is needed is
+not less otherworldliness but more: that more otherworldliness would
+work a social revolution of a beneficent character. The result might be
+that we should spend less of our national income on preparations for
+war and more in making the conditions of life tolerable for the poor;
+that we should begin to pay something of the same sort of care for the
+training of children that we now bestow on the nurture of pigs and
+calves. We might possibly look on those whom we curiously call the
+"inferior races" as less objects of commercial exploitation and more as
+objects of moral and spiritual interest.
+
+We shall no doubt do this when we have more fully grasped what the
+resurrection of Christ has done and made possible. It is no account of
+that resurrection to think of it as a demonstration of immortality. It
+only touches the fringes of its importance when we think of it as
+setting the seal of divine approval upon the teaching of Jesus. We get
+to the heart of the matter when we think of the risen humanity of our
+Lord as having become for us a source of energy. The truth of our Lord's
+life is not that He gave us an example of how we ought to live, but that
+He provided the power that enables us to live as He lived. Also He gave
+us the point of view from which to estimate life. The writer of the
+Epistles to the Hebrews uses a striking phrase when he speaks of "the
+power of an endless life." Is not that an illuminating phrase when we
+think of our relation to our Lord? His revelation of the meaning of
+human life has brought to us the vision of what that life may become and
+the power to attain that end. The fact of our endlessness at once puts a
+certain order into life. Things, interests, occupations fall into their
+right places. There are so many things which seem not worth while
+because of the revelation of the importance of our work. Other things
+there are which we should not have dared to undertake if we had but this
+life in which to accomplish them. But he who understands that he is
+building for eternity can build with all the care and all the
+deliberation that is needed for so vast a work. There is no haste if we
+select those things which have eternal value. We can undertake the
+development of the Christian qualities of character with entire
+hopefulness. The very conception of the beauty and perfectness of the
+fruits of the Spirit might discourage us if our time were limited. But
+if we feel that the work we have done on them, however elementary and
+fragmentary, as long as it is honest and heartfelt, will not be lost
+when death comes, then we can go securely on. We can go on in any
+spiritual work we have undertaken without that sense of feverish haste
+lest death overtake us and put an end to our labour which so affects men
+in purely secular things. To us death is not an interruption. Death does
+not destroy our human personality, nor does it destroy our interest in
+anything that like us is permanent. We feel perfectly secure when we
+have identified ourselves with the business of the Kingdom of God. Then
+we almost feel the throb of our immortality; the power of an endless
+life is now ours. We have not to wait for death and resurrection to
+endue us with that power because it is the gift of God to us here, that
+gift of enternal life which our Lord came to bestow upon us. Only the
+gift which we realise imperfectly or not at all at its bestowal we come
+to understand in something of its real power; and henceforth we live in
+the possession and fruition of it, growing up "into Him in all things,
+which is the Head, even Christ."
+
+     Hail, thou brightest Star of Ocean;
+     Hail, thou Mother of our God;
+     Hail, thou Ever-sinless Virgin,
+     Gateway of the blest abode.
+     Ave; 'tis an angel's greeting--
+     Thou didst hear his music sound,
+     Changing thus the name of Eva--
+     Shed the gifts of peace around.
+     Burst the sinner's bonds in sunder;
+     Pour the day on darkling eyes;
+     Chase our ills; invoke upon us
+     All the blessings of the skies.
+     Show thyself a watchful Mother;
+     And may He our pleadings hear,
+     Who for us a helpless Infant
+     Owned thee for His mother dear.
+     Maid, above all maids excelling,
+     Maid, above all maidens mild,
+     Freed from sin, oh, make our bosoms
+     Sweetly meek and undefiled.
+     Keep our lives all pure and stainless,
+     Guide us on our heavenly way,
+     'Till we see the face of Jesus,
+     And exult in endless day.
+     Glory to the Eternal Father;
+     Glory to the Eternal Son;
+     Glory to the Eternal Spirit:
+     Blest for ever, Three in One.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE FORTY DAYS
+
+     To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by
+     many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and
+     speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
+
+Acts I, 3.
+
+     Open unto us the door of thy loving kindness, O blessed
+     Mother of God; we have set our hope on thee, may we not be
+     disappointed, but through thee may we be delivered from
+     adversity, for thou art the saving help of all
+     Christian people.
+
+     O Mother of God, thou who art a deep well of infinite mercy,
+     bestow upon us thy compassion; look upon thy people who have
+     sinned, and continue to make manifest thy power. For thee do
+     we trust, and to thee do we cry, Hail! even as of old did
+     Gabriel, the chief of the angelic hosts.
+
+RUSSIAN.
+
+These Forty Days that intervened between our Lord's resurrection and
+ascension must have been utterly bewildering in the experience of the
+Apostles. Our Lord was once more with them; He had come back from the
+grave; that would have been the central experience. But in His
+intercourse with them He was so changed, the same and yet with a vast
+difference. We think of the perplexed group of the disciples gathered in
+the familiar place, going over the recent facts and trying to adjust
+themselves to them. Just what is the difference that death and
+resurrection have made, we hear them discussing. Is it that He appears
+and disappears so strangely, not coming any longer to be with them in
+the old way, with the old familiar intercourse? There is obviously no
+failure in Himself, no decline in love; but there is a decline in
+intimacy. They themselves feel a strange awe in His presence such as
+they had not been accustomed to feel in the past. They feel too that
+this restrained intercourse is but temporary, that at any moment it may
+end. The instructions He is giving them are so obviously final
+instructions, fitting them for a future in which He will not be
+with them.
+
+Amid all this perplexity we try to see Our Lady and to get at her mind.
+She was no doubt in the small group eagerly waiting our Lord's coming,
+dreading each time He left them that He would return no more. One
+thinks of her as less bewildered than the others because her interest
+was more concentrated. She had no problems to work out, no perplexities
+to absorb her; she had simply to love. Life to her was just love--love
+of the Son Whom she had brought forth and Whom she had followed so far.
+She lived in His appearings; and between them she lived in remembrance
+of them. One does not think of her as dwelling very much on what He
+says, but as dwelling upon Him. The thought of Him absorbs her. She has
+passed into that relation to our Lord that in the years to come many
+souls will strive to acquire--the state of absorbed contemplation, the
+state in which all things else for the time recede and one is alone with
+God. God so fills the soul that there is room there for nothing else.
+
+For the Apostles these were days of immense importance as days in which
+they were compelled to reconstruct their whole view of the meeting of
+our Lord's mission and of their relation to it. They came to these days
+with their settled notion about the renewed Kingdom of Israel and of our
+Lord's reign on earth which His teaching hitherto had not been able to
+expel; but now they are compelled to see that the Kingdom of God of
+which they are to be the missionaries is a Kingdom in another sense than
+they had so far conceived it. It differs vastly from their dream of an
+Israelite empire. It is no doubt true that this mental revolution is of
+slow operation, and that even when certain truths are grasped it will
+still take time to grasp them in all their implications. For long their
+Judaism will impede their full understanding of the meaning of the
+Kingdom of God. It will be years before they can see that it is a
+non-Jewish fact and that other nations will stand on an equality with
+them. But they will by the end of the Forty Days have grasped the fact
+that they are not engaged in a secular revolution and are not entering
+on a career of worldly power. They will be ready for their active
+ministry after Pentecost, a ministry of spiritual initiation into the
+Kingdom of God. When in response to their preaching men asked the
+question: "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" They were ready with
+their answer: "Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of
+Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of
+the Holy Ghost."
+
+So the Forty Days were filled with new meanings emerging from the old
+teaching, of suddenly grasped significance in some saying of our Lord
+that they had assumed that they understood but in reality had attributed
+little meaning to. It is one of the striking things about our relation
+to spiritual truth that we can go on for long thinking that we are
+attaching a meaning to something which in fact, it turns out, has meant
+almost nothing to us. Some day a phrase which we have often read or
+repeated suddenly is lighted up with a significance we had never dreamed
+of. We have long been looking some truth in the face, but in fact it has
+never laid hold of us; we have made no inferences from it, deduced no
+necessity of action, till on a day the significance of it emerges and
+we are overwhelmed by the revelation of our blunder, of our stupidity.
+The fact is that we assume that our conduct is quite right, and we
+interpret truth in the light of our conduct rather than interpret
+conduct in the light of truth. It is the explanation, I suppose, of the
+fact that so many people read their Bible regularly without, so far as
+one can see, the reading having any effect upon their conduct. The
+conduct is a settled affair and they are finding it reflected in the
+pages of the Gospel. Their minds are already definitely made up to the
+effect that they know what the Gospel means, and that is the meaning
+that they put into the Bible. One does not know otherwise how to account
+for the fact that it is precisely those who think themselves "Bible
+Christians" who are farthest from accepting the explicit teaching of the
+Bible. If there is anything plain in the New Testament it is that the
+whole teaching of our Lord is sacramental. If anything is taught there
+one would think it was the nature and obligation of baptism, the
+Presence of our Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar, the gift of
+Confirmation, the meaning of absolution. Yet it is to "Bible Christians"
+that sacraments appear to have no value, are things which can be
+dispensed with as mere ornaments of the Christian Religion.
+
+I wonder if we have wholly got beyond that point of view? I wonder if we
+have got a religious practice which is settled or one that is
+continually expanding? I wonder if we force our meaning on the Bible or
+if we are trying to find therein new stimulus to action? That in truth
+is the reason for reading the Holy Scriptures at all--to find therein
+stimulus, stimulus for life; that we may see how little or how much our
+conduct conforms to the ideal set out there. We do not read to learn a
+religion, but to learn to practice the religion that we already have.
+
+Now to take just one point in illustration. The commission of our Lord
+to His Church in the person of the Apostles was a commission to forgive
+sins. "He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy
+Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and
+whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." As to how in detail,
+this commission is to be exercised is a matter for the Church to order
+as the circumstances of its life require. As I read my Bible certain
+facts emerge: I am a sinner; Christ died for my sins; He left power in
+His Church for the forgiveness of sin--of my sin. And then the question
+arises: What is the bearing of all that on my personal practice? Have I
+settled a practice for myself to which I am subjecting the teaching of
+the Bible and the Church? Or am I alert to see a contrast or a
+contradiction between my practice and the teaching of the Bible and the
+Church, if such exist? Now there are many people in the Church who make
+no use of the sacrament of penance, and there are many others who make
+use of it very sparingly. It is clear that either they must be right, or
+the Bible and the Church must be right. It is clear that such persons,
+to press it no farther, are imposing the interpretation of their own
+conduct on the teaching of the Christian Religion and asserting by
+their constant practice that that interpretation is quite inadequate,
+notwithstanding the contrary practice of the entire Catholic world.
+That, to put it mildly, is a very peculiar intellectual and
+spiritual attitude.
+
+We can most of us, I have no doubt, find by searching somewhere in our
+religious practice parallel attitudes toward truth. We have settled many
+questions in a sense that is agreeable to us. We cannot tell just how we
+got them settled, but settled they are. Take a very familiar matter
+which greatly concerns us in this parish dedicated to the Blessed Virgin
+Mary, the question of the honour and reverence due to our Blessed
+Mother. We had got settled in our practice that certain things were
+right and certain wrong. I doubt if a very intelligent account of
+this--why they were right or wrong--could, in many cases have been
+given. But the settled opinion and practice was there.
+
+And then came the demand for a review; that we look our practice
+squarely in the face and ask, "What is the ground of this? Does it
+correspond with the teaching of Scripture and of the Catholic Church?
+And if it does not, what am I going to do about it? Have I only a
+collection of prejudices there where I supposed that I had a collection
+of settled truths? Do I see that it is quite possible that I may be
+wholly wrong, and that I am hindered by pride from reversing my
+attitude?" For there is a certain pride which operates in these matters
+of belief and practice as well as elsewhere. We are quite apt to pride
+ourselves on our consistency and think it an unworthy thing to change
+our minds. That is rather a foolish attitude; changing one's mind is
+commonly not a mark of fickleness but of intellectual advance. It means
+oftentimes the abandonment of prejudice or the giving up of an opinion
+which we have discovered to have no foundation. This is rather a large
+universe in which we live, and it is improbable that any man's thought
+of it at any time should be adequate. Intellectual progress means the
+assimilation of new truths. The Christian Religion is a large and
+complex phenomenon, and any individual's thought of it at any time must
+be, in the nature of things, an inadequate thought. Progress in religion
+means the constant assimilation of new truths--new, that is, to us.
+Surely it is a very peculiar attitude to be proud of never learning
+anything, making it a virtue to have precisely the same opinions this
+year as last! I should be very much ashamed of myself if a year were to
+pass in which I had learned nothing, had changed my mind about nothing.
+In religion, one knows that the articles of the Faith are expressed in
+the dogmatic definitions of the Church; but one will never know, seek as
+one will, all that these mean in detail, all that they demand in
+practice. And our only tolerable attitude is that of learners constantly
+seeking to fill up the _lacunae_ in our beliefs and practice.
+
+In fact, any living Christian experience is always in process of
+adjustment. Those who conceive a dogmatic religion as an immovable
+religion, as a collection of cut and dried formulae which each
+generation is expected to learn and repeat and to which it has no other
+relation, are quite right in condemning that conception, only that is
+not, in fact, what the Christian Religion is. The content of the
+Christian dogmas is so full and so complex that there is never any
+danger of intellectual sterility in those who are called to deal with
+them; and their application to life is so rich and so manifold that
+there is not the least danger that those who set out to apply them to
+the problems of daily existence will become mere formalists. The attempt
+to live a truly Christian life is a never-ending, inexhaustible
+adventure. Only those can miss this fact who have utterly misconceived
+Christianity as a barren set of prohibitions, warning its devotees off
+the field of great sections of human experience. There are those who
+appear to imagine that the primary business of Christianity is to deal
+with sin, and that in order to keep itself occupied it has to invent a
+large number of unreal sins. Unfortunately sin, as the deliberate
+rejection of the known will of God, exists; and, fortunately, the grace
+of our Lord Jesus Christ Who came into the world to save sinners also
+exists. We can be unendingly thankful for that. But it is also true that
+the action of Christianity is not exhausted in the negative work of
+dealing with sin. Christianity is primarily a positive action for the
+bringing about and development of the relation of the soul with God in
+the state of union. We may say that Christianity has to turn aside from
+this its proper business of developing the spiritual life to the
+preliminary work of dealing with sin which kills spirituality and
+hinders its development. But it is not necessary to make the blunder of
+assuming that this dealing with sin is the essential work of
+Christianity because it has so continually to be at it, any more than
+it is necessary to assume that the essential work of a farmer is the
+digging up of weeds. Surely it would be no adequate treatise on
+agriculture which would confine itself to description of the nature of
+weeds and of methods of dealing with them. There is a branch of theology
+which deals with sin, the methods of its treatment and its cure; but
+there are also other branches of theology: and the direction of the Holy
+Scripture is not to get rid of sin and stop; but having done that, to go
+on to perfection.
+
+Christian experience is a constant process of adjustment, a constantly
+growing experience. By the study of the Christian revelation it is
+always finding new meanings in old truths, new modes of application of
+familiar practices. This simply means that the Christian is alive and
+not a fossil. It means that his relation to our Lord is such that it
+opens to him inexhaustible depths of experience. It is easy to see this
+in the concrete by taking up the life of almost any saint. It is easy to
+trace the growth of S. John from the young fisherman, fiery, impatient,
+who wished to call down fire from heaven upon his adversaries as Elijah
+did, and gained the rebuke: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are
+of," to the mature and supremely calm and simple experience which is
+reflected in the Gospel and Epistles. It is easy to trace the
+development of the impulsive, zealous Pharisee that Paul of Tarsus was,
+through all the stages of spiritual growth that are reflected in his
+Letters, till he is Paul the aged waiting to depart and be with Christ
+"which is far better." You can study it in the confessions of S.
+Augustine in its first stage and follow it through its later stages in
+his letters and other writings, and in many another saint beside. If you
+have any spiritual experience at all you can trace it in your own case:
+you have grown, not through dealing with sin, but through the pursuit of
+ideal perfection, that perfection which is set before you by the
+Christian Religion. You may not feel that you have gone very far: that
+is not the point at present; you know that you have found a method by
+which you may go on indefinitely; that there is no need that you should
+stop anywhere short of the Beatific Vision. You do know that your
+religion is not the deadening repetition of dogmas which the unbeliever
+conceives it to be, but is the never ceasing attempt to master the
+inexhaustible truth that is contained in your relation to our Lord. You
+do know that however far you have gone you feel that you are still but
+on the threshold and that the path before your feet runs out into
+infinity. Let us go back again to our examination of the experience of
+the Apostles. When we examine their training we find there, I think, two
+quite distinct elements both of which must have had a formative
+influence upon their ministry. In the first place there was the element
+of dogmatic teaching. There is a class of persons who are accustomed to
+tell us that there is no dogma in the New Testament, by which they
+appear to mean that the particular dogmatic affirmations of the Creed
+are not formulated in the pages of the New Testament, but are of later
+production. That, no doubt, is true; but nevertheless it would be
+difficult to find a more dogmatic book than the New Testament, or a
+more dogmatic teacher than was our Lord. And our Lord taught the
+Apostles in a most definite way the expected acceptance of His teaching
+because He taught it. "He taught as one having authority, and not as the
+scribes," it was noted. The point about the teaching of the scribes was
+that it was traditional, wholly an interpretation of the meaning of the
+Old Testament. It made no claim to originality but rather based its
+claim on the fact it was not original. Our Lord, it was noticed, did not
+base His claim on tradition. In fact He often noticed the Jewish
+tradition for the purpose of marking the contrast between it and His own
+teaching. "Ye have heard that it hath been said of old time ... but I
+say unto you." He commonly refused to give an explanation of what He had
+said, but demanded acceptance on His authority. He brought discipleship
+to the test of hard sayings, and permitted the departure of those who
+could not accept them. He cut across popular prejudices and took small
+account of the "modern mind" as expressed by the Sadducees. He expected
+the same unhesitating submission from the Apostles whom He was training,
+though it was also a part of their training to be the future heralds of
+the Kingdom that they should have the "mysteries of the Kingdom"
+explained to them. But from the time when Jesus began to preach, saying
+"the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," He preached and taught with the same
+unhesitating note of certainty, and with the same demand for
+intellectual submission on the part of those who heard Him.
+
+And that continues to the end. During the Forty Days, the few sayings
+that have come to us have the same ring of authority, of dogmatic
+certainty. The result was that when the Apostles went out to teach they
+were equipped with a body of truth which they presented to the world in
+the same unhesitating way. Indeed, that is the only way in which the
+central truths of the Christian Faith can be presented. They are not the
+conclusions of argument, which may be taken up and argued over again to
+the end of the world,--they are the dicta of revelation. We either know
+them to be true because they have been revealed, or we do not know them
+to be true at all. They are mysteries, that is, truths beyond the
+possibility of human finding which have been made known to man by God
+Himself. They are the appropriate data of religion and what
+distinguishes it from philosophy. The presence of mystery in philosophy
+is annoying, and the aim is to get rid of it, but a religion without
+mystery is absurd. Religion deals with the fundamental relations between
+God and man and the light it brings us must be a supernatural light.
+Such a religion in its presentation naturally cut across the
+preconceptions of the traditionalists in Jerusalem to whom nothing new
+could be true, as across the preconceptions of the sophists of Athens,
+to whom nothing that was not new was interesting.
+
+This dogmatic equipment was but one side, however, of the Apostolic
+training for their future work, a training to which the finishing
+touches, so to say, were put during the Forty Days. The other side of
+the training was the impression upon them of the Personality of our
+Lord, the effect of their close association with Him. This has an
+importance that dwarfs all other influences of the time; and we feel all
+through the Gospel that it was what our Lord himself counted upon in
+forming them for their mission. In the beginning "He chose twelve to be
+with Him," and their day by day association with Him was constantly
+changing their point of view and reforming their character. It was not
+the teaching, the explanation of parables, or the sight of the miracles;
+it was the silent effect of a personality that was in contact with them
+constantly and was constantly presenting to them an ideal of life, an
+ideal of absolute submission to the will of the Father and of utter
+consecration to the, mission that had been committed to Him.
+
+We all know this silent pressure of life upon life. We have most of us,
+I suppose, experienced it either from our parents or from friends in
+later life; and we can through that experience of ours attempt the
+explanation of our Lord's influence on the Apostles. There were not only
+the hours of formal teaching--they, in a way, were perhaps the less
+important from our present point of view. We have more in mind the
+informal talks that would go on as they went from village to village in
+Galilee, or as they gathered about the door of some cottage in the
+evening or sat in the shelter of some grove during the noon-day heat. It
+was just talk arising naturally out of the incidents of the day, but it
+was always talk guided by Jesus--talk in which Jesus was constantly
+revealing Himself to them, impressing upon them His point of view,
+making plain his own judgment upon life. And when we turn to His formal
+teaching we realise how revolutionary was His point of view in regard to
+life, how He swept aside the customary conventions by which they were
+accustomed to guide life, and substituted the radical principles that
+they have left on record in the Sermon on the Mount for the perplexity
+of a world yet far from understanding them. Evidently the Apostles would
+find their accustomed values tossed aside and a wholly new set of values
+presented to them.
+
+I suppose we find it difficult to appreciate how utterly revolutionary
+the Gospel teaching continually is, not because we have become
+accustomed to follow it, but because we have got used to hearing it and
+evacuating it of most of its meaning by clever glossing. It was thus
+that the teaching classes in Jerusalem avoided the pressure of Old
+Testament ideals by a facile system of interpretation which made "void
+the Word of God by their traditions." Human nature has not altered; and
+we succeed by the same method in making the Gospel of none effect. We
+are so well accustomed to do this that we lose the point and pungency of
+much of our Lord's teaching. But we know that the apostles did not. We
+know that they presented that teaching in all its sharpness to would-be
+disciples. It could not be otherwise with those who for three years had
+been in day by day intimacy with our Lord and had assimilated His point
+of view and his judgment on life.
+
+One effect of their contact with our Lord in the days following the
+resurrection would be that whatever changes the passage to a new level
+of existence had wrought in Him, it had not changed either the tone of
+His teaching or the beauty and attractiveness of His Personality. The
+concluding charges that were given them, the great commission of
+proclaiming the Kingdom with which they were now definitely endued, the
+powers which were committed to them in the great words: "All power is
+given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all
+nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
+of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
+commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the
+world," would but confirm and strengthen all that had gone before in
+their experience of Him. The Jesus of the resurrection was no pale ghost
+returned from the grave, intermittently to appear to them to assure them
+of the fact of immortality. He was "the same Jesus" Whom they had known
+for three years, and whose return from the dead triumphant over the
+powers that had opposed Him, set quite plainly and definitely the seal
+of indisputable authority upon all the teaching and the example that had
+gone before. The period of their probation was over: The commission was
+theirs: It remained that they should abide in Jerusalem until they
+should be "endued with power from on high."
+
+     Proclaimed Queen and Mother of a God,
+       The Light of earth, the Sovereign of saints,
+     With pilgrim foot up tiring hills she trod,
+       And heavenly stile with handmaids' toil acquaints;
+         Her youth to age, her health to sick she lends;
+         Her heart to God, to neighbor hand she bends.
+
+     A Prince she is, and mightier Prince doth bear,
+       Yet pomp of princely train she would not have;
+     But doubtless, heavenly choirs attendant were,
+       Her Child from harm, herself from fall to save:
+         Word to the voice, song to the tune she brings,
+         The voice her word, the tune her ditty sings.
+
+     Eternal lights enclosèd in her breast
+       Shot out such piercing beams of burning love,
+     That when her voice her cousin's ears possessed
+       The force thereof did force her babe to move:
+         With secret signs the children greet each other;
+         But, open praise each leaveth to his mother.
+
+     Robert Southwell, S.J. 1560-1595.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE ASCENSION
+
+
+     And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted
+     from them, and carried up into heaven.
+
+                                S. Luke XXIV, 51.
+
+     O Mother of God, since we have obtained confidence in thee,
+     we shall not be put to shame, but we shall be saved.
+
+     And since we have obtained thy help and thy meditation, O,
+     thou holy, pure, and perfect one!
+
+     We fear not but that we shall put our enemies to flight and
+     scatter them.
+
+     We have taken unto us the shelter of thy mighty help in all
+     things like a shield.
+
+     And we pray, and beseech thee that we may call upon thee, O
+     Mother of God, so that thou deliver us through thy prayers.
+
+     And that thou mayest raise us up again from the sleep of
+     darkness, to offer praise through the might of God Who took
+     flesh in thee.
+
+     COPTIC.
+
+
+There would be no doubt of the finality of our Lord's physical
+withdrawal this time. As the group of disciples stood on the hilltop in
+Galilee and watched the clouds close about Him, they would feel that
+this was the end of the kind of intercourse to which they had been
+accustomed. The past Forty Days would have done much to prepare them for
+the separation. Their conception of our Lord's work as issuing in the
+establishment of an earthly Kingdom had been swept away; the changed
+terms of their intercourse with Him in the resurrection state had
+emphasised the change that had taken place; His teaching during these
+weeks which was centered on the work of the future in which they were to
+carry on the mission He had initiated; all these elements prepared them
+for the definite withdrawal of the ascension. Nevertheless we can
+understand the wrench that must have been involved in His actual
+withdrawal. We face the dying of some one we love. We know that it is a
+matter of weeks; the weeks shorten to days, and we are "prepared" for
+the death; but what we mean is that the death will not take us by
+surprise. However prepared we may be, the pain of parting will be a
+quite definite pain; there is no way of avoiding that.
+
+We know that there was no way for the disciples to avoid the pain of the
+going of Jesus. It was not the same sort of pain that they felt now, as
+they gazed up from the hill top to the cloud drifting into the
+distance, as the pain that had been theirs as they hurried trembling and
+affrighted through the streets of Jerusalem on the afternoon of the
+Crucifixion. This pain had no sting of remorse for a duty undone, or of
+fear for a danger to be met. It was the calm pain of love in the
+realisation that the parting is final.
+
+We know that among the group that watched the receding cloud the eyes
+that would linger longest and would find it hardest to turn away would
+be those of the Blessed Mother. Her mission about our Lord during all
+these past years had been a very characteristically womanly mission, a
+mission of silence and help and sympathy. She was with the women who
+ministered to Him, never obtrusive, never self-assertive; but always
+ready when need was. It was the silent service of a great love. That is
+the perfection of service. There are types of service which claim reward
+or recognition. We are not unfamiliar in the work of the Kingdom with
+people who have to be cajoled and petted and made much of because of
+what they do. Verily, they have their reward. But the type we are
+considering, of which the Blessed Mother is the highest expression, is
+without thought of self, being wholly lost in the wonder of being
+permitted to serve God at all. To be permitted to give one's time and
+personal ministry to our Lord in His Kingdom and in His members is so
+splendid a grace of God that all thought of self is lost in the joy of
+it. We know that S. Mary could have had no other thought than the
+offering of her love in whatever way it was permitted to express
+itself; and we know that the quality of that love was such that the
+moment of the ascension would have left her desolate, watching the cloud
+that veiled Him from her eyes.
+
+All of which does not mean that we are wrong when we speak of the
+ascension as one of the "Glorious Mysteries" of S. Mary. There we are
+viewing it in its wide bearing as S. Mary would come to view it in a
+short while. When the meaning of the ascension became plain, when under
+the guidance of the Holy Spirit, S. Mary was able to view her Son as
+"the One Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus," when she
+was able to think of the human nature that God had taken from her as
+permanently enthroned in heaven,--then would all this be to her creative
+of intense joy. We, seeing so clearly what the ascension essentially
+meant, can think of it as a mystery of intense joy, but as our Lord
+passed away from sight the passing would for the moment be one last stab
+of the sword through this so-often wounded heart.
+
+There would be no lingering upon the hill top. The angel messengers
+press the lesson that the life before them is a life of eager contest,
+of energetic action. Jesus had indeed gone in the clouds of heaven, but
+they were reminded that there would be a reappearance, a coming-again in
+the clouds of heaven, and in the meantime there was much to do, work
+that would require their self-expenditure even unto death. Back must
+they go to Jerusalem and there await the opening of the next act of the
+drama of the Kingdom of God.
+
+As we turn to the Epistles of the New Testament and to the slowly
+shaping theology of the early Church, we find set out for us the nature
+of our Lord's heavenly activity; we see the full meaning of His
+Incarnation. The human nature which the Son of God assumed from a pure
+Virgin, He assumed permanently. He took it from the tomb on the
+resurrection morning, he bore it with Him from the Galilean hill to the
+very presence of uncreated God. When the Gates lift and admit the
+Conqueror to heaven, what enters heaven is our nature, what is enthroned
+at the Right Hand of God is man, forever united to God. And when we ask,
+"What is the purpose of this?" The answer is that it is the continual
+purpose of the incarnation, the purpose of mediatorship between the
+created and the uncreated, between God and man. The constant purpose of
+the incarnation is mediation--of the need of mediation there is no end.
+Our Lord's work was not finished, though there are those who appear to
+believe that it was finished, when, as a Galilean Preacher He had taught
+men of the Father: nor was it finished when He bought redemption for us
+on the Cross, and triumphing over death in the resurrection, returned to
+heaven at the ascension. There is a very real sense in which we can say
+that all those acts were the preliminaries of His work, were what made
+the work possible. We then mean by His work the age-long work of
+building the Kingdom of Heaven, and through it bringing souls to the
+Father. To insist perhaps over-much: We are not saved by the memory of
+what our Lord did, we are saved by what He now does. We are saved by the
+present application to us of the work that was wrought in the years of
+His earthly life.
+
+We need to grasp this living and present character of our Lord's work if
+we will understand the meaning of His mediation. There is a gulf between
+the divine, the purely spiritual, and the human, which needs some bridge
+to enable the human to cross it. That bridge was thrown across in the
+incarnation when God and man became united in the Person of the second
+Person of the ever blessed Trinity. When God the Son became incarnate,
+God and man were forever united and the door of heaven was about to
+swing open. Henceforth from the demonstrated triumph of our Lord in the
+Ascension the Kingdom of Heaven is open to all believers, and there is
+an ever-ready way of approach to God the Blessed Trinity by the
+Incarnate Person of the Son Who is the One Mediator between God and man.
+Whoever approaches God, whoever would reach to the Divine, must approach
+by that path, the path of Jesus Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
+
+He is the Way to God: and that Way is one that we follow by
+participation in His nature, by being taken up into Him. We do not reach
+God by thinking about our Lord, or by believing about our Lord: thinking
+and believing are the preliminaries of action. There are wonderful
+riches in the King's Treasury, but you do not get them because you think
+of them or because you believe that they are there. You get them when
+you go after them. And you get the ends of the Christian Religion not
+because you believe them to exist, but because you go after them in the
+way in which Christ directed. Inasmuch as He is the Way to the Father,
+we reach the Father by being made one with the Son, by being made a
+member of Him, by being taken into Him in the life of union. "No man
+cometh unto the Father but by me," He says. And the process of coming is
+by believing all that He said and acting upon His Word to the uttermost.
+Those who by partaking of the Sacraments are in Christ have passed by
+His mediation to the knowledge of the Father.
+
+For a road can be travelled in either direction. Christ is the road by
+which we come to the Father, to participation in the life of the Blessed
+Trinity; but also we can think of Him as the road by which the Father
+comes to us. We can think of ourselves as drawing near to God in His
+Beloved Son: I love to think the other way of the road, of God drawing
+near to me, of God pouring of His riches into human life and elevating
+that life to His very Self. I like to think of the Christian life as a
+life to which God continually communicates Himself, till we are filled
+"with all the fulness of God." Can we imagine any more wonderful
+expression of the life of holiness to which we are called than that? We
+"grow up into Him in all things." That is the true account of the
+Christian life, not some thin and dull routine of moral duty, but the
+spiritual adventure of the road that travels out into the infinite
+pursuit of spiritual accomplishment till it is lost in the very heart
+of God.
+
+This was the starting point of Blessed Mary. She was filled with all
+the fulness of God from the moment of her conception, and was never
+separated from the joy of the great possession. We are born in sin and
+have to travel the road to the very end. Yet we, too, begin in union,
+because we are born of our baptism into Christ soon after our natural
+birth, and our problem is to achieve in experience the content of our
+birthright. In other words: our feet are set in the Way from the
+beginning, and our part is to keep to the Way and not wander to the
+right hand or to the left; that this may be possible for us Christ lived
+and died and to-day is at the Right Hand of the Father where He ever
+liveth to make intercession for us. We need never walk without Christ.
+The weariness of the journey is sustained by His constant and ready
+help. The way is lighted by the Truth which is Himself, and the life
+that we live is His communicated life. "I live, yet not I, but Christ
+liveth in me." There are those who find the road godward, the road of
+the Christ-life, wearisome because they keep their eyes fixed on the
+difficulties of the way and treat each step as though it were a separate
+thing and not one step in a wonderful journey. The way to avoid the
+weariness of the day's travel is to keep one's eye fixed on the end, to
+raise the eyes to the heavens where Jesus sitteth enthroned at the Right
+Hand of the Father. The day's song is the Sursum Corda,--"Lift up your
+hearts unto the Lord!"
+
+The mediatorial office of our Lord is exercised chiefly through His
+Sacrifice. He ever liveth to make intercession for us; and this
+intercession is the presentation of the Sacrifice that He Himself
+offered once for all in Blood upon the Cross, and forever presents to
+the Father in heaven "one unending sacrifice." This heavenly oblation of
+our Lord which is the means wherethrough we approach pure Divinity, is
+also the Sacrifice of the Church here on earth. The heavenly Altar and
+the earthly Altar are but one in that there is but one Priest and one
+Victim here and there. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the Church's
+presentation of her Head as her means of approach to God, as the ground
+of all her prayers. These prayers make their appeal through Jesus Who
+died and rose again for us and is on the Right Hand of Power. We know of
+no other way of approach, we plead no other merit as the hope of our
+acceptance. Let us be very clear about this centrality of our Lord's
+mediation because I shall presently have certain things to say which are
+often assumed to be in conflict with his Mediatorial Office, but which
+in reality do not so conflict, but exist at all because of the Office.
+
+We approach Divinity, then, through our Lord's humanity; and we at once
+see how that teaching, so common to-day, which denies the Resurrection
+of our Lord's Body, and believes simply in the survival of His human
+soul strikes at the very heart of the Catholic Religion. If Revelation
+be true, our approach to God is rendered possible because there is a
+Mediator between God and man, the MAN Christ Jesus. All our prayers
+have explicitly, or implicitly, this fact in view. All our Masses are a
+pleading of this fact.
+
+How great is our joy and confidence when we realise this! We come
+together, let us say, on Sunday morning at the High Mass. We are coming
+to offer the Blessed Sacrifice of our Lord's Body and Blood. But who,
+precisely, is to make the offering? When we ask what this congregation
+is, what is the answer? The congregation is the congregation of Christ's
+Flock: it is the Body of Christ gathered together for the worship of
+Almighty God. The act that is to be performed is the act of a Body, not
+primarily of individuals. Our participation in the act of worship in the
+full sense of participation is conditioned upon our being members of the
+Body. If we are not members of the Body we have no recognised status as
+worshippers. No doubt we each one have our individual aspirations and
+needs which we bring with us, but they are the needs and aspirations of
+a member of the Body of Christ, and our ability to unite them with the
+act that is to be performed grows out of our status as members of the
+Body; as such, we join our own intention to the sacrificial act and make
+our petitions through it. But we are here as offerers of the Sacrifice,
+and may not neglect our official significance, and attempt to turn the
+Mass into a private act of worship.
+
+We, then, the Body of Christ in this place, offer the Sacrifice of
+Christ. What is the status of the priest? He is a differentiated organ
+of the Body, not created by the Body, but created by God in the creation
+of the Body. He is not separate from the Body, an official imposed upon
+it from the outside, nor is he a creation of the Body set apart to act
+upon its behalf. He is one mode of the expression of the Body's
+life--the Body could not perfectly perform its functions without him
+any more than a physical body can perfectly function without a hand or
+an eye. But neither has the priest any existence apart from the Body of
+which he is a function. The Sacrifice that he offers is not his on
+behalf of the Body, but the Body's own Sacrifice which is made through
+his agency.
+
+But a complete body has a head; and of the Body which is the Church the
+Head is Christ. We, the members, have our life from Him, the Head; we
+are able at all to act spiritually because of our union with Him. He is
+our life; and the acts of the Body are ultimately the acts of the Head.
+The Sacrifice which the Body offers as the means of its approach to
+Divinity is One Sacrifice of the Head: and the priestly function of the
+Body has any vitality because it is Christ Who is its life, Who
+functions through the priest, Who is, in fact, the true Priest. He
+Himself is both Sacrifice and Priest; and that which is offered here is
+indentical with that which is offered there.
+
+Our life flows from our Head, is the life of Christ in us. So closely
+are we associated with Him that we are called His members, the
+instrument through which His life expresses itself, through which He
+acts. By virtue of the life of Christ of which all we are partakers, we
+are not only members of Christ, but members one of another. Our
+spiritual life is not our own affair, but we have duties one to another,
+and all the members of the Body are concerned in our exercise of our
+gifts, have, in fact, claims on the exercise of them.
+
+This mutual inherence of the members of the Body and these obligations
+to one another are in strict subordination to the Head; but they are
+very real duties and privileges which are ours to exercise. What we are
+concerned with at present is that from, this view of them that I have
+been presenting there results the possibility and obligation of
+intercession; the love and care of the members for one another is
+exercised in their prayers for one another. This privilege of
+intercession is one of the privileges most widely valued and most
+constantly exercised throughout the Church. Days of intercession,
+litanies, the offering of the Blessed Sacrifice with special intention,
+the constant requests for prayers for objects in which people are
+interested, all testify to the value we place on the privilege. Here is
+one action in regard to which there is no doubting voice in Christendom.
+
+But curiously, and for some reason to me wholly unintelligible, there
+are a great many who think of this right and duty of intercession
+between the members of the One Body as exclusively the right and duty of
+those who are living here on earth; or at least if it pertain to the
+"dead" it is in a way in which we can have no part. One would think--and
+so the Catholic Church has always thought--that those whom we call dead,
+but who are really "alive unto God" with a life more intense, a life
+more spiritually clear-visioned, than our own, would have a special
+power and earnestness in prayer, and that a share in their intercessions
+is a spiritual privilege much to be valued. They are members with us of
+the same Body; death has not cut them off from their membership,
+rather, if possible, it has intensified it, or at least their perception
+of what is involved in it. They remain under all the obligations of the
+life of the Body and consequently under the obligation to care for other
+members of the Body. The intercession of the saints for us is a fact
+that the Church has never doubted and cannot doubt except under penalty
+of denying at the same time the existence of the Body. That certain
+members of the Church have of late years doubted our right to invoke the
+saints, to call upon them for the aid of their prayers, is true; but
+there seems no ground for rejecting the tradition of invocation except
+the rather odd ground that we do not know the mode by which our requests
+reach them! As there are a good many other spiritual facts of which we
+do not know the mode, I do not think that we need be deterred from the
+practice of invocation on that ground: certainly the Church has never
+been so deterred.
+
+It is strange how little people attempt to think out their religion, and
+especially their obligation to religious practice. I have so often heard
+people say, when the practice of invocation of saints was urged: Why ask
+the saints? Why not go directly to God? And these same people are
+constantly asking the prayers of their fellow Christians here on earth!
+Suppose when some pious soul comes to me and asks me if I will not pray
+for a sick child, or a friend at sea, I were to reply: "Why come to me?
+Why not go directly to God?" I should be rightly thought unfeeling and
+unchristian. But that is precisely what the same person says when I
+suggest that the saints or the Blessed Mother of God be invoked for some
+cause that we have in hand! A person comes to me and asks my prayers,
+and I go to a saint and ask his prayers on precisely the same basis and
+for precisely the same reason, namely, that we are both members of the
+Body of Christ and of one another. We have the right to expect the
+interest and to count on the love of our fellow-members in Christ. We go
+to the saints with the same directness and the same simplicity with
+which we go to the living members of the Body, living, I mean in the
+Church on earth. If it be not possible to do that, then death has made a
+very disastrous break in the unity of the Body of Christ.
+
+And if we can count so without hesitation upon the love and sympathy and
+interest of the saints, surely we can count upon finding the same or
+greater love and sympathy in the greatest of all the saints, our blessed
+Mother, who is also the Mother of God. She in her spotless purity is the
+highest of creatures. She by her special privilege has boundless power
+of intercession; not power as I have explained before, because of any
+sort of favouritism, but power because her spiritual perfection gives
+her unique insight into the mind of God. Power in prayer really means
+that, through spiritual insight we are enabled to ask according to His
+will "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask
+anything according to his will, he heareth us." That is why
+righteousness is the ground of prevailing intercession, because
+righteousness means sympathetic understanding of the mind of God.
+
+And in none is there such sympathetic understanding because in none is
+there such nearness to God, as in Blessed Mary. To go to her in our
+prayers and to beg her to intercede for us is, of course, no more a
+trenching upon the unique mediatorship of our Lord than it is to ask my
+human friend to pray for me. We tend, do we not? to select from among
+the circle of our acquaintance those whom for some reason we feel to
+have what we call a special power in prayer when we seek for some one to
+pray for us in our need. Is it not wholly natural then that we should go
+to our Blessed Mother on whose sympathy we can unfailingly count and in
+whose spiritual understanding we can implicitly trust, when we want to
+interest those who are dear to our Lord in our special needs? We have
+every claim upon their sympathy because they are fellow-members of the
+same Body; and we know, too, that He Who has made us one in His Body
+wills that we should receive His graces through our mutual
+ministrations.
+
+     Mary, Maiden, mild and free,
+     Chamber of the Trinity,
+     A little while now list to me,
+      As greeting I thee give;
+     What though my heart unclean may be,
+      My offering yet receive.
+
+     Thou art the Queen of Paradise,
+     Of heaven, of earth, of all that is;
+     Thou bore in thee the King of Bliss
+      Without or spot or stain;
+     Thou didst put right what was amiss,
+      What man had lost, re-gain.
+
+     The gentle Dove of Noe thou art
+     The Branch of Olive-tree that brought,
+     In token that a peace was wrought,
+      And man to God was dear:
+     Sweet Ladye, be my Fort,
+      When the last fight draws near.
+
+     Thou art the Sling, thy Son the Stone
+     That David at Goliath flung;
+     Eke Aaron's rod, whence blossom sprung
+      Though bare it was, and dry:
+     'Tis known to all, who've looked upon
+      Thy childbirth wondrous high.
+
+     In thee has God become a Child,
+     The wretched foe in thee is foiled;
+     That Unicorn that was so wild
+      Is thrown by woman chaste;
+     Him hast thou tamed, and forced to yield,
+      With milk from Virgin breast.
+
+     Like as the sun full clear doth pass,
+     Without a break, through shining glass,
+     Thy Maidenhood unblemished was
+       For bearing of the Lord:
+     Now, sweetest Comfort of our race,
+       To sinners be thou good.
+
+     Take, Ladye dear, this little Song
+     That out of sinful heart has come;
+     Against the fiend now make me strong,
+       Guide well my wandering soul:
+     And though I once have done thee wrong,
+       Forgive, and make me whole.
+     Wm. De Shoreham's translation
+     from the Latin, or French of
+     Robt. Grosseteste; C. 1325.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
+
+     And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire,
+     and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with
+     the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the
+     Spirit gave them utterance.
+
+Acts II, 3.
+
+     Holy Mother of God, Virgin ever blessed, glorious and noble,
+     chaste and inviolate, O Mary Immaculate, chosen and beloved
+     of God, endowed win singular sanctity, worthy of all praise,
+     thou who art the Advocate for the sins of the whole world; O
+     listen, listen, listen to us, O holy Mary, Pray for us.
+     Intercede for us. Disdain not to help us. For we are
+     confident and know for certain that thou canst obtain all
+     that thou wiliest from thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, God
+     Almighty, the King of ages, Who liveth with the Father and
+     the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever.
+
+MS. Book of Cerne, belonging to Ethelwald, BP. of Sherbourne, 760.
+
+"When the Day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one
+accord in one place"--I suppose the "all" will be not merely the
+"twelve," but the "all" that were mentioned by S. Luke a few verses
+before. He mentions the Apostles by name and then adds, "These all
+continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women,
+and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren."
+
+We think of our Lady as sharing in the Pentecostal gift. This was the
+first act of her ascended Son, this sending forth of the Holy Spirit
+whom He had promised. It was the fulfilment of the prophecy: "I will
+pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters
+shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men
+shall dream dreams." I do not know of anything in the teaching of the
+Church to lead us to suppose that this gift was to the Apostles alone:
+rather the thought of the Church is that to all Christians is there a
+gift of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is imparted to the Church as such,
+and within the organisation He functions through appropriate organs.
+"There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." Whatever the
+operations of God through the Body of Christ, the same divine energy is
+making them possible. "All these worketh that one and selfsame Spirit,
+dividing to every man severally as he will."
+
+That the Holy Spirit should manifest Himself in her life was, of
+course, no new experience for S. Mary. Her conscious vocation to be the
+Mother of God had begun when the Holy Ghost had come upon her, and she
+had conceived that "Holy Thing" which was called the Son of God. And we
+cannot think that the Spirit Who is the Spirit of sanctity had ever been
+absent from her from the moment of her wonderful conception when by the
+creative act of the Spirit she was conceived without sin, that is, in
+union with God. But as there are diversities of gifts, so the coming of
+the Spirit on Pentecost would have meant to her some new or increased
+gift of God.
+
+For the Church as such this coming of the Spirit meant the entrance of
+the work of the Incarnation upon a new phase of its action. We may, I
+suppose, think of the work of our Lord during the years of His Ministry
+as intensive. It was the work of preparing the men to whom was to be
+committed the commission to preach the Kingdom of God. They had been
+chosen to be with Him, and their training had been essentially an
+experience of Him, an experience which was to be the essence of their
+Gospel and which their mission was to interpret to the world. "Who is
+this Jesus of Nazareth Whom ye preach? What does He mean?" was to be the
+question that they would have to answer in the coming years; and they
+would have to answer it to all sorts of men; to Jews who would find this
+conception of a suffering and rejected Messiah "a stumbling-block"; to
+the Greeks who would find "Jesus and the resurrection" "foolishness"; to
+all races of men who would have to be persuaded to leave their
+ancestral religions and revolutionise their lives, and before they would
+do so would wish to know what was the true meaning of Christ in whose
+name their whole past was challenged. As we watch the perplexity, the
+bewilderment, of these Apostles in the face of the collapse of all their
+hopes on the first Good Friday, as we see them struggling with the fact
+of the Resurrection, and attempting to adjust their lives to that; and
+then listen to their preaching and follow their action in the days
+succeeding Pentecost, we have brought home to us the nature of the
+action of the Holy Spirit when He came to them as the Spirit of Jesus to
+enable them to carry on the work that Jesus had committed to them.
+
+We understand that the work of the Spirit was first of all the work of
+interpreting the experience of the last three years. During these years
+they had been with Jesus, and the result was an experience which,
+however wonderful, or rather, just because it was wonderful, was in
+their consciousness at present little more than a chaotic mass of
+impressions and memories. It was the work of the Spirit to enkindle and
+illuminate their understanding so that they could put the experiences of
+the last three years in order, if one may put it in that way. He enabled
+them to draw out the meaning of what they had gone through. We are at
+once impressed with the reality of the work of the Spirit when we listen
+to the sermon of S. Peter to those who have witnessed the miracle of
+Pentecost. Here is another miracle of which we have, perhaps, missed
+something of the wonder. This man who in answer to the mockeries of the
+crowd--"these men are full of new wine"--stands forth to deliver this
+exposition of Jesus is the same man who but a few days before had denied
+his Lord through fear; he is the same man who even after the
+Resurrection was filled with such discouragement that he could think of
+nothing to do but to return to the old life of a fisherman, who had said
+on a day, "I go a-fishing." If we wish to understand the meaning of the
+coming of the Spirit, let us forget for the moment the tongues of fire,
+which are the symbol, and read over the words of S. Peter which are the
+true miracle of Pentecost.
+
+And this action of the Spirit is not sporadic or temporary. We follow
+the annals of the Church and we find the constant evidence of the
+Spirit's power and action in the Christian propaganda. The courage with
+which the Christians meet the opposition of Jews and Romans, in their
+resourcefulness in dealing with the utterly unprecedented problems they
+are called on to face, in the intellectual grip of the Apologists who
+have to meet the criticism of very diverse sets of opponents, in their
+rapidly growing comprehension of what the Incarnation means, and of all
+in the way of action that our Lord's directions involve,--all these,
+when we recall the antecedents of these men, lead us to a clearer
+apprehension of the nature of the Spirit's work in the Church. As our
+Lord had promised, He is bringing "all things to their remembrance" and
+"leading them into all the truth." If we need proof of the constant
+supernatural action of God in the Church, we get all we can ask in the
+preaching of Jesus by His followers in these opening years of
+their ministry.
+
+I said that our Lord's work in the time of His ministry was intensive,
+the preparing of instruments for the founding of the Kingdom. With
+Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit it passes into a new stage; it
+becomes _extensive_ in that it now reaches out to gather all men into
+the Kingdom. To this end there is now a vast development of the
+machinery (so to call it) of the Gospel, a calling into existence of the
+means whereby Christ is to continue His action in men's souls. For there
+must continue a direct action of Christ or the Gospel will sink to the
+condition of a twice-told tale: it will be the constant repetition of
+the story of Jesus of Nazareth Who went about doing good: and it will
+have less and less power to be of any help to men as it receeds into the
+past. Without the means which are called into existence to produce
+continual contact between the Redeemer and the Redeemed we cannot
+conceive of the Gospel continuing to exist as power.
+
+This is not a matter of pure theory: it is a thing that we have seen
+happen. We have seen the growth of a theory of Christianity which
+dispenses wholly or nearly wholly with the means of grace, and reduces
+the presentation of the Gospel to the presentation of the ideal of a
+good life as an object of imitation. When one asks: "Why should I
+imitate this life which, however good in an abstract way, is not very
+harmonious with the ideals of society at present?" one is told that it
+is the best life ever lived, the life that best interprets God, our
+heavenly Father to us. If one asks: "What is likely to happen if one
+does not imitate this life, but prefers some more modern type of
+usefulness?" the answer seems to be: "Nothing in particular will
+happen." In other words, the preaching of the Gospel divorced from the
+means of grace tends more and more to decline to the presentation of a
+humanitarian ideal of life which has little, and constantly less,
+driving power.
+
+We see then as we study the history of the early days of the Church the
+constant presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the mode and means by
+which the Gospel is presented. We see it particularly in the development
+of the ministry and the growth of the sacramental system. It seems to me
+not very important to find a detailed justification of all the things
+that were done or established in explicit words or acts in the New
+Testament. If we are dealing, as we believe that we are, with an
+organism of which the life is God the Holy Ghost Who is the Vicar of
+Christ in the building and administration of His Kingdom, I do not see
+why we should not find in the action of the Kingdom as much of
+inspiration as we find in its writings. I do not see why we should
+accept certain things on the authority of the action of the early
+Christian community, as the baptism of infants and the communion of
+women, and reject others, as the reservation of the Blessed Sacraments
+and prayers for the dead. Nor do I see why we should draw some sort of
+an artificial line through the history of the Church and declare all the
+things on one side of it primitive and desirable, and all on the other
+late and suspect! Especially as no one seems to be able to explain why
+the line should be drawn in one place rather than in another.
+
+If the Holy Spirit was sent by our Lord as His Vicar to preside in the
+Church, as I suppose we all believe, it was in fulfilment of our Lord's
+promise to be with it till the end of the world and that the gates of
+hell should not prevail against it. There is nothing anywhere in Holy
+Scripture indicating that the Holy Spirit was to be sent to the
+"primitive Church," even if any one could tell what the primitive Church
+is, or rather when the Church ceased to be primitive. The Holy Spirit is
+present as a guide to the Church to-day quite as fully as He was in the
+first century. His presence then was not a guarantee that all men should
+believe the truth or do the right, nor is it now. The state of
+Christendom is a sufficient evidence of the ability of men to defy the
+will of God, the Holy Spirit; but that does not mean that the Holy
+Spirit has withdrawn any more than the state of things at Corinth which
+called out S. Paul's two Epistles to that Church is a proof that God the
+Holy Ghost never came or did not stay with that primitive Christian
+community. The power of the Spirit is not an irresistible power, but a
+spiritual influence which will guide those who are willing to be guided,
+who will to be submissive to His will. But the will of God can always be
+resisted--and always is. Nevertheless the Holy Spirit is in the Church.
+He shaped and is shaping its beliefs and institutions: and to-day we
+trust that He is leading us back to His obedience that we may at length
+realize the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.
+
+The work of the Holy Spirit in the individual Christian is a
+constructive work; it has in view the growth of the child of God in
+holiness. He makes the soul of the baptised His dwelling-place and
+wishes to remain there as in His Temple, carrying on the work of its
+sanctification. The state of guiltlessness that follows absolution is
+not the equivalent of sanctity. Guiltlessness is a negative, sanctity is
+a positive state, and is acquired as the result of active correspondence
+with the will of God. In order that there may be this correspondence the
+will of God must be known, not merely as we know the things that we have
+learned by rote, but known in the sense of understood and appreciated.
+The will of God is knowable: that is, it has been revealed to man; but
+it needs to be effectively made known to the individual man. He must be
+convinced of the importance of divine truth to him. We know that just
+there is the supremely vital point in the teaching of the truth. Men
+assent to truth as true; but they are not thereby necessarily moved to
+act upon it: it may remain unassimilated. The vast majority of the
+people of this country, if they were questioned, would assert a belief
+in God; but a surprising number of them are unmoved by that belief, are
+led by it to no action. Or take the membership of any parish; they would
+all profess a belief in the efficacy of the sacraments: yet there is a
+surprisingly large number who do not frequent the sacraments. How many
+of you, for example, make your confessions and communions with the
+frequency and regularity that your theory about the sacraments implies?
+
+Now it is the work of the Holy Spirit to effect the passage in life
+from theory to practice, from profession to action. He illuminates the
+mind that we may understand; He stirs the will that we may act. He aids
+us to overcome the intellectual and physical sloth which is the
+arch-enemy of Christian practice. He intercedes for us, and He pleads
+with us that we may act as the children of God that we believe ourselves
+to be. But all He can do is to entice the will; if we remain unwilling,
+unmoved, He is ultimately grieved and leaves us. We may hope that that
+despair of the Holy Spirit of a soul rarely happens because it is a
+spiritual disaster awful to contemplate. In most men and women we can
+see enough impulse toward God, enough struggle with evil, to encourage
+us to think that the Holy Spirit has not utterly abandoned them. And it
+is never safe for us to judge definitely of another's spiritual case;
+but we do see lives that are so given over to malignancy that our hope
+for them is an optimism which has small basis on which to rest.
+
+In most we may be certain that there is going on a very active pleading
+of the Holy Spirit. He is interpreting the meaning of the truth we
+accept. He is present in a careful reading of the Bible, in meditation,
+in devotional study. He receives of Christ and shows it unto us. I am
+sure we ought to think more of this interpretative assistance of the
+Holy Spirit in the work of understanding the Christian Religion,
+especially in its application to the daily life. I am quite certain, and
+I have no doubt that the experience of some of you, at least, will bear
+me out, that it makes a vast difference in the results of our reading
+and study if we undertake it under the direct invocation of the Holy
+Spirit and with the conscious giving ourselves up to His guidance. We
+have to make a meditation, for example, and we begin with prayer to God
+the Holy Ghost for guidance and enlightenment. It is often well to let
+that prayer run on as long as it will. It may be in the end that instead
+of making the meditation we had planned we shall have spent the time in
+a prayer of union with the Holy Spirit and will find ourselves refreshed
+and enlightened as the result. There is need of that sort of yielding of
+self to the promptings of the Spirit. I think that it not infrequently
+happens that our rules get in the way of His action by destroying or
+checking in us a certain flexibility which is necessary if we are to
+respond quickly to the voice of the Spirit. As in the case just
+mentioned where the Spirit is leading us to communion with Him we are
+apt to think: "I must get on with my meditation or the time will be up
+and I shall not have made it," and we turn from the Spirit and stop the
+work that He was accomplishing.
+
+He has so much to do for us, so many things to show us, so many grounds
+to urge for our more earnest seeking of sanctity. The true point of our
+Bible reading is that it is the opportunity of the Holy Spirit to
+exhibit truth to us so that in us it will become energetic. We already
+are familiar with the incidents of our Lord's Passion. If it be a matter
+of knowledge there is no need to-night to take up the Gospel and read
+the chapters which tell of the Crucifixion. There is not much point in
+reading through a chapter as a matter of pious habit. It is
+extraordinary how many there are who speak with contempt of "mediæval
+prayers" such as the recitation of the Rosary, who yet "read a chapter"
+once a day in the shortest possible time and with the minimum of
+attention. We can think of all religious practices as opportunities that
+we offer to God the Holy Ghost. The few verses of Holy Scripture we read
+may well be the medium of His action upon us. He may give us new insight
+into their meaning, He may stir our wills to correspondence with their
+teaching, He may kindle our hearts by the evidence of the divine love
+that He presses home. Who does not remember moments when new meaning
+seemed to flash from the familiar pages, when we felt ourselves
+convicted of inadequate response to the knowledge we have, or when we
+felt our heart stir and send us to our knees in an act of
+thanksgiving and love?
+
+Our constant need is the clear knowledge of ourselves. We may, we often
+do, see clearly God's will, and then we deceive ourselves as to the
+nature of our response. We think we are seeking for God when in reality
+we are seeking our own ends. We make our own plans and then seek to
+impose them on the will of God. Self-seeking, which we mistake for
+something else, is at the root of much spiritual failure. We try to
+believe that God's will is our will, and we succeed in a measure. We
+need therefore to be constantly examining ourselves by the revealed
+standard of God's will, to let in the light of the Spirit on our
+judgments and acts. For the struggle of the Spirit for control is a
+struggle with a resisting and sluggish will. We see, but we do not
+move; we know, but we do not act. The horrible inertia of spiritual
+sloth paralyses us, and the call of the Spirit is heard in vain. Like
+the man in our Lord's parable we plead the lateness of the hour, and our
+unwillingness to disturb others as our excuse for not rising at the
+Spirit's summons. But the Spirit, like the Friend at midnight, still
+knocks at the door, and the sound of the summons penetrates the
+quietness of the house and breaks in upon our slumbers. Well is it for
+us if in the end we rise and open to Him.
+
+It is only as we thus become energetic by the yielding to God of our
+wills that He can go on to His desired work. The aim of God in dealing
+with our lives is creative. He wills that we bring forth fruit, and the
+fruit that He wills that we bring forth is the Fruit of the Spirit. The
+general notion of holiness analyses into these qualities which are the
+evidence of God's indwelling, of His actual possession of the soul. When
+the soul yields at last to the divine will and begins to follow the
+divinely indicated course of action, then it loses self and finds God,
+then the results begin to show in the growth of the character-qualities
+that we call fruits or virtues. The presence or the absence of these is
+infallible evidence of the Spirit's success or failure in His work in
+us. If we abide in Christ, then the natural results of such abiding must
+be forthcoming. "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in
+me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye
+can do nothing."
+
+A vine bears fruit because it assimilates the natural elements which
+are furnished it by the Providence of God through earth and air and
+water, and works them into the fruit which is the end, the meaning of
+its existence. Our Lord through the constant operation within us of the
+Holy Spirit gives us the spiritual power to work over the endowments of
+nature and the opportunities of life into the spiritual product which is
+holiness. We can just as well, and perhaps easier, work up the same
+natural elements into a quite different product. The result of our
+life's action may be that we can show the works of the flesh. But what
+is the will of the Spirit, S. Paul sets before us in these words: "For
+when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What
+fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the
+end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and
+become the servants of God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the
+end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God
+is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
+
+Any adequate self-examination, therefore, bears not only on our sins,
+our failures, but on our accomplishment. A tree is known by its fruits;
+and fruits are things which are evident to all men. If indeed the work
+of the Spirit in us is love, joy, peace and the rest of the fruits,
+these qualities cannot be hid. Certainly they cannot be hid from
+ourselves. They are the evidence to us of precisely where we stand in
+the way of spiritual accomplishment. And we must remember that they are
+supernatural qualities, and not be deceived by the existence in us of a
+set of human counterfeits. Love is not good-natured tolerance; joy is
+not superficial gaiety, peace is not clever dodging of difficulties. The
+fruits of the Spirit are not of easy growth, but come only at the end of
+a long period of cultivation, of energetic striving. But like all the
+gifts of God they do come if we want them to come. "If ye abide in me,
+and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be
+done unto you." But when we ask our Lord for gifts we must remember that
+the giving is not a mechanical giving. What our Lord gives is the Might
+of the Spirit to effect what we desire. If a man ask of God a good
+harvest the prayer is answered if there be given the conditions under
+which a good harvest can be produced; it will not be produced without
+the appropriate human labour. And when we ask of God the Fruits of the
+Spirit the prayer is granted if the conditions are given under which
+this Fruit may be brought forth. But neither here may we expect Fruit
+without appropriate action on our part. God gives, but He gives to those
+who want.
+
+I
+
+others do of grace bereave, When, in their mother's womb, they life
+receive, God, as his sole-borne Daughter, loved thee: To match thee like
+thy birth's nobility, He thee his Spirit for thy Spouse did leave, Of
+whom thou didst his only Son conceive; And so was linked to all the
+Trinity. Cease, then, O queens, who earthly crowns do wear, To glory in
+the pomp of worldly, things: If men such respect unto you bear Which
+daughters, wives and mothers are of kings; What honour should unto that
+Queen be done Who had your God for Father, Spouse and Son?
+
+II
+
+Sovereign of Queens, if vain ambition move My heart to seek an earthly
+prince's grace, Show me thy Son in his imperial place, Whose servants
+reign our kings and queens above: And, if alluring passions I do prove
+By pleasing sighs--show me thy lovely face, Whose beams the angels'
+beauty do deface, And even inflame the seraphins with love. So by
+ambition I shall humble be, When, in the presence of the highest King, I
+serve all his, that he may honour me; And love, my heart to chaste
+desires shall bring, When fairest Queen looks on me from her throne, And
+jealous, bids me love but her alone.
+
+III
+
+Why should I any love, O Queen, but thee, If favor past a thankful love
+should breed? Thy womb did bear, thy breast my Saviour feed, And thou
+didst never cease to succour me. If love do follow worth and dignity,
+Thou all in thy perfections dost exceed; If love be led by hope of
+future meed, What pleasure more than thee in heaven to see? An earthly
+sight doth only please the eye, And breeds desire, but doth not satisfy:
+Thy sight gives us possession of all joy; And with such full delights
+each sense shall fill, As heart shall wish but for to see thee still,
+And ever seeing, ever shall enjoy.
+
+IV
+
+Sweet Queen, although thy beauty raise up me From sight of baser
+beauties here below, Yet, let me not rest there; but, higher go To him,
+who took his shape from God and thee. And if thy form in him more fair I
+see, What pleasure from his deity shall flow, By whose fair beams his
+beauty shineth so, When I shall it behold eternally? Then, shall my love
+of pleasure have his fill, When beauty's self, in whom all pleasure is,
+Shall my enamoured soul embrace and kiss, And shall new loves and new
+delights distill, Which from my soul shall gush into my heart, And
+through my body flow to every part.
+
+HENRY CONSTABLE: 1562-1613.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE HOME OF S. JOHN
+
+And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.
+
+S. John XIX, 27.
+
+But now we unite to praise thee, O Pure and Immaculate One, blessed
+Virgin and sinless Mother of thy great Son and the God of all. O
+perfectly spotless and altogether holy, thou art the hope of despairing
+sinners. We bless thee as most full of grace, who didst give birth to
+Christ, God and Man. And we fall down before thee. We all invoke thee
+and implore thy help. Deliver us, O Virgin, holy and undefiled, from
+every pressing strait and from all temptations of the Evil One. Be thou
+our peacemaker in the hour of death and judgment. Do thou save us from
+the future unquenchable fire and from the outer darkness. Do thou render
+us worthy of the glory of thy Son, O Virgin and Mother, most sweet
+and clement.
+
+A PRAYER OF S. EPHREM THE SYRIAN.
+
+There is no scene in the whole range of Scripture narrative which is
+more full of pathos than this scene of the Cross. Two agonies meet: the
+agony of the nailing, the lifting, the dying; and the agony that looks
+on in silent helplessness. But while our Lord's physical agony was in
+some sort swallowed up in the intensity of the love which was the motive
+for enduring it, overpassed in the vision of the need of those for whom
+He was dying, S. Mary's agony was the pain of a love concentrated upon
+the Sufferer Who hangs dying before her eyes. If there be anything that
+can lighten the pain of such love it is that it feels itself answered,
+that its object is conscious of it and is helped by it. And S. Mary had
+that consolation: the love poured to her from the Cross, and revealed
+itself when the suffering Son turned His eyes upon her agony and,
+understanding what her desolation would be, committed her to His beloved
+disciple: "Behold thy Mother; behold thy son." These two great loves
+which had been our Lord's human consolation were thus committed to one
+another. And when the darkness fell, and death relieved the agony, and
+the Sacred Body had been cared for, then the mother found refuge with S.
+John: "and from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home."
+
+From the day of Pentecost on, S. Mary is no more heard of in the history
+of the Church. As so often, the Scriptures are silent and decline to
+answer our interested questions. They go on with the essentails of their
+story, the founding of the Church of God, and leave other things aside.
+So we do not know any of the last years of the life of Blessed Mary.
+Where did she live? How long did she live? The traditions, in any case
+of quite an untrustworthy nature, are contradictory. Jerusalem and
+Ephesus contend for the honour of our Lady's residence. Jerusalem must
+have been the site of that "home" to which S. John took her after the
+crucifixion. Did she remain there, or did she follow S. John, and at
+length come to live with him in Ephesus? Ephesus puts forward the claim,
+and we feel that it would be well founded in the nature of the relation
+between these two, if S. Mary lived until the settlement of the last of
+the apostles in the Asian city. Our Lord's committal of His Mother to
+the beloved disciple implies their personal association as long as S.
+Mary lived: if till S. John was settled in Ephesus, then we may be sure
+that she was there. She would be with S. John as long as she lived, but
+can we think of her as living long? Would not a great love draw her to
+another world and the presence of her triumphant Son?
+
+Let us, however think, as one tradition bids us, of our Lady as living
+some time with S. John at Ephesus. We can understand the situation
+because it is so much like our own. These Asia Minor cities of the
+imperial period were curiously like the great centers of population in
+the Western world of to-day--London, Paris, New York, Chicago. There was
+the same over-crowding of population, the same intense commercial
+activity, the same almost insane thirst for amusement and excitement,
+the same degeneracy of moral fibre. The sins that sapped the life of
+Ephesus are the same that degrade contemporary life. In some ways
+Ephesus was, possibly, more frankly corrupt; but on the other hand it
+had no daily press to advertise and promote sin and social corruption.
+There is more of Christianity and of Christian influence in the modern
+city, but even here there is a curious resemblance between the two. The
+Christian Religion had but recently been introduced into Ephesus, but
+already it had precisely that touch of ineffectiveness that seems to us
+so modern. The message of the risen Lord to the angel of the Church in
+Ephesus is: "Nevertheless I have this against thee, that thou hast left
+thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and
+repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly,
+and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent."
+
+The things that hearten us are sometimes strange; but I suppose that
+there is a feeling of encouragement in our present day distress and
+spiritual ineffectiveness in the thought that even under S. John the
+Church in Ephesus was not wholly ideal. The conditions which baffle us,
+baffled him. The converts who were so promising and enthusiastic
+declined in zeal and fell back under the spell of worldliness. Zeal is a
+quality which is maintained with great difficulty, and the pull of the
+world, whether social or business, is steadily exercised. Converts in
+Ephesus, like converts in New York, felt that their friends were right
+who declared that they were quite unnecessarily strict, and that in
+order to serve Christ it was not necessary to turn their backs
+absolutely on Diana.
+
+As one tries to reconstruct the situation in Ephesus, one feels that our
+Lady would have had no prominence in the Church in the way of an
+actively exercised influence. One thinks of her as living in retirement,
+as not even talking very much. If she lived long she would be an object
+of increasing interest and even of awe to the new converts, and an
+object of growing love to all those who were admitted to any sort of
+fellowship with her. But one cannot imagine a crowd about her, inquiring
+into her experiences and her memories of her divine Son. Once she told
+of her experience, for it was necessary that the Church should know of
+the circumstances of the coming of the Son of God into the world, but
+beyond that necessary communication of her experience we cannot think of
+her as speaking of her sacred memories. Silence and meditation, longing
+and waiting, would have filled the years till the hour of her release.
+
+But in the quiet hours spent with S. John it would be different. Between
+the Blessed Virgin and S. John there was perfect understanding and
+perfect sympathy, and we love to think of the hours that they would have
+spent together in deep spiritual intercourse. Those hours would not be
+hours of reminiscence merely; they would rather be hours in which these
+two would attempt with the aid of the Spirit Who ruled in them so fully
+to enter deeper and ever deeper into the meaning of Incarnate God.
+Jesus would be the continual object of their thought and their love, and
+meditation upon His words and acts would lead them to an ever increasing
+appreciation of their depth and meaning.
+
+We have all felt, in reading the pages of S. John, how vast is the
+difference both in attitude toward his subject and in his understanding
+of it from that of the other Evangelists. The earlier Evangelists seem
+deliberately to keep all feeling out of their story, to tell the life of
+our Lord in the most meagre outline, confining themselves to the
+essential facts. Anything like interpretation they decline. In S. John
+all this is changed. The Jesus whom he presents is the same Jesus, but
+seen through what different eyes! The same life is presented, but with
+what changes in selection of material! The Gospel of S. John seems
+almost a series of mediations upon selected facts of an already familiar
+life rather than an attempt to tell a life-story. And so indeed we think
+of it. When S. John wrote, the life of our Lord as a series of events
+was already before the Church. The Church had the synoptic Gospels, and
+it had a still living tradition to inform it. What it needed, and what
+the Holy Spirit led S. John to give it, was some glimpse of the inner
+meaning of the Incarnation, some unfolding of the spiritual depths of
+the teaching of Jesus.
+
+We know how it is that different people listening to the same words get
+different impressions and carry away with them quite different meanings.
+We hear what we are able to hear. And S. John was able to hear what the
+other disciples of our Lord seem not to have heard. What dwelt in his
+memory and was worked up in his meditations and was at length
+transmitted to us, was the meaning of such incidents as the interview
+with Nicodemus, and the talk with the woman of Samaria, the discourse on
+the Holy Eucharist and the great High-priestly prayer. Men have felt the
+contrast between S. John and the other Evangelists so intensely that
+they have said that this is another Christ who is presented by S. John,
+and the influences which have shaped the author of the Fourth Gospel are
+quite other than those which shaped the men of the inner circle of
+Jesus. But no: it is the instinctive, or rather the Spirit-guided,
+selection of the material afforded by those years of association with
+Jesus for the purpose of transmitting to the Church a spiritual depth
+and beauty, a spiritual significance in our Lord's teaching, that the
+earlier Gospel had hardly touched.
+
+Which perhaps they could not touch because when they wrote there was not
+yet in the Church the spiritual experience which could fully interpret
+our Lord. Through the life of union with the risen Jesus and all the
+spiritual experience, all the illumined intelligence that that life
+brought, S. John was enabled to understand and interpret as he did.
+Writing far on toward the end of the first century he was writing out of
+the personal experience of Christian living of many years, which brought
+with it year by year an increased power of spiritual vision opening to
+him the depth and wonder of the fact of God made man. It is to an
+experience of our Lord that he appeals as the basis of his teaching.
+"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have
+seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have
+handled, of the Word of life: (for the life was manifested, and we have
+seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which
+was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) that which we have
+seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship
+with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and His Son Jesus
+Christ." And as we read on in S. John's Epistles we cannot fail to see
+how deeply the years of meditation have influenced his understanding of
+our Lord and His teaching, and how much his past experience of our Lord
+has been illumined by the experience of the risen Jesus which has
+followed. At no time, we are certain, has S. John been out of touch with
+his Master.
+
+And can we for a moment think that the years of intercourse with our
+Lady meant nothing in the spiritual development of S. John? On the
+contrary, may we not think that much of the spiritual richness which is
+the outstanding feature of his writings was the outcome of his
+association with the blessed Mother? No one has ever shown the
+sympathetic understanding of our Lord, has been so well able
+convincingly to interpret Him, as the beloved disciple. I myself have no
+doubt that much of his understanding came by way of S. Mary. Her
+interpretative insight would have been deeper than any one else's, not
+only because of her long association with Jesus, but because of her
+sinlessness. No two lives ever touched so closely; and there was not
+between them the bar that so blocks our spiritual understanding and
+clouds our spiritual vision, the bar of sin. I suppose it is almost
+impossible for us to appreciate the effect of sin in clouding vision and
+dulling sympathy. Our every day familiarity with venial sin, our easy
+tolerance of it, the adjustment of our lives to habits that involve it,
+have resulted in a lack of spiritual sensitiveness. Much of the meaning
+of our Lord's life and words passes over us just because of this dimness
+of vision, this insensitiveness to suggestion. And therefore we find it
+difficult to imagine what would be the understanding, the insight, the
+response to our Lord, of one between whom and Him there was no shadow of
+sin. And such an one was the blessed Mother. With unclouded vision she
+looked into the face of her Son. As His life expanded she followed with
+perfect sympathy; indeed, sometimes, as at Cana, her understanding of
+what He was made her precipitate in concluding as to His necessary
+action. When He became a public teacher and unfolded largely in parable
+His doctrine, it was her sinless soul which would see clearest and
+deepest, and with the most ready response. And therefore I am sure that
+we cannot go astray in thinking that S. John's relation to S. Mary was
+not simply that of a guardian of her from the pressure of the world, but
+was indeed that of a son who listened and learned from the experience of
+his Mother. No doubt S. John himself was of a very subtle spiritual
+understanding; notwithstanding that, and notwithstanding his exceptional
+opportunities of learning, we may still believe that there are many
+touches in his Gospel which are the result of his association with his
+Lord's Mother.
+
+Is it not possible for us to have our share in that pure insight of
+blessed Mary? When we try to think out the lines of our own spiritual
+development and the influences that have contributed to shape it, do we
+not find that the presence or absence of devotion to our Lady has been a
+factor of considerable importance? Devotion to her injected an element
+into our religion which is of vast moment, an element of sympathy, of
+gentleness, of purity. You can if you like, in condemnatory accents,
+call that element sentimentalism, although it is not that but the
+exercise of those gentler elements of our nature without whose exercise
+our nature functions one-sidedly. You may call it the feminine element,
+if you like; you will still be indicating the same order of activity.
+Surely, an all around spiritual development will bring out the feminine
+as well as the masculine qualities. And it seems to be historically true
+that those systems of religion which represent a revolt against the
+cultus of our Lady and carefully exclude all traces of it from their
+worship, show as a consequence of this exclusion a hardness and a
+barrenness which makes their human appeal quite one-sided. And when
+those same systems have realised their limitations and their lack of
+human appeal, and have tried to supply what is lacking, they have again
+failed, because instead of reverting to historical Christianity they
+have taken the road of humanitarianism, basing themselves on our Lord's
+human life and consequent brotherhood with us, rather than upon His
+supernatural Personality as operative through His mystical Body. Stress
+is laid upon charitable helpfulness rather than upon the power of grace.
+The modern man tries to reform life rather than to regenerate it.
+
+And, I repeat, I cannot help associating with a repudiation of the
+cultus of the saints, and especially of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a
+consequent failure to understand the Christian life as a supernatural
+creation. If one leaves out of account the greater part of the Kingdom
+of Heaven, all the multitudes of the redeemed, and their activities, and
+fastens one's attention exclusively upon that small part of the Kingdom
+which is the Church on earth, one can hardly fail to miss the
+significance of the earthly Church itself. Religion understood in this
+limited way may well drift more and more toward Deism and
+Humanitarianism, and further and further from any supernatural
+implications. This is no theory; it is what has happened. It was the
+course of Protestantism from the Reformation to the eighteenth century;
+and, after a partial revival of supernaturalism, is once more the rapid
+course of Protestantism to-day. Protestantism has lost or is fast losing
+any grip on the Trinity or the Incarnation: to it God is more and more a
+barren unity, and Jesus a good man. And this largely because all
+interest in the world of the Redeemed has been abandoned and all
+intercourse with the inhabitants of that world denied.
+
+It is therefore of the last importance that we, infected as we are with
+Protestantism, should stress the revival of the cultus of the saints,
+and should insist upon our right and privilege to pay due honour to the
+Mother of God and ask our share in her prayers. We must do all we can to
+make her known to our brethren. We need her sympathy, her aid,
+her example.
+
+Above all, the example of her spotless purity. It is notorious that one
+of the most marked features of our time is the virulent assault on
+purity. We had long emphasised a certain quality of conduct which we
+called modesty; it was, perhaps, largely a convention, but it was one of
+those protective conventions which are valuable as preservative of
+qualities we prize. It was protective of purity; and however artificial
+it was, in some respects, it existed because we felt that purity was a
+thing too precious to be exposed to unnecessary risk. Well, modesty is
+gone now, whether in conduct or convention. One hears discussed at
+dinner-tables and in the presence of young girls matters which our
+mothers would have blushed to mention at all. The quality of modesty is
+declared Puritanical and hypocritical. "Hypocritical virtue" is a phrase
+one frequently meets; and we seem fast going on to the time when all
+virtue will be regarded as hypocrisy. Customary standards are falling
+all about us, overthrown in the name of personal liberty.
+
+And by liberty, one gathers, is meant freedom to do as one pleases, and
+especially as one sexually pleases. The assault is pushed hardest just
+now against the sanctity of the sacrament of matrimony and the morals of
+that sacrament as they have been developed by the Christian Church.
+Protestantism long ago assented to the overthrow of Christian standards
+in the marriage relation and has aided the sexual anarchy with which we
+are faced to-day. To-day the chief attack is on the purity of marriage
+in the interests, ostensibly, of humanity. A vigorous campaign in favour
+of what is called birth-control is being carried on, and is being
+supported in quarters which are professedly Christian. There are many
+grounds for opposing the movement, social, humanitarian and other. We
+are here concerned with it only as it is an attack on purity. From the
+Christian point of view the marriage relation has for its end the
+procreation of children for the upbuilding of the Kingdom of God. If
+circumstances are such, through reasons of health or economy, that
+children seem undesirable, the remedy is plain, self control. The theory
+that human beings have no more control over their appetites than beasts,
+while it has much to support it in contemporary life, cannot be admitted
+from the point of view of religion. Self-control is always possible, and
+is constantly exercised by many men and women who choose to be guided by
+principle rather than by passion. And in any case the Christian Religion
+can become no partner, not even a silent one, in a conspiracy to murder,
+or in the sort of compromise that turns marriage into a licensed sodomy.
+If indeed the economic status of the modern world is such that the
+average couple cannot support a family, then the Christian Church may
+well aid in the bringing about of an economic revolution; but it can
+hardly aid in the destruction of its own ideals of purity.
+
+What is ultimately at stake in the modern world is the whole conception
+of purity as a quality that is desirable. This attitude has become
+possible among us for one reason because we have consented to the
+suppression of ideals of life which were calculated to sustain it. To
+sustain any moral or spiritual conception there must be maintained
+certain appropriate ideals which, while out of the reach of the average
+man, create and sustain in him an admiration and respect for the ideal
+standard. So the standard of purity presented in Mary and protected by
+the belief in her Immaculate Conception and her assumption, has the
+effect, not only of commending the life of chastity in the sense of the
+vows of religion, but also in the broad sense of the restraint and
+discipline of appetite whether within or without the marriage relation.
+It impresses upon us the truth that purity is not only a human quality
+but a divinely created virtue, the result of the infusion of sanctifying
+grace into the soul. Is it not largely because the young are taught
+(when they are taught anything at all in the premises) that purity is a
+matter of the _will_, that they so often fail? If they were taught the
+nature of the _virtue_ and were led to rely more on the indwelling might
+of the Holy Spirit would they not have better success? And if there were
+held constantly before their eyes the example of the saints and
+especially of Blessed Mary ever-virgin, would not they have an increased
+sense of the value of purity?
+
+The life and example of S. Mary are an inestimable treasure of the
+Church of God, and her removal from the world has only enhanced that
+value. To-day her meaning is clearer to us than ever. The spirit-guided
+mind of the Church has through the centuries been meditating on the
+meaning of her office as Mother of God. The words in which she accepts
+her vocation, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, implying, as they do, an
+active co-operation with the divine purpose, a voluntary association of
+herself with it, imply, too, the perpetual continuance of that
+association, and contain in germ all Catholic teaching in regard to her
+office. She passed from this world silently, and to the world unknown;
+but to the Church of God she ever remains of all human beings the
+greatest spiritual force in the Kingdom of God.
+
+     Weep, living things, of life the Mother dies;
+       The world doth lose the sum of all her bliss,
+     The Queen of earth, the Empress of the skies;
+       By Mary's death mankind an orphan is.
+         Let Nature weep, yea, let all graces moan,
+         Their glory, grace and gifts die all in one.
+
+     It was no death to her, but to her woe,
+       By which her joys began, her griefs did end;
+     Death was to her a friend, to us a foe,
+       Life of whose lives did on her life depend:
+         Not prey of death, but praise to death she was.
+         Whose ugly shape seemed glorious in her face.
+
+     Her face a heaven; two planets were her eyes,
+       Whose gracious light did make our clearest day;
+     But one such heaven there was, and lo, it dies,
+       Death's dark eclipse hath dimmed every, ray:
+         Sun, hide thy light, thy beams untimely shine;
+         True light since we have lost, we crave not thine.
+     Robert Southwell, 1560-1595
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+     THE ASSUMPTION
+
+     Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with
+     me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast
+     given me.
+
+     S. John XVII, 24.
+
+     Hail! Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail! Our life, our
+     sweetness, our hope, all hail. To thee we cry, poor exiled
+     children of Eve. To thee we send up our cries, weeping and
+     mourning in this vale of tears. Turn, then, Most gracious
+     Advocate, thy merciful eyes upon us, and now, after this our
+     exile, show unto us the blessed Fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O
+     gracious, O merciful, O sweet Virgin Mary.
+     Anthem from the breviary. Attributed
+     to Hermann Contractus, 1013-54.
+
+There is nothing more wonderful or beautiful, nothing that brings to us
+a more perfect revelation of our Lord's mind, than this prayer which is
+recorded for us by S. John. There is in it a complete unfolding of that
+sympathy and love which we feel to underlie and explain our Lord's
+mission. As we come to know what God is only when we see Him revealed in
+Jesus; when we enter into our Lord's saying, "He that hath seen me, hath
+seen the Father," so in the revelation of Jesus we understand God's
+attitude toward us. In Jesus the love of God shows itself, not as an
+abstract quality, a philosophical conception, but as a burning,
+passionate eagerness to rescue, an outgoing of God to individual souls.
+There is a deep personal affection displayed in this final scene in the
+Upper Chamber. This is our Lord's real parting from His disciples. He
+will see them again, but under conditions of strain and tragedy, or
+under such changed circumstances that they cannot well enter into the
+old intimacy. But here there is no bar to the expression of love. Here
+He gives them the final evidence of His utter union with them in the
+humility of the foot-washing. Here He marvellously imparts Himself in
+the Breaking of the Bread, wherein is consummated His personal union
+with them. This is the demonstration, if one were needed, that having
+loved His own, He loved them unto the uttermost.
+
+It is inconceivable that passionate love such as this should ever end.
+It is a personal relation which must endure while personality endures.
+It is really the demands of love which more than anything else outside
+revelation are the evidence of immortality. We are certain that the love
+of God which in its fulness has been made known in Christ cannot be
+annihilated by death. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love;
+therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee." Love such as that
+must draw men, not only in this world, but in all worlds. If it can draw
+men out of sin to God, it must create an enduring bond. If it can draw
+God to men, it must be the revelation of a permanent attitude of God to
+man. It is a love that goes out beyond the world, that love of which S.
+Paul says: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor
+angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
+to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
+separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
+
+Our instinctive thought of the Judgment seems to be of it as
+condemnation, or, at best, as acquittal. But why not think of it as
+consummation? Why not think of it as setting the seal of God's approval
+upon our accomplishment of His will and purpose for us? The final
+Judgment is surely that,--the entrance of those who are saved into the
+full joy of their Lord. There once more will our humanity be complete
+because it is the whole man, not the soul only, but the soul clothed
+with the body of the resurrection, once more clothed upon with its
+"house from heaven," which is filled with the joy of the Beatific
+Vision. The thought of the particular judgment may fill us with dread;
+but if we are able to look beyond that to the general Judgment at the
+last day, we shall think only of our perfect bliss in the enjoyment
+of God.
+
+The belief in the Assumption of our Lady is a belief that in her case
+that which is the inheritance of all the saints, that they shall rise
+again with their bodies and be admitted to the Vision of God, has been
+anticipated. In her, that which we all look forward to and dream of for
+ourselves, has been attained. She to-day is in God's presence in her
+entire humanity, clothed with her body of glory.
+
+This teaching, one finds, still causes some searching of hearts among
+us, and is thought to raise many questions difficult to answer. And it
+may be admitted at the outset that it is not a truth taught in Holy
+Scripture but a truth arrived at by the mind of the Church after
+centuries of thought. Unless we can think of the Church as a divine
+organism with a continuous life from the day of Pentecost until now, as
+being the home of the Holy Spirit, and as being continuously guided by
+Him into all the truth; unless we can accept in their full sense our
+Lord's promises that He will be with the Church until the end of the
+world, we shall not find it possible to accept the assumption as a fact,
+but shall decline to believe that, and not only that but, if we are
+consistent, many another belief of the Christian Church. But if we have
+an adequate understanding of what is implied in the continuity of the
+Church as the organ of the present action of the Holy Spirit, we shall
+not find that the fact that a given doctrine is not explicitly contained
+in Holy Scripture is any bar to its acceptance. We shall have learned
+that the revelation of God in Christ, and our relation to God in Christ,
+are facts of such tremendous import and inexhaustible content that it
+would be absurd to suppose that all their meaning had been understood
+and explicitly stated in the first generation of the Christian Church.
+
+We shall not, then, find it any bar to the acceptance of belief in the
+assumption of our Lady that its formal statement came, as is said,
+"late." We simply want to know that when it came it came as the outcome
+of the mature thought of the Church, the Body of Christ, the Fulness of
+Him that filleth all in all.
+
+It is to be noted that the assumption is not a wholly isolated fact.
+There are several cases of assumption in the Old Testament though of a
+slightly different character in that they were assumptions directly from
+life without any interval of death. Such were the assumptions of Enoch
+and Elijah. Moses, too, it has been constantly believed, was assumed
+into heaven,--in his case after death and with his resurrection body. A
+case which is more strangely like what is believed to have taken place
+in the experience of blessed Mary is that closely connected with our
+Lord's resurrection and recorded by S. Matthew. "And the graves were
+opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of
+the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and
+appeared unto many." Although it is not asserted that these were assumed
+into heaven, it seems impossible to avoid the inference; and if "many
+saints which slept" were raised from the dead and assumed into the
+heavenly world, there can be no _a priori_ difficulty in believing the
+same thing to have taken place in the Blessed Mother of God. Nay if such
+a thing as an assumption is at all possible for any human being one
+would naturally conclude from the very relation of S. Mary to our Lord
+that the possibility would be realised in her.
+
+And there were elements in her case which were lacking in all the other
+cases which suggest a certain fitness, if not inevitability, in her
+assumption. She was conceived without sin,--never had any breath of sin
+tainted her. Was it then possible that she should be holden by death?
+Surely, in any case, it was impossible that her holy body should see
+corruption: we cannot think of the dissolution of that body which had no
+part in sin. If ever an assumption were possible, here it was
+inevitable--so the thought of the Church shaped itself. The compelling
+motives of the belief were theological rather than historical. The germ
+out of consideration of which was evolved the belief in the assumption
+was the relation of Blessed Mary to her Son. That unique relation might
+be expected to carry with it unique consequences, and among these the
+consequence that the body which was bound by no sin should be reunited
+to the soul which had needed no purgation, but had passed at once to the
+presence of its God and its Redeemer who was likewise Son. It is well to
+stress the fact that the assumption is not only a fact but a doctrine.
+Fact, of course, it was or there could be no doctrine; but the truth of
+the fact is certified by the growing conviction in the mind of the
+Church of the inevitability of the doctrine.
+
+What is implied in the word assumption is that the body of the Mother of
+our Lord was after her death and burial raised to heaven by the power of
+God. It differed therefore essentially from the ascension of our Lord
+which was accomplished by His Own inherent power. When this assumption
+took place we have no means of knowing. We do not certainly know where
+S. Mary lived, nor where and when she died. Jerusalem and Ephesus
+contend in tradition for the privilege of having sheltered her last days
+and reverently carried her body to its burial. There is no way of
+deciding between these two claims, although the fact that our Lord
+confided His Mother to S. John throws some little weight into the scale
+of Ephesus. And yet S. Mary may have died before S. John settled in
+Ephesus. We can only say that history gives us no reliable information
+on the matter.
+
+In the silence of Scripture we naturally turn to the other writings of
+the early Church for light and guidance on the matter; but there, too,
+there is little help. There is, to be sure, a group of Apocryphal
+writings which have a good deal to say about the life of S. Mary, where
+the Scriptures and tradition are silent. Among other things these
+Apocryphal writings have a good deal to say, and some very beautiful
+stories to tell, of S. Mary's last days, of her burial and assumption.
+Are we to think of these stories as containing any grain of truth? If
+they do, it is now impossible to sift it from the chaff. These stories
+are generally rejected as a basis of knowledge. And there has been, and
+still is in some quarters, a conviction that the belief of the Church in
+the assumption rests on nothing better or more stable than these
+Apocryphal stories; that the authors of these Apocrypha were inventing
+their stories out of nothing, and that in an uncritical age their
+legends came to be taken as history. Thus was a belief in the assumption
+foisted upon the Church, having no slightest ground in fact. The human
+tendency to fill in the silences of Scripture has resulted in many
+legends, that of the assumption among them.
+
+There is a good deal to be said for this position, yet I do not feel
+that it is convincing. That the incidents of the life of the Blessed
+Virgin Mary as narrated in the Apocrypha are historical, of course
+cannot be maintained. But neither is it at all probable that such
+stories grew up out of nothing: indeed, their existence implies that
+there were certain facts widely accepted in the Christian community that
+served as their starting point. While the Apocryphal stories of the life
+of our Lady cannot be accepted as history, they do presuppose certain
+beliefs as universally, or at least widely, held. Thus one may reject
+all the details of the story of the death and burial and assumption of
+our Lady, and yet feel that the story is evidence of a belief in the
+assumption among those for whom the story was written. What was new to
+them was not the fact of the assumption but the detailed incidents with
+which the Apocrypha embroidered it. I feel no doubt that these
+Apocryphal stories are not the source of belief in the assumption, but
+are our earliest witness to the existence of the belief. They actually
+presuppose its existence in the Church as the necessary condition of
+their own existence.
+
+Another fact that tells in the same direction is the absence of any
+physical relics of our Lady. At a time when great stress was laid upon
+relics, and there was little scruple in inventing them, if the authentic
+ones were not forthcoming, there were no relics produced which were
+alleged to be the physical relics of S. Mary. Why was this? Surely,
+unless there were some inhibiting circumstances, relics, real or forged,
+would have been produced. The only probable explanation is that the
+inhibiting circumstance was the established belief in the assumption. If
+the assumption were a fact, there would be no physical relics; if it
+were an established belief, there would be no fraud possible. Add to
+this that various relics of our Lady were alleged to exist; but they
+were not relics of her body.
+
+Again: by the seventh century the celebration of the feast of the
+assumption had spread throughout the whole church. This universal
+establishment of the feast implies a preceding history of considerable
+length, going well back into the past. The feast was kept in many
+places, and under a variety of names which seem to imply, not mere
+copying, but independent development. It is alleged, to be sure, that
+the names by which the feast was called do not imply belief in the
+assumption. The feast is called "the Sleeping," "the Repose," "the
+Passage" of the Virgin, as well as by the Western title, the assumption.
+But a study of the liturgies and of the sermons preached in honour of
+the feast will convince any one that the underlying tradition was that
+of our Lady's assumption.
+
+These quite separate and yet converging lines of evidence seem to me to
+show convincingly what was the wide-spread belief of the early Christian
+community as to the destiny of Blessed Mary. They imply a tradition
+going well back into the past, so far back, that in view of the
+theological expression of the mind of the Church they may well be
+regarded as apostolic. Our personal belief in the assumption will still
+rest primarily upon its theological expression in the mind of the
+Church, but having attained certainty as to the doctrine, which is of
+course at the same time certainty as to the fact, we shall have no
+difficulty in finding in the above sketched lines of historical
+development the evidence of the primitive character of the belief.
+
+It may not be amiss to give a few characteristic quotations as
+indicating the mind of the Church in this matter.
+
+S. Modestus, patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 614), preaching on the Falling
+Asleep of the Mother of God, said:--
+
+"The Lord of heaven and earth has to-day consecrated the human
+tabernacle in which He Himself, according to the flesh, was received,
+that it may enjoy with Him forever the gift of incorruptibility. O
+blessed sleep of the glorious, ever-virgin Mother of God, who has not
+known the corruption of the grave; for Christ, our all-powerful Saviour,
+has kept intact that flesh which gave Him His flesh.... Hail, most holy
+Mother of God: Jesus has willed to have you in His Kingdom with your
+body clothed in incorruptibility.... The most glorious Mother of Christ
+our Lord and Saviour, Who gave life and immortality, is raised by her
+Son, and forever possesses incorruptibility with Him Who called her from
+the tomb."
+
+S. Andrew, Archbishop of Crete (d. 676), also preaching on the Falling
+Asleep of the Mother of God, says:--"It is a wholly new sight, and one
+that surpasses the reason, that of a woman purer than the heavens
+entering heaven with her body. As she was born without corruption, so
+after death her flesh is restored to life."
+
+In one of his sermons at the same feast, S. Germanus of Constantinople
+(d. 733), speaks thus:--"It was impossible that the tomb should hold the
+body which had been the living temple of the Son of God. How should your
+flesh be reduced to dust and ashes who, by the Son born of you, have
+delivered the human race from the corruption of death?"
+
+Preaching on the same festival, S. John Damascene (d. 760) said:--"Your
+flesh has known no corruption. Your immaculate body, which knew no
+stain, was not left in the tomb. You remained virgin in your
+child-bearing; and in your death your body was not reduced to dust but
+has been placed in a better and celestial state."
+
+There are one or two practical consequences of this doctrine concerning
+which, perhaps, it may be well to say a few words. The first is as the
+result of such devotions to our Lady as are implied in, or have in fact
+followed, a belief in her assumption. It is objected to them that even
+granting the truth of the fact of the assumption, still the stress laid
+on the fact and the devotions to our Lady which are held to be
+appropriate to it, are unhealthy in their nature, and do, in fact, tend
+to obscure the worship of our Lord: that where devotions to our Lady are
+fostered, there devotion to our Lord declines. That therefore instead of
+trying to advance the cultus of our Lady, we should do much better to
+hold to the sanity and reserve which has characterised the Anglican
+Church since the Reformation.
+
+These and the like arguments seem to me to hang in the air and to be
+quite divorced from facts. They imply a state of things which does not
+exist. The assertion that where devotion to our Lady prevails devotion
+to our Lord declines is as far as possible from being true. Where to-day
+is the Deity of our Lord defended most ardently and devotion to Him most
+wide spread? Is it in Churches where devotion to our Lady is suppressed?
+On the contrary, do you not know with absolute certainty, that in any
+church where you find devotion to our Lady encouraged, there will you
+find the Deity of our Lord maintained? Has the Anglican "sanity and
+reserve" in regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary saved the Anglican Church
+from the inroads of unitarianism and rationalism? Is it not precisely in
+those circles where the very virginity of our Lady is denied that the
+divinity of our Lord is denied also? No, devotion to Mary is far indeed
+from detracting from the honour due to Mary's Son.
+
+And we cannot insist too much or too often that the doctrines of the
+Christian Church form a closely woven system such that none, even the
+seemingly least important, can be denied without injuring the whole. No
+article of Christian belief expresses an independent truth, but always a
+truth depending upon other truths, and in its turn lending others its
+support. To deny any truth that the mind of the Church has expressed is
+equivalent to the removal of an organ from a living body.
+
+And to-day we feel more than ever the need of the doctrine of the
+assumption. One of the bitterest attacks on the Christian Faith which is
+being made to-day, emanating principally from within the Christian
+community, and even from within the Christian ministry, is that which is
+being made on the truth of the resurrection of the body, whether the
+resurrection of our Lord, or our own resurrection. In place of the
+Christian doctrine believed and preached from the beginning, we are
+asked to lapse back into heathenism and a doctrine of immortality. Not
+many seem to realise the vastness of the difference that is made in our
+outlook to the future by a belief in the resurrection of the body as
+distinguished from immortality. But the character of the religions
+resulting from these two contrary beliefs is absolutely different. It
+needs only to study them as they actually exist to be convinced of
+this fact.
+
+And it is precisely the doctrine of the assumption of our Lady which
+contributes strong support to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection
+of the body. It teaches us that in her case the vision and hope of
+mankind at large has been anticipated and accomplished. The resurrection
+of our Lord is found, in fact, to extend (if one may so express it) to
+the members of His mystical body; and the promise which is fulfilled in
+Blessed Mary, is that hope of a joyful resurrection which is thus
+confirmed to us all. In its stress upon the assumption the mind of the
+Christian Church has not been led astray, has not been betrayed into
+fostering superstitions, but has been led by the Spirit of Christ which
+He promised it to the development of a truth not only revealing the
+present place of His glorious Mother in the Kingdom of her Son, but
+encouraging and heartening us in our following of the heavenly way.
+
+     Whoe is shee that assends so high
+       Next the heavenlye Kinge,
+     Round about whome angells flie
+       And her prayses singe?
+
+     Who is shee that adorned with light,
+       Makes the sunne her robe,
+     At whose feete the queene of night
+       Layes her changing globe?
+
+     To that crowne direct thine eye,
+       Which her heade attyres;
+     There thou mayst her name discrie
+       Wrytt in starry fires.
+
+     This is shee, in whose pure wombe
+       Heaven's Prince remained;
+     Therefore, in noe earthly tombe
+       Cann shee be contayned.
+
+     Heaven shee was, which held that fire
+       Whence the world tooke light,
+     And to heaven doth now aspire,
+       Fflames with fflames to unite.
+
+     Shee that did so clearly shyne
+       When our day begunne,
+     See, howe bright her beames decline
+       Nowe shee sytts with the sunne.
+
+     Sir John Beaumont, 1582-1628.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE CORONATION
+
+
+     And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed
+     with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head
+     a crown of twelve stars.
+
+     Rev. XII, I.
+
+     To-day the Angel Gabriel brought the palm and the crown to
+     the triumphant Virgin. To-day he introduced to the Lord of
+     all, her, who was the Temple of the Most High, and the
+     dwelling of the Holy Spirit.
+
+     FOR THE ASSUMPTION. ARMENIAN.
+
+The heaven which S. John the Evangelist shows us is the continuation of
+the earthly Church. As we read his pages we feel that entrance there
+would be a real home-coming for the earnest Christian. We are familiar
+enough with presentations of heaven which seem to us to be so detached
+from Christian reality as to lack any human appeal. We think of
+philosophic presentations of the future with entire indifference. It is
+possible, we say, that they may be true; but they are utterly
+uninteresting. It is not so in the visions of S. John. Here we have a
+heaven which is humanly interesting because it is continous with the
+present life, and its interests are the interests that it has been the
+object of our religion to foster. The qualities of character which the
+Christian religion has urged upon our attention are presented as finding
+their clear field of development in the world to come. There, too, are
+unveiled the objects of our adoration, the ever-blessed Three who yet
+are but one. Love which has striven for development under the conditions
+and limitations of our earthly life, which has tried to see God and has
+gone out to seek Him in the dimness of revelation, now sees and is
+satisfied. Whom now we see in a mirror, enigmatically, we shall then see
+face to face.
+
+And it is a heaven thronged with saints, with men and women who have
+gone through the same experiences as those to which we are subjected,
+and have come forth purified and triumphant. We sometimes in
+discouragement think of life as continuous struggle. It is perhaps
+natural and inevitable that we should thus concentrate attention upon
+the present, but if we lift our eyes so as to clear them from the mists
+of the present we see that it is far from a hopeless struggle, but
+rather the necessary discipline from which we emerge triumphant. Those
+saints whom we see rejoicing about the throne of God, those who go out
+to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, passed through the struggle
+of persecution to their triumphant attainment of the Vision. It is our
+eternal temptation to expect to triumph here; but it is only in a very
+limited sense that this can be true: our triumph is indeed here, but the
+enjoyment of it and all that is implied in it is elsewhere. Here even
+our most complete achievement is conditioned by the limitations of
+earth: there the limitations are done away and life expands in
+perfectness.
+
+So we look eagerly through the door that is opened in heaven as those
+who are looking into their future home. That is what we all are striving
+for--presumably. We are consciously selecting out of life precisely
+those elements, are centering on those interests, which have eternal
+significance and are imperishable values. As we travel along the Pilgrim
+Way it is with hearts uplifted and stimulated by the Vision of the end.
+We advance as seeing Him Who is invisible. We live by hope, knowing that
+we shall attain no enduring satisfaction until we pass through the gates
+into the City, and mingle with the throng of worshippers who sing the
+song of Moses and of the Lamb. Therefore our life is always
+forward-looking and optimistic: because we are sure of the end, we wait
+for it with patience and endurance, thankful for all the experience of
+the Way. As the years flow by we do not look back on them with regret as
+the unrenewable experiences of a vanished youth, but we think of them as
+the bearers of experiences by which we have profited, and of goods which
+we have safely garnered, waiting the time when their stored values can
+be fully realised.
+
+Over all the saints whom the Church has seen rejoicing in the heavenly
+life, rises the form of Mary, Mother of God. S. John's vision of the
+"great sign in heaven" in its primary meaning has, no doubt, reference
+to the Church itself; but the form of its symbolism would be impossible
+if there were not a secondary reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It
+is the thought of her and of her office as Mother of the Redeemer that
+has determined the form of the vision. The details are too clear to
+permit of doubt, and such has been the constant mind of Catholic
+interpreters.
+
+And how else than as Queen of the heavenly host should we expect her to
+be represented? What does the Church teaching as to sanctity imply?
+
+It implies the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision. The normal Christian
+life begins in the sacramental act by which the regenerate child is made
+one with God, being made a partaker of the divine nature, and develops
+through sacramental experience and constant response to the will of God
+to that spiritual capacity which is the medium of the Beatific Vision
+and which we call sanctity or purity. "The pure in heart shall see God."
+
+But the teaching of the Church also implies that there is a marvellous
+diversity in the sanctity of the members of the Body of Christ. Each
+saint retains his personal characteristics, and his sanctity is not the
+refashioning of his character in a common mould but the perfecting of
+his character on its own lines. We sometimes hear it said that the
+Christian conception of heaven is monotonous, but that is very far from
+being the fact. It is only those conceptions of heaven which have
+excluded the communion of saints, and have thought of heaven as the
+solitary communion of the soul with God; which have in other words,
+excluded the notion of human society from heaven, which have appeared
+monotonous. As we read any series of the lives of the saints, and
+realise that it is these men and women and multitudes of others like
+them, that make up the society of heaven, we get rid of any other notion
+than that of endless diversity. And thus studying individual saints we
+come to understand that not only is the sanctity of them diverse in
+experience but different in degree. All men have not the same capacity
+for sanctity, we infer; all cannot develop to the same level of
+attainment. We may perhaps say that while all partake of God, all do not
+reflect God in the same way or in the same degree.
+
+But if there be a hierachy of saints it is impossible that we should
+think of any other at its head than Blessed Mary. Whatsoever diversity
+there may be in the attainments of the saints, there is one saint who
+is pre-eminent in all things, who,--because in her case there has never
+been any moment in which she was separate from God, when the bond of
+union was so much as strained,--is the completest embodiment of the
+grace of God. That is, I think, essentially what is meant by the
+Coronation of our Lady,--that her supremacy in sanctity makes her the
+head of the heirarchy of saints, that in her the possibilities of the
+life of union have been developed to the highest degree through her
+unstained purity and unfailing response to the divine will.
+
+It is of the last importance, if the Catholic conceptions are to be
+influential in our lives, that we should gain such a hold on the life of
+heaven, the life that the saints, with Saint Mary at their head, are
+leading to-day, as shall make it a present reality to us, not a picture
+in some sort of dreamland. Our lives are shaped by their ideals; and
+although we may never attain to our ideals here, yet we shall never
+attain them anywhere unless we shape them here. Heaven must be grasped
+as the issue of a certain sort of life, as the necessary consequence of
+the application of Christian principles to daily living. It is wholly
+bad to conceive it as a vague future into which we shall be ushered at
+death, if only we are "good"; it must be understood as a state we win to
+by the use of the means placed at our disposal for the purpose. Those
+attain to heaven in the future who are interested in heaven in
+the present.
+
+And a study of the means is wholly possible for us because we have at
+hand in great detail the lives of those whom the Church, by raising
+them to her altars, has guaranteed to us as having achieved sanctity and
+been admitted to the Beatific Vision. They achieved sanctity here--that
+is, in the past. They achieved it under an infinite variety of
+circumstanies,--that is the encouragement. They now enjoy the fruits of
+it in the world of heaven,--that is the promise.
+
+And nowhere can we better turn for the purpose of our study than to the
+life of Blessed Mary. There is the consummate flower of sainthood; and
+therefore it it best there that we can study its meaning. And for two
+principal reasons can we best study it there. In the first place because
+of its completeness: nowhere else are all the elements of sanctity so
+well developed. And in the second place because of the riches of the
+material for understanding Blessed Mary that is placed at our disposal
+by the labour of many generations of saints and doctors. All that devout
+meditation can do to understand the sanctity of Blessed Mary has
+been done.
+
+Our limit is necessarily reduced, our selection partial and our
+accomplishment fragmentary. We cannot however miss our way if we follow
+in the steps of Holy Revelation in making love the central quality. S.
+Mary's greatness is ultimately the greatness of her love. It began as a
+love of the will of God. She appears as utterly selfless, as having
+devoted herself to the will of God as He shall manifest that will. And
+therefore when the time comes she makes the great sacrifice that is
+asked of her without hesitation and without effort: "Behold, the
+handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." And all her
+life henceforth is loving response to what is unfolded as the content of
+the accepted revelation. That is a noteworthy thing that I fancy is
+often missed. It is not uncommon for one to accept a vocation as a
+whole, and then subsequently, as it unfolds, shrink from this or that
+detail of it. But in the case of S. Mary the acceptance of the vocation
+meant the acceptance of _God_, and there was no holding back from the
+result of that.
+
+That must be our guide in the pursuit of the heavenly life: we must
+understand that we are not called to accept this or that belief or
+practice, but are called to accept God--God speaking to us through the
+revelation He has entrusted to His Catholic Church. We do not, when we
+make our act of acceptance, know all or very much of what God is going
+to mean; but whatever God turns out to mean in experience, there can be
+no holding back. The note of a true acceptance of vocation is precisely
+this limitless surrender, a surrender without reservation. S. Mary could
+by no means understand what was to be asked of her: she only knew it was
+God Who asked it. She could not foresee the years of the ministry when
+her Son would not have where to lay His head, followed by the anxiety of
+Holy Week and the watch by the Cross on Good Friday; but as these things
+came she could understand them as involved in her vocation, in her
+acceptance of God.
+
+And cannot we get the same attitude toward life? In the acceptance of
+the Christian Religion what we have accepted is God. We have
+acknowledged the supremacy of a will outside ourselves. We say, "we are
+not our own, we are bought with a price," the price of the Precious
+Blood. But if our acceptance is a reality and not a theory it will turn
+out to involve much more than we imagined at the first. The frequent and
+pathetic failures of those who have made profession of Christianity is
+largely accounted for by this,--that the demands of the Christian
+Religion on life turn out to be more searching and far-reaching than was
+supposed would be the case. Religion turns out to be not one interest to
+be adjusted to the other interests of life, but to be a demand that all
+life and action shall be controlled by supernatural motive. Those who
+would willingly give a part, find it impossible to surrender the whole.
+The world is full of Young Rulers who are willing "to contribute
+liberally to the support of religion," but shrink from the demand that
+they "sell all." "I seek not yours, but you," S. Paul writes to the
+Corinthians; and that is also the seeking of God--"Not yours but you."
+And because the limit of our willingness is reached in contribution and
+does not extend to sacrifice, we fail.
+
+But Blessed Mary did not fail because there was no limit to her
+willingness to sacrifice. Her will to sacrifice had the same limitless
+quality as her love; and because of the limitless quality of her
+self-giving her growth in the life of union was unlimited, or limited
+only by the limitations of creaturehood. When therefore we think of her
+to-day as Queen of Saints we are not thinking of an arbitrarily
+conferred position; we are thinking of a position which comes to her
+because she is what she is. She through the unstinting sacrifice of her
+love came into more intimate relations with God than is possible for any
+other, and through that relation came to know more of the mind of God
+than any other. The power of her intercession is the power of her
+understanding, of her sympathy with the thoughts of God. When we come to
+her with our request for her intercession we feel that we are sure of
+her sympathy and her understanding. Her experience of human life, we
+think, was not very wide: can she whose life was passed under such
+narrow conditions understand the complex needs of the modern man or
+woman? It is true that her actual experience of human life was not very
+wide; but her experience of God is very wide indeed, and she is able to
+understand our experience better than we can understand it ourselves
+because of her understanding of God's mind and will. It is seeing life
+through God's eyes that reveals the truth about it.
+
+Hence the blunder and the tragedy of those who seek to know life by
+experience, when they mean experience gained by participation in life's
+evil as well as in its good. They succeed in soiling life rather than in
+understanding it; for participation in evil effectually prevents our
+understandings of good. It is on the face of things that the farther a
+man goes into sin, the less is righteousness intelligible to him. Our
+Lord's rule "He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine" is not
+an arbitrary maxim, but embodies the deepest psychological truth. There
+is but one path to full understanding, and that is the path of
+sympathy. And therefore are we sure of our Lady's understanding and
+come to her unhesitatingly for the help of her intercession. She
+understands our case because she sees it revealed in the mind of
+her Son.
+
+It cannot be questioned that much of the weakness of religion to-day is
+due to the fact that Christian ideals make but faint appeal. By many
+they are frankly repudiated as impossible of attainment in a world such
+as this, and as weakening to human character so far as they are
+attained. Christians, of course, are unable to take this point of view,
+and, therefore, they treat the ideals with respect, but continue to
+govern their lives by motives which are not harmonious with them. It is
+tacitly assumed on all sides that a consistent pursuit of Christians
+ideals will assure failure in social or business life. This, of course,
+is tantamount to a confession that social and business life are
+unchristian, and raises the same sort of grave questions as to the duty
+of a Christian as were raised in the early days of the Church under the
+heathen empire. With that, however, we may not concern ourselves now. We
+are merely concerned to note and to emphasise the fact that, whatever
+may be true of society or business, our religion is lamentably
+ineffective because of its failure to emphasise the ideals of sanctity
+and to present those ideals as the ideals of _all_ Christian life, not
+as the ideals of a select few. While religious teachers asquiesce in the
+present set of compromises as an adequate expression of Christian
+character, we may expect a decline in the Church as a spiritual force,
+whatever may be true of it as a social force.
+
+If Christian ideals are to resume their appeal to the membership of the
+Church as a whole it is requisite that they be studied by the clergy and
+intelligently presented. But little is to be hoped in this direction so
+long as our theological training ignores religion and concentrates its
+attention on something that it takes for scholarship. The raw material
+that is sent by our parishes to the seminaries to be educated for Holy
+Orders is commonly turned out of the seminary with less religion that it
+entered. The outlook for the presentation of Christian ideals is not
+hopeful. We seem destined to drift on indefinitely in our habitual
+compromises.
+
+All the more is it necessary that we should lift our eyes to the heavens
+where humility and meekness, where sacrifice and obdience, are, in the
+person of Blessed Mary, crowned as the most perfect expression of
+sanctity, as the qualities that raise man nearest God. And what consoles
+us in the present depressing circumstances of the Church is that we are
+permitted to look through S. John's eyes into the world of heaven, and
+there see "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations,
+and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, before the throne and before the
+Lamb, clothed with white robes, and with palms in their hands." Somehow,
+we feel, under whatever distressing and discouraging circumstances, the
+work of God in the regeneration of souls goes on. No doubt it is a work
+that is largely hidden from our eyes, from those eyes which are blinded
+to the reality of spiritual things. Humility and meekness are the
+qualities of a hidden life; they do not flaunt themselves before men's
+eyes. But in their silence and obscurity great souls are growing up,
+growing to the spiritual status of the saints of God. In our estimate of
+values we shall do well to lay to heart the utterances of WISDOM: "Then
+shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such
+as have afflicted him, and made no account of his labours. When they see
+it, they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at
+the strangeness of his salvation, so far beyond all that they had looked
+for. And they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say
+among themselves, This is he, whom we had sometime in derision, and a
+proverb of reproach: we fools accounted his life madness, and his end
+without honour: how is he numbered among the children of God, and his
+lot is among the saints! Verily we went astray from the way of truth,
+and the light of righteousness shined not unto us, and the sun of
+righteousness rose not upon us."
+
+When we have attained to the point of view as to life's value which is
+expressed in the ideal of sanctity then we shall know how to estimate at
+their true worth the constant criticisms which are directed against
+those ideals and those who seek them. The saints, we are told, were no
+doubt estimable men and women, but they were weak, and for the purpose
+of the world's work, useless. But is this true, to keep to a specific
+example, of the Blessed Virgin Mary? What is there about her life that
+suggests weakness? And what can be the meaning of calling such a life
+useless to the world? Take but one aspect of it. It has for centuries
+furnished an ideal of womanhood. It is contended that the women who
+have taken Blessed Mary for their ideal have shown themselves weak and
+useless?--that those women are stronger in character and of more value
+to the world who have thrown over the ideals of sanctity and built their
+lives upon the social ideals prevalent at present? I no not care to
+attempt any characterisation of the feminine ideal which is commended to
+us at present; it is sufficient to say that it is difficult to
+understand how it can be considered socially valuable; still less how it
+can be considered an advance on the character qualities which
+distinguish the Christian ideal of sanctity.
+
+In the midst of the present confusion of values it is for us of vast
+significance that we have in this matter the mind of Christ. There need
+be no confusion in our minds. What Christ commended has proved to be
+practical of accomplishment, the evidence of which is the great
+multitude which no man can number who to-day sing about the throne of
+God and of the Lamb. What God approves is evidenced by the Coronation of
+the Blessed Mother over all the multitudes of the saints of God. Blessed
+Mary is the embodied thought of God for humanity, the realised ideal of
+a human life. He that is mighty hath magnified her, till she shines
+resplendent in spiritual qualities over all the hosts of the elect.
+
+But though so highly exalted she is not thereby removed to an
+inaccessible distance. She who is privileged to bear the incredible
+title, MOTHER OF GOD is our Mother as well. Upon the Cross our Lord
+said to us in the person of His beloved Disciple, "Behold thy Mother";
+and it is a mother's love that we find flowing to us from the heart of
+Mary. Have we been cold to her, and inappreciative of her love? Have we
+felt that we have no need of her in the conduct of our lives? If so,
+what we have been doing is to isolate ourselves from the divinely
+provided fount of human sympathy which ever flows from our star-crowned
+Mother. Is life so rich in sources of help and sympathy and love that we
+can afford to over-pass the eagerness of God's saints to help us, the
+willingness of the very Mother of God to intercede? Is not the life that
+shuts out from itself the society of heaven pitifully impoverished?
+
+Too many of us are like the man who owned the field wherein was the
+buried treasure. Limitless aid is at our disposal, but on condition that
+we want it and will seek it. Let us try to understand what it is to have
+at our disposal the love and sympathy of the saints of God,--that they
+are not remote inhabitants of a distant sphere whose present interests
+have led to forgetfulness of what they once were, whose present joy is
+so intense as to make them self-centred, but that their very attainment
+of perfection implies the perfection of their love and the completeness
+of their sympathy. The perfection of God's saints and their attainment
+of the end of their course in the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision, has
+but made them more sensitive of our needs and more eager to help.
+
+The spiritual wisdom and power of the Mother of God is at our disposal
+to-day. To the feebleness of our prayers may be added the spiritual
+wisdom and strength of her intercession. He Whose will it is that we
+should pray for one another, wills too that the prayers of His Blessed
+Mother should be at the disposal of all who call upon her. Let us take
+the fact of the intercession of the Queen of Saints seriously as a
+source of power ever open to us.
+
+Thou who art God's Mother and also ours, thou who lookst constantly into
+the Face of the Son, thou who art the fullest manifestation of the love
+of the Blessed Trinity, thou Mary, our Mother, pray for us now and in
+the hour of our death.
+
+     All hail, O Virgin crowned with stars
+       and moon under thy feet,
+     Obtain us pardon of our sins
+       of Christ, our Saviour sweet;
+     For though thou art Mother of any God,
+       yet thy humility
+     Disdaineth not this simple wretch
+       that flies for help to thee.
+     Thou knowest thou art more dear to me
+       than any can express,
+     And that I do congratulate
+       With joy thy happiness.
+     Thou who art the Queen of Heaven and Earth
+       thy helping hand me lend,
+     That I may love and praise my God
+       and have a happy end.
+     And though my sins me terrify,
+       yet hoping still in thee,
+     I find my soul refreshèd much
+       when to thee I do flee;
+     For thou most willingly to God
+       petitions dost present,
+     And dost obtain much grace for us
+       in this our banishment.
+     The honour and the glorious praise
+       by all be given to thee,
+     Which Jesus thy beloved Son,
+       ordained eternally;
+     For thee whom he exalts in heaven
+       above the angels all,
+     And whom we find a Patroness
+       when unto thee we call.
+     O Mater Dei, memento mei. Amen.
+
+     Dame Gertrude More, O.S.B.
+     Ob. 1633.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR LADY SAINT MARY***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 12624-8.txt or 12624-8.zip *******
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+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Our Lady Saint Mary, by J. G. H. Barry</title>
+<style type="text/css">
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Our Lady Saint Mary, by J. G. H. Barry</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Our Lady Saint Mary</p>
+<p>Author: J. G. H. Barry</p>
+<p>Release Date: June 15, 2004  [eBook #12624]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: iso-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR LADY SAINT MARY***</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<center><h3>E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner,<br>
+            and the Project Gutenbereg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>Our Lady Saint Mary</h1>
+<br>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h3>J.G.H. BARRY, D.D.</h3>
+<center>Would that it might happen to me that I should<br>
+be called a fool by the unbelieving, in that I<br>
+have believed such things as these.<br>
+<br>
+--<i>Origen</i>.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h5>1922</h5>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<center>TO THE MEMBERS<br>
+OF THE<br>
+LEAGUE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN<br>
+THIS VOLUME IS HOPEFULLY<br>
+DEDICATED</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+<br>
+<p>The two papers in Part I have been published in the American
+Church Magazine. Of Part II Chapter 1 has been published
+separately; Chapters 2, 4, 7, 9 and 12 have been published in the
+Holy Cross Magazine. The rest of the volume is here published for
+the first time.</p>
+<p>I would emphasise the fact that the contents of Part II is a
+series of sermons which were prepared as such, and were preached in
+the Church of S. Mary the Virgin, New York City, for the most part
+in the Winter of 1921-22. In preparing them for publication in this
+volume no attempt has been made to alter their sermon character. It
+is not a theological treatise on the Blessed Virgin that I have
+attempted, but a devotional presentation of her life.</p>
+<p>I have added to the text as originally prepared certain prayers
+and poems. The object of the selection of the prayers, almost
+exclusively from the Liturgies of the Catholic Church, is to
+illustrate the prevalence of the address of devotion to our Lady
+throughout Christendom. The poems are selected with much the same
+thought, and have been mostly gathered from mediaeval sources, and
+so far as possible, from British. I have no special knowledge of
+devotional poetry, but have selected such poems as I have from time
+to time copied into my note books. This fact has made it impossible
+for me to give credit for them to the extent that I should have
+liked. I trust that any one who is entitled to credit will accept
+this apology.</p>
+<p>Much of the difficulty felt by Anglicans at expressions commonly
+found in prayers and hymns addressed to our Lady is due to
+prevalent unfamiliarity with the devotional language of the
+Catholic Church throughout the ages. Those whose background of
+thought is the theology of the Catholic Church, not in any one
+period, but in the whole extent of its life, will have no
+difficulty in such language because the limitations which are
+implied in it will be clear to them. To others, I can only say that
+it is fair to assume that the great saints of the Church of God in
+all times and in all places did not habitually use language which
+was idolatrous, and our limitations are much more likely to be at
+fault than their meaning. It is not true in any degree that the
+teaching of Catholics as to the place of the Virgin intrudes on the
+prerogative of our Lord. It is, as matter of fact Catholics, and
+not those who oppose the Catholic Religion who are upholding that
+prerogative. This has been excellently expressed by a modern French
+theologian. "We are established in the friendship of God, in the
+divine adoption, in the heavenly inheritance, solely in virtue of
+the covenent by which our souls are bound to the Son of God, and by
+which the goods, the merits, and the rights of the Son of God are
+communicated to our souls, as in the natural order, the property of
+the husband becomes the property of the wife. Surely, one can say
+nothing more than we say here, and assuredly the sects opposed to
+the Church have never said more: indeed, they are far to-day from
+saying so much to maintain intact this truth, that Jesus Christ is
+our sole Redeemer, and to give that truth the entire extent that
+belongs to it."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<br>
+<h3><a href="#PART_ONE">PART I.</a></h3>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I_1">I. OF LOYALTY.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II_1">II. THE MEANING OF WORSHIP.</a></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3><a href="#PART_TWO">PART II.</a></h3>
+<center><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I. MARY OF NAZARETH.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">II. THE ANNUNCIATION I.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">III. THE ANNUNCIATION II.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV. THE VISITATION I.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">V. THE VISITATION II.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI. S. JOSEPH.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII. THE NATIVITY.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII. THE MAGI.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX. THE PRESENTATION.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">X. EGYPT.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI. NAZARETH.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII. THE TEMPLE.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII. CANA I.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV. CANA II.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV. WHO IS MY MOTHER?</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI. HOLY WEEK I.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII. HOLY WEEK II.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII. THE CRUCIFIXION.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX. THE DESCENT AND BURIAL.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX. THE RESURRECTION.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI. THE FORTY DAYS.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII. THE ASCENSION.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII. THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY
+SPIRIT.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV. THE HOME OF S. JOHN.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV. THE ASSUMPTION.</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI. THE CORONATION.</a></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="PART_ONE"></a>PART ONE</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I_1"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>OF LOYALTY</h3>
+<blockquote>O God, who causes us to rejoice in recalling the joys
+of the conception, the nativity, the annunciation, the visitation,
+the purification, and the assumption of the blessed and glorious
+virgin Mary; grant to us so worthily to devote ourselves to her
+praise and service, that we may be conscious of her presence and
+assistance in all our necessities and straits, and especially in
+the hour of death, and that after death we may be found worthy,
+through her and in her, to rejoice in heaven with thee. Through
+&amp;c.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">SARUM MISSAL.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he dream of the Middle Ages was of one Christian society of
+which the Church should be the embodiment of the spiritual, and the
+State of the temporal interests. As there is one humanity united to
+God in Incarnate God, all its interests should be capable of
+unification in institutions which should be based on that which is
+essential in humanity, and not on that which is accidental: men
+should be united because they are human and Christian, and not
+divided because of diversity of blood or color or language. The
+dream proved impossible of realization, and the struggle for human
+unity went to pieces on the rocks of the rapidly developing
+nationalism of the later Middle Ages.</p>
+<p>The Reformation was the triumph of nationalism and the defeat of
+Catholic idealism. It resulted in a shattered Christendom in which
+the interests of local and homogeneous groups became supreme over
+the purely human interests. In state and Church alike patriotism
+has tended more and more to become dominant over the interests that
+are supralocal and universal. The last few years have seen an
+intensification of localism. We have seen bitter scorn heaped on
+the few who have labored for internationalism in thought and
+feeling. We have seen the attempt of labor at internationalism
+utterly break down under the pressure of patriotic motive. We are
+finding that the same concentration on immediate and local
+interests is an insuperable bar to the realization of an ideal of
+internationalism which would effectively deal with questions
+arising between nations and put an end to war. The Church failed to
+establish a spiritual internationalism; the indications are that it
+will be long before humanitarian idealists will be able to effect a
+union among nations still infected with patriotic motive, such as
+shall bring about a subordination of local and immediate interests
+to the interests of humanity as such. That the general interests
+are also in the end the local interests is still far from the
+vision of the patriot.</p>
+<p>What the growth of nationalities with its consequent rise of
+international jealousies and hostilities has effected in civil
+society, has been brought about in matters spiritual by the
+divisions of Christendom. The various bodies into which Christendom
+has been split up are infected with the same sort of localism as
+infects the state. They dwell with pride upon their own
+peculiarities, and treat with suspicion if not with contempt the
+peculiarities of other bodies. The effort to induce the members of
+any body of Christians to appreciate what belongs to others, or to
+try to construe Christianity in terms of a true Catholicity, is
+almost hopeless. All attempts at the restoration of the visible
+unity of the Church have been wrecked, and seem destined for long
+to be wrecked, on the rocks of local pride and local interests. The
+motives which in secular affairs lead a man to put, not only his
+body and his goods, as he ought, at the disposal of his country;
+but also induce him to surrender his mind to the prevailing party
+and shout, "My country, right or wrong," in matters ecclesiastical
+lead him to cry, "My Church, right or wrong." It is only by
+transcending this localism that we can hope for progress in Church
+or State--can hope to conquer the wars and fightings among our
+members that make peace impossible.</p>
+<p>This infection of localism is not peculiar to any body of
+Christians. The Oriental Churches have been largely state-bound for
+centuries, and, in addition, have been mentally immobile. The Roman
+Church with its claims to exclusive ownership of the Christian
+Religion has lost the vision it once had and subordinated the
+Catholic interests of the Church to the local interests of the
+Papacy. The fragments of Protestantism are too small any longer to
+claim the universalism claimed by the East and West, and perforce
+acknowledge their partial character; but it is only to indulge in a
+more acute patriotism, and assertion of rights of division, and the
+supremacy of the local over the general. The Churches of the
+Anglican Rite are less bound, perhaps, than others. They are
+restless under the limitations of localism and are haunted by a
+vision of an unrealized Catholicity; but they are torn by internal
+divisions and find their attempts at movement in any direction
+thwarted by the pull of opposing parties.</p>
+<p>One result of the mental attitude generated by the conditions
+indicated above is that any attempt to deal with subjects other
+than those which are authorized because they are customary, or
+tolerated because they are familiar, is liable to be greeted with
+cries of reproach and accusations of disloyalty. Such and such
+teachings we are told, without much effort at proof, are contrary
+to the teachings of the Anglican Church, or are not in harmony with
+that teaching, or are illegitimate attempts to bring in doctrines
+or practices which were definitely rejected by our fathers at the
+Reformation. Those who are implicated in such attempts are told
+that they are disturbers of the peace of the Church and are invited
+to go elsewhere.</p>
+<p>As one who is not guiltless of such attempts, and as one who is
+becoming accustomed to be charged with novelty in teaching, and
+disloyalty in practice to that which is undoubtedly and
+historically Anglican, I have been compelled to ask myself, "What
+is loyalty to the Anglican Church? Is there, in fact, some peculiar
+and limited form of Christianity to which I owe allegiance?" I had
+got accustomed to think of myself as a Catholic Christian whose lot
+was cast in a certain province of the Catholic Church which was
+administratively separated from other parts of that Church. This I
+felt--this separation--to be unfortunate; but I was not responsible
+for it, and would be glad to do anything that I could to end it. I
+had not thought that this administrative separation from other
+provinces of the Catholic Church meant that I was pledged to a
+different religion; I had not thought of there being an Anglican
+Religion. I have all my life, in intention and as far as I know,
+accepted the whole Catholic Faith of which it is said in a Creed
+accepted by the Anglican Church that "except a man believe
+faithfully he cannot be saved." I do not intend to believe any
+other Faith than that, and I intend to believe all of that; and I
+have not thought of myself as other than a loyal Anglican in so
+doing.</p>
+<p>But criticism has led me to go back over the whole question and
+ask whether there is any indication anywhere in the approved
+documents of the Anglican Communion of an intention at all to
+depart from the Faith of Christendom as it was held by the whole
+Catholic Church, East and West, at the time when an administrative
+separation from Rome was effected. Was a new faith at any time
+introduced? Has there at any time been any official action of the
+Anglican Church to limit my acceptance of the historic Faith? That
+many Anglican writers have denied many articles of the Catholic
+Faith I of course knew to be true. That some Anglican writer could
+be found who had denied every article of the Catholic Faith I
+thought quite possible. But I was not interested in the beliefs or
+practices of individuals. I am not at all interested in what
+opinions may or may not have been held by Cranmer at various stages
+of his career, or what opinions may be unearthed from the writings
+of Bale by experts in immoral literature; I am interested solely in
+the official utterances of the Anglican Communion.</p>
+<p>In following out this line of investigation I have spent many
+weeks in the reading of many dreary documents: but fortunately
+documents are not important in proportion to the element of
+excitement they contain. I have read the documents contained in the
+collection of Gee and Hardy entitled "Documents Illustrative of
+English Church History." I have read the "Formularies of Faith Put
+Forth by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII." I have read
+Cardwell's "Synodalia." And I have also read "Certain Sermons or
+Homilies Appointed to be read in Churches at the time of Queen
+Elizabeth of Famous Memory." I doubt whether any other extant human
+being has read them.</p>
+<p>And the upshot of the whole matter is that in none of these
+documents have I found any expressed intention to depart from the
+Faith of the Catholic Church of the past as that Faith had been set
+forth by authority. No doubt in the Homilies there are things said
+which cannot be reconciled with the Faith of Catholic Christendom.
+But the Homilies are of no binding authority, and I have included
+them in my investigation only because I wanted their point of view.
+That is harmonious with the rest of the authoritative
+documents--the intention is to hold the Faith: unfortunately the
+knowledge of some of the writers was not as pure as their
+intention.</p>
+<p>The point that I am concerned with is this: there is no
+intention anywhere shown in the authoritative documents of the
+Anglican Church to effect a change in religion, or to break with
+the religion which had been from the beginning taught and practised
+in England. The Reformation did not mean the introduction of a new
+religion, but was simply a declaration of governmental
+independence. I will quote somewhat at length from the documents
+for the purpose of showing that there is no indication of an
+intention to set up a new Church.</p>
+<p>One or two quotations from pre-reformation documents will make
+clear the customary phraseology in England during the Middle Ages.
+King John's Ecclesiastical Charter of 1214 uses the terms "Church
+of England" and "English Church." The Magna Charta of 1215 grants
+that the "Church of England shall be free and have her rights
+intact, and her liberties uninjured." The Articuli Cleri of 1316
+speak of the "English Church." The Second Statute of Provisors of
+1390 uses the title "The Holy Church of England." "The English
+Church" is the form used in the Act "De H&aelig;retico Comburendo"
+of 1401, as it is also in "the Remonstrance against the Legatine
+Powers of Cardinal Beaufort" of 1428<a name=
+"FNanchor1"></a><a href="#_1">[1]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> Documents
+in Gee &amp; Hardy.</blockquote>
+<p>These quotations will suffice to show the customary way of
+speaking of the Church in England. If this customary way of
+speaking went on during and after the Reformation the inference is
+that there had no change taken place in the way of men's thinking
+about the Church; that they were unconscious of having created a
+new or a different Church. We know that the Protestant bodies on
+the Continent and the later Protestant bodies in England did change
+their way of thinking about the Church from that of their fathers
+and consequently their way of speaking of it. But the formal
+documents of the Church of England show no change. "The Answer of
+the Ordinaries" of 1532 appeals as authoritative to the
+"determination of Scripture and Holy Church," and to the
+determination of "Christ's Catholic Church." The "Conditional
+Restraint of Annates" of 1532 protests that the English "as well
+spiritual as temporal, be as obedient, devout, catholic, and humble
+children of God and Holy Church, as any people be within any realm
+christened." In the Act for "The Restraint of Appeals" of 1533,
+which is the act embodying the legal principle of the English
+Reformation, it is the "English Church" which acts. The statement
+in the "Act Forbidding Papal Dispensations and the Payment of
+Peter's Pence" of 1534 is entirely explicit as to the intention of
+the English authorities. It declares that nothing in this Act
+"shall be hereafter interpreted or expounded that your grace, your
+nobles and subjects intend, by the same, to decline or vary from
+the congregation of Christ's Church in any things concerning the
+very articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom<a name=
+"FNanchor2"></a><a href="#_2">[2]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> Gee &amp;
+Hardy.</blockquote>
+<p>These documents date from the reign of Henry VIII. In the same
+reign another series of authoritative documents was put forth which
+contains the same teaching as to the Church. "The Institution of a
+Christian Man" set forth in 1536, in the article on the Church has
+this: "I believe assuredly--that there is and hath been from the
+beginning of the world, and so shall endure and continue forever,
+one certain number, society, communion, or company of the elect and
+faithful people of God.... And I believe assuredly that this
+congregation ... is, in very deed the city of heavenly Jerusalem
+... the holy catholic church, the temple or habitacle of God, the
+pure and undefiled espouse of Christ, the very mystical body of
+Christ," "The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian
+Man" of 1543 in treating of the faith declares that "all those
+things which were taught by the apostles, and have been by an whole
+universal consent of the church of Christ ever sith that time
+taught continually, ought to be received, accepted, and kept, as a
+perfect doctrine apostolic." It is further taught in the same
+document in the eighth article, that on "The Holy Catholic Church,"
+that the Church is "catholic, that is to say, not limited to any
+one place or region of the world, but is in every place universally
+through the world where it pleaseth God to call people to him in
+the profession of Christ's name and faith, be it in Europe, Africa,
+or Asia. And all these churches in divers countries severally
+called, although for the knowledge of the one from the other among
+them they have divers additions of names, and for their most
+necessary government, as they be distinct in places, so they have
+distinct ministers and divers heads in earth, governors and rulers,
+yet be all these holy churches but one holy church catholic,
+invited and called by one God the Father to enjoy the benefit of
+redemption wrought by our Lord and Saviour Jesu Christ, and
+governed by one Holy Spirit, which teacheth this foresaid one truth
+of God's holy word in one faith and baptism<a name=
+"FNanchor3"></a><a href="#_3">[3]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a>
+Formularies of Faith in the Reign of Henry VIII.</blockquote>
+<p>With the accession of Edward VI. the Protestant element in the
+Reformation gained increased influence. Our question is, Did it
+succeed in imprinting a new theory of the nature and authority of
+the Church on the formal and authoritative utterances of the Church
+in England? The first "Act of Uniformity" of 1549 contains the now
+familiar appeal to Scripture and to the primitive Church, and the
+Book set forth is called "The Book of Common Prayer and
+Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of
+the Church, after the Use of the Church of England." The "Second
+Act of Uniformity," 1552, uses the same language about the Church
+of England and the primitive Church. Passing on to the reign of
+Elizabeth, in the "Injunctions" of 1559 there is set forth "a form
+of bidding the prayers," which begins: "Ye shall pray for Christ's
+Holy Catholic Church, that is for the whole congregation of
+Christian people dispersed throughout the whole world, and
+especially for the Church of England and Ireland." In the "Act of
+Supremacy" of the same year it is provided that an opinion shall
+"be ordered, or adjudged to be heresy, by the authority of the
+canonical Scriptures, or by the first four general Councils, or any
+of them, or by any other general Council wherein the same was
+declared heresy by the express and plain words of the said
+canonical Scriptures." This test of doctrine is repeated in Canon
+VI of the Canons of 1571. "Preachers shall ... see to it that they
+teach nothing in the way of a sermon ... save what is agreeable to
+the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic
+fathers and ancient bishops have collected from this self-same
+doctrine<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#_4">[4]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a> Documents
+in Gee &amp; Hardy.</blockquote>
+<p>It is hardly worth while to spend much time on the Homilies. I
+will simply note that they continue the appeal to the primitive
+Church which is asserted to have been holy, godly, pure and
+uncorrupt; and to the "old holy fathers and most ancient learned
+doctors" which are quoted as authoritative against later
+innovations. They still speak of the Church of England as
+continuous with the past. I do not find that they treat the
+contemporary reformers as of authority or quote them as against the
+traditional teaching of the Church.</p>
+<p>We will go on to one more stage, that is, to the Canons of 1604
+which represent the mind of the Church of England at the time of
+the accession of James I. They declare that "whosoever shall
+hereafter affirm, That the Church of England, by law established
+under the King's majesty, is not a true and an apostolical church,
+teaching and maintaining the doctrine of the apostles; let him be
+excommunicated." (III) They appeal to the "Ancient fathers of the
+Church, led by the example of the apostles." (XXXI) In treating of
+the use of the sign of the Cross in baptism they assert that its
+use follows the "rules of Scripture and the practice of the
+primitive Church." And further, "This use of the sign of the Cross
+in baptism was held in the primitive Church, as well by the Greeks
+as the Latins, with one consent and great applause." And replying
+to the argument from abuse the canon goes on: "But the abuse of a
+thing doth not take away the lawful use of it. Nay, so far was it
+from the purpose of the Church of England to forsake and reject the
+Churches of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any such like
+Churches, in all things that they held and practised, that, as the
+Apology of the Church of England confesseth, it doth with reverence
+retain those ceremonies, which do neither endanger the Church of
+God, nor offend the minds of sober men." (XXX)</p>
+<p>It appears clear from a study of the passages quoted and of many
+others of kindred nature that the Anglican Church did not start out
+upon its separate career with any intention of becoming a sect; it
+did not complain of the corruption of the existing religion and
+declare its purpose to show to the world what true and pure
+religion is. It did not put forward as the basis of its action the
+existing corruption of doctrine, but the corruption of
+administration. Its claim was a claim to manage its own local
+affairs, and was put into execution when the Convocation of
+Canterbury voted in the negative on the question submitted to it,
+viz., "Whether the Roman pontiff has any greater jurisdiction
+bestowed on him by God in Holy Scripture in this realm of England,
+than any other foreign bishop?"</p>
+<p>The attitude indicated is one that has been characteristic of
+the Anglican Church ever since. It has always been restless in the
+presence of a divided Christendom; the sin of the broken unity has
+always haunted it. It never has taken the smug attitude of
+sectarianism, a placid self-satisfaction with its own perfection.
+It has felt the constant pull of the Catholic ideal and has been
+inspired by it to make effort after effort for the union of
+Christendom. It has never lost the sense that it was in itself not
+complete but a part of a greater whole. It has never seen in the
+existing shattered state of the Christian Church anything but the
+evidences of sin. Its appeal has constantly been, not to its own
+sufficiency for the determination of all questions, but to the
+Scriptures as interpreted by the undivided Church. If it has at
+times been prone to overstress the authority of some ideal and
+undefined primitive Church, it was because it thought that there
+and there only could the Catholic Church be found speaking in its
+ideal unity.</p>
+<p>This the attitude of the Anglican Church of the past is its
+attitude to-day. The Lambeth Conference of 1920 gave voice to
+it:</p>
+<blockquote>"The Conference urges on every branch of the Anglican
+Communion that it should prepare its members for taking their part
+in the universal fellowship of the re-united Church, by setting
+before them the loyalty which they owe to the universal Church, and
+the charity and understanding which are required of the members of
+so inclusive a society."</blockquote>
+<p>Commenting upon this utterance of the Lambeth Conference the
+three bishops who are the joint authors of "Lambeth and Reunion"
+say:</p>
+<blockquote>The bishops at Lambeth "beg for loyalty to the
+universal Church. The doctrinal standards of the undivided Church
+must not be ignored. Nor must modern developments, consistent with
+the past, be ruled out merely because they are modern. Men must
+hold strongly what they have received; but they must forsake the
+policy of denying one another's positive presentment of truth. That
+only must be forbidden which the universal fellowship cannot
+conceivably accept within any one of its groups<a name=
+"FNanchor5"></a><a href="#_5">[5]</a>."</blockquote>
+<blockquote><a name="_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a> Lambeth
+and Rennion. By the bishops of Peterborough, Zanzibar and
+Hereford.</blockquote>
+<p>The bishops just quoted add: "We rejoice indeed at this new mind
+of the Lambeth Conference." Whether it is a new mind in Lambeth
+Conferences we need not consider; it is certainly no new mind in
+the Anglican Church, but is precisely its characteristic attitude
+of not claiming perfection or finality for itself, but of looking
+beyond itself to Catholic Christendom, and longing for the time
+when reunion of the churches which now make up its "broken unity"
+will enable it to speak with the same voice of authority with which
+it did in its primitive and undivided state.</p>
+<p>In attempting to decide what as a priest of the Anglican
+Communion one may or may not teach or practice, one is bound to
+have regard, not to what is asserted by anyone, even by any bishop,
+to be "disloyal" or "unanglican," but to the principles expressed
+or implied in the utterances of the Church itself. From those
+utterances as I have reviewed them, it appears to me that a number
+of general principles may be deduced for the guidance of
+conduct.</p>
+<p>I. The Churches of the Anglican Communion are bound by the
+entire body of Catholic dogma formulated and accepted universally
+in the pre-Reformation Church.</p>
+<p>The Anglican documents, to be sure, speak constantly of the
+"Primitive Church," but they do not anywhere define what they mean
+by that; and frequently, by their appeal to the "undivided Church,"
+and to "general Councils," they seem to include in their undefined
+term much more than is commonly understood. In any case, the Church
+has no special authority because it is <i>primitive</i>: its
+authority results not from its being primitive but from its being
+<i>Church</i>. The only point of the Anglican appeal would be the
+universal acceptance of a given doctrine. Such universal acceptance
+must be taken as proof of its primitiveness, that is, of its being
+contained, explicitly or implicitly, in the original deposit of
+faith. The Anglican Church was content with the summing up of this
+Faith in the Three Creeds, and attempted to formulate no new Greed
+of her own--the XXXIX Articles are not strictly a Creed: they are
+not articles of Faith but of Religion. But the very history of the
+Creeds implies that they are not final, that is, complete, but that
+they are a summing up of the Catholic Religion to date. There are
+truths which the circumstances of the Church in the Conciliar
+period had not brought into prominence which later events compelled
+the Church to express its mind upon. Such a truth is that of the
+Real Presence of our Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar. This truth
+had attained explicit acceptance throughout the Church before the
+Reformation, sufficiently witnessed by the liturgies in use. It is
+also embodied in the Anglican liturgy. If anyone thinks the
+language of the Anglican Church doubtful on this point, the
+principles enunciated by the Church compel interpretation in accord
+with the mind of the universal Church. There are other truths which
+are binding on us on the same basis of universal consent, but I am
+not seeking to apply the principle in every case but only to
+illustrate it.</p>
+<p>II. There is another class of truths or doctrines widely held in
+Christendom, which yet cannot be classed as dogmas of the faith.
+Such a doctrine is that of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed
+Virgin Mary. This doctrine has been made of faith in the Roman
+communion, but has not yet ecumenical acceptance, and therefore may
+be doubted without sin by members of the Greek or Anglican
+Churches. What we need to avoid, as the Lambeth Conference has
+reminded us, is a purely insular and provincial attitude in
+relation to doctrines which have not been formally set forth by
+Anglican authority. The Anglican Church has tried its best to
+impress upon us that there is no such thing as an Anglican
+Religion; there is but one Religion--the Religion of God's Catholic
+Church. What we are to seek to know is not the mind "of the
+Anglican reformers," or the mind "of the Caroline divines," but the
+mind of the Catholic Church. Wherever we shall find that mind
+expressed, though in terms unfamiliar to us, we are bound to treat
+it with respect. We are to seek to know the truth that the truth
+may make us free--from all pride and prejudice, as well as from
+heresy and blasphemy. And we shall best come at this mind in its
+widest meaning by the study of the writings of the saints of all
+ages and of all parts of the Church. It may fairly be inferred that
+those who have attained great perfection in the Catholic life have
+achieved it by the application of Catholic truth to every day
+living.</p>
+<p>III. The members of the Anglican Church have the same freedom as
+other Catholics in the matter of theological speculation. What was
+done at the Reformation was not final in the sense that we are
+never to believe or to teach anything that is not found in Anglican
+formularies. The fact that a certain doctrine like that of the
+Invocation of Saints was omitted from the Anglican formularies is
+not fatal to its practice. The grounds of its omission in practice
+may or may not have been well judged. But the theory of it was
+never denied, it is indeed contained in the Creeds themselves, and
+change in circumstances may justify its revival in practice.</p>
+<p>Moreover, the theology of the Christian Church is not a body of
+static doctrine, but is the expression of the ceaseless meditation
+of the saints upon the truths revealed to us by God. To suppose
+that any age whatever has exhausted the meaning of the Revealed
+Truth would be absurd. It is inexhaustible. So long as the mind of
+the Church is pondering it, it brings out from it things old and
+new. Among ourselves it is perhaps at present more desirable that
+we should bring out the old things than seek to find the new. The
+historic circumstances of the Anglican Church have been such as to
+lead to the practical disuse of much that is of great spiritual
+value in the treasury of the Church. It is largely in the attempt
+to bring into use the riches that have been abandoned that some are
+to-day incurring the charge of disloyalty--a charge that they are
+not careful to answer, if they may be permitted to minister to a
+larger spiritual life in the Church they love.</p>
+<p>At the same time the development of doctrine is a real mode of
+enrichment of the theology of the Church. The devout mind pondering
+divine truth will ever penetrate deeper into its meaning. Thus it
+was that in the course of centuries the Church arrived at a
+complete statement of the doctrine of our Lord's person. And what
+it could rightly do in the supreme case, it surely can rightly do
+in cases of lesser moment. We need not be afraid of this movement
+of thought, for the mind of the united Church may be trusted not to
+sanction any error. Our Lord has promised that the gates of hell
+shall not prevail against the Church. We can trust Him to fulfil
+His promise. He has also promised us that the Holy Spirit shall
+lead us into all the truth. Can He trust us not to thwart the work
+of the Spirit by a provincial attitude as of those who already in
+the utterances of the Anglican formularies claim to possess all
+truth?</p>
+<p>IV. There is one other inference to be drawn from what I
+conceive to be the Anglican position, and that is one that relates,
+not primarily to doctrine but to practice. For many years now the
+Anglican Churches have been greatly disturbed by varieties of
+practice, though it is difficult to see why varieties of practice
+should be in themselves disturbing. But without going into that
+matter, which would carry us far afield, I would simply state that
+the principle already laid down in regard to doctrine seems to
+apply here in the matter of practice: that is, the Anglican has the
+right to use any practice which has not been explicitly forbidden
+by the authorities of the local Church. The Churches of the
+Anglican Communion have never set forth any competent guide for the
+conduct of worship, and by refraining from so doing have left the
+matter in the hands of those who have to conduct services and
+provide for the spiritual needs of those over whom they have been
+given cure of souls. There is nothing more absurd than to assume
+that nothing rightly can be done in these matters except what has
+been directed by authority; that no services can be held but such
+as have formal authorization; that no ceremonies can be introduced
+but such as the custom of the time since the Reformation has made
+familiar to many.</p>
+<p>In such matters authority naturally and necessarily goes along
+with the cure of souls; the priest of the parish must perforce
+provide for the spiritual needs of his parish. If he finds those
+needs satisfied with the rendering of Morning and Evening
+Prayer--well and good; but those who do not find the needs of their
+parish so satisfied must seek to satisfy them by the providing of
+other spiritual means. And in seeking thus to provide for the
+spiritual growth of souls committed to his care, the priest, on the
+principles of the Anglican formularies, is justified and entitled
+to make use of the means in use throughout Catholic Christendom. He
+is quite justified in calling his people together for a prayer
+meeting, if in his judgment that will be for their spiritual good;
+or if his judgment is different, he is equally justified in
+inviting them to join him in saying the rosary. He may incite to
+greater devotion by a shortened form of Evening Prayer or by
+popular Vespers. I do not think that there is anything in the
+Christian Religion or in the formularies of the Anglican Church
+that forbids him to have moving pictures or special musical
+services. Nor is there any reason why, if it be in his judgment
+promotive of holiness, he should not provide for his parish such
+services as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. There can be no
+legitimate criticism of a service on the ground of its
+<i>provenance</i>.</p>
+<p>It is a common reproach against the Anglican Communion that is
+"does not know its own mind." It would be much truer to say that
+there are many members of it who have been at no pains to ascertain
+whether it have a mind or what that mind is: who have been content
+to confound the mind of the Church with the mind of the party to
+which they are attached by the accident of birth or of preference.
+I do not for a moment contend that the party (to use an ugly but
+necessary word) to which I am attached stands, in all things, in
+perfect alignment with the Anglican Formularies. There are
+circumstances in which it appears to me to be necessary to appeal
+from Anglican action to the mind of that larger Body, the whole
+Church of Christ throughout the world, to which the Anglican Church
+points me as its own final authority. In so doing I do not feel
+that I am disloyal, but that I am actually doing what authority
+tells me to do. These are cases in point. I do not believe that a
+local Church can suppress and permanently disuse sacraments of the
+universal Church. The Anglican Church by its suppression of the
+sacraments of Unction and by its almost universal disuse for
+centuries of the sacrament of Penance, compelled those who would be
+loyal to the Catholic Church to which it appealed to act on their
+own initiative in the revival of the use of those sacraments. I do
+not believe that the local Church has the right or the power to
+forbid or permanently disuse customs which are of universal
+currency in the Catholic Church. I do not believe that it has the
+right to neglect and fail to enforce the Catholic custom of
+fasting, and especially of fasting before communion. I do not
+believe that any Christian who is informed on these things has the
+right to neglect them on the ground that the Anglican Church has
+not enforced them. On the basis of its own declarations the
+ecumenical overrides the local; and if it be said, "What is a
+priest, that he should undertake to set the practice of his Church
+right?" the answer is that he is a man having cure of souls for
+whose progress in holiness he is responsible before God, and if
+those who claim authority in such matters will not act, he must
+act, though it be at the risk of his immortal soul.</p>
+<p>These things seem to be true with the truth of self-evidence.
+And because they seem to be true, I have not hesitated to preach,
+and now to print, the sermons on the life and words of our Lady
+contained in this volume. I am told by many that such teaching is
+dangerous, but I am not told by any of any danger that is
+intelligible to me. That such devotions to our Lady as are here
+commended trench on the prerogative of God, and exalt our Lady
+above the place of a creature is sufficiently answered by the fact
+that the very act of asking the prayers of Blessed Mary is an
+assertion of her creaturehood--one does not ask the prayers of God.
+And when it is said that devotion to her takes away from devotion
+to her Son, one has only to ask in reply, who as a matter of fact
+have maintained and do maintain unflinchingly the divinity of our
+Lord? Certainly the denials of the divinity of our Lord are found
+where there is also a denial that any honor is due or may rightly
+be given to His Blessed Mother; and where that Mother receives the
+highest honor, there we never for a moment doubt that the full
+Godhead of Jesus will be unflinchingly and unhesitatingly
+maintained.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Wherefore in praise, the worthiest that I may,<br>
+Jesu! of thee, and the white Lily-flower<br>
+Which did thee bear, and is a Maid for aye,<br>
+To tell a story I will use my power;<br>
+Not that I may increase her honour's dower,<br>
+For she herself is honour, and the root<br>
+Of goodness, next her Son, our soul's best boot.<br>
+<br>
+O Mother Maid! O Maid and Mother free!<br>
+O bush unburnt; burning in Moses' sight!<br>
+That down didst ravish from the Deity,<br>
+Through humbleness, the spirit that did alight<br>
+Upon thy heart, whence, through that glory's might,<br>
+Conceived was the Father's sapience,<br>
+Help me to tell it in thy reverence.<br>
+<br>
+Lady! thy goodness, thy magnificance,<br>
+Thy virtue, and thy great humility,<br>
+Surpass all science and all utterance;<br>
+For sometimes, Lady, ere men pray to thee<br>
+Thou goest before in thy benignity,<br>
+The light to us vouchsafing of thy prayer,<br>
+To be our guide unto thy Son so dear.<br>
+<br>
+My knowledge is so weak, O blissful Queen!<br>
+To tell abroad thy mighty worthiness,<br>
+That I the weight of it may not sustain;<br>
+But as a child of twelve months old or less,<br>
+Even so fare I; and therefore, I thee pray,<br>
+Guide thou my song which I of thee shall say.<br>
+<br>
+Chaucer. The Prioress' Tale.<br>
+Version by Wordsworth.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART ONE</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II_1"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE MEANING OF WORSHIP</h3>
+<blockquote>O Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all holy thoughts do
+come; who hast taught thy servants to honour thy glorious mother;
+mercifully grant us so to celebrate her on earth with the solemn
+sacrifice of praise and with due devotion, that by her intercession
+we may be found worthy to reign in joy in heaven. Who livest
+&amp;c.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">SARUM MISSAL.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>here are thoughts and actions which so enter the daily conduct
+of our lives that we take them for granted and never pause to
+analyse them. If perchance something occurs to make us ask what
+these thoughts and actions truly and deeply mean we are surprised
+to find that we have, in fact, no adequate understanding of them.
+We have a feeling about them and we are quite sure that this
+feeling is a good and right one. We have ends that we are seeking
+and we are satisfied that the ends are in all ways desirable. But
+suddenly confronted with the question why, unexpectedly asked to
+explain, to justify ourselves, we find ourselves dumb. We cannot
+find adequate exposition for what we nevertheless know that we are
+justified in. It is so with much that we admire; we have never
+tried to justify our admiration, have never thought that it needed
+an explanation; and then, unexpectedly, we find ourselves
+challenged, we find our taste criticised, and in our efforts at
+self-defence we blunder and stumble and hesitate about what we
+still feel that we are quite right in holding fast.</p>
+<p>It is common things that we thus take for granted; it is daily
+activities that we thus assume need no explanation. For us who
+habitually gather to the services of the Church there is no more
+taken-for-granted act than worship. Worship is a part of our daily
+experience. At certain times each day we offer to God stated and
+formal acts of worship. Many times a day most likely we pause and
+for a moment lift our thought to our blessed Lord for a brief
+communion with Him. It is a part of our settled experience thus to
+draw strength from the inexhaustible source which at all times is
+at our disposal. We know how the tasks of the day are lightened and
+our strength to meet them renewed by these momentary invasions of
+the supernatural. There are also special times in each week when we
+meet with other members of the One Body of Christ in the offering
+of the unbloody Sacrifice. We know that in that act heaven and
+earth join, and that not only our brethren who are kneeling beside
+us are uniting with us in the offering of the Sacrifice, not only
+are we one with all those other members of the Body who on this
+same morning are kneeling at the numberless altars of Christendom,
+but that all those who are in Christ are with us partakers of the
+same Sacrifice, and that in its offering we are joined with all the
+holy dead, and by our partaking of Christ are brought close to one
+another. We therefore lovingly take their names upon our lips, and
+enkindle their memory in our hearts; and find that death, which we
+had thought of as a separation, has but broken the barriers to the
+deepest and most blessed communion, and that we are now, as never
+before, united to those whom we find in Christ Jesus our Lord.</p>
+<p>And then comes the unexpected challenge: "what does all this
+mean: these repeated and diverse acts that you are accustomed to
+speak of and to think of as acts of worship? What, ultimately, do
+you mean by worship, and can there possibly be found any common
+feature in these so diverse acts which can justify you in regarding
+them as essentially one? This act which is in truth presenting
+yourself before the majesty of God in humble adoration, in the
+guise of a suppliant child depending upon the love of the Father
+for the supply of the daily needs; or this other act which is of
+such deepest mystery that we approach any attempted statement of it
+with awe, which is in fact the representation of the sacrifice of
+Calvary; and then these invocations by which we ask the loving
+co-operation of our fellow members of Christ that they may
+associate themselves with us in the work of prayer and mutual
+intercession--how can all these acts be brought together under a
+common rubric, how can they all be designated as worship? What in
+fact is it that you mean by worship?"</p>
+<p>So are we challenged. So are we thrown back, and in the end
+thrown back most beneficially, to the analysis of our acts.
+Worship, we tell ourselves, is <i>worth</i>-ship; it is the
+attribution of worth or honor to whom these are properly due.
+"Honour to whom honour is due," we hear the Apostle saying. Worship
+is therefore not an absolute value but a varying value, the content
+of any act of which will be determined by the nature of the object
+toward which it is directed. It is greatly like love in this
+respect; its nature is always the same, but its present value is
+determined by the object to which it is directed. We are to love
+the Lord our God, and we are also to love our neighbour; the nature
+of the love is in each case the same; and yet we are not to love
+our neighbour with the limitless self-surrender with which we love
+God. The love of God is the passionate giving of ourselves to Him
+with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and
+with all our strength. The love of the neighbour is measured and
+restrained, having in view his good that we are seeking, the
+promotion of his salvation as our fellow member in the Body of
+Christ. In the same way worship will take its colour, its
+significance, its tone, its intensity, not from some abstract
+conception, but from the end it seeks. This is made plain, too,
+when we look at our Bibles and Prayer Books for the actual use of
+the word. There we find much of the worship of God: but we also
+find a limited use of the word. "Then shalt thou have worship in
+the presence of them that sit at meat with thee." (S. Luke, XIV,
+10.) And in the marriage service of the English Prayer Book we
+read: "With this ring I thee wed, and with my body I thee worship."
+The same limited content of the word is found in the old title of
+respect--"Your Worship."</p>
+<p>But so thoroughly has the word worship become associated with
+our approach to God, that we still, many of us, no doubt, feel the
+shock of the unaccustomed when we hear the worship of the Blessed
+Virgin or of the saints spoken of. It does not help us much to fall
+back on the Latin word, <i>Cultus</i>, for we understand that the
+meaning is the same.</p>
+<p>We are helped, I think, if we substitute the parallel word
+honour for worship in the places of its use. We meet in the Church
+to honour God, and we offer the Blessed Sacrifice as the act of
+supreme honour which is due to Him alone; but in connection with
+the supreme honour offered to God we also honour the saints of God
+by the observance of their anniversaries with special services
+including the Holy Sacrifice. The word honour does not sound so ill
+to ears unaccustomed to a certain type of Catholic expression as
+the word worship: but the meaning is untouched.</p>
+<p>Let us go on then to the analysis of the notion of worship. In
+the writings of theologians we find an analysis of the notion of
+worship into three degrees. There is, first of all, that supreme
+degree of worship which is called <i>latria</i> and which is the
+worship due to God alone. If we ask what essentially it is that
+differentiates <i>latria</i> from all other degrees of worship or
+honour we find that it is the element of sacrifice that it
+contains. Sacrifice is the supreme act of self-surrender to
+another, of utter self-immolation, and it can have no other
+legitimate object than God Himself. The central notion of sacrifice
+is the surrender of self. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant were
+of value because they were the representatives of the nation and of
+the individuals who offered them; because of the
+self-identification of nation or individual with the thing offered,
+which must therefore be in some sense the offerer's, must, so to
+say, <i>contain him</i>: must be that in which he merges himself.
+So the one Sacrifice of the New Covenant gets its essential value
+in that it is the surrender of the Son to the will of the Father.
+"I am come to do Thy will, O God." Christ's sacrifice is
+self-sacrifice: the voluntary surrender of the whole life to the
+divine purpose.</p>
+<p>And when we actually worship God, worship Him with the worship
+of <i>latria</i>, our act must be of the same essential nature; it
+must be an act of sacrifice, of self-giving; the offering of
+ourselves to the will of the Father. So it is in our participation
+in the offering of the Blessed Sacrifice. The full meaning of our
+joining in that act is that we are uniting ourselves with our
+Lord's offering of Himself, and as members of His Body share in the
+sacrifice of the Body which is the supreme act of worship. And our
+other acts of worship lay hold on and proceed from this which is
+the ground of their efficacy. All our subordinate acts of worship,
+so to call them, have their character and vitality as Christian
+acts of the worship of God because of the relation of the
+worshipper to God as a member of the Body of His Son. They are
+offered through the Son and derive their potency from their
+association with Him and His sacrifice. They reach God through the
+sacrifice of the One Mediator.</p>
+<p>Worship, then, in this complete sense, is due to God alone; and
+it is separated by a whole heaven from any worship, that is,
+honour, which can be offered to any creature, however exalted. No
+instructed person would for a moment imagine that the prayers which
+we address to the saints are in any degree such worship as is
+offered to God; but in as much as those who are unfamiliar with the
+forms of the Catholic Religion in its devotional expression may
+easily be led astray, it seems needful to stress this fact of the
+difference between simple petition and such acts and prayers as
+involve the highest degree of worship.</p>
+<p>One of the chief sources of confusion in this matter is the
+failure to distinguish between the nature of the act of worship,
+which is determined by the person to whom it is directed, and the
+mere adjuncts of the act. But an act of <i>latria</i> is not
+constituted such by the fact that it is aided in its expression by
+such circumstances as banners, lights, incense and so on. These are
+quite appropriate to any act of honour, and have been customarily
+so used in relation to human beings. There was a certain hesitation
+in the Church for some time in the matter of incense which under
+the older Covenant had been especially appropriated to God, because
+in the experience of the early Church it was demanded, and
+necessarily refused, as an acknowledgment of the divinity of the
+Emperor. But with the passing of the pagan empire incense as the
+universal symbol of prayer came into use in all manner of services
+wherein intercession was a part.</p>
+<p>Such adjuncts therefore are not foreign to those subordinate
+acts of worship or honour which are technically known as <i>dulia.
+Dulia</i>--this word means service--is such honour as may be
+rightly rendered to creatures without at all encroaching upon the
+majesty of God. It is <i>that</i> degree of worship that we have in
+mind when we speak of the worship of the saints. That <i>dulia</i>
+of the saints is expressed when we ask for the intercession of this
+or that saint, and is not essentially different from the asking for
+the prayers of any other human beings. We commonly ask for one
+another's prayers and feel that in doing so we are exercising our
+brotherhood in the Body of Christ in calling into action its mutual
+love and sympathy. We should be beyond measure astonished if we
+were told that such requests for the prayers of our brethren were
+encroachments upon the honour of God and the sin of idolatry! But
+if in this case our surprise is justified, it is difficult to see
+how the case is at all altered by the fact that the fellow members
+of the Body whose prayers we are asking happen to be <i>dead</i>,
+that is, as we believe and imply in our request for their
+intercession, have passed into a new and closer relation to our
+Blessed Lord. Nor, again, does the case seem to be at all altered,
+if the brother whose prayers we ask has been dead a long time, and
+has, by the common consent of Catholic Christendom, been received
+into the number of the saints. The ways in which the human mind
+works under the influence of prejudice are always interesting.
+There are many devout persons who feel that it is a valuable
+element in their religion to have the privilege of following the
+Kalendar of the Church and to keep the saints' days therein
+indicated by attendance at divine service; who yet would be
+horrified if it were suggested that a prayer should be offered to
+the saint whose day is being observed, and that the saint should be
+made the object of an act of worship. But what essentially
+<i>is</i> the keeping of a saint's day, with a celebration of the
+Holy Communion with special collect, epistle and gospel, but an act
+of worship <i>(dulia)</i> of the saint? The nature of the act would
+be in no way changed if in addition to our accustomed collects
+there were added one which plainly asked for the prayers of the
+saint in whose honour we are keeping the feast.</p>
+<p>In the worship of the Church of God a place apart is assigned to
+the honour to be paid to the blessed Mother of our Lord. As the
+highest of all creatures, as highly favoured above all, as she whom
+God chose to be the Mother of His Son, the devout thought of
+generations of Christians has felt that their recognition of her
+relation to God in the Incarnation called for a special degree of
+honour rightly to express it. The thought of the faithful lingers
+about all that was in any degree associated with the coming of God
+in the flesh: so great was the deliverance thereby wrought for man
+that man's gratitude ever seeks new means of expression and ever
+finds the means inadequate to his love. Many of the expressions
+that are found in devotional writers associated with the cultus of
+the Blessed Virgin Mary are an outcome of this attitude of mind. To
+those who are unused to them they seem exaggerated; in the vast
+mass of the devotional writings of Catholic Christendom there is no
+difficulty in finding expressions which <i>are</i> exaggerated; but
+it is well to remember when thinking of this that the exaggeration
+is the exaggeration of love. The tendency of love <i>is</i> to
+exaggerate the forms of its expression. It is, however, we feel on
+reflection, an error to judge by the exaggeration rather than by
+the love. It is perhaps well to ask ourselves whether we are saved
+from exaggeration by greater sanity or by lesser love.</p>
+<p>But exaggeration apart, this feeling of the unique position of
+the blessed Mother in relation to the Incarnate Son, as calling
+forth a special honour for her is embodied in the designation of
+the honour to be rendered her as <i>hyperdulia</i>--a specially
+devoted service. It is hardly necessary after what has been said to
+point out that even here in the highest honour rendered to any
+saint there is no passing of the infinite gulf which separates
+Creator from creature, any infringement upon the honour of God. No
+Catholic could dream that blessed Mary would be in any wise
+honoured by the attribution to her of what belongs to her Son.
+These are no doubt commonplaces, but it is better to be commonplace
+than to be misunderstood. The intercession that is asked of the
+blessed Mother is the intercession of one who by God's election is
+more closely associated with God than any other human being is or
+can be. Her power of prayer is felt to proceed from the depth of
+her sanctity; from, in other words, the perfection of her relation
+to her blessed Son Who is the only Mediator and the Saviour of us
+all.</p>
+<p>Let me say in conclusion that this giving of honour to our Lord,
+and to all His saints as united to Him, and the celebration of
+their days according to the Church's year, and the asking of the
+help of their intercession in all the needs of our lives, is not
+simply a thing to be tolerated in those who are inclined to it, is
+not simply a privilege which we are entitled to if we care for it,
+but is a duty which all Christians ought to fulfil because
+otherwise they are failing to make real to them a very important
+article of the Christian Creed. The Communion of Saints, like all
+other articles of the Creed, needs to be put into active use, and
+will be when we believe it as distinguished from assent to it. When
+we believe that all who live unto God in the Body of His dear Son
+are inspired with active love one toward another, we shall
+ourselves feel the impulse of that love, and be compelled both to
+seek an outlet for it toward all other members of the Body, and
+also will equally feel compelled to seek our own share in the
+action of that love by asking for the prayers of the saints for
+ourselves and for all in whom we are interested. Then will we find
+in the "worship of the saints" one great means whereby we can
+worship the God of the saints by the devout recognition of the
+greatness of His work in them, May God be praised and glorified in
+all His saints.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Lowly, and higher than all creatures raised,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Term by eternal council fixed upon,<br>
+Thou art she who didst ennoble man,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;That even He who had created him<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To be Himself His creature disdained not.<br>
+Within thy womb rekindled was the love,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;By virtue of whose heat this flower thus<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Is blossoming in the eternal peace.<br>
+Here thou art unto us a noon-day torch<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Of charity, and among mortal men<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Below, thou art a living fount of hope.<br>
+Lady, thou art so great and so prevailest,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;That who seeks grace without recourse to thee,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Would have his wish fly upward without wings.<br>
+Thy loving-kindness succors not alone<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Him who is seeking it, but many times<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Freely anticipates the very prayer.<br>
+In thee is mercy, pity is in thee,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;In thee magnificence, whatever good<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Is in created being joins in thee.<br>
+<br>
+Dante, Par. XXXIII, 1-21. (Trans. H. Johnson.)</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="PART_TWO"></a>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>MARY OF NAZARETH</h3>
+<center>Mary, of whom was born Jesus.</center>
+<center>S. Matt. I. 16.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>My Maker and Redeemer, Christ the Lord, O Immaculate,
+coming forth from thy womb, having taken my nature upon him, hath
+delivered Adam from the primal curse; wherefore, to thee,
+Immaculate, the Mother of God and Virgin in very sooth, we cry
+aloud unceasingly the Ave of the Angel, "Hail, O Lady, protection
+and shelter and salvation of our souls!"</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">BYZANTINE.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he silences of the Holy Scriptures have always provoked
+speculation as to what is left untold. The devout imagination has
+played about the hints we receive and woven them into stories which
+far outrun any true implication of the facts. Thus has much
+legendary matter gathered about the childhood of our Lord,
+containing the stories, not always very edifying according to our
+taste, which are set down in the Apocryphal Gospels. The same
+eagerness to know more than we are told has produced the developed
+legend of the childhood of our Lady. We can of course place no
+reliance on most of the statements that are there made; perhaps the
+most that we can lay hold of is the fact that S. Mary's father was
+Joachim and her mother Anna. The rest may be left to silence.</p>
+<p>But if the facts of the external life of Mary of Nazareth cannot
+be hoped for, certain general truths evidently follow from God's
+plan for her and from her relation to our Blessed Lord. There are
+certain inferences from her vocation which are irresistible and
+which the theologians of the Church did not fail to make as they
+thought of her function in relation to the Incarnation. We know
+that the work of Redemption by which it was God's purpose to lead
+back a sinful world to Himself was a purpose that worked from the
+very beginning of man's fatal separation from the source of his
+life and happiness. The essential meaning of Holy Scripture is that
+it is a history of the origin of God's purpose and of His bringing
+it to a successful issue in the mission of our Lord. In the
+Scriptures we are permitted to see the unfolding of the divine
+purpose and the preparation of the instruments by which the purpose
+is to be effected. We see the divine will struggling with the human
+will, and in appearance baffled again and again by the selfishness
+and the stupidity of man. We see too that the divine will is in the
+long run successful in securing a point of action in humanity, in
+winning the allegiance of men of good will to co-operation with the
+purpose of God. We see spiritual ideals assimilated, and sympathy
+with the work of God generated, until we feel that that work has
+gained a firm and enduring ground in humanity from which it can
+act. God is able to consummate His purpose, and men begin to
+understand in some measure the nature of the future deliverance and
+to look forward to the coming of One Who should be the embodiment
+of the divine action and the Representative of God Himself with a
+completeness which no previous messenger of God had ever
+attained.</p>
+<p>It we would understand the Old Testament we must find that its
+intimate note is preparation, just as the intimate note of the New
+Testament is accomplishment. God is working to a foreseen end, and
+is working as fast as men will consent to co-operate and become the
+instruments of His purpose. The purpose is not one that can be
+achieved by the exercise of power; it is a purpose of love and can
+be effected only through co-operating love. And as we watch the
+final unfolding of that purpose in the Incarnation of God, we more
+and more become conscious of the preparation of all the instruments
+of the purpose which are working in harmony for the revelation of
+the meaning of God.</p>
+<p>Of all the instruments of this divine purpose, one figure has
+preeminently fascinated the devout imagination because of her
+unique beauty, and has been the object of profound speculation
+because of the intimacy of her relation to God,--Mary of Nazareth.
+The vocabulary of love and reverence has exhausted itself in the
+attempt to express our estimate of her. The literature of Mariology
+is immense. And no one who has at all entered into the meaning of
+the Incarnation, of what is involved in eternal God taking human
+flesh, can wonder at this. Here at the crisis of the divine
+redeeming action, when the crowning mystery which angels desire to
+look into is being accomplished, we find the figure of a village
+maiden of Israel as the surprising instrument of the advent of God.
+We wonder: and we instinctively feel, that as all the other steps
+and instruments in God's redemption of man had from the beginning
+been carefully prepared, so shall we find preparation here. We
+understand that as God could not come in the flesh at any time, but
+only when the "fulness of time" had come; so He could not come of
+any woman, but only of such an one as He had prepared to be the
+instrument of His Incarnation.</p>
+<p>It is involved in the very intimacy of the relation which exists
+between our Lord and His blessed Mother that she should be unique
+in the human race. We feel that we are right in saying that the
+Incarnation which waited for the preparation of the world socially
+and spiritually, must also be thought of as waiting for the coming
+of the woman who would so completely surrender herself to the
+divine will that in her obedience could be founded the antidote to
+the disobedience which was founded in Eve. The race waited for the
+coming of the new mother who should be the instrument in the
+abolishing of the evil of which the first mother was the
+instrument. And from the very beginning of the thought of the
+Church about blessed Mary there was no doubt that it was implied in
+her office in bearing the God-Man that she should be without
+sin--sinless in the sense of never having in any least degree
+consented to evil the thought of the Church has ever held her to
+be. It was held incredible that she who by God's election bore in
+the sanctuary of her womb during the months of her child-bearing
+Him who was Lord and Creator and was come to save the world from
+all the stain and penalty of sin should herself be a sinner.
+Without actual sin, therefore, was Mary held to be from the time
+that the thought of the Church was turned upon her relation to our
+Blessed Lord<a name="FNanchor6"></a><a href="#_6">[6]</a>.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor6">[6]</a> It is
+true that a few writers among the Fathers see in blessed Mary
+traces of venial sin; who think of her intervention at Cana as
+presumptuous &amp;c. But such notices are not of sufficient
+frequency or importance to break the general
+tradition.</blockquote>
+<p>For some time this seemed enough. It was not felt that any
+further thought about her sinlessness was needed. But as the
+uniqueness of Mary forced itself more and more upon the brooding
+thought of theologians and saints they were compelled to face the
+fact that her freedom from actual sin was not a full appreciation
+of her purity, was not an exhaustive treatment of her relation to
+our Lord. The doctrine of the nature of sin itself had been
+becoming clearer to the minds of Christian thinkers. All men are
+conceived and born in sin, it was seen. After S. Paul's teaching,
+the problem of <i>sin</i> was not the problem of sins but the
+problem of sinfulness. The matter could not be left with the
+statement that all men do sin; the reason of their sinning must be
+traced out. And it was traced out, under S. Paul's guidance, to a
+ground of sin in nature itself, to a defect in man as he is born
+into the world. He does not become a sinner when he commits his
+first sin: he is born a sinner. In other words, the problem of
+man's sinfulness is the problem of original sin.</p>
+<p>What then do we mean by original sin? Briefly, we mean this. At
+his creation man was not only created innocent, but he was created
+in union with God, a union which conferred on him many supernatural
+gifts, gifts, that is, which were not a part of his nature, but
+were in the way of an addition to his nature. "By created nature
+man is endowed with moral sense, and is thus made responsible for
+righteousness; but he is unequal to its fulfilment. The
+all-righteous Creator could be trusted to complete His work. He
+endowed primitive man with superadded gifts of grace, especially
+the supernatural gift, <i>donum supernaturale</i>, of the Holy
+Spirit<a name="FNanchor7"></a><a href="#_7">[7]</a>."</p>
+<blockquote><a name="_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor7">[7]</a> Hall,
+Dogmatic Theology, V, 263.</blockquote>
+<p>Our purpose does not require us further to particularize these
+gifts and our time does not permit it. We are concerned with this:
+the effect of man's sin was, what the effect of sin always is, to
+separate man from God. To sin, man has to put his will in
+opposition to the will of God. This our first parents did; and the
+result of their act was the destruction of their union with God and
+the loss of their supernatural endowments. They lapsed into a state
+of nature, only it was a state in which they had forfeited what had
+been conferred upon them at their creation. This state of man, with
+only his natural endowments, is the state into which all men, the
+descendants of Adam, have been born. This is the state of original
+sin. "Original sin means in Catholic theology a state inherited
+from our first human parents in which we are deprived of the
+supernatural grace and original righteousness with which they were
+endowed before they sinned, and are naturally prone to sin." (Hall,
+Dogmatic Theology, Vol. V, p. 281.) We can state the same fact
+otherwise, and more simply for our present purposes, by saying that
+by sin was forfeited the grace of union or sanctifying grace; and
+when we say that a child is born in sin we mean that it is born out
+of union with God, or without the supernatural gift of sanctifying
+grace. You will note here no implication of original sin as an
+active poison handed on from generation to generation. It will be
+important to remember this presently.</p>
+<p>When, therefore, the thought of the Church began to follow out
+what was involved in its belief in the actual sinlessness of
+blessed Mary, in its holding to the fact that her relation to God
+was of such a close and indeed unique character that her actual
+sinfulness would be incomprehensible; it was at length compelled to
+ask, What, in that case are we to think of original sin? If the
+first Eve was created in innocence and endowed with supernatural
+gifts, are we to think that she whom the Fathers of the Church from
+the earliest times have constantly called the second Eve, she whom
+God chose to be the Mother of His Son, should be less endowed? Is
+it a fact any more conceivable that the virgin Mother of God should
+be born in original sin than that she should be the victim of
+actual sin? If by the special grace of God she was kept from sin
+from the time that she was able to know good and evil, is it not
+probable that the freedom from sin goes further back than that, and
+is a freedom from original as well as from actual sin? What is the
+meaning of the Angelic Salutation, "Hail, thou that art <i>full of
+grace</i>," unless it refer to a superadded grace, to such <i>donum
+supernaturale</i> as the first Eve received? There is indeed no
+precedent to guide in the case: the prophet Jeremiah and S. John
+Baptist had been preserved from sin from the womb, but this did not
+involve freedom from original sin. Still the fact that there was no
+precedent was not in anywise fatal; the point of the situation was
+just that there was no precedent for the relation to God into which
+Blessed Mary had been called. It was precisely this uniqueness of
+vocation which was leading theological thought to the conclusion of
+the uniqueness of her privilege: and this uniqueness of privilege
+seemed to call for nothing less than an exemption from sin in any
+and all forms. So a belief in the Immaculate Conception grew up
+despite a good deal of opposition while its implications were being
+thought out, but was found more and more congenial to the mind of
+the Church. She whose wonderful title for centuries had been Mother
+of God could never at any moment of her existence have been
+separate from God. She must, so it was felt, have been united to
+God from the very first moment of her existence.</p>
+<p>But what does this exemption from the common lot of men actually
+mean? I think that the simplest way of getting at it is to ask
+ourselves what it is that happens to a child at baptism. Every
+human child that is born into the world is born in original sin,
+that is, is born out of union with God, without sanctifying grace.
+It is then brought to the font and by baptism regenerated, born
+again, put in a relation to God that we describe as union, made a
+partaker of the divine nature. This varying description of the
+effect of baptism means that the soul of the child has become a
+partaker of sanctifying grace, the grace of union with God.
+Original sin, we say, is forgiven: that is, the soul is placed in
+the relation to God that it would have had had sin not come into
+existence, save that there remains a certain weakness of nature due
+to its sinful heredity. This that happens to children when they are
+baptised is what is held to have happened to Blessed Mary at her
+creation. Her soul instead of being restored to God by grace after
+her birth, was by God's special grace or favour created in union
+with Him, and in that union always continued. The uniqueness of S.
+Mary's privilege was that she never had to be restored to union
+with God because from the moment of her existence she had been one
+with Him. This would have been the common lot of all men if sin had
+not come into the world.</p>
+<p>In view of much criticism of this belief it is perhaps necessary
+to emphasize the fact that a belief in Mary's exemption from
+original sin does not imply a belief that she was exempt from the
+need of redemption. She is a creature of God, only the highest of
+His creatures: and like all human beings she needed to be redeemed
+by the Blood of Christ. The privileges which are our Lord's
+Mother's, are her's through the foreseen merits of her Son--she, as
+all others, is redeemed by the sacrifice and death of Christ. There
+is in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception no shadow of
+encroachment on the doctrine of universal redemption in Christ;
+there is simply the belief that for the merits of the Son the
+Mother was spared any moment of separation from the Father.</p>
+<p>It will, of course, be said that this doctrine is but the
+relatively late and newly formulated doctrine of the Latin Church
+and is of no obligation elsewhere; that we are in no wise bound to
+receive it. In regard to which there are one or two things to be
+said. That we are not formally bound to believe a doctrine is not
+at all the same thing as to say that we are formally bound not to
+believe it. I am afraid that the latter is a not uncommon attitude.
+There is no obligation upon us to disbelieve the Immaculate
+Conception of blessed Mary; there is an obligation upon us to
+understand it and to appreciate its meaning and value. We must
+remember that a doctrine that is not embodied in our Creed may
+nevertheless have the authority of the Church back of it. The
+doctrine of the Real Presence is not stated in the Creed; yet it is
+and always has been the teaching of the Church everywhere in all
+its liturgies. Though any particular statement of the Real Presence
+is not binding, the fact itself is binding on all Christians, and
+may not be doubted.</p>
+<p>In much the same way it will be found that theological doctrines
+of relatively late creedal formulation yet have behind the
+formulation a long history of actual acceptance in the teaching of
+the Church. They are theologically certain long before they are
+embodied in authoritative formulae. What the individual Christian
+has to do is to try to assimilate the meaning of theological
+teaching and to find a place for it in his devotional practice and
+experience. His best attitude is not one of doubt and scepticism,
+but of meditation and experiment. It is through this latter
+attitude that each one is helping to form the mind of the Church,
+and aiding its progressive appreciation of revealed truth.</p>
+<p>I do not see how any one who has entered into the meaning of the
+Incarnation can feel otherwise than that the uniqueness of the
+event carries with it the uniqueness of the instrument. It can of
+course be said that truth is not a matter of feeling but of
+revelation. But is it not true that God reveals Himself in many
+ways, and that our feelings as well as our intellects are involved
+in our perception of the truth revealed? Do we not often feel that
+something must be true far in advance of our ability to prove it
+so? And in truths of a certain order is there not an intuitive
+perception, a perception growing out of a sense of fitness, of
+congruity, which outruns the slow advance of the intellect? Love
+and sympathy often far outrun intellectual process. This is not to
+say that feeling is all; that a sense of fitness and conformity is
+a sufficient basis of doctrine. There is always need of the
+verification of the conclusions of the affections by the intellect;
+and the intellect in the last resort will have to be the
+determining factor.</p>
+<p>And I think it can be said without hesitation that the
+intellectual work of theological students has quite justified the
+course that the affections of Christendom have taken in their
+spontaneous appreciation of Mary, the Ever-Virgin Mother of Our
+Lord. What the heart of Christendom has discovered, the mind of
+Christendom has justified. But here more than in any other
+doctrinal development it is love that has led the way, often with
+an eagerness, an <i>&eacute;lan</i>, with which theology has found
+it difficult to keep up.</p>
+<p>And as we to-day try to appreciate the place of Blessed Mary in
+the life of the Church of God must we not feel it to be our
+misfortune that our past has been so wrapped in clouds of
+controversy that we have been unable to see her meaning at all
+clearly? Must we not feel deep sadness at the thought that the very
+mention of Mary's name, so often stirs, not love and gratitude, but
+the spirit of suspicion and dislike? We no doubt have passed beyond
+such feelings, but the traces of their evil work through the
+centuries still persist. They persist in certain feelings of
+reserve and hesitation when we find that our convictions are
+leading us to the adoption of the attitude toward her which is the
+common attitude of all Catholicity, both East and West. When we
+feel that the time has actually come to abandon the narrowness and
+barrenness of devotional practice which is a part of our tradition,
+we nevertheless feel as though we were launching out on strange
+seas and that our next sight of land might be of strange regions
+where we should not feel at home. If such be our instinctive
+attitude, it is well to remember that progress, spiritual as well
+as other, is conquest of the (to us) new; but that the acquisition
+of the new does not necessarily mean the abandonment of the old. We
+shall in fact lose nothing of our hold on the unique work of our
+Lord because we recognise that His Blessed Mother's association
+with it implies a certain preparation on her part, a certain
+uniqueness of privilege. There is one God, and one Mediator between
+God and man, the Man Christ Jesus; and all who come to God, come
+through Him. But they come also in the unity of the Body of many
+members and of many offices. And the office of her who in God's
+providence was called to be the Mother of the Incarnate is surely
+as unique as is her vocation. She surely is entitled to receive
+from us the deep affection of our hearts and the highest honour
+that may be given to any creature.</p>
+<br>
+<p>THE GARLAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARIE.</p>
+<blockquote>Here are five letters in this blessed name,<br>
+Which, changed, a five-fold mystery design,<br>
+The M the Myrtle, A the Almonds claim,<br>
+R Rose, I Ivy, E sweet Eglantine.<br>
+<br>
+These form thy garland, when of Myrtle green<br>
+The gladdest ground to all the numbered five,<br>
+Is so implex&eacute;d fine and laid in, between,<br>
+As love here studied to keep grace alive.<br>
+<br>
+Thy second string is the sweet Almond bloom<br>
+Mounted high upon Selines' crest:<br>
+As it alone (and only it) had room,<br>
+To knit thy crown, and glorify the rest.<br>
+<br>
+The third is from the garden culled, the Rose,<br>
+The eye of flowers, worthy for her scent,<br>
+To top the fairest lily now, that grows<br>
+With wonder on the thorny regiment.<br>
+<br>
+The fourth is the humble Ivy intersert<br>
+But lowly laid, as on the earth asleep,<br>
+Preserved in her antique bed of vert,<br>
+No faiths more firm or flat, then, where't doth creep.<br>
+<br>
+But that, which sums all, is the Eglantine,<br>
+Which of the field is cleped the sweetest briar,<br>
+Inflamed with ardour to that mystic shine,<br>
+In Moses' bush unwasted in the fire.<br>
+<br>
+Thus love, and hope, and burning charity,<br>
+(Divinest graces) are so intermixt<br>
+With odorous sweets and soft humility,<br>
+As if they adored the head, whereon they are fixed.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE ANNUNCIATION I</h3>
+<center>And the angel came in unto her, and said,<br>
+Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is<br>
+with thee; blessed art thou among women.<br>
+S. Luke, I. 28</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Oh God, whose will it was that thy Word should take
+flesh, at the message of the Angel, in the womb of the blessed
+Virgin Mary, grant to us thy suppliants that, we who believe her to
+be truly the Mother of God, may be assisted by her intercession
+with thee. Through &amp;c.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">ROMAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hen we attempt to reconstruct imaginatively any scene of Holy
+Scripture it is almost inevitable that we see it through the eyes
+of some great artist of the past. The Crucifixion comes to us as
+D&uuml;rer or Guido Reni saw it; the Presentation or the Visitation
+presents itself to us in terms of the imagination of Raphael; we
+see the Nativity as a composition of Corregio. So the Annunciation
+rises before us when we close our eyes and attempt to make "the
+composition of place" in a familiar grouping of the actors: a
+startled maiden who has arisen hurriedly from work or prayer,
+looking with wonder at the apparition of an angel who has all the
+eagerness of one who has come hastily upon an urgent mission. The
+surroundings differ, but artists of the Renaissance like to think
+of a sumptuous background as a worthy setting for so great an
+event.</p>
+<p>We keep close to the meaning of Scripture if we set the
+Annunciation in a room in a cottage of a Palestinian working man.
+And I like to think of S. Mary at her accustomed work when Gabriel
+appeared, not with a rush of wings, but as a silent and hardly felt
+presence standing before her whom the Lord has chosen to be the
+instrument of His coming. Wonder there would have been, the kind of
+awe-struck wonder with which the supernatural always fills men; and
+yet only for a moment, for how could she who was daily living so
+close to God fear the messenger of God? The thought of angels and
+divine messengers would be wholly familiar to her. They had been
+the frequent agents of God in many a crisis of her people's
+history, and appeared again and again in the story of her ancestors
+on whose details she had often meditated. Yet in her humility she
+could but think it strange that an angel should have any message to
+bear to her.</p>
+<p>It is a striking enough scene, as the artists have felt when
+they tried to put it before us. But no artist has ever been able to
+go below the surface and by any hint lead us to an appreciation of
+the vast implications of the moment. This moment of the
+Annunciation is in fact the central moment of the world's history.
+No moment before or since has equalled it in its unspeakable
+wonder, in its revelation of the meaning of God. Not the moment of
+the creation when all the Sons of God sang together at the vision
+of the unfolding purpose of God; not the morning of the
+Resurrection when the empty tomb told of the accomplished overthrow
+of death and hell. This is the moment toward which all preceding
+time had moved, and to which all succeeding ages will look
+back--the moment of the Incarnation of God.</p>
+<p>It is well to ask ourselves at this point what the Incarnation
+means, because our estimate of Blessed Mary as the chosen
+instrument of God's grace will be influenced by our estimate of
+that which she was chosen to do. One feels the failure to grasp her
+position in the work of our redemption often displays a weak hold
+upon that which is the very heart of God's work--the fact of God
+made man. The moment of the Annunciation is the moment of the
+Incarnation: God in His infinite love for mankind is sending forth
+His Son to be born of a woman in the likeness of our flesh. God the
+Son, the second Person of the ever adorable Trinity, is entering
+the womb of this maiden, there to wrap Himself in her flesh and to
+pass through the common course of a human child's development till
+He shall reach the hour of the Nativity. When we try to grasp the
+reach of the divine Love, its depth, its self-forgetfulness, we
+must stand in the cottage in Nazareth and hear the angelic
+salutation. And then surely our own hearts cannot fail to respond
+to the revelation of the divine love; and something of our love
+that goes out to our hidden Lord, goes out too to the maiden-mother
+who so willingly became God's instrument in His work for our
+redemption. In imagination I see S. Gabriel kneeling before her who
+has become a living Tabernacle of God Most High, and repeating his
+"Hail, thou that art highly favoured," with the deepest
+reverence.</p>
+<p>"Hail, thou that art full of grace." We linger over this Ave of
+S. Gabriel, and often it rises to our lips. Perhaps it is with S.
+Luke's narrative, almost naked in its simplicity, in our hands as
+we try once more to push our thought deep into the meaning of the
+scene, that we may understand a little better what has resulted in
+our experience from the Incarnation of God, and our thought turns
+to S. Mary whom God chose and brought so near to Himself. Perhaps
+it is when, with chaplet in hand, we try to imagine S. Mary's
+feelings at this first of the Joyful Mysteries when the meaning of
+her vocation comes clearly before her. Hail! thou that art full of
+grace, of the Living Grace, the very Presence of the divinity
+itself. The plummet of our thought fails always to reach the depth
+of that mystery of Mary's Child. It was indeed centuries before the
+Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit thought out and fully
+stated the meaning of this Child; it was centuries before it fully
+grasped the meaning of Mary herself in her relation to her divine
+Son: and after all the centuries of Spirit-guided statement and
+saintly meditation it still remains that many fail to understand
+and to make energetic in life the fact of the Incarnation of God in
+the womb of the Virgin Mary.</p>
+<p>And what was S. Mary's own attitude toward the announcement of
+the Angel? Her first instinctive word--the word called out by her
+imperfect grasp of the meaning of the message of S. Gabriel, is:
+How can this be seeing I know not a man? Are we to infer from these
+words, as many have inferred, that in her secret thoughts S. Mary
+had resolved always to remain a virgin, that she had so offered
+herself to God in the virgin state? Possibly when we remember that
+such was God's will for her it is not going too far to assume that
+she had been prompted thus to meet and offer herself to the divine
+will. Be that as it may there is an obvious and instantaneous
+assumption that the child-bearing which is predicted to her lies
+outside the normal and accustomed way of marriage. She clearly does
+not think that the archangel's words look to her approaching union
+with S. Joseph, even if the nominal nature of that marriage were
+not agreed upon. It is clear that her instantaneous feeling is that
+as the message is supernatural in character, so will its fulfilment
+be, and the wondering <i>how</i> arises to her lips.</p>
+<p>The answer to the how is that what is worked in her is by the
+power of the Holy Spirit: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and
+the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that
+holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of
+God."</p>
+<p>As so often in the dealing of God with us, that which is put
+forward as an explanation actually deepens the mystery. It was no
+abatement of Mary's wonder, nor did it really put away her
+<i>how</i> when she was told that the Holy Ghost should come upon
+her and that the child should be the Son of the Highest. And yet
+this was the only answer to such a question that was possible. Our
+questions may be met in two ways: either by a detailed explanation,
+or by the answer that the only explanation is God--that what we are
+concerned with is a direct working of God outside the accustomed
+order of nature and therefore outside the reach of our
+understanding. Such acts have no doubt their laws, but they are not
+the laws in terms of which we are wont to think.</p>
+<p>The question of S. Mary was not a question which implied doubt.
+It is therefore the proper question with which to approach all
+God's works. There is a stress with which such questions may be
+asked which implies on our part unbelief or at least hesitation in
+belief. It is a not uncommon accent to hear to-day in questions as
+to divine mysteries. Our recitation of the creed is not rarely
+invaded by restlessness, shadows of doubt, which perhaps we brush
+aside, or perhaps let linger in our minds with the feeling that it
+is safer for our religion not to follow these out. I am afraid that
+there are not a few who still adhere to the Church who do so with
+the feeling that it is better for them to go on repeating words
+that they have become used to rather than to raise questions as to
+their actual truth; who feel that the faith of the Church rests on
+foundations which in the course of the centuries have been badly
+shaken, but that it is safer not to disturb them lest they
+incontinently fall to pieces.</p>
+<p>In other words there is a wide-spread feeling that such stories
+as this of the Annunciation and of the Virgin birth of our Lord are
+fables. When we ask, why is there such a feeling? the only answer
+is that the modern man has become suspicious of the supernatural.
+Has there anything been found in the way of evidence, we ask, which
+reflects upon the truth of the story in S. Luke? No, we are told;
+the story stands where it always did, its evidence is what it
+always was. What has changed is not the story or the evidence for
+it but the human attitude toward that and all such stories. The
+modern mind does not attempt to disprove them, it just disapproves
+of them, and therefore declines to believe them. It sets them aside
+as belonging to an order of ideas with which it no longer has any
+sympathy.</p>
+<p>It is no doubt true that we reach many of our conclusions,
+especially those which govern our practical attitude towards life,
+from the ground of certain hardly recognised presuppositions,
+rather than from the basis of thought out principles. The thought
+of to-day is pervaded by the denial of the supernatural. It insists
+that all that we know or can know is the natural world about us. It
+rules out the possibility of any invasions of the natural order and
+declines to accept such on any evidence whatsoever. All that one
+has time to say now of such an attitude is that it makes all
+religion impossible, and sets aside as untrustworthy all the
+deepest experiences of the human soul. If I were going to argue
+against this attitude (as I am not able to now) I should simply
+oppose to it the past experience of the race as embodied in its
+best religious thought. I should stress the fact that what is
+noblest and best in the past of humanity is wholly meaningless
+unless humanity's supposition of a life beyond this life, and of
+the existence of spiritual powers and beings to whom we are
+related, holds good. No nation has ever conducted its life on the
+basis of pure materialism, save in those last stages of its
+decadence which preluded its downfall.</p>
+<p>But without going so far as to reject the supernatural and
+reject the truth of the immediate intervention of God in life,
+there are multitudes of men and women whose whole life never moves
+beyond the natural order. They have no materialistic theory; if you
+ask them, they think that they are, in some sense not very well
+defined, Christians. But they have no Christian interests, no
+spiritual activities of any sort. For all practical purposes God
+and the spiritual order do not exist for them. They are not for the
+most part what any one would call bad people; though there seems no
+intelligible meaning of the word in which they can be called
+<i>good</i>. The best that one can say of them is that they have a
+certain usefulness in the present social order though they are not
+missed when they fall out of it. They can be replaced in the social
+machine much as a lost or broken part can in an engine. And just as
+the part of an engine which has become useless where it is, can
+have no possible usefulness elsewhere, so we are unable to imagine
+them as capable of adaptation to any other place than that which
+they have filled here. Perhaps that is what we mean by
+hell--incapacity to adapt oneself to the life of the future.</p>
+<p>All this implies a temper of mind and soul that has rendered
+itself incapable of vision. For just as our ordinary vision of the
+beauty of this world depends not only on the existence of the world
+but on a certain capacity in us to see it, so that the beauty of
+the world does not at all exist for the man whose optic nerve is
+paralysed; so the meaning and beauty, nay, the very existence of
+the supernatural order depends for us upon a capacity in us which
+we may call the capacity of vision. The sceptic waves aside our
+stories of supernatural happenings with the brusque statement,
+"Nobody to-day sees angels. They only appear in an atmosphere of
+primitive or medi&aelig;val superstition, not in the broad
+intellectual light of the twentieth century." But it may be that
+the fact (if it be a fact) that nobody sees angels in the twentieth
+century is due to some other cause than the non-existence of the
+angels. After all, in any century you see what you are prepared to
+see, what in other words, you are looking for. It is a common
+enough phenomenon that the man who lives in the country misses most
+of the beauty of it. In his search for the potato bug he misses the
+sunset, and disposes of the primrose on the river's brim as a
+common weed. It is true that in order to see we need something
+beside eyes, and to hear we need something beside ears. When on an
+occasion the Father spoke from heaven to the Son many heard the
+sound, and some said, "It thundered"; others got so far as to say,
+"An Angel spake to him."</p>
+<p>Let us then in the presence of narratives of supernatural
+happenings ask our <i>how</i> with a good deal of reverence and a
+good deal of modesty, not as implying a sceptical doubt on our
+part, but as a wish that we may be admitted deeper into the meaning
+of the event. Scepticism simply closes the door through which we
+might pass to fuller knowledge. The questioning of faith holds the
+door open. To those who have not closed the door upon the
+supernatural it is evident that it is permeated with forces and
+influences which are not material in their origin or their effects;
+that God acts upon the world now as He has ever acted upon it. If
+we cannot believe this I do not see that we can believe in God at
+all in any intelligible sense. There is to me one attitude toward
+the supernatural that is even more hopeless than the attitude of
+materialistic scepticism which says, "Miracles do not happen"; and
+that is the attitude which says, "Miracles happened in Bible times,
+but have never happened since." As the one attitude seems to imply
+that God made the world, but after He had made it left it to go on
+by itself and no more expresses any interest in it; so the other
+implies that after God put the Christian religion in the world He
+left that to go on by itself and no longer pays any attention to
+it. Either to me is wholly unintelligible and inconceivable.</p>
+<p>And what is worse, is wholly out of touch with the revelation of
+God made in Holy Scripture. That displays God working in and
+through the material universe, and it displays God working in and
+through the spirit of man; and it in no place implies that either
+the material world or the human order is so perfect as to need no
+further divine action. Revelation implies the constant presence and
+action of God in nature and in the Church; it implies that both
+have a forward look and are not ends in themselves but are moving
+on toward some ultimate perfection. "The whole creation groaneth
+and travaileth ... waiting for the adoption, that is, the
+redemption of our body." We look for a new heaven and a new earth;
+and human society looks to a perfect consummation in the fellowship
+of the saints in light.</p>
+<p>Looking out on life from the spiritual point of vantage, we may
+hopefully ask our <i>how</i>, and there will be an answer. To
+blessed Mary S. Gabriel replied: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon
+thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore
+also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called
+the Son of God."--An answer that was full of light and of deepest
+mystery. The immediate question--the mode of her conception--was
+cleared up; it would be through the direct action of God the Holy
+Spirit: but the nature of the Child to be born is filled with
+mystery. We can imagine S. Mary in the days to come finding her
+child-bearing quite intelligible in comparison with the mystery
+that brooded over His nature.</p>
+<p>This is the common fact in our dealing with God. We express it
+when we say that we never get beyond the need of faith. We pray
+that one thing may be made clear, and the result of the clearing is
+the deepened sense of the mystery of the things beyond, just as any
+increase in the power of the telescope clears up certain questions
+which had been puzzling the astronomers only to carry their vision
+into vaster depths of space, opening new questions to tantalize the
+imagination. We find it so always. The solution of any question of
+our spiritual lives does not lead as perhaps we thought it would
+lead to there being no longer any questions to perplex us and to
+draw on our time and our energy; rather such solution puts us in
+the presence of new and, it may well be, deeper and more perplexing
+questions. "Are there no limits to the demands of God upon us," we
+sometimes despairingly ask? And the answer is, "No: there are no
+limits because the end of the road that we are travelling is in
+infinity." The limit that is set to our perfecting is the
+perfection of God, and if we grow through all the years of eternity
+we shall still have attained only a relative perfection.</p>
+<p>So the successful passing of one test cannot be expected to
+relieve us from all tests in the future. It is the dream of the
+child that manhood will set it free; and he reaches manhood only to
+find that it imposes obligations which are so pressing that he
+reverses his dream and speaks of his childhood as the time of his
+true freedom. The meeting of spiritual tests is but the proving of
+spiritual capacity to meet other tests. To our Lady it might well
+seem that the acceptance of the conditions of the Incarnation was
+the severest test that God could assign her; that in the light of
+the promise she could look on to joy. But the future concealed a
+sword which should pierce her very heart. The promise contained no
+doubt wonderful things--this wonder of God's blessing that she was
+now experiencing in the coming of the Holy Ghost, in the very
+embrace of God Himself: this is but the first of the Joyful
+Mysteries which were God's great gifts to her. But her life was not
+to be a succession of Joyful Mysteries, ultimately crowned with the
+Mysteries of Glory. There were the Sorrowful Mysteries as well.
+They were as true, and shall we not say, as necessary, as valuable,
+a part of her spiritual training as the others. She, our Mother,
+was now near God, with a nearness that was possible for no other
+human being, and it is one of the traditional sayings of our Lord:
+"He that is near Me is near fire." And fire burns as well as warms
+and lights. She is wonderful, the Virgin of Nazareth, in this
+moment when she becomes Mother of God: and we share in the rapture
+of the moment when in the fulness of her joy she hardly notices S.
+Gabriel's departure: but we feel, too, a great pity for her as we
+think of the coming days. So we kneel to her who is our Mother, as
+well as Mother of God, and say our <i>Ave</i>, and ask her
+priceless intercession.</p>
+<blockquote>Gabriel, that angel bright,<br>
+Brighter than the sun is light,<br>
+From heaven to earth he took his flight,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Letare.<br>
+<br>
+In Nazareth, that great city,<br>
+Before a maiden he kneeled on knee,<br>
+And said, "Mary, God is with thee,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Letare."<br>
+<br>
+"Hail Mary, full of grace,<br>
+God is with thee, and ever was;<br>
+He hath in thee chosen a place.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Letare."<br>
+<br>
+Mary was afraid of that sight,<br>
+That came to her with so great light,<br>
+Then said the angel that was so bright,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;"Letare."<br>
+<br>
+"Be not aghast of least nor most,<br>
+In thee is conceived of the Holy Ghost,<br>
+To save the souls that were for-lost.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Letare."<br>
+<br>
+Fifteenth Century.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE ANNUNCIATION II</h3>
+<center>And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto
+me according to thy word.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke I. 38</center>
+<blockquote>O God, who through the fruitful virginity of blessed
+Mary didst bestow on mankind the rewards of eternal salvation:
+grant, we beseech thee, that we may experience her intercession for
+us through whom we were made worthy to receive the author of life,
+even Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">Roman.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-s.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>Mary's momentary hesitation had been due to the surprise that
+she felt at the nature of the angelic message and the difficulty
+that there was in relating it to her state of life. That she, a
+virgin, should bear a son was vastly perplexing; but the answer of
+S. Gabriel speedily cleared away the difficulty: "The Holy Ghost
+shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow
+thee."</p>
+<p>Blessed Mary had no difficulty about the supernatural; she was
+not afflicted with the modern disease that there are no things in
+heaven and earth save such as are contained in our philosophy. She
+was not of those who "cannot believe what they do not understand,"
+It was enough for her that a message had come from God: and no
+matter how little she was able to understand the mode of God's
+proposed action within her, she was willing to offer herself to be
+the instrument of the will of God. No doubt that was an habitual
+attitude and not one taken up on the spur of the moment. It is
+indeed very rarely that what seem spontaneous actions are really
+such; and S. Mary's first word was nearer spontaneity than the
+second. Her exclamation in answer to the angelic <i>Ave</i> was the
+natural expression of her surprise at so unexpected a message: its
+variance from all her thought about her life was the thing that
+struck her; and therefore her instinctive, "How can this be?"</p>
+<p>In this second word we have a quite different attitude. Here is
+revealed to us the profound and perfect humility of the Blessed
+Virgin. This answer comes from the experience of her whole life. It
+is of such utterances that we say that they are revealing. What we
+at any time say, does in fact reveal what we are--what we have come
+to be through the experience of our past life. And no doubt it is
+these instinctive utterances which are called out by some
+unexpected occurrence that reveal more of us than our weighed and
+guarded words. Back of every word we utter is a life we have lived.
+We have been spending years in preparing for that word. Perhaps
+when the time comes to speak it, it is not the word we thought we
+were going to speak, it was not the prelude to the action we
+thought that we were going to perform; it reveals a character other
+than the character that we thought we had. How often the Gospel
+brings that before us! We see the young Ruler come running with his
+brave and perfectly sincere words about inheriting eternal life;
+and then we see him going away when the testing of our Lord
+demonstrated that he only partly meant what he said. It was not S.
+Peter's brave words, "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not
+deny thee," that revealed the truth about the Apostle; but the
+words that were called out by the accusation that he was of the
+company of Jesus: "Then began he to curse and swear, saying, I know
+not the man." We have no doubt that he knows himself better when he
+catches the eye of the Master turned upon him and goes and weeps
+bitterly. And it is true, is it not, that it is through words
+called out and thoughts stirred by the unexpected that we often get
+new insight into our real state. A sudden temptation reveals a
+hidden weakness, and we go away shamed and crushed, saying, "I did
+not suppose that I was capable of that."</p>
+<p>But, thank God, the revelation is sometimes the other way; the
+testing uncovers unexpected strength. Of many a man, after some
+strong trial, we say, "I did not know that he had so much courage,
+or so much patience." The quiet unassuming exterior was the mask of
+an heroic will of which very likely not even the possessor
+suspected the true quality. The annals of martyrdom are full of
+these revelations of unsuspected strength. Here in the case of
+Blessed Mary the quality revealed is that of humility so perfect
+that it dreams not of revolt from the most searching trial. It
+reveals the character of our Mother better than pages of
+description can do. What we see in response to the bewildering
+messages brought by S. Gabriel is the instinctive movement of the
+soul toward God. There is utter absence of any thought of self or
+of how she may be affected by the purpose of God; it is enough that
+that purpose is made plain.</p>
+<p>It seems well to insist on this instinctive movement of the soul
+in Blessed Mary because it is one item of the evidence that the
+Catholic Church has to offer for its belief in her sinlesssness.
+Any momentary rebellion, no matter how soon recovered from, or how
+sincerely regretted, against the will of God, would be evidence of
+the existence of sin. But where sin is not, where there is an
+unstained soul, there the knowledge of the will of God will send
+one running to its acceptance; there will be active acceptance and
+not just submission to God's will. Submission implies a certain
+effort to place ourselves in line with the will of God; it often
+seems to imply that we are accepting it because we cannot do
+anything else. But with Blessed Mary there is a glad going forth to
+meet God; the word "Behold" springs out to meet the will of God
+half-way. It is as though she had been holding herself ready,
+expectant, in the certainty of the coming of some message, and now
+she offers herself without the shadow of hesitation, as to a
+purpose which was a welcome vocation: "Behold the Handmaid of the
+Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." How wonderful is the
+humility of obedience!</p>
+<p>And humility--we must stress this--is not a virtue of youth; it
+is not one of the virtues which ripen quickly, but is of slow
+development and delayed maturity. Modesty we should expect in a
+maiden, and lack of self-assertion; and perhaps obedience of a
+sort. But those do not constitute the virtue of humility. We are
+humble when we have lost self; and Mary's wondering answer reveals
+the fact that she is not thinking of herself at all, but only of
+the nature of the divine purpose. That that purpose being known she
+should at all resist it would seem to her a thing incredible, for
+all her life she had had no other motive of action. Her will had
+never been separated from the will of God.</p>
+<p>This state of union which was hers by divine election and
+privilege, we achieve, if we achieve it at all, by virtue of great
+spiritual discipline. We are, to be sure, brought into union with
+God through the sacraments, but the union so achieved is, if one
+may so express it, an unstable union; it is union that we have to
+maintain by daily spiritual action and which suffers many a
+weakening through our infidelity, even if it escape the disaster of
+mortal sin. We sway to and fro in our struggle to attain the
+equilibrium of perfection which belonged to Blessed Mary by virtue
+of the first embrace of God which had freed her from sin. Our
+tragedy is that we have almost universally lost the first
+engagements of the Spiritual Combat before we have at all
+understood that there is any combat. The circumstances of life of
+child and youth are such that we become familiar with sin before we
+have the intelligence to understand the need of resisting, even if
+we are fortunate enough to have such an education as to awaken a
+sense of sin as opposition to God. There is nothing more appalling
+than the tragedy of life thus defiled and broken and put at a
+disadvantage before it even understands the ideals that should
+govern its course. When the vision of perfection comes and we face
+life as the field where we are to acquire eternal values, we face
+it with a poisoned imagination and a depleted strength. Our battle
+is not only to maintain what we have, but to win back what we have
+lost.</p>
+<p>Under such conditions there is much consolation in learning that
+we do not fight alone but have the constant help and sympathy of
+those who are endued with the strength of perfect purity. Their
+likeness to us in that they have lived the life of the flesh
+assures us of their understanding, and it assures us too of their
+active co-operation. We cannot understand the saints standing
+outside human life and from the vantage point of their achievement
+looking on as indolent spectators. The spectacle offorded by the
+Church Militant must call out the active intercession of all the
+saints; but especially do we look for helpful sympathy from her who
+is our all-pure Mother, whose very purity gives her intercession
+unmeasured power. She is not removed from us through her
+spotlessness, but by virtue of her clearer understanding of the
+meaning of sin and of separation from God that it brings her, she
+is ready to fly to the help of all sinners by her ceaseless
+intercession.</p>
+<p>The difficulty of our spiritual lives rises chiefly out of the
+clash of wills. A disordered nature, a tainted inheritance, a
+corrupt environment conspire to make the life of grace tremendously
+difficult. It is only in a very limited sense that we can be said
+to be free, and there is no possibility at all of overcoming the
+handicap of sin, except firm and careful reliance on the grace of
+God. That grace, no doubt, is always at our disposal as far as we
+will use it. Grace moves us, but it does not compel us; and we are
+free always to reject the offer of God. We have only to open our
+eyes upon the world about us to see how rarely is the grace of God
+accepted in any effective way. Even in convinced Christians the
+attempt to live the divided life is the commonest thing possible.
+It sometimes seems as though the prevalent conception of the
+Christian life were that it is sufficient to offer God a certain
+limited allegiance and that the remainder of the life will be
+thereby ransomed and placed at our disposal to use as we will. We
+find the theory well worked out in the current attitude of
+Christians toward the observance of the Lord's Day. It appears to
+be held that an attendance at Mass or Matins is a sufficient
+recognition of the interests of religion and that the rest of the
+day may be regarded, not as the Lord's Day, but as man's--as a day
+of unlimited amusement and self-indulgence. The notion of
+consecration is abandoned. The only possible outcome of such
+theories of life is what we already experience, spiritual
+lawlessness and moral degradation. I suppose that it will only be
+through social disaster that society will come (as usual, too late)
+to any comprehension that the will of God is what it is because it
+is only by following the road that it indicates that human life can
+reach a successful development. God's laws are not arbitrary
+inflictions; they are the expression of the highest wisdom in the
+guidance of human life.</p>
+<p>Our elementary duty therefore as sane persons is to find what is
+the will of God in any given circumstances; there should be no
+action until there has been an effort to ascertain that will. It
+were as sensible to set about building a house without ascertaining
+what strength of foundation would be needful, or without knowing
+the sort of material we were going to use. One has heard of a house
+being built in which it turned out that there was a room with no
+doorway, or floor to which no stair led up; but we do not commend
+such exploits as the last word in architecture, nor would we
+commend a farmer who planted his crops without attention to the
+nature of the soil. There are certain elementary principles of
+common sense which we pretty uniformly hold to in every matter with
+the exception of religion; that seems to be held to be a separate
+department of human activity with laws of its own, and in which the
+principles which govern life elsewhere do not hold. We do not
+profess this theory, of course, but we commonly act upon it, while
+we still profess to respect the will of God. It is strange too that
+after having habitually neglected that will, we are greatly
+disappointed, not to say indignant, when after a life of
+disobedience and scorn of God's thought for us we do not find
+ourselves in possession of the fruits of righteousness. If it were
+not so tragic it would be amusing to hear men declaim against the
+justice of a God whose existence they have habitually
+disregarded.</p>
+<p>But, it is often said, it is not by any means easy to find out
+God's will. You talk about it as though it were as easy to know
+God's will as it is to know the multiplication table. Well, at
+least it can be said that one does not get to know the
+multiplication table without effort! What objections as to the
+obscurity of the will of God will seem to mean is that it does take
+effort to ascertain it. I do not know of any reason for regarding
+that as unjust. If the will of God is what religion maintains that
+it is, of primary importance to our lives, we might well be glad
+that it is ascertainable at all, at the expense of whatever
+effort.</p>
+<p>An Almighty God has implanted within every human heart the
+knowledge that His will exists and is important; that is, He has
+endowed every man with a conscience which is the certainty of the
+difference between right and wrong, and the conviction that we are
+responsible for our conduct to some power outside ourselves; that
+we are not at liberty to conduct life on any lines we will. Having
+so much certainty, it surely becomes us to set about ascertaining
+the nature of the power and the details of the will. The very
+nature of conscience, as a sense of obligation, rather than a
+source of information, should create a desire for a knowledge of
+what God's will is in detail, that is, what is the content of the
+notion of right and wrong.</p>
+<p>And while it is true that such content can only be ascertained
+by work, it is not true that the work is a specially difficult one.
+The Revelation of God's mind made through Holy Scripture and
+through the life of His Incarnate Son is an open book that any one
+can study; and to any objection that such study has led chiefly to
+difference of opinion and darkness rather than light, the answer is
+that such disaster follows for the most part only when the guidance
+of the Catholic Church is repudiated; when, that is, we pursue a
+course in this study which we should not pursue in relation to any
+other. If we were studying geology we should not regard it as the
+best course to scorn all that preceding students have done, and
+betake our unprepared selves to field work! But that is the "Bible
+and the Bible only" theory of spiritual knowledge. If we want to
+know the meaning of the Biblical teaching, we must make use of the
+helps which the experience of the Church has richly provided.</p>
+<p>But the nature of the divine will and the particulars of our
+obligation are not merely, perhaps one ought to say, not chiefly,
+to be assimilated through our brains. The best preparation for the
+doing of the will of God and the progressive entering into His
+mind, is an obedient life. Purity of character will carry us
+farther on this path than cleverness of brains. Our Lord's own rule
+is: <i>He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine.</i> In
+other words, we understand the mind of God and attain to the
+illumination of the conscience, through sympathetic response to the
+will so far as we have seen it. And each new response, in its turn,
+carries us to a deeper and clearer understanding of the will. That
+is to say, our conscience, by habitual response to God's will, so
+far as it knows it, is so illumined as to be able to make
+trustworthy judgments on new material submitted to it.</p>
+<p>This is, of course, to be otherwise described as the working of
+God the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit that dwelleth in us and
+directs us to right judgments if we will listen. Our danger is that
+self-will constantly crops up and complicates the case by
+representing that the line suggested by the Holy Spirit is not in
+reality in accord with our interests. This opposition between the
+seeming interests suggested by self-will, which indeed often
+contribute to our immediate gratification, and our true interests
+as indicated by the monitions of the Holy Spirit, constitutes the
+real struggle of the life during the period of probation. The will
+of God in every circumstance is usually plain enough; but it is
+silenced by the clamour of the passions and desires demanding
+immediate gratification: and we are all more or less children in
+our insistence on the immediate and our incapacity to wait. But I
+must insist again that it is not knowledge that is wanting but
+sympathy with the course that knowledge directs. We pursuade
+ourselves that we do not know, when the real trouble is that we
+know only too well. One feels that much that is put forward as
+inability to understand religion is at bottom merely disinclination
+to obey it.</p>
+<p>Not that there is not room for genuine perplexity. Often it
+happens that we are not at all certain in this or that detail of
+conduct. In that case it is well to consider whether it is
+necessary to act before we can attain certainty through study or
+advice. But if act we must, we can at least act with honesty, not
+making our will the accomplice of our passions or interests.</p>
+<p>I do not believe that there are many cases in which we shall go
+wrong if we make use of all the means at our disposal. A diligent
+doing of the will of God does undoubtedly bring light on unknown
+problems and unexpected situations in which we from time to time
+find ourselves. If our constant attitude has been one of free and
+glad obedience we need not fear to go astray. "Behold the handmaid
+of the Lord," Blessed Mary said; and such an attitude has never
+failed to meet the divine approval and call out the help of God.
+Just to put ourselves utterly at God's disposal is the clearing of
+all life. "Into Thy hands," is the solution of all
+difficulties.</p>
+<blockquote>I sing a maiden<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;That is matchless;<br>
+King of all kings<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To her Son she ches.<br>
+<br>
+He came all so still<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To His Mother's bower,<br>
+As dew in April<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;That falleth on the flower.<br>
+<br>
+Mother and maiden<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Was never none but she;<br>
+Well might such a lady<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;God's Mother be.<br>
+<br>
+English, Fifteenth Century.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h3>THE VISITATION I</h3>
+<br>
+<center>And Mary arose in those days, and went into<br>
+the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah;<br>
+and entered into the house of Zacharias, and<br>
+saluted Elizabeth.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke I. 39, 40.</center>
+<blockquote>Grant, we beseech thee, O Lord God, to us thy servants,
+that we may evermore enjoy health of mind and body, and by the
+glorious intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be delivered
+from present sorrows and enjoy everlasting gladness.
+Through.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p class="loc">ROMAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hose who were faithful in Israel and were looking forward to the
+fulfilment of God's promises would be drawn together by close bonds
+of sympathy. It oftentimes proves that the bonds of a common ideal
+are stronger than the bonds of blood. It was to prove so many times
+in the history of Christianity when in accordance with our Lord's
+words the closest blood relation would be broken through fidelity
+to Him, and a man's foes be found to be those of his own household.
+But also it is true that the possession of common ideals becomes
+the basis of relations which are stronger than race or family. We
+may be sure that the members of that little group of which we catch
+glimpses now and then in the progress of the Gospel story found in
+their expectation of the Lord's deliverance of Israel such a bond.
+We feel that S. Mary and S. Joseph must have been members of this
+group and that they were filled with the hope of God's
+manifestation. Another family which shared the same hope was that
+of the priest Zacharias whose wife Elizabeth was the cousin of Mary
+of Nazareth. It is to their house in the hill country of Judah we
+now turn our thoughts.</p>
+<p>It was a part of the angelic message to S. Mary that her cousin
+Elizabeth had "conceived a son in her old age; and this is the
+sixth month with her who was called barren." Overwhelmed as S. Mary
+was by the vocation which had come to her, perplexed as to what
+should be her next step, she may well have seized upon the words of
+the angel as a hint as to her present course. She must confide in
+some one, and that some one, we instantly feel, must be a woman. In
+her own great joy she would need some one with whom to share it. In
+her unprecedented case she would need a counselor, and who better
+could afford aid than her cousin whose case was in so many respects
+like her own, who was already cherishing a child whose conception
+was due to the intervention of God? We understand therefore, why it
+is that without waiting for the further development of events, Mary
+arises, and goes "with haste" to the home of her cousin.</p>
+<p>It is just now a house full of joy. For many years there had
+been happiness there, but a happiness over which a cloud rested.
+The affliction of barrenness was their sorrow. To the Hebrew there
+was no true family until the love of the father and the mother was
+incarnated in the child; and through many weary days Zacharias and
+Elizabeth had waited until hope quite failed as they found
+themselves beyond the possibility of bearing a child to cheer them
+and to hand on their name. We may be sure that they were reconciled
+to the will of God, for it is written of them that they were
+righteous, and the central feature of righteousness is the
+acceptance of the divine will. But though one cheerfully accepts
+the divine will there may still remain a consciousness of a vacancy
+in life; and therefore we can understand the joy that came to
+Zacharias when the angel appeared to him in the temple when he was
+exercising the priest's office and offering the incense of the
+daily sacrifice with the message that he should have a son. It was
+a joy that would be unclouded by the God-sent dumbness which was at
+once a punishment for his lack of immediate faith and a sign of the
+faithfulness of God. It was a joy that would hasten his steps
+homeward with the glad tidings, a joy that would fill the heart of
+Elizabeth when she heard the message of God. Soon the consciousness
+of the babe in her womb would be a growing wonder and a growing
+happiness. There would be a new brightness in the house where the
+aged mother waits through the months and the dumb father with his
+writing tablet at his side meditates upon the meaning of the
+providence of God and upon the prophecies of the angel as to his
+child's future. But what that future would be he could hardly
+expect to witness; he was too old to live to the day of his child's
+showing unto Israel.</p>
+<p>It is to this house that we see S. Mary hastening, sure of
+finding there a heart in which she can confide. She "entered into
+the house of Zacharias and saluted Elizabeth." We are not told what
+the words of her salutation were, but no doubt it was the customary
+Jewish salutation of peace. There could have been no more
+appropriate salutation exchanged between these two in whose souls
+was abiding the peace of a perfect possession of God. The will of
+God to which they had been accustomed to offer themselves all their
+lives was being accomplished through them in unexpected ways; but
+it found them as ready of acceptance as they had been in any of the
+ordinary duties of life wherein they had been accustomed to wait
+upon God. We may seem sometimes to go beyond Holy Scripture in our
+interpretations of feelings and thoughts which we are sure must
+have been those of the actors in the drama of salvation unfolded to
+us in the Scriptures; but are we not entitled to infer from God's
+actions a good deal of the nature of the instruments He uses? Are
+we not quite safe in the case of S. Mary in the deduction from the
+nature of her vocation of the spiritual perfection to attribute to
+her? Does not God's use of a person imply qualities in the person
+used? It is on this ground that I feel that we are quite safe in
+inferring the spiritual attitude of S. Mary and of S. Elizabeth
+from the choice God made of them to be the instruments of His
+purpose of redemption.</p>
+<p>But we are not inferring, we have the record with us, when we
+think of the joy of the mothers transcended in the joy of the
+children. The unborn Forerunner becomes conscious of the approach
+of Him of whom he is to say later: "Behold the Lamb of God that
+taketh away the sin of the world"; and there is an instantaneous
+movement that can only be that of recognition and worship. The
+movement of the child is at once understood and translated by S.
+Elizabeth: "And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed
+art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And
+whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
+For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine
+ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy."</p>
+<p>In the presence of such joy and such sanctity we feel that our
+proper attitude is the attitude of adoring wonder that S. Elizabeth
+expresses. We worship our hidden Lord as the unborn prophet
+worships Him. We have no question to ask, nor curiosity at the mode
+of God's action. We are quite content to accept His action as it is
+revealed to us in Scripture; a revelation of the divine presense in
+humanity which has been abundantly verified in all the history of
+the Church. That verification in experience--a verification that we
+ourselves can repeat--is worth infinitely more than all the
+argument that the centuries have seen.</p>
+<p>"Blessed art thou among women," S. Elizabeth cries; and in doing
+so she is but repeating the words of the angel of the Annunciation.
+This word, too, we presently hear S. Mary taking up, and under the
+inspiration of the Holy Ghost saying: "From henceforth all
+generations shall call me blessed."</p>
+<p>And so they have. All generations, that is, that have been
+faithful to the Gospel teaching and have assimilated in any degree
+the consequences of S. Mary's nearness to God. When we speak of
+"Blessed" Mary we are but doing what angels and holy women have
+done, and it is great pity if in doing so we have to make a
+conscious effort, if the words do not spring spontaneously from our
+lips. Surely, we have not gone far toward the mastery of God's
+coming in the Incarnation if we have not felt the purity of the
+instrument through whom God enters our nature. The outward and
+visible sign of our understanding is found in our ability to
+complete the <i>Ave</i> as the Holy Spirit has taught the Church to
+complete it: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and
+in the hour of our death."</p>
+<p>This reiterated attribution of blessedness to Mary our Mother
+calls us to pause and ask just what blessedness means. It is of
+course the characteristic Scripture locution for those who in some
+way enjoy the special favour of God. Blessedness is the state of
+those who have received special divine gifts of favour. A
+characteristic scriptural description of the blessedness of the
+righteous in contrast with the disaster of the unrighteous may be
+studied in the first Psalm. In the New Testament we naturally turn
+to the Sermon on the Mount where the Beatitudes give us our Lord's
+thought about blessedness. I think that we can describe the notion
+of blessedness there presented as being the state of those who have
+taken God at His word and chosen Him, and by that act of choice,
+while they have forfeited the world and the world's favour, have
+attained to the spiritual riches of the Kingdom of God. They are
+those to whom God is the Supreme Good, in whose possession they
+gladly count all things but loss. These are they who here in the
+pilgrim state have already attained to the enjoyment of God because
+they want nothing other or beside Him.</p>
+<p>Supremely blessed, therefore, is Mary our Mother, who never for
+a moment even in thought was separate from God. From the earliest
+moment of her existence she could say, "My beloved is mine and I am
+His." We try to think out what such a fact may mean when translated
+into terms of spiritual energy, and it seems to mean more than
+anything else boundless power of intercession such as the Church
+has attributed to S. Mary from the earliest times. We see no other
+way of estimating spiritual power save as the power of prayer. It
+is through prayer that we approach God--for we remember that
+sacrifice is but the highest form of prayer. The blessedness of S.
+Mary, that peculiar degree of blessedness which seems signalized by
+the reiterated attribution of the quality to her, must for our
+purposes to be understood as "power with God," power of
+intercession. It means that our Lord has chosen her to be a special
+medium of approval to Him, and that through her prayers He wills to
+bestow upon men many of His choicest gifts. Naturally, her prayers,
+like our prayers, are mediated by the merits of her divine Son;
+nevertheless they have a peculiar power which is related to her
+peculiar blessedness in that she is the mother of Incarnate God,
+and by special privilege is herself without sin. Of all those to
+whom we are privileged to turn in the joys and tragedies of our
+lives for the sympathy which helps through enlightened, loving
+prayer, we most naturally resort to her who is all love and all
+sympathy, Mary, the Mother of Jesus, blessed among women
+forever.</p>
+<p>Although we are told nothing of these days that S. Mary spent
+with her cousin Elizabeth, we do gather that she remained with her
+until her child was born and that she saw S. John in his mother's
+arms, and was a partaker in the joy of the aged parents. She was
+present when Zacharias, his speech restored, uttered the
+<i>Benedictus</i> in thanksgiving for the birth of his son. It was
+then, having seen her own Son's Forerunner that S. Mary went back
+to Nazareth filled more than ever with the sense that God's hand
+was in the events that were taking place, and of the approach of
+some crisis in her nation's history. It must have been that she
+talked intimately with Zacharias and Elizabeth and with them tried
+to imagine what was the future in which these two children were so
+closely concerned. When we consider the <i>Magnificat</i> and the
+<i>Benedictus</i> not as the "Gospel Canticles" to be sung in
+Church but as the utterances of pious Israelites under the
+inspiration of the Holy Ghost, we feel how very vivid must have
+been their expectation of God's action in the immediate future, and
+with what intense love and interest they thought of the parts to be
+taken by their children in the deliverance God was preparing. How
+often they must have pondered the God-inspired saying: "He shall be
+great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God
+shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall
+reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there
+shall be no end." "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of
+the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to
+prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by
+the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God;
+whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light
+to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to
+guide our feet into the way of peace."</p>
+<p>We think too of a more intimate sympathy that there would have
+been between these two women, drawn now so close together, not only
+by the blood bond, but by the bond of a common experience. What
+wonderful hours of communing during these three months! The peace
+of the hills of Judah is all about them and the peace of God is in
+their souls. What ecstatic joy, what ineffable love was theirs in
+these moments as they thought of the children who were God's
+precious gift to them. I fancy that there were many hours when they
+ceased to think of the mystery that hung over these children's
+destiny, and became just mothers lost in love of the coming
+sons.</p>
+<p>As we try to think out their relation to each other it presents
+itself to us as a relation of sympathy. Sympathy is community of
+feeling; it is maimed and thwarted when there is feeling only on
+one side. We speak of our sympathy in their affliction for others
+whom we do not know and who do not know us, but that is a very
+imperfect rendering of the perfect thing. No more than love does
+sympathy reach its perfection in solitude. But here in this village
+of Judah we know that we have the perfect thing--sympathy in its
+most exquisite form.</p>
+<p>This capacity for sympathy is one of the greatest of human
+endowments, and, one is glad to think, not like many human
+endowments, rare in its manifestation. In its ordinary
+manifestation it is instinctive, is roused by the spectacle of need
+calling us to its aid. There come to our knowledge from time to
+time instances of what seem to us very grievous failures in
+sympathy, but investigation shows that ignorance is very commonly
+at the bottom of them. When human beings are convinced of a need
+they are quite ready to respond. Indeed this readiness to respond
+makes them the easy victims of all sorts of impostures, of baseless
+appeals which play upon sentiment rather than convince the
+understanding. And just there lies the weakness of sympathy in that
+it is so easily turned to sentimentality. But the sentimentalist
+who gushes over ills, real or imaginary, can commonly be brought to
+book easily enough. For one thing the sentimentalist is devoted to
+publicity. He loves to conduct campaigns and drives, to "get up" a
+demonstration or an entertainment. I do not mean that he is a
+hypocrite but only that he loves the lime-light. When any tragedy
+befalls man his impulse is to organise a dance in aid of it. It is
+extraordinary how many people there are who will aid a charity by
+dancing to whom one would feel it quite hopeless to appeal for the
+amount of the dance tickets. And yet they are not wholly selfish
+people; there does lie back of the dance a certain sympathetic
+impulse. We easily deceive ourselves about ourselves, and it is
+well to be sure that we have true sympathy and not just sentiment.
+It is not so difficult to find out. We can test ourselves quickly
+enough by examining our giving. Do we give only when we are asked?
+Do we yield to spectacular appeals or only to those that we have
+examined and found good? Do we put the spiritual interests of
+humanity first? Is there any appreciable amount of quiet
+spontaneous giving which is known to no one? Do we prefer to be
+anonymous? Such tests soon reveal what we are like. One who never
+gives spontaneously, without being asked, we may be sure is lacking
+in sympathy.</p>
+<p>But of course one does not mean that sympathy is so closely
+related to what we call charity as what I have just said, if left
+by itself, would seem to imply. That is indeed the common form
+assumed by sympathy which has to be called out. But the best type
+of sympathy is the expression of our knowledge of one another; it
+is based on our knowledge of human nature and our interest in human
+beings. Because it is based on knowledge it is not subject to be
+swept away by the sweet breezes of sentimentalism. To its perfect
+exercise it is needful to know individuals not merely to know about
+them. The ordinary limitations of sympathy come from this, that we
+do not want to take time and pains to know one another. That, for
+example, is where the Church falls short in its mission to
+constitute a real brotherhood among its members--they have no time
+nor inclination really to know one another, or they find the
+artificial walls that society has erected impassable. It is, in
+fact, not very easy to know one another, and it is impossible to
+develop the complete type of sympathy with a crowd. For one must
+insist that this highest type of sympathy requires, what the word
+actually does mean, mutual sharing in life, the participation in
+the lives of our fellows and their partaking in our lives.</p>
+<p>So we understand why perfect sympathy is conditioned on
+spirituality. Unless we are spiritually developed and spiritually
+at one we cannot share in one another's lives fully. Where there
+are lives separated by a gulf of spiritual differences the
+completest sympathy is impossible. And we understand why Incarnate
+seems so much nearer to us than God unincarnate. It is true that
+"the Father Himself loveth you"; it is true that it is the love of
+the Blessed Trinity that is expressed in the Incarnation. The
+Incarnation did not create God's love and sympathy, it only reveals
+it. Yet it is precisely the Incarnation that enables us to lay hold
+on God's sympathy with a certainty and sureness of grasp that we
+would not otherwise have. The sight of "God in Christ reconciling
+the world unto Himself" is more to us in the way of proof than any
+amount of declaration can be. To be told of the sympathy of God is
+one thing, to see how it works is another.</p>
+<p>Our personal need in this matter is to find the sympathy that
+will help us in something outside ourselves, outside the
+limitations of human nature. Much as we value human sympathy,
+precious as we find its expression, yet we do find that it has for
+the higher purposes of life serious limitations. It has very little
+power to execute what it finds needs to be done. A man may
+understand another's weakness and may utterly sympathise with it;
+he may advise and console, but in the end he finds that he cannot
+adequately help. The case is hopeless unless he can point the
+sufferer to some source outside himself on which he can draw,
+unless he can lead him to the sympathy of God. God can offer not
+only consolation, not only the spectacle of another life which has
+triumphed under analogous circumstances, but He can give the power
+to this present weak and discouraged life to triumph in the place
+where it is. He can "make a way of escape."</p>
+<p>But there is another form of sympathy which we crave and need
+which is just the communion of soul with soul. We are not asking
+anything more or other than to show ourselves. We are overwhelmed
+with the loneliness of life. It comes upon us in the most crowded
+places, this sense of separation from all about us. Oh, that I
+might flee away and be at rest, is our feeling. It is here that we
+specially need our Lord. Blessed are we if we have learned to find
+in Him the rest we need for our souls, if we have learned to open
+the door that leads always to Him; or, perhaps to knock appealingly
+at that door which He will never fail to open. It is then that we
+find the joy of the invitation "Come unto me all ye that are weary
+and heavy laden and I will give you rest."</p>
+<p>But Christ, the perfect Sympathiser, has associated others with
+Himself. If we can go to him, so can others; the Way is open to
+all. And those who go and are associated with Him are gathered into
+a family. Here among those who have followed the interests which
+are ours, and have pursued the ends that we are pursuing, and
+cultivated the qualities which we value, we feel sure of that
+sympathetic understanding of life which we seek. And especially
+among those members of the Body who have gone on to the end in
+fidelity to the ideals of the life which is hid with Christ in God
+shall we look for understanding and help. It is from this point of
+view that the Communion of Saints will mean so much to us. We value
+the strength of mutual support which inevitably grows out of
+associated life. We cannot think of the saints of God as having
+passed beyond us into some place of rest where they are content to
+forget the problems of earth: rather we are compelled to think of
+them as still actively sharing in those interests which are still
+the interests of their divine Head. Until, Jesus Himself cease to
+think of us who are still in the Pilgrim Way, and cease to offer
+Himself on our behalf, we cannot think of any who are in Him as
+other than intensely interested in us of the earthly Church, or as
+doing other than helping by prayer for us that we with them may
+attain our end. And especially shall we feel sure that at any
+moment of our lives we may turn to the Mother in confident
+expectancy of finding most helpful sympathy and most ready aid. Her
+life to-day is a life of intercession, of intercession which has
+all the power of perfect understanding and perfect sympathy. Let us
+learn to go to her; let us learn that as God is praised and
+honoured in His saints, as our Lord choses to work through those
+who are united to Him, so it is His will that great power of prayer
+shall be hers of whom He assumed our nature, that nature through
+which He still distributes the riches of His grace.</p>
+<blockquote>As I lay upon a night,<br>
+My thought was on a Lady bright<br>
+That men callen Mary of might,<br>
+Redemptoris Mater.<br>
+<br>
+To her came Gabriel so bright<br>
+And said, "Hail, Mary, full of might,<br>
+To be called thou art adight;"<br>
+Redemptoris Mater.<br>
+<br>
+Right as the sun shineth in glass,<br>
+So Jesus in His Mother was,<br>
+And thereby wit men that she was<br>
+Redemptoris Mater.<br>
+<br>
+Now is born that Babe of bliss,<br>
+And Queen of Heaven His Mother is,<br>
+And therefore think me that she is<br>
+Redemptoris Mater.<br>
+<br>
+After to heaven He took His flight,<br>
+And there He sits with His Father of might,<br>
+With Him is crowned that Lady bright,<br>
+Redemptoris Mater.<br>
+<br>
+English, Fifteenth Century.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE VISITATION II</h3>
+<center>And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit
+hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke I. 46, 47.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Forasmuch as we have no excuse, because of the
+multitude of our sins, we plead through thee, O Virgin Mother of
+God, with Him whom thou didst bear.<br>
+<br>
+Lo, great is thine intercession, strong and acceptable with our
+Saviour.<br>
+<br>
+O Stainless Mother, reject not us sinners in thine intercession
+with Him Whom thou didst bear.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">COPTIC.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>onderful was this day in the little town of Judah where these
+two women, each in her way an instrument of God in the upbuilding
+of His Kingdom, met and rejoiced together. There is revealed to us
+something of the possibilities of our religion when we try to
+follow the thought of these two women. They are so utterly devoted
+to God that God can speak to them. I think that it is well for us
+to dwell on this fact for a moment. We are apt to look upon
+inspiration, what is described as being filled with the Holy Ghost,
+as somewhat of a mechanical mode of God's operation. Our mistaken
+view is that God takes control of the faculties of a human being
+and uses them for His own purposes.</p>
+<p>But that is quite to misunderstand God's method. God uses the
+faculties of a man in proportion as the man yields himself to Him;
+and one who is living a sincere religion becomes in a degree the
+medium of God's self-expression. This possibility of expressing God
+increases as we increase in sanctity. Those who have completely
+yielded themselves to God in a life of sanctity become in a deep
+sense the representatives of God: they have, in S. Paul's
+phraseology, His mind. To be capable of so becoming the divine
+instrument it is necessary, not only to offer no opposition to
+God's purposes, but to make ourselves the active executants of
+them. Our Christian vocation is thus to be the instrument of God,
+to be the visible demonstrations of His power and presence. There
+is a true inspiration, a true speaking for God to-day, no doubt, as
+true as at any time in the Church's history, wherever there is
+sanctity. What is lacking to present day utterances of sanctity is
+not the action of the Holy Spirit, but authentication by the
+Church: that is given only under certain special circumstances and
+for special purposes. But there is no need to limit the inspiring
+action of the Holy Spirit to such utterances as for special reasons
+have received official recognition.</p>
+<p>What we need to feel is the constant action of the Holy
+Spirit--that He wants to speak through every man. And it helps to
+clear our minds if we go to our Bibles with the expectation of
+finding here, not exceptions to all rules which obtain in common
+life, but types of the divine action. The isolation of Bible
+history has done much to create a feeling of its unreality. What
+has happened only in the Bible can, we are apt to feel, safely be
+disregarded in daily life in the twentieth century. But if what we
+find there is customary modes of divine action in life, exceptional
+in detail rather than in principle, the attitude we shall take will
+be wholly different. We shall then study them with the feeling
+expressed in S. Paul's saying, "These things are written for our
+learning," and we shall expect to find in us and about us the same
+order of divine action, we shall learn to look on our lives as
+having their chief meaning in the fact that they are possible
+instruments of God; we shall learn to regard failure as failure to
+show forth God to the world.</p>
+<p>In a way we can read our facts backward: the fact that
+"Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost," and the fact that Mary
+under the same divine impulse gave utterance to the words of the
+Magnificat, is a revelation of the character of these two women
+which would satisfy us of their sanctity had we no other evidence
+of it. The choice of them by God to be His instruments is evidence
+of the divine approval; and that approval can never be false to the
+facts; what God treats as holy must be holy.</p>
+<p>So we come to holy Mary's Song with the feeling that in studying
+it we shall find in it a revelation of S. Mary herself. She is not
+an instrument on which the Holy Spirit plays, but an intelligent
+being through whom He acts. She, like S. Elizabeth, is filled with
+the Holy Spirit--she had never been in the slightest degree out of
+union with God--but still the Magnificat is her utterance; it
+represents her thought; it is the measure, if one may so put it, in
+modern terminology, of her degree of spiritual culture. Much that
+we say about S. Mary, her simplicity, her social place, and so on,
+seems to carry with it the implication of the ignorance and
+spiritual dullness that we associate with the type of poverty we
+are accustomed to to-day. But the poor folk whom we meet in
+association with our Lord are neither ignorant nor spiritually
+dull; and it would be a vast mistake to think of Blessed Mary as
+other than of great intelligence and spiritual receptivity, or as
+deficient in understanding of the details of her ancestral
+religion. We have no reason to be surprised that she should sing
+Magnificat, or to think that the Holy Spirit was speaking through
+her thoughts which were quite beyond her comprehension. Inspired
+she was, but inspired, no doubt, to utter thoughts that had many
+times filled her mind.</p>
+<p>Her spiritual attitude as revealed in the Magnificat is but the
+attitude which must have been hers habitually--the attitude that
+exalts God and not self. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my
+spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." That is the starting-place
+of all holy souls--the adoration of God. True humility is never
+self-conscious because self is lost in the vision of God. S. Mary
+was bearing in her pure body the very Son of God. Admit, if you
+will, that as yet she did not understand the full reach of her
+vocation; but she did know that she had been chosen by God in a
+most signal manner to be the instrument of His purpose. That which
+S. Elizabeth spoke under divine impulse,--"Whence is this that the
+mother of my Lord should come to me?"--must have had clear meaning
+for her. But the wonder of all that God is accomplishing through
+her only brings her to God's feet. That "He that is mighty hath
+done me great things," is but the evidence of His sanctity, not of
+her greatness.</p>
+<p>One never gets through wondering at the beauty of humility; and
+it is one of the marks of how far we are from spiritual
+apprehension when we find this splendid virtue unattractive. It
+does indeed cut across many of the instinctive impulses of our
+nature; it can hardly be said to have dawned on humanity as a
+virtue until the Incarnation of God. Therein it has revealed to us
+God's attitude in His work and, by consequence, the natural
+attitude of all such as would associate themselves with God. It is
+not so much a self-denying as a self-forgetting virtue. It is
+ruined by the very consciousness of it. Such phrases as "practicing
+humility" seem self-contradictory--when one begins to practice
+humility it becomes something else. We do not conceive of our Lady
+as setting out to be humble, of thinking of what a humble person
+would do under such and such circumstances. She does not, as I was
+saying, think of herself at all, but thinks of God. The "great
+things" she has are His gift. That He has looked upon her low
+estate, and that in consequence of His visitation "all generations
+shall call her blessed," is a manifestation of the divine glory and
+goodness, not an occasion of pride to the recipient of God's
+gifts.</p>
+<p>We who are so self-seeking, who are so greedy of praise, who are
+constantly wanting what we feel is our due, who hunger to be
+"appreciated," who are full of proud boasting about our
+accomplishment, will do well to meditate upon this point of view.
+We acknowledge the supremacy of God with our lips, but in our acts
+we are quite prone to assume that we are independent actors in the
+universe where whatever we have is due to our own creative powers.
+We claim a certain lordship over life, a certain independent use of
+it. We resent the pressure of religious principle as setting up a
+sort of counter-claim to control that which it is ours to dispose
+of as we will. Most of our difficulties come from this godless
+attitude which claims independence of life. It results in a
+religion which is willing to pay God tribute, but is not willing to
+belong to God. But the humble person has nothing of his own and
+moreover wants nothing; he wants simply that God shall use him,
+that he shall be found a ready instrument in God's hands.</p>
+<p>It is this readiness that we find in Blessed Mary when she
+answered the astonishing announcement of the angel with her,
+"Behold the Handmaid of the Lord." It is that quality which we find
+in her here when she construes God's purpose in terms which go out
+far beyond her individual life and sees in her experience but one
+item in God's dealing with humanity in His age-long work of
+"bringing His wanderers home." We should have far less difficulty
+and find our lives far more significant if we could get rid of our
+wretched egotism and find it possible to lose ourselves in the work
+of God. We should then find the work important because it is God's
+work and not because we are associated with it. We should also find
+it less easy to be discouraged because we should not understand our
+failure to be the failure of God. Discouragement is but one of the
+aspects of egotism, and not the most attractive.</p>
+<p>We cannot rise to anything like a passion of holiness unless we
+have found God to be all in all. Only so can we lose ourselves in
+God. And I must, at whatever risk of over-dwelling, stress the fact
+that we can only attain this point of view by dwelling on God and
+not on self. Let God be the foreground of our thought. Let our
+souls magnify the Lord. Let us dwell upon the "great things" God
+has done for us. In every life there is such a wonderful
+manifestation of the divine goodness--only we do not take time to
+look for it. It is well to take the time: to write out, if need be,
+our spiritual history. We shall then find abundant evidence of the
+goodness of God. It may be that it is a goodness that is seen
+chiefly in offers, in opportunities to be something which we have
+declined or have only imperfectly realized. Be that as it may,
+there is no life, I am quite convinced, that has not a spiritual
+history which is a marvellous history of what God at least wanted
+to do for it. It is also a history of what He actually has done: a
+history of graces, of rich gifts, of deliverances. It matters not
+that we have been so heedless as to miss most of what God has done.
+The facts stand and are discoverable whenever we care to pay enough
+attention to them to ascertain their true meaning. When we do that,
+then surely we shall be compelled to do, what blessed Mary never
+needed to do, fall at God's feet in an act of penitence, seeing
+ourselves, perhaps for the first time, in the light of God's
+mind.</p>
+<p>The Magnificat, if we consider it as a personal expression, is a
+wonderful expression of selfless devotion, where the perception of
+the glory and majesty of God excludes all other thoughts. It is,
+too, a thanksgiving for the personal gift which is her vocation to
+be the Mother of the Saviour. Out of her lowliness she has been
+exalted--how highly she herself cannot at the time have dreamed. We
+can see what was necessarily involved in God's choice of her, and
+to-day we think of her as in her perfect purity exalted in heaven
+far above all other creatures. Mother of God most holy we call her,
+and in the words of her canticle ever repeat her thanksgiving as
+our thanksgiving, too, for the vocation that God sent her and for
+the gift which through her has come to us.</p>
+<p>But there is a more universal aspect of the Magnificat.
+Essentially it is the presentation of the constant antithesis which
+runs through all revelation between the flesh and the spirit,
+between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this world. It
+embodies the conception of God striving to save a world which has
+revolted from Him, and now at last entering upon that stage of His
+work which is the beginning of a triumph over all the powers of the
+adversary. In Mary's song the contrasted powers are still presented
+under the Old Testament terminology which was the natural form of
+her thought. The adversaries of God are the proud, the mighty, the
+rich; while those who are on God's side are the humble, the
+god-fearers, the hungry. The form of the thought and its essential
+meaning remain the same through the centuries, though our
+terminology changes somewhat. Presently in the pages of the New
+Testament we shall get the presentation as the contrast between the
+children of this world and the sons of God. We shall find the
+briefest expression of the latter to be the saints.</p>
+<p>We no longer feel that rich and poor express a spiritual
+contrast. Nor do we, who are quite accustomed to the action of
+labour leaders, regard social position as being the exclusive seat
+of arrogancy. But we know that the spiritual values which are
+expressed in the varying terminology are constant; we know that the
+warfare between God and not-God is still the most important
+phenomenon in the universe. And it happens as we look out on the
+battlefield where the forces of good and evil contend, where before
+our eyes they seem to sway back and forth on the field of human
+life with every varying fortunes, that we not seldom feel that the
+battle is not obviously falling to the side of righteousness. There
+come moments when we are oppressed by what seems to us the lack of
+power in the ideals of righteousness. The appeal of the proud and
+of the rich is so dazzling; the splendour of the visible kingdom of
+the world is so intoxicating, the contagion of the crowd which
+follows the uplifted banner of Satan is so penetrating, that we
+hardly wonder to see the new generations carried away in the sweep
+of popular enthusiasm. Here is excitement, exhilarating enjoyment,
+the throb and sting of the flesh, the breathless whirl of gaiety,
+the physical quiet of satisfied desires. What is there to appeal on
+the other side? As the crowds troop past to the sound of music and
+dancing they for a moment raise their eyes, and above them rises a
+hill whereon is a Cross and on the Cross an emaciated Victim is
+nailed, and at the foot of the Cross a small group of discouraged
+folk--S. John, The blessed Mother, the other Mary--stunned by the
+grief born of the death of Son and Friend.</p>
+<p>These two utterances stand in eternal contrast: "All these
+things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me":
+and, "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." As yet the
+appeal made from an "exceeding high mountain" visibly seems to
+prevail against that made from "the place which is called
+Calvary."</p>
+<p>And what have we to counteract the depression which is the
+natural reaction from the spectacle of the world-rejection of
+Christ? We have the truth which is embodied in Mary's Magnificat,
+we have the fact of Mary's vocation to be the Mother of God. The
+revelation of God's meaning and purpose is a basis of optimism
+which no promise of Satan can overthrow. When all is said, the view
+from the exceeding high mountain is a view of the Kingdom of this
+world only; from the place called Calvary you can see the Kingdom
+of God as well. From this point of vantage alone the permanent
+values of life are visible; and to the taunt flung at us, the taunt
+so terrifying to the young, "You are losing life," the enigmatic
+reply from the Cross is that you have to lose life to gain it; that
+permanent and eternal values are acquired by those who have the
+self-restraint and the foresight not to sacrifice the substance to
+the shadow, nor to mistake the toys of childhood for the riches of
+manhood. "In the meantime life is passing and the shadows draw in
+and you have not attained" so they say. True: we count not
+ourselves to have yet attained; but we press on toward the mark of
+our high calling in Christ Jesus our Lord. We are not in a hurry,
+because the crown we are seeking is amaranthine, unfading. We are
+not compelled to compress our enjoyment within a given time; we do
+not awake each morning with the thought that we may not outlast the
+daylight; we are not hurried and fevered with the sense of our
+fragility. The kingdoms of the world and the glory of them must be
+seized now: Satan cannot afford to wait because his kingdom has an
+end. But God can afford to wait because of His Kingdom there is no
+end.</p>
+<p>We are content then with <i>promises</i> and with such partial
+fulfilment as we find on our pilgrim-way. We are content because we
+see the end in the beginning. To those who in the first days of the
+Church objected that though the promises were wonderful and
+abundant the fulfilment was small; to those who said we do not yet
+see the perfection of the kingdom; the answer of inspiration was:
+True, we do not yet see the accomplishment of all of God's
+promises, but we do see Jesus. And there is where we stand to-day.
+The work that God has to do in the spiritualising of the human race
+is tremendous; but we actually see its beginning in Jesus, and we
+are content to wait with God for the perfect accomplishment.</p>
+<p>And we must remember when we think of the work of God in terms
+of time, that the length of time that is required to accomplish the
+spiritualisation of the human race is not to be estimated in terms
+of the divine will but in terms of the human will. It is not divine
+power but human resistance which is the determining factor, for God
+will not compel us to obey Him, nor would compelled obedience have
+any spiritual value. And we can estimate something of the human
+resistance that has to be overcome by concentrating attention upon
+one unit of that resistance. That is, we can learn from the study
+of our own life what is the resistance of one human being to the
+triumph of the will of God; and, taking oneself as a fair sample of
+the race can multiply our resistance to God's will by the numbers
+of the race. We are perfectly certain of the will of God: God wills
+that all men shall come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved.
+"This is the will of God, even your sanctification." So far as we
+are thwarting that will we are playing into the hands of the power
+of evil. But that power is of limited existence; it draws to its
+end. Its death knell was struck when the noon-day darkness lifted
+from Calvary.</p>
+<p>Therefore the rejoicing of blessed Mary, whose Song reads the
+necessary end in the beginning, is well considered; and we rejoice
+with her and in her. It is our privilege--and it is a vast
+privilege--to rejoice in blessed Mary as the instrument of God in
+bringing the triumph of His Kingdom one stage nearer its
+accomplishment. And in especial we rejoice because we see in her
+one more, and the most marked, illustration of the divine method.
+"He hath regarded the low estate of His Handmaiden." "He hath
+exalted them of low degree." "He hath filled the hungry." The
+method of God is to work to His results through those who are
+spiritually receptive. The less of self there is in us the more
+room there is for God. "The Kingdom of God is within you," that is,
+the starting-point of God's work in the building of the Kingdom is
+within the soul of man. He must master the inner man, must win the
+allegiance of our souls, before His work can make any progress at
+all. The Kingdom of God cometh not "with observation," that is,
+from the outside in an exhibition of power; it must of necessity
+come from the inside in demonstration of the Spirit. "As many as
+are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."</p>
+<p>In blessed Mary we see the new starting-point in this last stage
+of the work of God. For the foreseen merits of her Son she is
+brought into union with God and spared the taint of sin, and
+becomes the second Eve, the Mother of the new race. Acting upon her
+pure humanity, the Holy Spirit produces that humanity which joined
+to the divinity in the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity becomes
+the Christ, the Son of the Living God. In Mary's rejoicing in this
+so great fact, the bringing of human redemption, we rightly share.
+It is with a right understanding of her Song that the Church
+throughout the ages has embodied it in its worship and through it
+constantly rejoices in God its Saviour. The actual detailed
+accomplishment of God's work in man's redemption is going on under
+our eyes. It is regrettable that human stupidity seems to prefer
+dwelling upon what seem God's failures, and are actually our own,
+rather than upon the constant triumphs of grace. But God reigns;
+and we can always find grounds of optimism if we can find that He
+is day by day reigning more perfectly in us. When we pray "Thy
+Kingdom Come," the field to examine for the fulfilment of our
+prayers is the field of our own souls.</p>
+<blockquote>Our Lady took the road<br>
+To Zachary's abode;<br>
+O'er mountain, vale and lea,<br>
+Full many a league sped she<br>
+Toward Hebron's holy hill,<br>
+By God's command and will.<br>
+<br>
+Full light did Mary, make<br>
+Of trouble for his sake.<br>
+God's Very Son of yore<br>
+Within her breast she bore;<br>
+And angels bright and fair,<br>
+Unseen, her fellows were.<br>
+<br>
+She, ere she took her way,<br>
+An orison would say,<br>
+That God her steps might tend<br>
+Safe to their journey's end;<br>
+And there, in manner meet,<br>
+Her cousin she 'gan greet.<br>
+<br>
+Elizabeth full fain<br>
+Eft bowed her head again;<br>
+She wist 'twas God's own Bride,<br>
+As, worshipful she cried:<br>
+'O Lady, Full of Grace,<br>
+Whence do I see thy face?'<br>
+<br>
+O House and Home of bliss,<br>
+O earthly Paradis--<br>
+Nay, Heaven itself on ground<br>
+Wherein the Lord is found,<br>
+The Lord of Glory bright,<br>
+In goodness great and might--<br>
+<br>
+Clean Maiden thou that art,<br>
+Come, visit this my heart;<br>
+And bring me chief my Good,<br>
+God's Son in Flesh and Blood;<br>
+Bless body, soul; and bide<br>
+For ever by my side.<br>
+<br>
+From the K&ouml;ln Gesang-Buch. XVI Cent.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>S. JOSEPH</h3>
+<center>Joseph, her husband, being a just man--<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. I. 19.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>O God, our refuge and our strength, look down in mercy
+upon thy people who cry to thee; and by the intercession of the
+glorious and immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God, of St. Joseph
+her spouse, and of thy blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and of all
+saints, in mercy and goodness hear our prayers for the conversion
+of sinners, and for the liberty and exaltation of our holy mother
+the church. Through.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">ROMAN.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hen we read the Gospels, not simply as a record of events but as
+revelation of the method of God, we are constantly impressed with
+what we cannot otherwise describe than as the care of God for
+detail. There is a curious type of mind which finds it possible to
+think of God as Creator and Ruler of the universe, but impossible
+to conceive Him as interested in or concerning Himself with the
+minutiae of human life; who can conceive God as caring for a solar
+system or a planet, but not as caring for a baby. Surely it is a
+strange notion of God that thinks of Him as estimating values in
+terms of weight and measure: surely much more intelligible is the
+Gospel presentation of Him as concerned with spritual values and
+exercising that minute care over human life which is best expressed
+by the word <i>Father</i>. It is very significant that as the
+volume of revelation unrolls, the earlier notions of God as Ruler,
+Governor, King, give way to the notion of Father, until in our
+Lord's presentation of the character of God it is His Fatherhood
+which stands in the forefront. What our Lord emphasises in the
+character of God are precisely the qualities of love and care and
+sympathy which the word Father connotes.</p>
+<p>And nowhere do we see this loving care of God which we call His
+Providence better set out for our study than in the detailed
+preparation which preceded and attended the birth of His Son into
+this world. There was that preparation of the Mother who was to be
+the source of the humanity of the Child Jesus which we have been
+dwelling upon; there was also the preparation for the proper
+guardianship of both Mother and Child during the years of Jesus'
+immaturity. There are certain things which are self-evident when
+once we turn our minds to them; and it is thus self-evident that
+the care of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother would require the
+preparation of the man to whom they should be committed. In the
+state of society into which our Lord was born, He and His Mother
+would need active guardianship of a peculiar nature. The man who
+should provide for our Lord's infancy must be a man, in the nature
+of the case, who was receptive of spiritual monitions and devoted
+to the will of God. It was a delicate matter to live before the
+world as the husband of Mary of Nazareth, and to live before God as
+the guardian of her virginity and as the foster-father of her
+divine Son. Only a very choice nature could respond to the demands
+thus made upon it, a nature which had been habitually responsive to
+the will of God and long nurtured by the richness of His grace.</p>
+<p>We know very little of St. Joseph; but God's choice of him for
+the office he was to fulfil near the blessed Virgin Mary and her
+Son reveals the nature of the man. He is described to us as "a just
+man," one whose judgment would not be swayed by prejudices, but who
+would be open to the consideration of any case upon its merits: a
+man who would not view events in the light of their effect upon
+himself and his plans, but who can calmly consider what in given
+circumstances is due to others. Such men are rare at any time for
+their production is a matter of slow discipline.</p>
+<p>We gather that both S. Joseph and S. Mary were of the same
+lineage, were descended from the same ancestor, David. We gather
+also that S. Joseph was much older than his bethrothed wife, for he
+had been already married and had a family. All the notices of these
+brothers and sisters of the Lord imply that they were considerably
+older than the Child of Mary, and that they felt that they had the
+sort of authority over Him which commonly belongs to the elder
+children of a family; the sort of doubt and criticism of His course
+which would be the instinctive attitudes of elders toward the
+unprecedented course of a younger. We have, I think, a right to
+infer from the terms of the narrative, that S. Joseph would have
+been well acquainted with S. Mary and was not taking a wife who was
+a stranger to him. Indeed, considering the actual development of
+the situation, I myself feel quite certain that those are right who
+maintain that the proposed marriage was intended to be merely a
+nominal union, the ultimate design of which was the protection of
+the virginity of Mary. I find it impossible to think of that
+virginity as other than of deliberate purpose from the beginning,
+and prompted by the Spirit of God for the purposes of God for which
+it served. There is, to be sure, no revelation of this in Holy
+Scripture, but there are facts which suggest themselves to the
+devout meditations of saints which we feel that we may safely take
+on the authority of their spiritual intuitions. Such a fact is this
+of Mary's purposed virginity which I am content to accept on the
+basis of its congruity with S. Mary's life and vocation. Of the
+fact of her perpetual virginity there can be no dispute among
+Catholic Christians.</p>
+<p>To S. Joseph thus preparing himself to be the guardian of the
+blessed Virgin it could only come as a tremendous shock that she
+should be found with a child. Our character comes out at such times
+of trial as when something that we had taken quite for granted
+fails us, and we are left breathless and bewildered in in the face
+of what would have seemed impossible even had we thought of it.
+What was S. Joseph's attitude? The beauty and sanity of his
+character at once shows itself. Grieved and disheartened as he must
+have been, disappointed as he could not but be, he yet thinks at
+once of his bethrothed, not of himself. How far could he save
+her?--that was his first thought. He would at least avoid
+publicity. "Being a just man, and not willing to make her a public
+example, he was minded to put her away privily." It is the quality
+that we express by the word benevolence--the quality of mature and
+deliberate wisdom. We feel that such a man could be trusted under
+any circumstances of life.</p>
+<p>We feel, too, that God would not leave S. Joseph in doubt as to
+the course he was to pursue, or as to the character of Mary
+herself. There could no shade of suspicion be permitted to rest
+upon her. Hence "while he thought on these things, behold, the
+angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph,
+thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for
+that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall
+bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall
+save his people from their sins."</p>
+<p>It is not difficult to imagine the joy of S. Joseph at this
+angelic message. We all know the sense of relief which comes when,
+after facing a most trying situation, and being forced to make up
+our minds to act when action either way is almost equally painful,
+we find that we are delivered from the necessity of acting at all,
+that the whole state of things has been utterly misunderstood. It
+was so with S. Joseph; and in his case there was the added joy
+which springs from the nature of the coming Child as the angel
+explains it to him. He who had accepted the charge of Mary was now
+to add to that charge the charge of her Child: and the Child is the
+very Saviour whom his soul and the souls of all pious Israelites
+had longed for. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save
+his people from their sins." We cannot expect that S. Joseph would
+have taken in the full meaning of this message, but he would have
+understood that he was called to a wondrous co-operation with God
+in the work of the redemption of Israel.</p>
+<p>As we think of S. Joseph it is this co-operation which is the
+significant thing in his life. As we study human life in the only
+way in which it is much worth while to study it, in the light of
+revelation, it becomes clear to us that there is purpose in all
+human life. Often we observe a purpose that we are not able to
+grasp, but in the light of what we know from revelation we do not
+doubt of its presence. Even lives that seem obscure and
+insignificant we feel sure must have a divine meaning; and the
+pathetic thing about most human life is that it never dreams of its
+own significance. We are consumed with the notion that God's
+instruments must be great, while it is on the face of revelation
+that they are commonly humble and of seeming insignificance. It is
+the work that is important, and the instrument becomes important
+through its relation to the work. We all at least have the common
+vocation of the Christian, and it would be difficult to exaggerate
+the spiritual significance of that. S. Joseph seems to us at once
+set apart by his vocation to be the guardian of the divine Child,
+to protect and to nurture the years of His human immaturity. This
+is no doubt a unique vocation, but is it quite so far separated
+from ordinary Christian experience as we assume? You and I are also
+constituted guardians of the divine Presence. This very morning, it
+may be, we have received within the Tabernacle of our breast the
+same Presence that S. Joseph guarded--the Presence of Incarnate
+God. In that Presence of His humanity our Lord abode with us but a
+few minutes and then the Presence withdrew: but He left behind Him
+a real gift, the gift of an increase in sacramental grace.</p>
+<p>Was that a light thing: Was it indeed so much less than the
+vocation of S. Joseph? And how have we guarded this Presence? Those
+few moments after the reception of our Incarnate Lord at the
+altar--how do we habitually spend them? Do we spend them in
+guarding the Presence? There is much to be learned about the
+meaning and the value of guarding the Eucharistic Gift. Our
+thanksgiving after Communion is fully as important as our
+preparation for receiving it. I am more and more inclined to think
+that much of the fruitlessness of communions which is so sad a side
+of the life of the Church is due to careless reception and
+inadequate thanksgiving. It is the adoration of our Lord within the
+Tabernacle of our body and thanksgiving to Him for having come to
+us that is the <i>appropriation</i> of the Gift of the Sacrament.
+He comes to us and offers Himself to us with all the benefits of
+His life and death; and then having offered Himself "He makes as
+though he would go farther," and he does actually go, unless we are
+awake to our spiritual opportunity, and constrain Him, saying,
+"abide with us, for it is toward evening and the day is far
+spent."</p>
+<p>We think of S. Joseph then, as with a relieved and rejoicing
+heart he enters upon his new realised vocation as the head of the
+Holy Family. The marriage which he had been upon the point of
+abandoning he now enters that he may give S. Mary and her coming
+Child his full protection.</p>
+<p>So S. Joseph "took unto him his wife; and knew her not till she
+had brought forth her first-born Son." These words have been so
+misunderstood as to imply that the marriage of S. Joseph and S.
+Mary was consummated after the birth of our Lord. Grammatically
+they convey no such implication; the mode of expression is
+perfectly simple and well known by which a fact is affirmed to
+exist up to a certain time without any implication as to what
+happens after. And the meaning of the passage which is not at all
+necessitated by its grammatical construction is utterly intolerable
+in Catholic teaching. The constant teaching of the Church is the
+perpetual virginity of Mary--that she was a virgin "before and in
+and after her child-bearing." There was to be sure an heretic named
+Helvidius who taught otherwise, but he was promptly repudiated by
+all Catholic teachers and but served to emphasize the depth and
+clearness of the Catholic tradition. Upon this point there has
+never been any wavering in the mind of the Church, and to hold
+otherwise shows a lamentable lack of a Catholic perception of
+values and but a superficial grasp upon what is involved in the
+Incarnation.</p>
+<p>The impression we get of S. Joseph is that of a man of great
+simplicity and gentleness of character--that childlikeness which
+was later praised by his foster Son. Such qualities do not produce
+much impression on the superficial observer, but they are of great
+spiritual value. They are the concomitants of a special type of
+open-mindedness. Open-mindedness is a quality much praised and
+little practiced. But the open-mindedness which is commonly praised
+is not the open-mindedness which is praiseworthy. What is at
+present meant by open-mindedness is in reality failure to have any
+mind at all upon a given subject. It is the attitude of doubt which
+never proceeds so far as to arrive at a solution. To have an open
+mind means to the contemporary man to hold all conclusions loosely,
+to consider all things open to question, to be ready to abandon
+what now appears to be true in favour of something which to-morrow
+may appear to be more true. In other words, we are invited to base
+life on pure scepticism.</p>
+<p>Now no life can be so conducted. We live by a faith of some
+sort, whether it be a faith in God or no. The most sceptical mind
+has to believe something to act at all. It cannot even doubt
+without affirming a belief in its own intellectual processes. The
+open mind that never reaches any certainty to fill it is a very
+poor possession indeed. And it is not at all what we mean when we
+say of S. Joseph that he was open-minded. We mean that he was
+receptive of new spiritual impressions and capable of further
+spiritual development. There are minds, and they are not unusual
+among people of a certain degree of spiritual development, which we
+can best describe as having reached a given stage of growth and
+then shut up. Or, to vary the figure, they impress one as having a
+certain capacity, and when that has been reached, being able to
+contain nothing further. They come to a stop. From that point they
+try to maintain the position they have acquired. But that is
+impossible: they inevitably fall away unless they are going
+forward. When the power of spiritual assimilation is dead, we are
+spiritually in a dying condition.</p>
+<p>What we mean by having an open and childlike mind, then, is that
+one has this power of spiritual assimilation and, consequently, a
+power of growth. The sceptic is afflicted with spiritual
+indigestion; he is an invalid who is quite certain that any food
+that is offered him is indigestible. His soul withers away through
+its incapacity to believe. The open-minded saint has a healthy
+spiritual digestion. This does not mean that, in vulgar parlance,
+he can, "swallow anything"; it does mean a power of discrimination
+between food offered him,--that he assimilates what is wholesome
+and rejects the rest. The sceptic is pessimistic as to the
+existence of any wholesome food at all; he starves his soul for
+fear that he should believe something that is not true. The saint,
+with the test of faith, sorts the food proposed to him, and grows
+in grace, and consequently in the knowledge and the love of
+God.</p>
+<p>Open-mindedness is sensitiveness to spiritual impressions,
+readiness for spiritual advance, even when such impressions cut
+across much that has seemed to us well settled, and such advance
+involves the upset of his established ways of thought. What
+distinguishes the evolution in the thought of the sceptic from that
+in the thought of the saint is that in the one case the result is
+destructive and in the other constructive. The sceptic is like a
+man who starts to build a house, and then periodically tears down
+what he has so far built and begins again on a new plan; the saint
+is like the house builder who broadens his plan in the course of
+construction, and who finds that within the limits of his general
+scheme there is room for indefinite improvement. The one never gets
+any building at all; the other gets a palace of which the last
+stages are of a more highly decorated school of architecture than
+he had conceived, or indeed, could conceive, when he began his
+work.</p>
+<p>In S. Joseph's case nothing could be more revolutionary in
+appearance than the truth he was asked to accept. He was asked to
+believe in the virgin-motherhood of his bethrothed, and in the fact
+that the Child soon to be born was He Who was to save Israel from
+his sins. He was asked to accept these incredible statements and to
+act upon them by taking Mary to wife as he had proposed. And he did
+not hesitate to accept the evidence of a dream and act in
+accordance with it. How could he do this? Because the required
+action which seemed so revolutionary of all his previous notions
+was, in fact, quite in accordance with his knowledge of God and of
+the promises of God. Though a simple man, perhaps because he was a
+simple man, he would know something of the teaching of the
+prophets. That teaching would have given him thoughts about God
+which would have, unconsciously, prepared him for these new acts of
+God. Though we cannot see before how a prophecy is to be fulfiled,
+after the event we can see that this is what is intended by it. We
+were actually being prepared by the prophecy for what was to take
+place. And thus, no doubt, S. Joseph's mind, being filled with the
+teaching of the Scriptures which he had heard read in the Synagogue
+every Sabbath day, would find that this new act of God on which he
+was asked to rely was, in fact, but a new step in the unfolding of
+that Providence which had for centuries been shaping the history of
+his nation.</p>
+<p>It is a quality to cultivate, this simple open-mindedness which
+is ready to respond to new spiritual impulses. It is precisely what
+prevents that deadly attitude of soul which proceeds as though
+religion were for us exhausted: as though we had reached the limit
+of expectancy. But to expect nothing is to receive nothing, because
+it is only expectancy that perceives what is offered. We move in a
+world which is thronged with spirtual impulses and energetic with
+spiritual powers. God is trying to lead us on to new spiritual
+experiences by which we may attain to a better understanding of
+Him. There is no assignable limit to our possible growth. But we
+fix a limit when we close our souls to further experiences by the
+practical denial that they exist. If we are childlike, we are
+always expecting new things of our Father; if we are open-minded we
+are alive to the activities of the spiritual world. We are
+conscious of possessing a growing religion, a religion truly
+evolutionary, constantly bringing to our knowledge unsuspected
+riches stored in the very principles whose meaning we had assumed
+that we had exhausted.</p>
+<p>Perhaps one of the treasures of our religion of which we have
+not achieved full consciousness is God's choice of us to be the
+guardians of His revelation. It is our charge "to keep the faith."
+I suppose that this responsibility is commonly regarded as
+belonging to some vaguely imagined Church which hands it on from
+generation to generation, to us among others, but without imposing
+on us an obligation of any active sort. But we are the
+Church--members in particular of the Body of Christ. And in the
+dissemination of the faith the last appeal is to us, not to some
+outside tribunal. When the Church wishes to discover its faith and
+make it articulate, its place of search is in the minds and hearts
+of the faithful. Our responsibility is to testify to the Catholic
+Faith, not so much by positively asserting it as by making it
+active and vivid in our lives so that its presence and power can by
+no means be mistaken. You, for instance, in common with the rest of
+the faithful, are the custodians of this truth of the perpetual
+virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It may seem a small matter,
+but it is not. That it is not is readily seen from this fact, that
+when the perpetual virginity of our Blessed Mother is denied then
+also the Incarnation of her Son is denied or is held only in a
+half-hearted way. The Church stresses such facts, not only because
+they are facts, but because by their character they form a hedge
+about the truth of the Incarnation of our Lord. And we who are
+Catholic Christians must feel an obligation to hold fast this fact.
+We ought actively to show our firm adherence to it. How? Chiefly by
+our attitude towards Blessed Mary herself, by the devotion that we
+show her. If we are quite indifferent to devotion to Blessed Mary,
+if we show her no honour, if we likewise fail in honour to her
+guardian, S. Joseph, is it not to be expected that our grasp upon
+the truths which are enshrined in such devotion will be feeble, and
+that we shall hold them as of small moment? The whole system of
+Catholic thought is so nicely articulated, so consistently held
+together, that failure to hold even the smallest constituent
+indicates a faulty conception of the whole. Catholics are
+constantly accused of over-stressing devotion to blessed Mary and
+the saints and thereby encroaching upon the honour due to our Lord.
+The answer to the reproach is to be found in the question: Who
+to-day are defending to the very death the truth of our Lord's
+Incarnation and the truths that hang upon it? Are they those who
+deny the legitimacy of invocation, or those in whose religious
+practise it holds an important and vital place?</p>
+<br>
+<p>A PANEGYRICK ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.</p>
+<blockquote>I do not tremble, when I write<br>
+A Mistress' praise, but with delight<br>
+Can dive for pearls into the flood,<br>
+Fly through every garden, wood,<br>
+Stealing the choice of flow'rs and wind,<br>
+To dress her body or her mind;<br>
+Nay the Saints and Angels are<br>
+Nor safe in Heaven, till she be fair,<br>
+And rich as they; nor will this do,<br>
+Until she be my idol too.<br>
+With this sacrilege I dispense,<br>
+No fright is in my conscience,<br>
+My hand starts not, nor do I then<br>
+Find any quakings in my pen;<br>
+Whose every drop of ink within<br>
+Dwells, as in me my parent's sin,<br>
+And praises on the paper wrot<br>
+Have but conspired to make a blot:<br>
+Why should such fears invade me now<br>
+That writes on her? to whom do bow<br>
+The souls of all the just, whose place<br>
+Is next to God's, and in his face<br>
+All creatures and delights doth see<br>
+As darling of the Trinity;<br>
+To whom the Hierarchy doth throng,<br>
+And for whom Heaven is all one song.<br>
+Joys should possess my spirit here,<br>
+But pious joys are mixed with fear:<br>
+Put off thy shoe, 'tis holy ground,<br>
+For here the flaming Bush is found,<br>
+The mystic rose, the Ivory Tower,<br>
+The morning Star and David's bower,<br>
+The rod of Moses and of Jesse,<br>
+The fountain seal&egrave;d, Gideon's fleece,<br>
+A woman cloth&egrave;d with the Sun,<br>
+The beauteous throne of Salomon,<br>
+The garden shut, the living spring,<br>
+The Tabernacle of the King,<br>
+The Altar breathing sacred fume,<br>
+The Heaven distilling honeycomb,<br>
+The untouched lily, full of dew,<br>
+A Mother, yet a Virgin too,<br>
+Before and after she brought forth<br>
+(Our ransom of eternal worth)<br>
+Both God and man. What voice can sing<br>
+This mystery, or Cherub's wing<br>
+Lend from his golden stock a pen<br>
+To write, how Heaven came down to men?<br>
+Here fear and wonder so advance<br>
+My soul, it must obey a trance.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE NATIVITY</h3>
+<center>She brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped<br>
+him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger;<br>
+because there was no room for them in the inn.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke II. 7.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>It is very meet to bless thee who bore the Christ, O
+ever Blessed and Immaculate Mother of God. More wondrous than the
+Cherubim and of greater glory than the Seraphim art thou who
+remaining Virgin didst give birth to God the Word. Verily, do we
+magnify thee, O Mother of God. In thee, O full of grace, all
+creation exults, the hierarchy of angels and the race of men. In
+thee sanctified temple, spiritual paradise, glory of virgins, of
+whom God took flesh, through whom our God Who was before the world
+became a Child. Of thy womb He made a throne, and its dominion is
+more extensive than the heavens. In thee, O full of grace, all
+creation exults: glory to thee.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">RUSSIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>e see a man and a woman on the road to Bethlehem where they are
+going to be taxed according to the decree of Augustus. Bethlehem
+would be known to them as the home of their ancestors, for they
+were both of the lineage of David. It was a painful journey for
+them for Mary was near the time of her delivery. We follow them
+along the road and into the village, as the twilight fades, and see
+them seeking shelter for the night. Bethlehem is a small place and
+the inn is crowded with those who have come on the errand with
+them, and the only place where they can find refuge for the night
+is a stable. But they are not used to luxury, and the stable serves
+their purpose.</p>
+<p>It also serves God's purpose. One understands as one reads this
+narrative of the Nativity what is meant by the Providential
+government of the world. We see how various lines of action, each
+free and independent, yet converge to the production of a given
+event. The different characters in the drama are all pursuing their
+own courses and yet the result is a true drama, not an unrelated
+series of events. Caesar's action, Joseph's lineage, our Lord's
+conception, all working together, bring about the fulfilment of
+prophecy by the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem. There is in the
+universe an over-ruling will which works to its ends by
+co-operating with human freedom, and not destroying it. We are not
+the sport of chance, not the slaves of fate, but free men; and yet
+through our freedom, through our blunders and rebellions and sins
+as well as through our obedience, the work of God is moving to its
+conclusion. Man did all that he could to defeat the ends of God and
+to thwart God's purpose of redemption. Yet on a certain night in
+Bethlehem of Judea the light of God overcame the human darkness,
+and the voices of God's angels pierced the human tumult, and Jesus
+Christ was born. "God of the substance of his Father begotten
+before all worlds, man of the substance of his mother, born in the
+world; perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human
+flesh subsisting."</p>
+<p>The manifestation came to certain shepherds watching their
+flocks in the fields about Bethlehem; simple men, quite unable to
+take in the meaning of what they see and hear. One cannot help
+thinking of what it would have meant in the way of an intellectual
+revolution if to some Greek or Roman philosopher, speculating on
+the destiny of humanity, the truth could have come that the future
+of the world was not in the court of Augustus, that it was not
+dependent on the Roman armies or Greek learning, but that it was
+bound up in the career and teaching of a Baby that night born in a
+stable in an obscure village in Judea. As we imagine such a case we
+see in the concrete the meaning of the revolution set in motion by
+this single event; and we are led to adore the ways of God in that
+He has chosen for the final approach to man for the purpose of
+redemption, this way of simplicity and humbleness. Man would not
+have thought of this as the best path for God to follow in this
+purpose of rescue, but we can be wise after the event and see that
+this Child born in poverty and obscurity would have fewer
+entanglements to break through, fewer obstacles to overcome.</p>
+<p>But these thoughts are far away from the night in Bethlehem. In
+the stable there where a Baby is lying in Mary's arms and Joseph
+stands looking on, there is no speculation about the
+world-consequences of the event. There is rather the splendour of
+love: the love of the mother in the new found mystery of this her
+Child; the love of God who has given her the Child. And all is a
+part of the great mystery of love, of the love wherewith God loves
+the world. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
+Son." Here is the Son, lying in Mary's arms, wrapped in swaddling
+clothes, and Mary looks into His face as any human mother looks
+into the face of her child. But through the eyes that smile up into
+Mary's face, God is looking out on a world of sorrow and pain and
+sin that He has come to redeem, and for which, in redeeming it, to
+die. Presently, the shepherds come in and complete the group, the
+representatives of universal humanity at the birth of their King,
+We have the whole world-problem in small, but here there is no
+consciousness of it. No echo of world-politics or of movements of
+thought break in here. But we know that here is the beginning of
+that which will set at naught world-politics and revolutionise
+movements of thought, that here is the centre about which humanity
+will move in the coming time. Here is that which is fundamental and
+abiding because here is the one invincible power of the
+universe--love. All else will fail: prophecies, systems of
+philosophy, religions, political and social structures; each in the
+time of its flourishing, proclaiming itself the last word of human
+wisdom,--these in bewildering succession have arisen and passed
+away. But love has survived them all. Love never faileth; through
+the slow succession of the centuries it is winning the world to
+God.</p>
+<p>It were well if we could learn to look on the happenings of this
+world as the miracles of divine love. We think of the power, the
+justice, the judgment of God as visible in this world's history;
+but these are but the instruments of love, and all that He does has
+its foundation in love and receives its impulse from love. This
+Nativity is the divine love coming into the world on its last
+adventure, determined to win man, all other means failing, by the
+extremity of sacrifice. The final word about this Child will be
+that having loved his own He loved them unto the uttermost, he
+loved them without stinting, with the uttermost capacity of love.
+Understanding this meaning of the love of God, we are prepared for
+the further fact that God uses all sorts of instruments as the
+instruments of His love. He shares Himself. He pours Himself into
+human life. He takes men into partnership in the work of
+redemption. Whenever a soul is mastered by love, it becomes a tool
+in God's hands. The progress of the Church--of God's Kingdom--might
+be described as the accumulation of these tools wherewith God
+works--souls who are so devoted to Him as to be the medium of
+bringing His power, the power of love, to bear on the souls of
+their brethren.</p>
+<p>To be the highest, the most perfect, of all the instruments of
+redemption God chose Mary of Nazareth to be the Mother of His Son.
+She is the most complete human embodiment of God's love. She, in
+her perfect purity, can transmit that love as power with the least
+loss of energy in the process of transmission. When we think of the
+saints as the means of God's action, we think of blessed Mary as
+the highest of the saints and the means most perfectly adapted to
+God's ends. Here at Bethlehem she holds God in her arms and looks
+into the human face that He has taken for this present work and all
+her being is absorbed in love. Oblivious, we think her, of her mean
+surroundings, of the animals that share with her their stable, of
+the shepherds who come in and look on in wonder, of S. Joseph
+standing by in sympathy. Love is all. Love is a passion consuming
+her being--what can the attendant circumstances matter? And to-day,
+after all these centuries: to-day the Child is the Ascended and
+Enthroned Redeemer, His risen and glorified humanity, transmitting
+something of the divine glory, seated at the right hand of the
+Majesty of God. And Mary, the Mother? Can we have any other thought
+than that she who on the first Christmas morning looks into the
+face of her Baby, still, to-day, looks up into the face of her
+divine Son, and the look is the same look of love? And can we think
+of the look that comes back to her from eyes that are human, taken
+from her body, though they be in very truth the eyes of God--can we
+think, I say, of the eyes of her Child and her God bringing
+anything else than the message of love? Can we think that when in
+answer to our invocation she presents our prayers in union with her
+own, that love will fail?</p>
+<p>But let us come back to earth--to Bethlehem--on that first
+Christmas eve and listen to the songs of the angels as they sing
+over the star-lit fields. How near heaven seems! How real is God!
+How joyful is this season of peace to men of good will! The message
+is of peace, but that peace will need to have its nature explained
+in the coming years if men's hearts are not to fail them and their
+faith wither away. It is not a general peace to the world that is
+being proclaimed. Later on our Lord will say: "My peace I give unto
+you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you." It is such a gift
+as can be enjoyed only by men of good will; converted men, that is
+to say, men whose will is close set with the will of God. For how
+should there be peace in any world on any other terms? How can
+there be peace for those who are in rebellion against God? Our Lord
+can promise peace, and can fulfil His promise because He is
+bringing a new potency into human life. He is a new way of approach
+to God, a new way into the Holiest of all. Through His humanity God
+is united to man, and through it man, any man, can be united to
+God. And one of the results of that union is this gift of peace,
+and the fact that it arises from the union explains its new
+character, why our Lord calls it His peace.</p>
+<p>This peace is the Christmas gift of the divine child to us. This
+is the method of God's work, from the inside out; from the
+spiritual fact to its external result. We do not begin by finding
+peace with this world: "in the world ye shall have tribulation."
+And most of the failure to attain peace, and much of men's loss of
+faith is due to repudiation of the divine method. We live in a
+disordered and pain-stricken world where human life is uniformly a
+life of trial and struggle, and our easy yielding to temptation is
+an attempt at some sort of an adjustment with the world such as we
+think will produce peace and quiet. We constantly demand of
+religion that it should effect this for us. So far as one can see
+much of the revolt against religion to-day has its ground in the
+failure of religion to meet the demands made upon it for a better
+world. Men look out on a world seething with unrest and filled with
+injustice, and they turn upon the Church and ask, "Why have you not
+changed all this? Are you not, in fact, neglecting your duty in not
+changing it? Or if you are not neglecting your duty, you must at
+least confess to your impotence. Your self-confessed business is to
+make a better world."</p>
+<p>True; but only on the conditions which love imposes. Religion
+does not propose to improve the world by a more skilful application
+of the principles of worldliness. It does not propose to turn
+stones into bread at the demand of any devils whatsoever. It does
+not say, "If you will support me and give me a certain superficial
+honour, I will bless your efforts and increase the success of your
+undertakings." Religion proposes to improve the world on the
+condition that the principles of religion shall be accepted as the
+working principles of life; on condition, that is, that love shall
+be made the ground of human association. Religion can make a better
+world, it can make the kingdoms of God and of His Christ; but it
+can only do so on the condition that it is whole-heartedly accepted
+and thoroughly applied. The proof that it can do this is in the
+fact that it can and does make better individuals. Wherever men and
+women have lived by the principles of the Gospel they have brought
+forth the fruits of the Gospel. It has done this, not under some
+specially favourable circumstances, but it has done it under all
+circumstances of life and in all nations of men. What has been done
+in unnumbered individual cases, can be done in whole communities
+when the communities want it done. It is quite pointless in times
+of great social distress to ask passionately, "why does not God
+make a better world?" The only question which is at all to the
+point is, "why has God not made <i>me</i> better?" The problem of
+God's dealing with the world is, in essence, the problem of God's
+dealing with me. If He has not reformed me, if I do not, in my
+self-examination, find that I am responding to the ideals of God,
+as far as I know them, there is small point in declamations about
+the state of society. Society that is godless, is just a mass of
+godless individuals; and I can understand why God does not reform
+the world perfectly well from the study of my own case. What in me
+prevents the full control of God is the same that prevents that
+control over the whole of society: and I know that that is not lack
+of knowledge, but lack of love. Men ignore the primary obligation
+of life: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... and thy neighbour as
+thyself." As long as they ignore that, there can be no reformed
+world, no world reflecting the divine purpose, no
+society,--whatever may be its widely multiplied
+legislation,--securing to men conditions of life which are sane and
+satisfactory.</p>
+<p>Therefore the Child who is born of Mary in Bethlehem while the
+angels are singing their carols over the fields where the shepherds
+watch, the Child Who brings peace to men of good will, still, after
+nearly two thousand years, finds His gift ignored and His longing
+to lift men to God unsatisfied. "He came unto His own and His own
+received Him not"--and the conditions are not vitally changed
+to-day. When we think of a world of fifteen hundred million human
+beings, the number of those who profess and call themselves
+Christians is comparatively small; the number of actually
+practicing Christians, of men and women who do live by the Gospel,
+without reserve and without compromise, is vastly smaller. The
+resistance of the principles of the Gospel is to-day intense; the
+demand for compromise is insistent. We are asked to throw over a
+system which has obviously failed, and to accept as the equivalent
+and to permit to pass under the same name a system which is
+fundamentally different; a system whose end is man and not God,
+whose means are natural and not supernatural, which seek to produce
+an adjustment with this world that means comfort, rather than an
+adjustment with the spiritual world which means sanctity.</p>
+<p>The ideal achievement of peace is here in Bethlehem where the
+mother holds the Holy Child to her breast, while her spirit is
+utterly in union with Him Who is both man and God. There is never
+any break in the pure peace of S. Mary because there is never any
+moment when her will is separated from the will of God, when her
+union with Him fails. This peace of perfect union has, through the
+merits of her Son, been hers always; she has never known the wrench
+of the will that separates itself from God. She has always been
+poor; she has been perplexed with life; she has suffered and will
+suffer intensely, suffer most where she loves most; but peace she
+has never lost, because her will has never wavered in its
+allegiance. What visibly she is doing in these moments of her great
+joy, holding God to her breast in a passion of love, she in fact is
+doing always--always is she one with God.</p>
+<p>That undisturbed peace of a never broken union is never possible
+for us. We have known what it is to reject the will of God and go
+our own way and indulge the appetites of our nature in violation of
+our recognised standards of life. If we are to come to peace it
+must be along the rough road of repentance. And it is wholly just
+that it should be so; that we should win back to God at the expense
+of shame and suffering; that we should retrace the road that we
+have travelled, with weary feet and bleeding heart. This after all
+does not much matter: what does matter immensely is that there is a
+road back to God and that we find it. What matters is that we
+discover that repentance and reformation are the only road to
+peace. We are offered many other roads alleged to lead to the same
+place; but not even a child should be deceived by the modern
+substitutes for repentance, by the shallow teaching whereby it is
+attempted to persuade men of the innocence of sin. They are never
+worth discussing, these modern substitutes for repentance. Men
+accept them, not because they are rational or convincing, but
+because they offer a justification for going the way that they have
+already made up their minds to go. But it is plain that whatever
+else they do they do not afford a basis for peace. They are no rock
+foundation for eternity. Other foundation for peace can no man lay
+or has laid than the acceptance of the salvation offered in Jesus
+Christ. He is our peace; and when we discover that, He makes peace
+in us by the application to our souls of the Blood of His Cross.
+This is the peace He came to bring. This the peace that the angels
+announced as they sang over Bethlehem. This is the peace which is
+ceaselessly proclaimed from the altars of the Christian Church, the
+peace of God which passeth understanding, the peace which is
+offered to all men of good will.</p>
+<p>How shall we attain it? By being men of good will, plainly. But
+what constitutes good will in a man? That which I have already
+discussed, perhaps abundantly, simplicity and childlike obedience
+of character. S. Joseph, the guardian of Mary and her Child here in
+Bethlehem, is the best example we can have of a man of good will, a
+man who under the most difficult circumstances responded with
+perfect readiness and complete obedience to the heavenly message
+that came to him. This is to be his course through the few years
+that he will live, to give himself to the will of God in the care
+of Jesus. We are men of good will if we do whatsoever our Lord says
+to us, if we are seeking first of all the Kingdom of God and its
+righteousness, if our estimate of values corresponds to our
+Lord's.</p>
+<p>There is our trouble--that old trouble of feebly trying to live
+the life of the Kingdom when what we actually want is the offer of
+this world. There is, there can be, no peace in a divided life.
+There is a certain spiritual sloth which has the exterior look of
+peace, as a corpse looks peaceful, but it has no relation to the
+peace which God gives. It is in fact the wages of sin, wages easily
+earned and long enjoyed. But so long as we are spiritually alive,
+so long we cannot enjoy whole-heartedly even the most fascinating
+of sins because there is lurking in the background the sense of the
+transitoriness of our sin and of the imminence of death and
+judgment. There is the skeleton in every man's closet until he
+finally makes choice on one side or the other. For we are not
+ignorant of the spiritual obligations of life. We always know more
+than we have achieved. When we talk about our ignorance and
+perplexity, we are not meaning ignorance and perplexity about the
+obligation to live in a certain way, and to perform certain duties,
+on this particular day: rather we are making this alleged ignorance
+of the future an excuse for not taking action in the present,
+action which we know to be obligatory.</p>
+<p>And peace is so wonderful a gift! To feel oneself in harmony
+with God, to know that one is carefully seeking His will and making
+it one's first and highest duty to perform it. To have found the
+peace of the forgiven soul as the result of absolution, at the
+expense of much shame and repugnance, it may be, but with what
+marvellous compensations when we go away with a sense of restored
+purity and the friendship of God--life looks so different when we
+look at it through purified eyes! The old life has held us so
+tightly, the old sins have clung so close; and then there was a day
+when we gave up self and turned to God and the Gift of God in Jesus
+Christ; and then we saw how miserable and vile and naked we had
+been all through the time of our boasted freedom; and we came as
+children to Mary's Child and offered ourselves to Him for
+cleansing. We kneel and offer to Him our wills and ask that they
+may be made good, and kept good in union with His most holy will.
+Then we find how true this word is: "In Me ye shall have peace: in
+the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have
+overcome the world." It is true, is it not? not only as we commonly
+interpret, that the disciples of Christ shall have tribulation in
+this world; but that much that we, giving ourselves to the world,
+counted joy, was in reality tribulation, and we are glad to be rid
+of it.</p>
+<blockquote>A babe is born to bliss us bring.<br>
+I heard a maid lulley and sing.<br>
+She said: "Dear Son, leave Thy weeping:<br>
+Thy, Father is the King of bliss."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"Lulley," she said and sung also,<br>
+"My own dear Son, why are Thou wo?<br>
+Have I not done as I should do?<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"Nay, dear mother, for thee weep I nought,<br>
+But for the woe that shall be wrought<br>
+To Me ere I mankind have bought.<br>
+Was never sorrow like it i-wis."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"Peace, dear Son! Thou grievest me sore:<br>
+Thou art my child, I have no more.<br>
+Should I see men mine own Son slay?<br>
+Alas, my dear Son, what means all this?"<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"My hands, Mother, that ye now see,<br>
+Shall be nailed to a tree;<br>
+My feet also fast shall be,<br>
+Men shall weep that shall see this."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"Ah, dear Son, hard is my happe<br>
+To see my child that lay in my lap,--<br>
+His hands, His feet that I did wrappe,--<br>
+Be so nailed; they never did amisse."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.<br>
+<br>
+"Ah, dear Mother, yet shall a spear<br>
+My heart asunder all but tear:<br>
+No wonder if I care-ful were<br>
+And wept full sore to think on this."<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Now sing we with Angelis:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria in excelsis.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE MAGI</h3>
+<center>Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days
+of Herod the king, Behold,<br>
+there came Magi from the East to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he
+that is born king of the Jews?<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. II, i.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, which hath borne for
+us God the Word. We give thee salutation with the Angel Gabriel,
+saying, Hail, thou that art full of grace; the Lord is with
+thee.<br>
+<br>
+Hail to thee, O Virgin, the very and true Queen; hail, glory of our
+race. Thou hast borne for us Emmanuel.<br>
+<br>
+We pray thee, remember us, O thou our faithful advocate with our
+Lord Jesus Christ, that He may forgive us our sins.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">COPTIC.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-o.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>ut of the East, over the desert, we see coming to Bethlehem the
+train of the star-led Magi. The devout imagination of the Church,
+dwelling upon the <i>significance</i> rather than the bare
+historical statements of the Gospel, have seen them as the
+representatives of the whole Gentile world. We often think of the
+treatment of the sacred story by the teachers and preachers of the
+Church as embroidering the original narratives with legendary
+material. We can look at it in that way; and by so doing, I think,
+miss the meaning of the facts. What we call ecclesiastical legend
+will often turn out on examination to be but the unfolding of the
+meaning of an event in terms of the creative imagination. The
+object is to present vividly what the event actually means when the
+meaning is of such widely reaching significance as far to overpass
+the simple facts. It is thus, I take it, that we must understand
+the story of the Magi as it takes shape in pious story. That the
+Magi were kings, and that they were three in number, emphasises the
+felt importance of their coming to the cradle of our Lord.
+Actually, they were understood to represent the Gentile world
+offering its allegiance to our blessed Lord, and therefore they
+would naturally represent the three branches of the Gentile world
+as it was understood at the time. The importance of their mission
+was reflected in the presentation of them as kings--no less persons
+were required to fill the dignity of the part. There was, too, a
+whole mass of prophecy to be reckoned with and interpreted in its
+relation to the event, the most obvious of which was that of
+Isaiah: "And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the
+brightness of thy rising."</p>
+<p>The Church story is essentially true, is but a dramatic
+rendering of the Gospel story. We may however content ourselves
+with the more simple rendering. We can hardly think of the stable
+as the setting of the reception of the Eastern Sages. Just when
+they came we cannot tell; but we seem compelled to put the Epiphany
+where the Church puts it in her year, somewhere between the
+Nativity and the Presentation, and the scene of it will still be,
+the Gospel implies, Bethlehem. "Now when Jesus was born in
+Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Behold, there
+came Magi from the East to Jerusalem." And at the direction of
+Herod, and guided by the Star they came to Bethlehem and offered
+their gifts and their worship. "They saw the young child with Mary
+his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had
+opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and
+frankincense, and myrrh."</p>
+<p>We try to get before us what would have been the mind of S. Mary
+through all these happenings which attended the birth of her Child.
+What is written of her here is no doubt characteristic: "Mary kept
+all these and pondered them in her heart." Wonder at the ways of
+God had been hers for so many months now--wonder, with devout
+meditation upon their meaning. Where there is no resistance to
+God's will but only the desire to know it more fully there is
+always the gradual assimilation of the truth. S. Mary moves in a
+realm of mystery from the moment of the Annunciation to the very
+end of her life. It is so difficult to understand what is the
+meaning of God in this unspeakable gift of a Son conceived by the
+power of the Holy Spirit, and in the constant accompaniment of pain
+and disaster and disappointment which is the unfolding experience
+of her life in relation to Him. But we feel in her no speculation,
+no rebellion, no insistence on knowing more; but we feel that there
+must have been a growing appreciation of the work of God,
+unhesitating acceptance of His will. Just to keep things in one's
+heart is so often the best way of arriving at an understanding of
+them; is the best way, at least, of arriving at the conviction that
+what we in fact need to understand is not so much what God does as
+that it is God Who does it. Our true aim in life is to understand
+God, and through that understanding we shall sufficiently
+understand life. Failure in human life is commonly due to an
+attempt to understand life without any attempt to understand it in
+relation to God. It is like an attempt to understand a work of art
+without an attempt to understand the artist, to estimate in terms
+of mechanical effort, rather than in terms of mind. A work of art
+means what the artist means when he creates it: life means what God
+means in His creation and government of it, and it is hopeless to
+expect to understand it without reference to the mind of God.</p>
+<p>Therefore Mary's way is the right way--the way of acceptance and
+meditation. So she sought to follow the mind of God. We are told
+little of her, but we are told quite enough to understand this. We
+know well her method, that she kept things in her heart. And we
+have one splendid example of the result of the method in the
+Magnificat. There the results of her communion with God break forth
+in that Canticle which ever since has been one of the priceless
+treasures of the Church. The Gospels never tell us very much; but
+if we will follow Mary's method they tell us enough to let us see
+the very hand of God in the working out of our salvation; they give
+us sample events from which we easily infer God's meaning
+otherwhere.</p>
+<p>And we may be sure that the months that followed the
+Annunciation would have been months of ever-deepening spiritual
+communion, resulting in a rapidly advancing spiritual maturity. One
+necessary result would have been to prepare the blessed Mother to
+receive new manifestations of God's Providence, and to fit them
+into the whole body of her experience. She would not at any time be
+lost in helpless surprise before a new development of the purpose
+of God. Surprised as she must have been when the Eastern Sages came
+to kneel before the Child she carried at her breast, and hail Him
+as born King of the Jews, she would have set to work to fit this
+new experience into what her acquired knowledge of the divine
+meaning had become. And one can have no doubt that these visitors
+from afar would have told her enough of the grounds of their action
+to illumine for her the prophecies concerning her Son.</p>
+<p>The special incidents that the Gospel select for record leave us
+always conscious that they <i>are</i> a selection and therefore
+must have special significance. That we are told that the Magi
+offered certain gifts, rather than told the words of homage
+wherewith they presented them turns our attention to the nature of
+the gifts as presumably having a significance in themselves rather
+than because of any actual value. In the gifts of these Gentiles
+come from afar to kneel before Him Whom they recognise as King of
+the Jews, we are compelled to see a certain attitude of humanity
+toward Him Who is revealed to be not only the King of the Jews, but
+Lord of Heaven and earth; they give what humanity needs must always
+give--the gold of a perfect oblation, the incense of perpetual
+intercession, the myrrh of a humble self-abandonment.</p>
+<p>These which are offered as the ideal tribute of humanity by the
+star-led Magi are found in their highest human perfection
+exemplified in the Mother of the Child to Whom the tribute is made.
+Perfect are they in our Lord; and she who is nearest Him in nature
+is nearest Him in the perfection of nature. We turn from God's
+ideal as set out in our blessed Lord to see it reflected as in a
+glass in the life of her whose perfection is the perfect rendering
+of His grace. Mary is so perfect because, by God's election, she is
+"full of grace."</p>
+<p>We, alas! limp after the ideal at a long distance. One pictures
+the life of sanctity under the familiar symbol of the race course,
+where many start in the race, and many, one by one, fall out by the
+wayside. Those who go on the race's end, go on because of certain
+qualities of endurance that we discover in them. In those who run
+the spiritual race for the amaranthine crown these qualities of
+endurance are not natural, but supernatural: they come not of birth
+but of rebirth. They are qualities which we draw from God. "It is
+not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that
+showeth mercy." The hand that sets the race confers the gifts that
+enable one to win it. "So run that ye may obtain."</p>
+<p>And perhaps the chiefest of all those gifts is that which makes
+us, the children of God, capable of the adoration of our Father.
+Worship is no other than the utter giving of ourselves, giving as
+Christ gave, "Who being originally in the form of God, thought it
+not a thing to be grasped at to be equal with God, but emptied
+Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in
+the likeness of men"; giving as the blessed Virgin gave when she
+gave, as she must have thought and have been willing to give, her
+whole reputation among men in response to the call of God; giving
+complete, in which there is no withholding. That is worship,
+sacrifice, the pure gold of self-oblation.</p>
+<p>But it is possible to think of the power of worship from another
+point of view. God never takes but He gives. What He appears to
+take He gives back with His blessing, and we find the restored gift
+multiplied manifold. So in the very act of our worship God confers
+on us power.</p>
+<p>For it is true, is it not, that in the very act of worship we
+experience, not exhaustion but exhilaration. In the very act of
+giving ourselves to God, God gives Himself to us, and in
+overflowing abundance. That is what we find to be true in our
+highest act of worship, the blessed Eucharist. Here God and man
+meet in a perfect communion. Here we offer ourselves in
+sacrifice--ourselves, our souls and bodies--in union with the
+sacrifice of our Lord; and here our Lord, Who is the sacrifice
+itself, not only offers Himself, but also He imparts Himself to
+those who are united with Him. And out of this sacrifice, thus
+issuing in an act of union, there flows the perpetual renewing of
+the vitality of the spiritual life. We are sustained from day to
+day by this sacrificial feeding; our strength which is continually
+being drawn upon by the demands of life, by the temptations we have
+to resist, by the exertion that is called for in all spiritual
+exercise, is renewed by our participation in the Body and Blood of
+our Lord. I am sure that all those who are accustomed to frequent
+communion feel the drain upon their strength when at any time they
+are deprived of their great privilege. I am also sure that many who
+feel that their spiritual life is but languid, or those other many
+who seem only dimly to feel that there are spiritual problems to be
+met, and spiritual strength needed for the meeting of them, would
+find themselves immensely helped, would find their minds illumined
+and their strength sustained in more frequent participation in the
+sacrificial worship and feasting of the Church. The attitude of
+vast numbers of those who are regarded as quite sincere Christians
+is wholly incomprehensible. The life of God is day by day poured
+out at the altars of the Church, and they go their way in seeming
+unconsciousness of its presence, of its appeal, of its virtue, or
+of their own sore need of it. The Magi come from a far distance on
+a hazardous journey into an unknown country that they may offer the
+gold of their adoration to an infant King; and the Christian feebly
+considers whether he is not too tired to get up of a morning and go
+a short distance to receive the Body and Blood of the Redeemer of
+his soul!</p>
+<p>The Magi came also bringing the incense of their intercession.
+Their privilege was that they were admitted to the very Presence
+Chamber of the great King. That the Infant in Mary's arms did not
+show any sign of kingship, the humble room where they were received
+bore no resemblance to the presence chamber of such kings as they
+were accustomed to wait upon, was to them of no consequence. They
+were endowed with the gift of faith, and believed the supernatural
+guiding rather than the outward seeming. The faith that had
+followed the star from so great a distance was not likely to be
+quenched by the antithesis of what must have been their imagination
+of the reality, of all the pictures that had been filling their
+minds as they pushed on across the desert. It was no more
+incredible that the King Whom they were seeking should be found in
+humble guise in a peasant's cottage than that they should have been
+guided to Him by a heavenly star. The gift of God to them was that
+they should be permitted to enter the presence of the King.</p>
+<p>This right of admission to the divine Presence is the precious
+gift of God to us. Since the heavens received the ascending Lord
+the Kingdom of heaven has been open to all believers. Prayer is a
+very simple and common thing in our experience; and yet when we try
+to think out its implications we are overwhelmed with the wonder of
+it. It implies a God Who waits upon our pleasure: it reveals to us
+a Father Who is ever ready to listen to the voice of His children.
+No broken hearted sinner, overwhelmed with the conviction of his
+vileness, cries out in the agony of his repentance but God is ready
+to hear. "He is more ready to hear than we to pray." No man pours
+out his thanksgivings for the abundant blessings he discovers in
+his life but the heart of God is glad in his gladness. No child
+kneels at night to repeat his simple prayer but God bends over him
+and blesses him. The wonder of it is summed up in our Lord's words:
+"The Father Himself loveth you," which are as an open door into the
+inner sanctuary, an invitation to enter to those who are hesitating
+on the threshold of the Holy of Holies.</p>
+<p>And there is no danger of tiring God: we come ceaselessly,
+endlessly. The cries of earth go up to Him, pitiful, ignorant,
+foolish cries; but they find God ready to hear and answer,
+fortunately not according to our ignorance but according to His
+great mercy. We think of the clouds of prayer in all ages, from all
+nations, in all tongues, and the very vastness of them gives us an
+index of the divine love.</p>
+<p>And it is not simply for ourselves that we pray, nor do we pray
+by ourselves; it is of God's love that in the work of prayer we are
+associated with one another. There is nothing further from the
+divine plan of life than our present individualism. Our temptation
+is to be egotistic and self-centred; to want to approach God alone
+with our private needs and wishes. We incline to travel the
+spiritual way by ourselves; we want no company; we want no one
+between our souls and God. But that precisely is not the divine
+method. We come to God through Christ; we come in association with
+the members of the Body. Our standing as Christians before Him is
+dependent upon our corporate relation to one another in His
+Son.</p>
+<p>Important issues are involved. We attain through this associated
+life of the Christian the power of mutual intercession. We find
+that it is our privilege to share our prayers with others, and to
+be interested in one another's lives. We have common interests and
+we work them out in common. Therefore when we try to put before us
+an ideal picture of the power of prayer, it will not be the
+solitary individual offering his personal supplications to the
+Father, but it will be the community of the faithful assembled for
+the offering of the divine Sacrifice. It is the praying Body that
+best satisfies our ideal of prayer, where we are conscious of
+helping one another in the work of intercession. We remember, too,
+when we think of prayer as prayer of the Body of Christ, that it is
+not just the visible congregation that is participating in it, but
+that all the Body share in the intercessions, wherever they may
+individually be. Our thoughts go up from the little assembly in the
+humble church and lose themselves in the splendour of the heavenly
+intercession where we are associated with prophets and apostles and
+martyrs, and with Mary the Mother of God.</p>
+<p>There was a third gift that the Magi brought to Him Whom they
+hailed King, a gift that is more perplexing as a gift to royalty
+than the other two. That gold and incense should be offered a King
+is clearly His royal right; but what has he to do with the
+bitterness of myrrh? But to this King myrrh is a peculiarly
+appropriate gift, for it is the symbol of complete
+self-abandonment. He who came to do not His own will but the will
+of Him that sent Him; Who laid aside the robes of His glory,
+issuing from the uncreated light that He might clothe Himself with
+the humility of the flesh, is properly honoured with the gift of
+myrrh.</p>
+<p>And as it was the symbol of His humility, so is it the symbol of
+our humanity in relation to Him. It suggests to us that uttermost
+of Christian virtues, the virtue of entire abandonment to the will
+of God. This is a most difficult virtue to acquire. We cling to
+self. We are devoted to our own wills. We rely on our own judgment
+and wisdom. We are impatient of all that gets in the way of our
+self-determination. We have in these last days made a veritable
+religion out of devotion to self, a cult of the ego.</p>
+<p>But he who will enter into the sanctuary of the divine life, he
+who will seek union with God, he who will be one with the Father in
+the Son, must abandon self. He must lose his life in order to save
+it. He must let go the world to cling to the Lord of life. This
+will of the man which is so insistent, so persistent, so assertive,
+so tenacious, must be laid aside and the Will of Another adopted in
+its place. Often this is bitter. Very true of us it is that when we
+were young we girded ourselves and walked whither we would; but it
+must be in the end, if we make life a spiritual success, that when
+we are old another shall gird us and carry us whither we would
+not.</p>
+<p>The secret of life is found when the bitterness of myrrh is
+turned to sweetness in the discovery that the outcome of the
+sacrificial life is not that it be narrowed but enlarged; and that
+for the life which we have entrusted to Him God will do more than
+we ask or think. When our will becomes one with the will of God we
+are surprised to find that we have ceased to think of what we once
+called our sacrifices, because life in Christ reveals itself to us
+as of infinite joy and richness, so that we forget the things that
+are behind and gladly press on.</p>
+<blockquote>Queen of heaven, blessed may thou be<br>
+For Godes Son born He was of thee,<br>
+For to make us free.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria Tibi, Domine.<br>
+<br>
+Jesu, Godes Son, born He was<br>
+In a crib with hay and grass,<br>
+And died for us upon the cross.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Gloria Tibi, Dominie.<br>
+<br>
+To our Lady make we our moan,<br>
+That she may pray to her dear Son,<br>
+That we may to His bliss come.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Gloria Tibi, Dominie.<br>
+<br>
+Sixteenth Century.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE PRESENTATION</h3>
+<center>And when the days of her purification according to the law
+of Moses were accomplished, they<br>
+brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke II. 22.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>O come let us worship the Holy Trinity, the Father, the
+Son, and the Holy Ghost,--we the Christian nations, for He is our
+true God.<br>
+<br>
+And we hope in Holy Mary, that God will have mercy upon us through
+her prayers.<br>
+<br>
+Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, who hath borne for us God the
+Word.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">COPTIC</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he reading of a story in the Gospels is often like looking
+through a window down some long arcade; there is in the foreground
+the group of actors in whom we are presently interested, and beyond
+them is the whole background of contemporary life to which they
+belong, of which they are a part. If we have time to think out the
+meaning of this surrounding life we gain added insight into the
+meaning of our principal characters. It is so now as we watch this
+group of humble peasant folk coming up to the temple to fulfil the
+demands of the law of Moses. In the precincts of the temple they
+are merged in a larger group whose interests are clearly identical
+with their own, and whom we easily see to be the local
+representatives of a party--the name, no doubt, suggests an
+organisation which they had not--scattered throughout Judea. Their
+interest was the redemption of Israel. They were the true heirs of
+the prophets, and among them the prophecies which concerned the
+Lord's Christ were the subject of constant study and meditation.
+Amid the movements and intrigues of political and religious
+parties, they abode quietly in the temple, as Simeon and Anna, or
+in their homes, as Zacharias and Elizabeth, <i>waiting</i>. Their
+power was the silent power of sanctity, the power that flows from
+lives steeped in meditation and prayer. They constitute that
+remnant which is the depository of the hopes of Israel and the
+saving salt which prevents the utter putrefaction of the body of
+the nation.</p>
+<p>We cannot for a moment doubt that Mary and Joseph were of this
+remnant, and that they were in complete sympathy with those whom
+they found here in the temple when the Child Jesus was brought in
+"to do for him after the custom of the law." The actual ceremony of
+the purification was soon over, the demands of the law satisfied.
+Neither Jesus nor Mary had any inner need of these observances;
+their value in their case was that by submission to them they
+associated themselves closely with their brethren, our Lord thus
+continuing that divine self-emptying which he had begun at the
+Incarnation. We are impressed with the completeness of this
+stooping of God when we see the offering that Mary brings, "A pair
+of turtle doves," the offering of the very poor. Our Lord has
+accepted life on its lowest economic terms in order that nothing in
+His mission shall flow from adventitious aids. He must owe all in
+the accomplishment of His work to the Father Who gave it Him to do.
+It will be the essence of the temptation that He must soon undergo
+that He shall consent to call to His aid earthly and material
+supports and base His hopes of success on something other than
+God.</p>
+<p>Accidentally, there is this further demonstration contained in
+the poverty of the Holy Family, that, namely, the completest
+spiritual privilege, the fullest spiritual development, is
+independent of "possessions." It is no doubt true that "great
+possessions" do not of necessity create a bar in all cases to
+spiritual accomplishment; but to many of us it is a consolation to
+know that the completest sanctity humanity has known has been
+wrought out in utter poverty of life. We shall have occasion to
+speak more of this later; we now only note the fact that those whom
+we meet in the pages of the New Testament as waiting hopefully for
+the redemption of Israel are waiting in poverty and hard work.</p>
+<p>What we find in S. Mary as she passes through the ceremony of
+her purification from a child-bearing which had in no circumstance
+of it anything impure, is the spirit of sacrifice which submission
+to the law implies. She has caught the spirit of her Son, the
+spirit of selfless offering to the will of God. It is the central
+accomplishment of the life of sanctity. The life of sanctity must
+be wrought out from the centre, from our contact with God. No one
+becomes holy by works, whatever may be the nature of the works.
+Works, the external life, are the expression of what we are, they
+are the externalization of our character. If they be not the
+expression of a life hid with Christ in God they can have no
+spiritual value, whatever may be their social value. The kind of
+works which "are done to be seen of men" "have their reward," that
+is, the sort of reward they seek, human approval; they have no
+value in the realm of the spirit.</p>
+<p>But the life that is lived as sacrifice, as a thing perfectly
+offered to God, is a life growing up in God day by day. It is our
+Lord's life, summed up from this point of view in the "I come to do
+thy will, O God." Its most perfect reflection is caught by blessed
+Mary with her acceptance of God's will: "Behold, the handmaid of
+the Lord." But it is the life expression of all sanctity; for the
+saint is such chiefly by virtue of his sacrificial attitude. It is
+the completest account of the life of sanctity that it "leaves all"
+to follow a divine call. It is the response of the Apostles who, as
+James and John, leave their father Zebedee and the boats and the
+nets and the hired servants, to follow Jesus. It is the answer of
+Matthew who rises from the receipt of custom at the Master's word.
+It is the answer of all saints in all times. Sanctity means the
+abandonment of all for Christ: it means the embracing of the
+poverty of Jesus and Mary.</p>
+<p>Is sanctity then, or the possibility of it, shut within the
+narrow limits of a poor life? Well, even if it were, the limits
+would not be so very narrow. By far the greater part of the human
+race at any time has been poor, as poor as the Holy Family.
+Unfortunately, Christianity is forgetting its vocation of poverty
+and becoming a matter of well-to-do-ness. But we need not forget
+that the poor are the majority. However, the fact is not that
+economical poverty is automatically productive of spirituality, but
+that accepted and offered poverty is the road to the heart of God.
+It is not denied that the rich man may consecrate and offer his
+goods to God and make them instruments of God's service; but in the
+process he runs great risk of deceiving himself and of attempting
+to deceive God--the risk of quietly substituting for the spirit of
+sacrifice the spirit of commercial bargaining, and attempting to
+buy the favour of God, and of ransoming his great possessions by a
+well-calculated tribute. It is not so much our possessions as the
+way we hold them that is in question; it is a question whether the
+inner motive of our life is the will to sacrifice or the will to be
+rich. "They that desire to be rich fall into temptation and a
+snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in
+destruction and perdition,"</p>
+<p>These dangers S. Paul noted as the besetting dangers of riches
+are counteracted by the possession of the spirit of sacrifice which
+holds all things at the disposal of God, and views life as
+opportunity for the service of God. And in so estimating life, we
+must remember that money is not the only thing that human beings
+possess. As I pointed out the vast majority of the human race have
+no money: it by no means follows that they have no capacity or
+field for the exercise of the spirit of sacrifice. There is, for
+instance, an abundant opportunity for the exercise of that spirit
+in the glad acceptance of the narrow lot that may be ours. Probably
+many, indeed most, poor are only economically poor; they fall under
+S. Paul's criticism in that "they desire to be rich," and are
+therefore devoid of the spirit of sacrifice that would transform
+their actual poverty into a spiritual value. But all the powers and
+energies of life do in fact constitute life's capital. A poor boy
+has great possessions in the gifts of nature that God has granted
+him. He may use this capital as he will. He may be governed by "the
+desire to be rich," or by the desire to consecrate himself to the
+will and service of God--and the working out of life will be
+accordingly. He may become very rich economically, or he may devote
+his life to the service of his fellows as physician, teacher,
+missionary, or in numberless other paths. Once more, the meaning of
+life is in its voluntary direction, and whatever may be his
+economic state, he may, if he will, be "rich toward God."</p>
+<p>If what we are seeking is to follow the Gospel-life, if we are
+seeking to express toward man the spirit of the Master, we find
+abundant field for the exercise of this spirit of sacrifice in our
+daily relations with others. S. Paul's rule of life: "Look not
+every man to his own things, but every man also to the things of
+others," is the practical rule of the sacrificed will. It seeks to
+fulfil the service of the Master by taking the spirit of the
+Master--His helpfulness, His consideration, His sympathy--with one
+into the detail of the day's work. It is one of the peculiarities
+of human nature that it finds it quite possible to work itself up
+to an occasional accomplishment, especially in a spectacular
+setting, of spiritual works, which it finds itself quite impotent
+to do under the commonplace routine of life. The race experience is
+accurately enough summed up in the cynical proverb: "No man is a
+hero to his valet." It expresses the fact that in ordinary
+circumstances, and under commonplace temptations, we do not succeed
+in holding life to the accomplishment which is ours when we are, as
+it were, on dress parade. In other words, we respond to the
+opinions we desire to create in others; and the spirit of sanctity
+is a response not to public opinion, but to the mind and thought of
+God. When we seek the mind of Christ, and seek to reproduce that
+mind in our own lives, seek to be possessed by it, then we shall
+gladly render back to God all life's riches which we have received
+from Him, and acknowledge in the true spirit of poverty that "all
+things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we given
+Thee."</p>
+<p>The world has got into a very ill way of thinking of God as
+<i>force</i>. Force seems in the popular mind to be the synonym of
+<i>power</i>. The only power that we understand is the power that
+<i>compels</i>, that secures the execution of its will by physical
+or moral constraint. With this conception of power in mind men are
+continually asking: "Why does not God do this or that? If he be God
+and wills goodness, why does He not execute goodness, use power to
+accomplish it?"</p>
+<p>It ought to be unnecessary to point out that such a conception
+of power is quite foreign to the Christian conception of God.
+Goodness that is compulsory is not goodness. Human legislation, in
+its enforcement of law, looks not to the production of goodness but
+to the production of order, a quite different thing. But God's
+heart is set upon the sanctification of His children and is
+satisfied with nothing less than that. "This is the will of God,
+even your sanctification." But sanctification cannot be compelled.
+The divine method is, that "when the fulness of time was come, God
+sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem
+them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of
+sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son
+into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Through this method we
+"were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." The result is not
+that we are compelled to obey, but that "the love of Christ
+constraineth us." The account of the apostolic authority is not
+that it is a commission to rule the universal Church, but "now then
+we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us;
+we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."</p>
+<p>The study of this divine method should put us on the right track
+in the attempt to estimate the nature of sanctity and the results
+we may expect from it. We shall expect nothing of spiritual value
+from force. We shall be quite prepared to turn away from the
+governing parties in Jerusalem as from those who have repudiated
+the divine method and are therefore useless for the divine ends. We
+shall turn rather to those who gather about the temple and there,
+in a life of prayer and meditation, wait for the redemption. It is
+to these, who are the real temple of the Lord, that the Lord "shall
+come suddenly," that the manifestation of God will be made. And
+their hearts will overflow with joy as they behold the fulfilment
+of the promises of God.</p>
+<p>The power of God is the power of love; and it is that love, and
+that love alone, that has won the victories of God. It is a very
+slow method, men say. No doubt. But it is the only method that has
+any success. The method of force seems effective; but its triumphs
+are illusory. Force cannot make men love, it can only make them
+hate. The world is being won to God by the love of God manifested
+in Christ Jesus our Lord. And it is as well to remember, when we
+are tempted to complain of the slowness of the process, that the
+slowness is ours, not God's. The process is slow because men will
+not consent to become the instruments of God's love for the world,
+will not transmit the crucified love of God's Son to their fellows.
+They continually, in their impatience, revert to force of some
+sort, for the attainment of spiritual ends. They become the tools
+of all sorts of secular ambitions which promise support in return
+for their co-operation. And the result may be read by any one not
+blinded by prejudice in the futility and incompetence of modern
+religions of all sorts. It is seen perhaps most of all in the pride
+of opinion which keeps the Christian world in a fragmentary
+condition, and which approaches the undoing of the sin of a divided
+Christendom with the preliminary announcement that no separated
+body must be required to admit that it has been in the wrong. Human
+disregard of the divine method of love and humility can hardly go
+farther; and the only practical result that can be expected to
+follow is such as followed from the negotiations of Herod and
+Pontius Pilate--a new Crucifixion of the Ever-sacrificed
+Christ.</p>
+<p>We have risen to the divine method when we have learned to rely
+for spiritual results upon God alone. Then is revealed to us the
+power of sanctity. We turn over the pages of the lives of the
+saints, of those who have been great in the Kingdom of God, and we
+are struck by the growing influence of these men and women. They
+are simple men and women whose life's energy is concentrated on
+some special work; they are confessors or directors; they work
+among the very poor; they lead lives of retirement in Religious
+Houses; they are preachers of the Gospel; they are missionaries.
+The one thing that they appear to have in common is utter
+consecration to the work in hand. And we see, it may be with some
+wonder, that as they become more and more absorbed in their special
+work, they become more and more centres of influence. Without at
+all willing it they draw people about them, become centres of
+influences, arouse interest, become widely known. In short, they
+are, without willing it, centres of energy. Of what energy?
+Obviously, of the energy of love: the love of God manifested in
+them draws men to God. The man at whose disposal is unlimited force
+compels men to do his will; but he draws no one to him except the
+hypocrite and the sycophant who expect to gain something by their
+servility. The saint draws men, not to himself, but to God; for
+obviously it is not his power but God's power that is being
+manifested through him.</p>
+<p>Unless we are very unfortunate we all know people whose
+attractiveness is the attractiveness of simple goodness. They are
+not learned nor influential nor witty nor clever, but we like to be
+with them. When we are asked why, we can only explain it by the
+attractiveness of their Christlikeness. What we gain from
+intercourse with them is spiritual insight and power. Their
+influence might be described as sacramental: they are means our
+Blessed Lord uses to impart Himself. They are so filled with the
+mind of Christ that they easily show Him to the world; and withal,
+quite unconsciously. For great love is possible only where there is
+great humility.</p>
+<p>And this power of sanctity which is the outcome of union with
+God is a permanent acquisition to the Kingdom of God. God's Kingdom
+is ultimately a Kingdom of saints. The sphere of God's
+self-manifestation in human life increases ever as the saints
+increase; and the power of sanctity necessarily remains while the
+saint remains, that is, forever. The saint remains a permanent
+organ of the Body of Christ, a perdurable instrument of the divine
+love. To speak humanly, the more saints there are, the more the
+love of God can manifest itself; the wider its influence on
+humanity. And the greater the Saint, that is, the nearer the Saint
+approaches the perfection of God, to which he is called--Be ye
+therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect--the more
+influential he must be; that is the more perfectly he will show the
+divine likeness and transmit the divine influence. When we think of
+the power of the saints as intercessors that is what actually we
+are thinking of,--the perfection of their understanding of the mind
+of Christ.</p>
+<p>But to return to this world and to the gathering in the temple
+on the day of the Purification. These are they in whom the hope of
+Israel rests. Israel is not a failure because it has brought forth
+these. God's work through the centuries has not come to naught
+because in these there is the possibility of a new beginning. The
+consummate flower of Israel's life is the Blessed Mother through
+whom God becomes man; and these who meet her in the temple are the
+representatives of those hidden ones in Israel who will be the
+field wherein the seed of the Word can be sown and where it will
+bring forth fruit an hundredfold. Jesus, this Child, is God made
+man; and these around Him to-day, Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna,
+are those who will receive His love and will show its power in the
+universe forever.</p>
+<p>And so it will remain always; the good ground wherein the seed
+may be sown and bring forth unto eternal life is the spiritual
+nature of man, made ready by humility and love,--"In quietness and
+confidence shall be your strength." In the quietness that waits for
+God to act, the confidence that knows that He will act when the
+time comes. It is well if our aspiration is to be of the number of
+those who live lives hid with Christ in God; who are seeking
+nothing but that the love of God may be shed abroad in their
+hearts; who are "constrained" by nothing but the love of Jesus. It
+is true that this simplicity of motive and aim will bring it about
+that our lives will be hidden lives, lives of which the world will
+take no note. We may be quite sure that none of the rulers of
+Israel thought much about old Simeon who passed his time praying in
+the temple. And if we want to be known of rulers it is doubtless a
+mistake to take the road that Simeon followed. But the reward of
+that way was that he saw "the Lord's Christ," that it was permitted
+him to take in his arms Incarnate God, and then, in his rapture, to
+sing <i>Nunc Dimittis</i>. We cannot travel two roads at once. When
+the Holy Family goes out from the temple it can go, if it will, to
+the palace of Herod, or it can go back to Bethlehem. It cannot go
+both ways and we know the way that it took. And we in our
+self-examination to-night can see two roads stretching out before
+us. We can go the way of the world, the way that seeks (whether it
+finds or no) popularity and prominence, or we can join the Holy
+Family and in company with Jesus and Mary and Joseph go back to the
+quietness and hiddenness of the House of Bread where the saints
+dwell. With them, sheltered by the Sacrifice of Jesus and the
+prayers of Mary and Joseph we can wait for the Redemption in the
+full manifestation of the life of God in us, and for the time when
+the love of God shall be fully "shed abroad in our hearts by the
+Holy Ghost which is given us."</p>
+<blockquote>O Sion, ope thy temple-gates;<br>
+See, Christ, the Priest and Victim, waits--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let lifeless shadows flee:<br>
+No more to heaven shall vainly rise<br>
+The ancient rites--a sacrifice<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;All pure and perfect, see.<br>
+<br>
+Behold, the Maiden knowing well<br>
+The hidden Godhead that doth dwell<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In him her infant Son:<br>
+And with her Infant, see her bring<br>
+The doves, the humble offering<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For Christ, the Holy One.<br>
+<br>
+Here, all who for his coming sighed<br>
+Behold him, and are satisfied--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Their faith the prize hath won:<br>
+While Mary, in her breast conceals<br>
+The holy joys her Lord reveals,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And ponders them alone.<br>
+<br>
+Come, let us tune our hearts to sing<br>
+The glory of our God and King,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The blessed One and Three:<br>
+Be everlasting praise and love<br>
+To him who reigns in heaven above,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Through all eternity.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>EGYPT</h3>
+<center>The angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream,
+saying,<br>
+Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into
+Egypt.<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. II, 13.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Deliver us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, from all evils
+past, present, and to come: and at the intercession for us of
+Blessed Mary who brought forth God and our Lord, Jesus Christ; and
+of the holy apostles Peter, and Paul, and Andrew; and of blessed
+Ambrose Thy confessor, and bishop, together with all Thy saints,
+favorably give peace in our days, that, assisted by the help of Thy
+mercy, we may ever be both delivered from sin, and safe from all
+turmoil. Fulfil this, by Him, with Whom Thou livest blessed, and
+reignest God, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for ever and
+ever.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">AMBROSIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hose who live in intimate union with God, the peace of whose
+lives is untroubled by the constant irruption of sin, are
+peculiarly sensitive to that mode of the divine action that we call
+supernatural. I suppose that it is not that God wishes to reveal
+Himself to souls only at crises of their experience or under
+exceptional conditions, but that only souls of an exceptional
+spiritual sensitivity are capable of this sort of approach.
+Communications of the divine will through dream or vision of inner
+voice are the accompaniment of sanctity; one may almost say that
+they are the normal means in the case of advanced sanctity. Most of
+us are too much immersed in the world, are too much the slaves of
+material things, to be open to this still, small voice of
+revelation. Our eyes are dimned by the garish light of the world,
+and our ears dulled by its clamour, so that our powers of spiritual
+perception are of the slightest. This is quite intelligible; and we
+ought not to fall into the mistake of assuming that our undeveloped
+spirituality is normal, and that what does not happen to us is
+inconceivable as having happened at all. If we want to know the
+truth about spiritual phenomena we shall put ourselves to school to
+those whose spiritual natures have attained the highest development
+and in whose experience spiritual phenomena are of almost daily
+happening.</p>
+<p>To the man "whose talk is of oxen," whose whole life is absorbed
+in the study of material things, a purely spiritual manifestation
+comes as a surprise. His instinctive impulse is to deny its reality
+as a thing obviously impertinent to his understanding of life. But
+one whose life is based on spiritual postulates, who is, however
+feebly, attempting to shape life in accordance with spiritual
+principles, though he may never have attained anything that can be
+interpreted as a distinct revelation from God by vision or voice or
+otherwise, yet must he by the very basic assumptions of his life be
+ready to regard such manifestations of God as intelligible, and
+indeed to be expected. So far from regarding divine interventions
+in life as impossible, we shall regard the Christian life which has
+no experience of them as abnormal, as not having realised its
+inheritance. The degree and kind of such intervention in life will
+vary; but it is the fact of the intervention that is important: the
+mode in a special case will be determined by the needs of that
+case. As we think along these lines we reach the conclusion that
+what we call the supernatural is not the unnatural or the abnormal,
+but is a higher mode of the natural.</p>
+<p>We are not surprised therefore to find that those whose
+spiritual development was such as to make it possible for God to
+choose them to fulfil special offices in relation to the
+Incarnation; who could be chosen to be, in the one case, the Mother
+of God-incarnate, and in the other, to be the guardian of the
+divine Child and His Blessed Mother, have the divine will in regard
+to the details of the trust committed to them, imparted to them in
+vision and in dream. So far from such vision and dream suggesting
+to us "a mythical element" in the Gospel narratives, they rather
+confirm our faith in that they harmonize with our instinctive
+conclusions as to what would be natural under the circumstances. We
+are prepared to be told that at this crisis in the Holy Child's
+life "the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying,
+Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into
+Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will
+seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the
+young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt."</p>
+<p>Thus early in our Lord's life is the element of tragedy
+introduced. The Incarnation of God stirs the diabolic powers, the
+rulers of "this darkness" to excited activity. The companion
+picture of the Nativity, of the Holy Child lying in Mary's arms, of
+the wondering shepherds, of the Magi from a far country,--the
+shadow of all this idyllic beauty is the massacre of the Innocents,
+the wailing of Rachel for her children. It is, as it were, the
+opening of a new stage in the world-old conflict where the powers
+of evil appear to have the advantage and can show the bodies of
+murdered infants as the trophies of their victory.</p>
+<p>But are we to think of the death of a child as a disaster? Has
+any actual victory redounded to the Prince of Power of the Air? One
+understands of course the grief and sense of loss that attends the
+death of any child, the breaking of the dreams which had gathered
+about its future. What the father and the mother dreamed over the
+cradle and planned for the future does not come to pass--all that
+is true. But in a consideration of the broader interests involved,
+does not the death of a baby have a meaning far deeper than a
+disappointment of hopes and dreams? It is true, is it not? that the
+coming of the child brought enrichment into the life of its
+parents? There was a new love born for this one child which is not
+the common property of all the children of the family, but is the
+peculiar possession of this child and its parents. Life--the life
+of the parents--is better and nobler by virtue of this love. They
+understand this, because when they stand by the side of the child's
+coffin they never feel that it had been better that this child had
+not come into existence. And more than that: as they commit this
+fragile body to the grave they know that there is no real sense in
+which they can say that they have lost this child. Rather, the
+child is a perpetual treasure, for the moment contemplated through
+tears, but presently to be thought of with unclouded joy. It is so
+wonderful a thing to think of this pure soul caught back to God; to
+think of it growing to spiritual maturity in God's very presence;
+to think of it following the Lamb withersoever He goeth. Yes: to
+think of it also as our child still, with our love in its heart,
+knowing that it has a father and a mother on earth, and, that, just
+because of its early death, it can be to them, what otherwise they
+would have been to it--the guard and helper of their Jives. In
+God's presence are the souls of children as perpetual intercessors
+for those whom they have left on earth; and they may well rejoice
+before God in that what appeared the tragedy of their death was in
+fact a recall from the field of battle before the testing of their
+life was made. We wept as over an irreparable loss,</p>
+<blockquote>While into nothingness crept back a host<br>
+Of shadows unexplored, of sins unsinned.</blockquote>
+<p>The artists have imagined the souls of those who first died for
+Jesus attending Him on the way to Egypt as a celestial guard. In
+any case we are certain that the angels who watched about Him so
+closely all His life were with the Holy Family as they set out upon
+the way of exile. It would have been a wearisome march but that
+Jesus was there. His presence lightened all the toils of the desert
+way. Egypt, their place of refuge, would not have seemed to them
+what it seems to us, a land of wonder, of marvellous creations of
+human skill and intelligence, but a place of banishment from all
+that was dear, from the ties of home and religion. The religion
+which lay wrapped in the Holy Child was to break down barriers and
+hindrances to the worship of God; but the time was not yet. For
+them still the Holy Land, Jerusalem, the Temple, were the place of
+God's manifestation, and all else the dwelling place of idols. They
+must have shuddered in abhorrence at those strange forms of gods
+which rose about them on every hand. We cannot ourselves fail to
+draw the contrast between the statues which filled the Egyptian
+sanctuaries and before which all Egypt, rich and poor, mighty and
+humble, prostrated themselves, and this Child sleeping on Mary's
+breast. The imagination of the Christian community later caught
+this contrast and embodied it in the legend that when Jesus crossed
+the border of Egypt, all the idols of the land of Egypt fell
+down.</p>
+<p>We cannot follow the thought of the Blessed Mother through these
+strange scenes and the experiences of these days. No doubt in the
+Jewish communities already flourishing in Egypt there would be
+welcome and the means of livelihood. But there would be perplexing
+questions to one whose habit it was to keep all things which
+concerned her strange Child hidden in her heart, the subject of
+constant meditation. Why, after the divine action which had been so
+constant from His conception to His birth, and in the circumstances
+which attended His birth, this reversal, this defeat and flight?
+Why after Bethlehem, Egypt? Why after Gabriel, Herod?</p>
+<p>It brings us back again to the primary fact that the Incarnation
+is essentially a stage in a battle, and that the nature of God's
+battles is such that He constantly appears to lose them. He "goes
+forth as a giant to run His course"; but the eyes of man cannot see
+the giant--they see only a Babe laid in a manger. We are tricked by
+our notion of what is powerful.</p>
+<blockquote>"They all were looking for a king<br>
+To slay their foes and lift them high;<br>
+Thou cam'st, a little baby thing<br>
+That made a woman cry."</blockquote>
+<p>The battle presents itself to us as a demand that we choose,
+that we take sides. The demand of Christ is that we associate
+ourselves with Him, or that we define our position as on the other
+side. "The friendship of the world is enmity with God" is a saying
+that is true when reversed: The friendship of God is enmity with
+the world. An open disclosure of the friendship of God sets all the
+powers of the world against us. This may be uncomfortable; but
+there does not appear to be any way of avoiding the opposition.</p>
+<p>Our Lord, in His Incarnation, not only stripped Himself of His
+glory, took the servant form, and in doing so deliberately deprived
+Himself of certain means which would have been vastly influential
+in dealing with men, but He also declined, in assuming human
+nature, to assume it under conditions which would have conferred
+upon Him any adventitious advantage in the prosecution of His work.
+He would display to men neither divine nor human glory: He would
+have no aid from power or position, from wealth or learning. He
+undertook His work in the strength of a pure humanity united with
+God. He declined all else. And He found that almost the first event
+of His life was to be driven into exile.</p>
+<p>And they who are associated with Him necessarily share His
+fortunes. Unless they will abandon the Child, Mary and Joseph must
+set out on the desert way. They had no doubt much to learn; but
+what is important is not the size or amount of what we learn, but
+the learning of it. When we are called, as they were, to leave all
+for Christ, it often turns out as hard, oftentimes harder, to leave
+property as riches; and the reason is that what we ultimately are
+leaving is neither poverty nor riches, but self: and self to us is
+always a "great possession."</p>
+<p>Therein, I suppose, lies the solution of the problem of the
+relation of property and Christianity in the common life. Idleness
+is sin; every one is bound to some useful labour, no matter what
+his material resources may be. And if we work for our living, if
+our labour is to be such as will support us, then there at once
+arises the problem of possessions. Useful, steady labour will
+ordinarily produce more than "food and raiment." Under present
+social arrangments accumulated property is handed on to heirs. A
+man naturally wants to make some provision for his family. Or he
+finds himself in possession of considerable wealth and the impulse
+is to spend in luxuries of one sort or another,--modern invention
+has put endless means of ministering to physical or aesthetic
+comfort within his reach. He can have a motor car, a country house,
+an expensive library; he can have beautiful works of art. And then
+he is confronted with the picture of the Holy Family which can
+never have lived much beyond the poverty line. He realises the
+nature of our Lord's life of poverty and ministry. And though the
+plain man may not feel that he can go very far in imitating this
+life, he does feel that there is a splendour of achievement in
+those who take our Lord at His word and sell all to follow Him.</p>
+<p>But the literal abandonment of life to the ideal of poverty is
+clearly not what our Lord contemplated for the universal practice
+of His followers. He nowhere indicates that all gainful labour is
+to be abandoned, or that having gained enough for food and raiment
+we are to idle thereafter, or even give ourselves to some ungainful
+work. The Kingdom of heaven does not appear to be society organised
+on the lines of socialism or otherwise. Our Lord contemplated life
+going on as it is, only governed by a new set of motives. It has as
+the result of the acceptance of the Gospel a new Orientation; and
+as a result of that it will view "possessions" in a new way. The
+acceptance of the Gospel means the self surrendered utterly to the
+will of God, and all that self possesses held at the disposal of
+that will. We may expect that God's will for us will be manifested
+in the events of life and its opportunities, and we shall hold
+ourselves alert and ready to embrace that will. It may be that the
+call will come to sell all, and we need to beware lest the
+thoroughness of the demand terrify us into the repudiation of our
+Lord's service; lest the thought of the sacrificed possessions send
+us away sorrowing. Ordinarily the call is less searching than that;
+or perhaps the mercy of God spares us from demands that would be
+beyond our strength. In any case, the truly consecrated self will
+regard luxury as a dangerous thing, replete with entanglements of
+all kinds, that it were well to avoid at the expense of any
+sacrifice. One does well to hold "possessions" in a very loose
+grip, lest the hold be reversed, and we become their servants
+rather than they ours. And it is well to emphasise again that the
+mere size of possessions is of small importance. There is a not
+very rational tendency to think of this as being a matter of
+millions, for the man of moderate income to think that there is no
+problem for him. The problem is as pressing for him as for any man.
+His minimum of comfort may be as tightly grasped as the other man's
+maximum. The only solution of the problem will be found in the
+converted self. Those who have really given themselves to God hold
+all things at His disposal. They are not thinking how they can
+indulge self but how they can glorify God.</p>
+<p>Egypt to many will stand for another sort of abandonment which
+much perplexes the immature Christian: that is, the sort of
+isolation in which the new Christian is quite likely to find
+himself when first he attempts to put Christian principles into
+practice. We imagine one brought up in the ordinary mixed circles
+of society, where there are unbelievers and lax Christians mingled
+together, and where there are no principles firmly enough held to
+interfere with any sort of enjoyment of life which offers. Such an
+one--a young woman, let us suppose--in the Providence of God
+becomes converted to our Lord, and comes to see that the lax and
+indifferent Christian life she had been leading was a mere mockery
+of Christian living. Speedily does she find when she attempts to
+put into action the principles of living which she now understands
+to be the meaning of the Gospel that a breach of sympathy has been
+opened between her and her accustomed companions; that many things
+which she was accustomed to do in their society and which made for
+their common fund of amusement are no longer possible to her. The
+careless talk, the shameless dress, the gambling, the drinking, the
+Sunday amusements--such things as these she has thrown over; and
+she finds that with them she has thrown over the basis of intimacy
+with her usual companions. It is not that they are antagonistic but
+simply that their points of contact have ceased to exist. Her own
+inhibitions exclude her automatically from most of the activities
+of her social circle. She finds herself much alone. Her friends are
+sorry for her and think her foolish and try to win her back, but it
+is clear to her that she can only go back by going back from
+Christ.</p>
+<p>This is the common case of the young whether boy or girl to-day,
+and the practical question is, Can they endure the isolation? It is
+easy to say: Let them make Christian friends; but that is not
+always practical, especially in the present state of the Church
+when there is no cohesion among its members, no true sense of
+constituting a Brotherhood, of being members of the same Body. We
+have to admit that the attempt to hold a high standard usually ends
+in failure, at least the practical failure of a weak compromise.
+But there are characters that are strong enough to face the
+isolation and to readjust life on the basis of the new principles
+and to mould it in accord with the new ideals. The period of this
+readjustment is one of severe testing of one's grasp on principles
+and one's strength of purpose. But the battle once fought out we
+attain a new kind of freedom and expansion of life. We look back
+with some amusement at the old life and the things that fascinated
+us in the days of our spiritual unconsciousness much as we look
+back at the games that amused us in our childish hours. The desert
+of Egypt that we entered with trepidation and fearful hearts turns
+out not to be so dreadful as we imagined, and indeed the flowers
+spring up under our feet as we resolutely tread the desert way.</p>
+<p>These trials must be the daily experience of those who attempt
+to put their religion into practice, and these perplexities must
+assail them so long as the Christian community continues to show
+its present social incompetence; so long, that is, as we attempt to
+make the basis of our social action something other than the
+principles of the spiritual life. A Christian society, one would
+naturally think, would spring out of the possession of Christian
+ideals; and doubtless it would if these ideals were really dominant
+in life, and not a sort of ornament applied to it. Any social
+circle contains men and women of various degrees of intellectual
+development and of varying degrees of experience of life; what
+holds them together is the pursuit of common objects, the objects
+that we sum up as amusement. Now the Christians in a community
+certainly have a common object, the cultivation of the spiritual
+life through the supernatural means offered by the Church of God.
+One would think that this object would have a more constraining
+power than the attractions of motoring or golf; but in fact we know
+that this is not so save in individual cases. There is not, that is
+to say, anywhere visible a Christian community which is wrought
+into a unity by the solidifying forces of its professed ideals.
+Those very people whose paths converge week by week until they meet
+at this altar, as they leave the altar, follow diverging paths and
+live in isolation for the rest of their time.</p>
+<p>One of the constant problems of the Church is that of the loss
+of those who have for a time been associated with it--of those who
+have for a time seemed to recognise their duty to God, and their
+privileges as members of His Son. They drift away into the world.
+We pray and meditate and worry over this and try to invent some
+machinery which will overcome it. But it cannot be overcome by
+machinery, especially by the sort of machinery which consists in
+transferring the amusements that people find in the world bodily
+into the Church itself. It cannot and will not be overcome until a
+Christian society has been created which is bound together by the
+interests of the Kingdom of God, and in which those interests are
+so predominant as to throw into the shade and practically
+annihilate other interests. And especially must such spiritual
+interests be strong enough to break down all social barriers so
+that the cultured and refined can find a common ground with the
+uneducated and socially untrained in the spiritual privileges that
+they share in common. When the banker can talk with his chauffeur
+of their common experience in prayer, and the banker's wife and her
+cook can confer on their mutual difficulties in making a
+meditation, then we shall have got within sight of a Christian
+society; but at present, while these have no spiritual contact, it
+is not within sight. The primitive Christian community in Jerusalem
+made the attempt at having all things in common. Their mistake
+seems to have been that they, like other and more modern people, by
+"all things" understood money. You cannot build any society which
+is worth the name on money, a Church least of all. It is
+unimportant whether a man is rich or poor; what is important is his
+spiritual accomplishment: and it is common spiritual aims and
+accomplishments which should make up the "all things" which
+possessed in common will form the basis of an enduring unity. But
+not until accomplishment becomes the supreme interest of life can
+we expect to get out of the impasse in which we at present find
+ourselves; in which, that is, the person can be converted to
+Christianity and enter into union with God in Christ and become a
+citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, and wake to find himself isolated
+from his old circle by his profession of new principles; but not,
+by his new principles, truly united to his fellow citizens in the
+Kingdom of God! One is tempted to write, What a comedy; but before
+one can do so, realises that it is in fact a tragedy!</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Mother of God--oh, rare prerogative;<br>
+Oh, glorious title--what more special grace<br>
+Could unto thee thy dear Son, dread God, give<br>
+To show how far thou dost all creatures pass?<br>
+That mighty power within the narrow fold<br>
+Did of thy ne'er polluted womb remain,<br>
+Whom, whiles he doth th' all-ruling Sceptre hold,<br>
+Not earth, nor yet the heavens can contain;<br>
+Thou in the springtide of thy age brought'st forth<br>
+Him who before all matter, time and place,<br>
+Begotten of th' Eternal Father was.<br>
+Oh, be thou then, while we admire thy worth<br>
+A means unto that Son not to proceed<br>
+In rigour with us for each sinful deed.<br>
+<br>
+John Brereley, Priest<br>
+(Vere Lawrence Anderton, S.J.)<br>
+1575-1643</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>NAZARETH</h3>
+<center>And he went down with them, and came to<br>
+Nazareth, and was subject unto them.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke II, 51.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>The Holy Church acknowledges and confesses the pure
+Virgin Mary as Mother of God through whom has been given unto us
+the bread of immortality and the wine of consolation. Give
+blessings then in spiritual song.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">ARMENIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-a.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>fter the rapid succession of fascinating pictures which are
+etched for us in the opening chapters of the Gospel there follows a
+space of about twelve years of which we are told nothing. The
+fables which fill the pages of the Apocryphal Gospels serve chiefly
+to emphasise the difference between an inspired and an uninspired
+narrative. The human imagination trying to develop the situation
+suggested by the Gospel and to fill in the unwritten chapters of
+our Lord's life betrays its incompetence to create a story of God
+Incarnate which shall have the slightest convincing power. These
+Apocryphal stories are immensely valuable to us as, by contrast,
+creating confidence in the story of Jesus as told by the
+Evangelists, but for nothing more.</p>
+<p>We are left to use our own imagination in filling in these years
+of silence in our Lord's training; and we shall best use it, not by
+trying to imagine what may have occurred, but by trying to
+understand what is necessarily involved in the facts as we know
+them. We know that the home in Nazareth whither Mary and Joseph
+brought Jesus after the death of Herod permitted them to return
+from Egypt was the simple home of a carpenter. It would appear to
+have been shared by the children of Joseph, and our Lady would have
+been the house-mother, busy with many cares. We know, too, that
+under this commonplace exterior of a poor household there was a
+life of the spirit of far reaching significance. Mary was
+ceaselessly pondering many things--the significance of all those
+happenings which, as the years flowed on without any further
+supernatural intervention, must at times have seemed as though they
+were quite purposeless. Of course this could not have been a
+settled feeling, for the insight of her pure soul would have held
+her to the certainty that such actions of God as she had
+experienced would some day reveal the meaning which as yet lay
+hidden.</p>
+<p>In the meantime other things did not matter much, seeing she had
+Jesus, the object of endless love. Every mother dreams over the
+baby she cares for and looks out into the future with trembling
+hope; so S. Mary's thoughts would go out following the hints of
+prophecy and angelic utterances, unable to understand how the light
+and shadow which were mingled there could find fulfilment in her
+Child. But like any other mother the thought would come back to her
+present possession, the satisfaction of her heart that she had in
+Jesus. With the growth of Jesus there would come the unfolding of
+the answering love, which was but another mode in which the love of
+God she had experienced all her life was manifesting itself. Jesus
+grew in wisdom and stature and we are able to enter a little into
+the over-flowing love of Mary as she watched the advance, this
+unfolding from day to day. The wonder that was hers in guiding this
+mind and will, in teaching our Lord His first prayers, in telling
+Him the story of the people of whom He had assumed our nature!
+There was here no self-will, no resistance to guidance, no
+perversity to wound a mother's heart. In the training of an
+ordinary child there are from time to time hints of characteristics
+or tendencies which may develop later into spiritual or moral
+disaster. There are growls of the sleeping beast which make us
+tremble for the future: there are hours of agony when we think of
+the inevitable temptations which must be met, and suggestions of
+weakness which colour our imagination of the meeting of them with
+the lurid light of defeat. But as Mary watched the unfolding
+character of Jesus she saw nothing there that carried with it the
+least suggestion of evil growth in the future, no outcropping of
+hereditary sin or disordered appetite. A constantly unfolding
+intelligence, and growing interest in the things that most
+interested her, an eagerness to hear and to know of the will and
+love of the eternal Father, these are her joy. That would have been
+the centre--would it not?--of the unfolding consciousness of Jesus:
+the knowledge of the Father.</p>
+<p>Training by love, so we might describe the life in the Home at
+Nazareth. And we must not forget the grave ageing figure who is the
+head of the household. <i>The Holy Family</i>--that was the perfect
+unity that their love created. There is a wonderful picture of
+these three by Sassaferato which catches, as no other Holy Family
+that I know of does, the meaning of their association. S. Mary whom
+the artistic imagination is so apt, after the Nativity, to
+transform into a stately matron, here still retains the note of
+virginity which in fact she never lost. It is the maiden-mother who
+stands by the side of the grave, elderly S. Joseph, the ideal
+workman, who is also the ideal guardian of his maiden-wife. And
+Jesus binds these two together and with them makes a unity,
+interpreting to us the perfection of family life.</p>
+<p>Family life is a tremendous test, it brings out the best and the
+worst of those who are associated in it. The ordinary restraints of
+social intercourse are of less force in the intimacy of family
+life: there is less need felt to watch conduct, or to mask what we
+know are our disagreeable traits. It is quite easy for character to
+deteriorate in the freedom of such intercourse. It is pretty sure
+to do so unless there is the constant pressure of principle in the
+other direction. The great safeguard is the sort of love that is
+based on mutual respect,--respect both for ourselves and for
+others. We talk a good deal as though love were always alike; as
+though the fact that a man and a woman love each other were always
+the same sort of fact. It does not require much knowledge of human
+nature or much reflection to convince us that that is not the case.
+Love is not a purely physical fact; and outside its physical
+implications there are many factors which may enter, whose
+existence constitute the <i>differentia</i> from case to case. It
+is upon these varying elements that the happiness of the family
+life depends. One of the most important is that character on either
+side shall be such as to inspire respect. Many a marriage goes to
+pieces on this rock; it is found that the person who exercised a
+certain kind of fascination shows in the intimacy of married life a
+character and qualities which are repulsive; a shallowness which
+inspires contempt, an egotism which is intolerable, a laxity in the
+treatment of obligations which destroys any sense of the stability
+of life. A marriage which does not grow into a relation of mutual
+honour and respect must always be in a state of unstable
+equilibrium, constantly subject to storms of passion, to suspicion
+and distrust.</p>
+<p>And therefore such a marriage will afford no safe basis on which
+to build a family life. But without a stable family life a stable
+social and religious life is impossible. It is therefore no
+surprise to those who believe that the powers of evil are active in
+the world to find that the family is the very centre of their
+attack at the present time. The crass egotism lying back of so much
+modern teaching is nowhere more clearly visible than in the
+assertion of the right of self-determination so blatantly made in
+popular writings. By self-determination is ultimately meant the
+right of the individual to seek his own happiness in his own way,
+and to make pleasure the rule of his life. "The right to happiness"
+is claimed in utter disregard of the fact that the claim often
+involves the unhappiness of others. "The supremacy of love,"
+meaning the supremacy of animalism, is the excuse for undermining
+the very foundations of family life. No obligation, it appears, can
+have a binding force longer than the parties to it find
+gratification in it. Personal inclination and gratification is held
+sufficient ground for action whose consequences are far from being
+personal, which, in fact, affect the sane and healthy state of
+society as a whole.</p>
+<p>The decline of a civilisation has always shown itself more
+markedly in the decline of the family life than elsewhere. The
+family, not the individual, is the basis of the social state, and
+no amount of theorising can make the fact different. Whatever
+assails the integrity of the family assails the life of the state,
+and no single family can be destroyed without society as a whole
+feeling the effect. "What," it is asked, "is to be done? If two
+people find that they have blundered, are they to go on
+indefinitely suffering from the result of their blunder? If an
+immature boy or girl in a moment of passion make a mistake as to
+their suitability to live together, are they to be compelled to do
+so at the expense of constant unhappiness?"</p>
+<p>It would seem obvious to say that justice requires that those
+who make blunders should take the consequences of them; that those
+who create a situation involving suffering should do the suffering
+themselves and not attempt to pass it on to others. It is not as
+though the consequences of the act can be avoided; they cannot.
+What happens is that the incidence of them is shifted. It is a part
+of the brutal egotism of divorce that it is quite willing to shift
+the incidence of the suffering that it has created on to the lives
+of wholly innocent people; in many cases upon children, in all
+cases upon society at large. For it is necessary to emphasize the
+fact that society is a closely compact body: so interwoven is life
+with life that if one member suffer the other members suffer with
+it. Breaches of moral order are not individual matters but social.
+This truth is implied in society's constantly asserted right to
+regulate family relations in the general interest even after it has
+ceased to think of such relations as having any spiritual
+significance. We need to-day a more vivid sense of the
+<i>community</i> lest we shall see all sense of a common life
+engulfed in the rising tide of individual anarchism. We need the
+assertion in energetic form of the right of the community as
+supreme over the right of the individual. We must deny the right of
+the individual to pursue his own way and his own pleasure at the
+expense of the rights of others. And to his insolent question, "Why
+should I suffer in an intolerable situation?" we must plainly
+answer: "Because you are responsible for the situation, and it is
+intolerable that you should be permitted to throw off the results
+of your wickedness or your stupidity upon other and innocent
+people."</p>
+<p>And it is quite clear that should society assert its pre-eminent
+right in unmistakable form and make it evident that it does not
+propose to tolerate the results of the egotistic nonsense of
+self-determination and the right of every one to live his own life,
+the evils of divorce and of shattered families would presently
+shrink to relatively small proportions. The present facility of
+divorce encourages thoughtless and unsuitable marriages in the
+first place; and in the second place, encourages the resort to
+divorce in circumstances of family disturbance which would speedily
+right themselves in the present as they have done in the past if
+those concerned knew that their happiness and comfort for years
+compelled an adjustment of life. When as at present any one who
+loses his temper can rush off to a court and get a marriage
+dissolved for some quite trivial reason, there is small
+encouragement to practice self-control. If a man and woman know
+that the consequences of conduct must be faced by them, and cannot
+be avoided by thrusting them upon others, they will no doubt in the
+course of time learn to exercise a little self-control.</p>
+<p>The family is the foundation of the state because, among other
+things, it is the natural training place of citizens: no public
+training in schools and camps can for a moment safely be looked to
+as a substitute or an equivalent of wholesome family influence. If
+the family does not make good citizens we cannot have good
+citizens. The family too is at the basis of organised religious
+life; if the family does not make good Christians we shall not have
+good Christians. The Sunday School and the Church societies are
+poor substitutes for the religious influence of the family, as the
+school and the camp are for its social interests.</p>
+<p>One is inclined to stress the obvious failure of the family to
+fulfil its alloted functions in the teaching of religion as the
+root difficulty that the Christian religion has to encounter and
+the most comprehensive cause of its relative failure in modern
+life. The responsibility for the religious and moral training of
+children rests squarely upon those who have assumed the
+responsibility of bringing them into the world, and it cannot be
+rightly pushed off on to some one else. To the protest of parents
+that they are incompetent to conduct such training, the only
+possible reply is a blunt, "Whose fault is that?" If you have been
+so careless of the fundamental responsibilities of life, you are
+incompetent to assume a relation which of necessity carries such
+responsibility with it. It is no light matter to have committed to
+you the care of an immortal soul whose eternal future may quite
+well be conditioned on the way in which you fulfil your trust. It
+would be well as a preliminary to marriage to take a little of the
+time ordinarily given to its frivolous accompaniments and seriously
+meditate upon the words of our Lord which seem wholly appropriate
+to the circumstance: "Whoso shall cause to stumble one of these
+little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a
+millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in
+the depths of the sea." It is the careless and incompetent training
+of children which in fact "causes them to stumble" when the
+presence of word and example would have held them straight. It has
+been (to speak personally) the greatest trial of my priesthood that
+out of the thousands of children I have dealt with, in only rare
+cases have I had the entire support of the family; and I have
+always considered that I was fortunate when I met with no
+interference and was given an indifferent tolerance. It is
+heart-breaking to see years of careful work brought to naught (so
+far as the human eye can see: the divine eye can see deeper) by the
+brutal materialism of a father and the silly worldliness of a
+mother.</p>
+<p>The interplay of lives in a family should be consciously
+directed by those who control them to the cultivation, to the
+bringing out of the best that is in them. Education means the
+drawing out of the innate powers of the personality and the
+training of them for the highest purposes. It is the deliberate
+direction of personal powers to the highest ends, the discipline of
+them for the performance of those ends. The life of a child should
+be shaped with reference to its final destiny from the moment of
+its birth. It should be surrounded with an atmosphere of prayer and
+charity which would be the natural atmosphere in which it would
+expand as it grows, and in terms of which it would learn to express
+itself as soon as it reaches sufficient maturity to express itself
+at all. It should become familiar with spiritual language and modes
+of action, and meet nothing that is inharmonious with these. But we
+know that the education of the Christian child is commonly the
+opposite of all this. It learns little that is spiritual. When it
+comes to learn religion it is obviously a matter of small
+importance in the family life; if there is any expression of it at
+all, it is one that is crowded into corners and constantly swamped
+by other interests which are obviously felt to be of more
+importance. Too often the spiritual state of the family may be
+summed up in the words of the small boy who condensed his
+observation of life into the axiom: "Men and dogs do not go to
+Church." In such an atmosphere the child finds religion and morals
+reduced to a system of repression. God becomes a man with a club
+constantly saying, Don't! He grows to think that he is a fairly
+virtuous person so long as he skilfully avoids the system of taboos
+wherewith he feels that life is surrounded, and fulfils the one
+positive family law of a religious nature, that he shall go to
+Sunday School until he is judged sufficiently mature to join the
+vast company of men and dogs.</p>
+<p>Nothing very much can come of negatives. Religion calls for
+positive expression; and it is not enough that the child shall find
+positive expression once a week in the church; he must find it
+every day in the week in the intimacy of the family. He must find
+that the principles of life which are inculcated in the church are
+practiced by his father and his mother, his brother and his sister,
+or he will not take them seriously. If he is conscious of virtue
+and religious practice as repression, a sort of tyranny practiced
+on a child by his elders, his notion of the liberty of adult life
+will quite naturally be freedom to break away from what is now
+forced upon him into the life of self-determination and
+indifference to things spiritual that characterises the adult
+circle with which he is familiar.</p>
+<p>But consider, by contrast, those rare families where the
+opposite of all this is true; where there is the peace of a
+recollected life of which the foundations are laid in constant
+devotion to our Lord. There you will find the nearest possible
+reproduction of the life of the Holy Family in Nazareth. Because
+the life of the family is a life of prayer, there will you find
+Jesus in the midst of it. There you will find Mary and Joseph
+associated with its life of intercession. In such a family the
+expression of a religious thought will never be felt as a discord.
+The talk may quite naturally at any moment turn on spiritual
+things. There are families in which one feels that one must make a
+careful preparation for the introduction of a spiritual allusion:
+one does it with a sense of danger, much as one might sail through
+a channel strewn with mines. There are other families in which one
+has no hesitation in speaking of prayer, of sacraments, of
+spiritual actions, as things with which all are familiar in
+practice, and are as natural as food and drink. In this atmosphere
+it produces no smile to say, "I am going to slip into the Church
+and make my meditation"; or, "I shall be a little late to-night as
+I am making my confession on my way home." Religion in such a
+circle has not incurred contempt through familiarity: it still
+remains a great adventure, the very greatest of all indeed; but it
+is an adventure in the open, full of joy and gladness.</p>
+<p>The Holy Family was a family that worked hard. It is no doubt
+true that our Lord learned his foster-father's trade, so that those
+who knew him later on, or heard His preaching, asked, "Is not this
+the carpenter?" But the Holy Family was a radiant centre of joy and
+peace because Jesus was in the midst of it. Where Jesus dwells
+there is the effect of his indwelling in the spiritual gladness
+that results. Mary was never too busy for her religious duties nor
+Joseph too tired with his week's work to get up on the Sabbath for
+whatever services in honour of God the Synagogue offered. They were
+perhaps conscious as the Child "increased in wisdom and stature,
+and in favour with God and man" of a spiritual influence that
+flowed from Him, and sweetened and lightened the life of the home.
+They were not conscious that in His Person God was in the midst of
+them; but that is what we can (if we will) be conscious of. We are
+heirs of the Incarnation, and God is in the midst of us; and
+especially does Jesus wish to dwell, as He dwelt in Nazareth, in
+the midst of the family. He wishes to make every household a Holy
+Family. He is in the midst of it in uninterrupted communion with
+the soul of the baptised child; and the father and mother,
+understanding that their highest duty and greatest privilege is to
+watch and foster the spiritual unfolding of the child's life in
+such wise that Jesus may never depart from union with it, become as
+Joseph and Mary in their ministry to it. There is nothing more
+heavenly than such a charge; there is nothing more beautiful than
+such a family life.</p>
+<p>There is often a pause in God's work between times of great
+activity--a time of retreat, as it seems, which is a rest from what
+has preceded and a preparation for what is to come. Such a pause
+were these years at Nazareth in the life of Blessed Mary. The time
+from the Annunciation to the return from Egypt was a time of deep
+emotion, of spirit-shaking events. Later on there were the trials
+of the years of the ministry, culminating in Calvary. But these
+years while Jesus was growing to manhood in the quietness of the
+home were years of unspeakable privilege and peace. The daily
+association with the perfect Child, the privilege of watching and
+guarding and ministering to Him, these days of deepening spiritual
+union with Him, although much that was happening to the mother was
+happening unconsciously,--were strengthening her grasp on ultimate
+reality, so that she issued with perfect strength to meet the
+supreme tragedy of her life. How wonderful God must have seemed to
+her in those thirty years of peace! To all of us God is thus
+wonderful in quiet hours; and the quiet hours are much the more
+numerous in most of our lives. But have we all learned to use these
+hours so that we may be ready to meet the hours of testing which
+shall surely come? No matter how quiet the valley of our life, some
+day the pleasant path will lift, and we must climb the hilltop
+where rises the Cross. It will not be intolerable, if the quiet
+years have been spent in Nazareth with Jesus and Mary and
+Joseph.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Most holy, and pure Virgin, Blessed Mayd,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Sweet Tree of Life, King David's Strength and
+Tower,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;The House of Gold, the Gate of Heaven's power,<br>
+The Morning-Star whose light our fall hath stay'd.<br>
+<br>
+Great Queen of Queens, most mild, most meek, most wise,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Most venerable, Cause of all our joy,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Whose cheerful look our sadnesse doth destroy,<br>
+And art the spotlesse Mirror to man's eyes.<br>
+<br>
+The Seat of Sapience, the most lovely Mother,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;And most to be admired of thy sexe,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Who mad'st us happy all, in thy reflexe,<br>
+By bringing forth God's Onely Son, no other.<br>
+<br>
+Thou Throne of Glory, beauteous as the moone,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;The rosie morning, or the rising sun,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Who like a giant hastes his course to run,<br>
+Till he hath reached his two-fold point of noone.<br>
+<br>
+How are thy gifts and graces blazed abro'd,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Through all the lines of this circumference,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;T'imprint in all purged hearts this Virgin sence<br>
+Of being Daughter, Mother, Spouse of God?<br>
+<br>
+Ben Jonson,<br>
+1573-1637.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE TEMPLE</h3>
+<center>And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought<br>
+me? Know ye not that I must be in my Father's house?<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke II, 49.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>We give thanks unto thee, O Lord, who lovest mankind,
+Thou benefactor of our souls and bodies, for that Thou hast this
+day vouchsafed to feed us with Thy Heavenly Mysteries; guide our
+path aright, establish us all in Thy fear, guard our lives, make
+sure our steps through the prayers and supplications of the
+glorious Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary and of all Thy
+saints.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">RUSSIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he time was come when by the law of His people the Boy Jesus
+must assume the duties of an adult in the exercise of His religion.
+Therefore His parents took Him with them to Jerusalem that He might
+participate in the celebration of the Passover. It would be a
+wonderful moment in the life of any intelligent Hebrew boy when for
+the first time he came in contact with the places and scenes which
+were so familiar to him in the story of his nation's past; and we
+can imagine what would have been the special interest of the Child
+Jesus who would have been so thoroughly taught in the Old Testament
+Scriptures, and who would have felt an added interest in the places
+He was now seeing because of their association with His great
+ancestor, David. Still His chief interest was in the religion of
+His people, and it was the temple where the sacrificial worship of
+God was centred that would have for Him the greatest attraction.
+This was His "Father's House," and here He Himself felt utterly at
+home. We are not surprised to be told that He lingered in these
+courts.</p>
+<p>"And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the
+child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and His mother
+knew it not." They had perfect confidence in Jesus; and yet it
+seems strange that they should have assumed that He was somewhere
+about and would appear at the proper time. When the night drew on
+and the camp was set up there was no Child to be found. Then we
+imagine the distress, the trouble of heart, with which Mary and
+Joseph hurry back to Jerusalem and spend the ensuing days in
+seeking through its streets. We share something of our Lord's
+surprise when we learn that the temple was the last place that they
+thought of in their search. Did they think that Jesus would be
+caught by the life of the Passover crowds that filled the streets
+of Jerusalem? Did they think that it would be a child's curiosity
+which would hold him fascinated with the glittering toys of the
+bazaars? Did they think that He had mistaken the caravan and been
+carried off in some other direction and was lost to them forever?
+We only know that it was not till three days had passed that they
+thought of the temple and there found Him. "And when they saw Him,
+they were amazed: and his mother said unto Him, Son, why has thou
+thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee
+sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Know
+ye not that I must be in my Father's house?"</p>
+<p>S. Mary and S. Joseph were proceeding on certain assumptions as
+to what Jesus would do which turned out to be untenable. It is one
+of the dangers of our religion--our personal religion--that we are
+apt to assume too much which in the testing turns out to be
+unfounded. We reach a certain stage of religious attainment, and
+then we assume that all is going well with us. When one asks a
+child how he is getting on he invariably answers: "I am all right."
+And the adult often has the same childish confidence in an untested
+and unverified state of soul. We are "all right"; which practically
+means that we do not care to be bothered with looking into our
+spiritual state at all. We have been going on for years now
+following the rules that we laid down when we first realised that
+the being a Christian was a more or less serious matter. Nothing
+has happened in these years to break the placidity of our routine.
+There has never been any relapse into grievous sin; we have never
+felt any real temptation to abandon the practice o&pound; our
+religion. We run along as easily and smoothly as a car on well-laid
+rails. We are "all right."</p>
+<p>But in fact we are all wrong. We have lapsed into a state of
+which the ideal is purely static: an ideal of spiritual comfort as
+the goal of our spiritual experience here on earth. We have
+acquired what appears to be a state of equilibrium into which we
+wish nothing to intrude that would endanger the balance. We are, no
+doubt, quite unconsciously, excluding from life every emotion,
+every ambition, as well as every temptation, which appears to
+involve spiritual disturbance. But we need to be disturbed.</p>
+<p>For the spiritual life is dynamic and not static; its ideal is
+motion and not rest. Rest is the quality of dead things, and
+particularly of dead souls. The weariness of the way, which is so
+obvious a phenomenon in the Christian life, is the infallible sign
+of lukewarmness. What we need therefore is to break with the
+assumption that we know all that it is necessary to know, and that
+we have done or are doing all that it is necessary to do. It is
+indeed the mark of an ineffective religion that the notion of
+necessity is adopted as its stimulus, rather than the notion of
+aspiration. The question, "Must I do this?" is a revelation of
+spiritual poverty and ineptitude. "I press on," is the motto of a
+living religion.</p>
+<p>Personal religion, therefore, needs constantly to be submitted
+to new tests, lest it lapse into an attitude of finality.
+Fortunately for us, God does not leave the matter wholly in our
+hands, but Himself, through His Providence, applies a wide variety
+of tests to us. It is often a bitter and disturbing experience to
+have our comfortable routine broken up and to find that we have
+quite miserably failed under very simple temptations. And the sort
+of failure I am thinking of is not so much the failure of sin as
+the failure of ideal. It is the case of those who think that they
+have satisfactorily worked out the problems of the spiritual life,
+and have reached a satisfactory adjustment of duty and practice,
+and then find that if the adjustment changes their practice falls
+off. The outer circumstances of life change and the change is
+followed by a readjustment of the inner life on a distinctly lower
+plane. It is revealed to us that the outer circumstances were
+controlling the spiritual practice, and not the practice dominating
+the circumstances. The ruling ideal was that of comfort, and under
+the new circumstances the spiritual ideal is lowered until it fits
+in with a new possibility of comfort in the altered circumstances.
+It is well to examine ourselves on these matters and to find what
+is the actual ruling motive in our religious practice.</p>
+<p>We may have assumed that we have Jesus, when all the assumption
+meant was that we thought that He was somewhere about. After all,
+it will not aid us very much if He is "in the company," if we go on
+our day's journey without Him. It is a poor assumption to build
+life upon, that Jesus exists, or that He is in the Church, or that
+He is the Saviour. It is nothing to us unless He is <i>our</i>
+Saviour, unless He is personally present in us and with us. And it
+is not wise or safe to let this be a matter of assumption, even
+though the assumption rest on a perfectly valid experience in the
+past; we cannot live on history, not even on our own history. That
+Jesus is with us must be verified day by day, and we ought to go no
+day's journey without the certainty of His presence. We can best do
+that, when the circumstances of life permit, by a daily communion.
+There at the altar we meet Jesus and know that He is with us. When
+the circumstances of life do not permit, (and often they do, when
+we lazily think they do not) there are other modes of arriving at
+spiritual certainty.</p>
+<p>It is quite easy to lose Jesus. He does not force His
+companionship upon us, but rather when we meet Him. "He makes as
+though he would go farther." He offers Himself to us; He never
+compels us to receive Him as a guest. And when we have in fact
+received Him, and asked Him to abide with us, He does not stay any
+longer than we want Him. We have to constrain Him. In other words,
+we lose Jesus, we lose the vitality of our spiritual life (though
+we may retain the routine practice of our religion), if we are not
+from day to day making it the most vital issue of our lives. That
+does not necessarily mean that we are spending more time on it than
+on anything else, but that we are putting it first in the order of
+importance in our lives and are sacrificing, if occasion arise,
+other things to it, rather than it to them. That a man loves his
+wife and child does not necessarily mean that he actually spends
+more time on them than he does on his business, but it does mean
+that they are more important in his life than his business, and if
+need arise it will be the business that is sacrificed to them and
+not they to the business. Spirituality is much less a matter of
+time than of energy. A wise director can guide a man to sanctity
+who will probably consecrate his Sunday, and give the director one
+half hour on week days to dispose of.</p>
+<p>To lose Jesus does not require the commission of great sin, as
+we count sin. The quite easiest way to lose Him is to forget Him
+and go about our business as though He did not exist. That is a
+frequent happening. For vast numbers Jesus does not exist except
+for an hour or so on Sunday. They give Him the formal homage of
+attendance at church on Sunday morning and then they go out and
+forget Him, not only for the rest of the week but for the rest of
+the day. The religion which thus reduces itself to a minimum of
+attendance at Mass on Sunday morning is surely not a religion from
+which much can be expected in the way of spiritual accomplishment.
+If it be true that there is a minimum of religious requirement
+which will ensure that we "go to heaven," then that sort of
+religion may be useful; but I do not know that anywhere such a
+minimum <i>is</i> required. The statement that I find is "Thou
+shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
+soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." The
+outstanding characteristic of love is surely not niggardliness, but
+passionate self-giving. All things are forgiven, not to those who
+are careful to keep within the limits required, but to those who
+"love much."</p>
+<p>The study of many cases, the experience of over thirty years in
+the confessional, convinces me that the chief cause of spiritual
+failure among Christians is not the irresistible impact of
+temptation but the lack of spiritual vision. The average man or
+woman is not consciously going anywhere; but they are just keeping
+a rule which is the arbitrary exactment of God. It might just as
+well be some other rule. That is, in their minds, the practice of
+the spiritual life has no immediate ends; it is not productive of
+spiritual expansion; it is not a ladder set up on earth to reach
+heaven on which they are climbing ever nearer God, and on the way
+are catching ever broader visions of spiritual reality as they
+ascend. The knowledge and the love of God are to them phrases, not
+practical goals, invitations to paths of spiritual adventure.
+Hence, having no immediate ends to accomplish, they find the whole
+spiritual routine dull and unattractive and naturally tend to
+reduce it to a minimum. It is not at all surprising that in the end
+they drop religion altogether, as why should one keep on travelling
+a road that leads nowhere? How can one love and serve a Jesus whom
+one has lost?</p>
+<p>The problem of personal religion is the problem of finding
+Jesus, of bringing life into a right relation to Him. The plain
+path is to follow the example of His parents who sought Him
+"sorrowing." Sorrow for having lost Jesus is the true repentance.
+Repentance which springs from fear of consequences, or from disgust
+with our own incompetence and stupidity when we realise that we
+have made a spiritual failure of life, is an imperfect thing. True
+repentance has its origin in love and is therefore directed toward
+a person. It is the conviction that we have violated the love of
+our Father, our Saviour, our Sanctifier. Sorrow springing from love
+is sorrow "after a godly sort." It is easy for us to drift into
+ways of carelessness and indifference which seem not to involve
+sin, to be no more than a decline from some preceding standard of
+practice which we conclude to have been unnecessarily strict; but
+the result is an increasing disregard of spiritual values, a
+growing obscuration of the divine presence in life. Then the day
+comes when some quite marked and positive spiritual failure, a
+failure of which we cannot imagine ourselves to have been guilty,
+when we were living in constant communion with our Lord, arouses us
+to the fact that for months our spiritual vitality has been
+declining and that we have ended in losing Jesus. It is a
+tremendous shock to find how fast and how far we have been
+travelling when we thought that we were only slightly relaxing an
+unnecessarily strict routine: that when we thought that we were but
+acting "in a common sense way," we were in reality effecting a
+compromise with the world. Well is it then if the surprise of our
+disaster shocks us back to the recovery of what we have lost, if it
+send us into the streets of the city, sorrowing and seeking for
+Jesus.</p>
+<p>Mere spiritual laziness is at the bottom of much failure in
+religion. There is no success anywhere in life save through the
+constant pressure of the will driving a reluctant and protesting
+set of nerves and muscles to their daily tasks. The day labourer
+comes home from his work with his muscular strength exhausted, but
+he has to go back to the same monotonous task on the morrow: his
+family has to be fed and clothed and he cannot permit himself to
+say, "I am tired and will stay away from work to-day." The business
+or professional man comes back from his office with a wearied brain
+that makes any thought an effort, but he must take up the routine
+to-morrow; the pressure of competitive business does not permit him
+to work when and as much as he chooses. But the Christian who is
+engaged in the most important work that is carried on in this
+world, the work of preparing an immortal soul for an unending
+future, is constantly under the temptation "to take a day off"--to
+let down the standard of accomplishment till it ceases to interfere
+with the business or the pleasure of life; is constantly too tired
+or too busy to do this or that. In short, religion is apt to be
+treated in a manner that would ensure the bankruptcy of any
+material occupation in life. Why then should it not ensure
+spiritual bankruptcy?</p>
+<p>Surely, to retain Jesus with us, to live in the intimacy of God,
+is the most pressingly important of our duties; it is worth any
+sort of expenditure of energy to accomplish it. And it cannot be
+accomplished without expenditure of energy. The view of religion
+which conceives it as a facile assent to certain propositions, the
+occasional and formal participation in certain actions, the more or
+less strict observance of certain rules of conduct, is so far from
+the fact that it is not worth discussing. Religion is the realised
+friendship of God; it is a personal relation of the deepest and
+purest sort; and, like all personal relations, is kept alive by the
+mutual activities of those concerned. The action of one party will
+not suffice to keep the relation in healthy state. The love of God
+itself will not suffice to maintain a being in holiness and carry
+him on to happiness who is himself quite indifferent to the entire
+spiritual transaction--whose attitude is that of one willing to be
+saved if he be not asked to take much trouble about it. That
+lackadaisical attitude can never produce any result in the
+spiritual order; it can only ensure the spiritual decline and death
+of one who has not thought it worth while to make an effort to
+live.</p>
+<p>Jesus can be found; but the finding depends upon the method of
+the seeking. There are many men who claim, and quite honestly, to
+be in pursuit of truth: to find the truth is the end of all their
+efforts. Yet they do not succeed in finding it. Why is this? I
+think that the principal reason is that they are constituting
+themselves the judges of the truth; they first of all lay down
+certain rules which God must obey if He wishes them to believe in
+Him! They insist on having, before they will believe, a kind of
+evidence that is impossible of attainment. They assert that this or
+that is impossible, and the other thing incredible. They partially
+ascertain the laws that govern the material universe, and they deny
+to the Maker of the universe the power to act otherwise than in
+accord with so much of the order of nature as they have discovered!
+They deny to God the sort of personal action in this world that
+they themselves constantly exercise.</p>
+<p>The method is not a method that can be hopeful of success. And
+it is worth noting that it is not a method that these same men
+followed in their investigations of the natural world. They have
+not accumulated information about natural law by first laying down
+rules as to how natural law must act, and refusing to listen to any
+evidence which does not fall in with these rules: rather, they have
+set themselves to observe how nature does act, and then deduced
+rules from their observation. Why not pursue the same method in
+religion? Why not in an humble spirit observe how God does act? Why
+start by saying, "Miracles do not happen?" Why reject as incredible
+the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection? Why not get a bigger notion
+of God than that of a mechanician running a machine, and think of
+Him as a Person dealing with persons? The relation of persons
+cannot be mechanical or predetermined; they are and must be free
+and spontaneous: they have their origin, not in the pressure of
+invariable law but in the impulse of love.</p>
+<p>Nor is the search for Jesus that is inspired by mere curiosity
+likely to be a success. There are many people who are curious about
+religion, and they want to know why we believe thus and so; and
+particularly why we act as we do. Why do you keep this day? What do
+you mean by this ceremony? Do you think that it is wrong to do this
+or that? Such people wander about observing; but their observation
+we understand is the observation of an idler who does not expect to
+be influenced by what he observes, but only to be amused. These are
+they who run after the latest thing in heresy, the newest thing in
+thought. What is observable about them is that they never seriously
+contemplate doing anything themselves. They are like those
+multitudes who followed our Lord about for awhile but were
+dispersed by the test of hard sayings.</p>
+<p>But Jesus can be found. He is found of all those who seek Him
+humbly and sincerely, putting away self and desiring simply to be
+led: who do not challenge Him with Pilate's scornful, "What is
+truth?" but rather say, "Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief."
+He is easily found of those who know where to look for Him. There
+is no mystery about that,--He will certainly be in His Father's
+House. The surprise of Joseph and Mary that He had thus dealt with
+them is answered by Jesus' surprise that they did not certainly
+know where He would be: "Wist ye not that I must be in My Father's
+House?"</p>
+<p>In the House of God, the Church of God, is the ready approach to
+Jesus. It is in the last degree foolish to waive aside the Church
+in which are stored the treasures of more than nineteen centuries
+of Christian experience as though it did and could have nothing to
+say in the matter. A seeker after information as to the meaning of
+the constitution of the United States would be considered a madman
+if he impatiently turned from those of whom he made enquiry when
+they suggested the decrees of the Supreme Court as the proper place
+to seek information. Surely, from any point of view, the Church
+will know more about Jesus than any one else: if in all the
+centuries it has not discovered the meaning of Him Whom it
+ceaselessly worships there is small likelihood that that meaning
+will be discovered by an unbeliever studying an ancient book! If
+the Church cannot lead us to Jesus, and if it cannot interpret to
+us His will, there is small likelihood that any one else will be
+able to do so. And if during all these centuries His will has been
+unknown it can hardly be of much importance to discover it now. If
+His Church has failed, then His Mission is discredited.</p>
+<p>For us who have accepted His revelation as made to the Church
+and by it unfailingly preserved, who have learned to find Him there
+where He has promised to be until the end of time, there is another
+sense in which we think of His words as words of encouragement and
+consolation. There are hours in life which press hard upon us;
+there are other hours when the sense of God's love and goodness
+fills us with thankfulness and joy. In such hours we crave the
+intimacy of personal communion: we want to tell our grief or our
+joy. And then we take our way to the temple, and know that we shall
+find Him there in His Incarnate Presence in His Father's House. We
+go in and kneel before the Tabernacle and know that Jesus is here.
+Here in the silence He waits for us. Here in the long hours He
+watches; here is the ever-open door leading to the Father where any
+man at any time may enter. He who humbled Himself to the hidden
+life of Nazareth now humbles Himself to the hidden life of the
+Tabernacle: and we who believe His Word, have no need to envy
+Joseph and Mary the intimacy of their life with Jesus, because here
+for us, if we will, is a greater intimacy--the intimacy of those of
+whom it can be said: They evermore dwell in Him and He in them.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Lady of Heaven, Regent of the Earth,<br>
+&nbsp;Empress of all the infernal marshes fell,<br>
+Receive me, thy poor Christian, 'spite my, dearth,<br>
+&nbsp;In the fair midst of thine elect to dwell:<br>
+&nbsp;Albeit my lack of grace I know full well;<br>
+For that thy grace, my Lady and my Queen,<br>
+Aboundeth more than all my misdemean,<br>
+&nbsp;Withouten which no soul of all that sigh<br>
+May merit heaven. 'Tis sooth I say, for e'en<br>
+&nbsp;In this belief I will to live and die.<br>
+<br>
+Say to thy Son, I am his--that by his birth<br>
+&nbsp;And death my sins be all redeemable--<br>
+As Mary of Egypt's dole he changed to mirth,<br>
+&nbsp;And eke Theophilus', to whom befell<br>
+&nbsp;Quittance of thee, albeit (so men tell)<br>
+To the foul fiend he had contracted been.<br>
+Assoilzie me, that I may have no teen,<br>
+&nbsp;Maid, that without breach of virginity<br>
+Didst bear our Lord that in the Host is seen:<br>
+&nbsp;In this belief I will to live and die.<br>
+<br>
+A poor old wife I am, and little worth:<br>
+&nbsp;Nothing I know, nor letter aye could spell:<br>
+Where in the church to worship I fare forth,<br>
+&nbsp;I see heaven limned with harps and lutes, and hell<br>
+&nbsp;Where damned folk seethe in fire unquenchable:<br>
+One doth me fear, the other joy serene;<br>
+Grant I may have the joy, O Virgin clean,<br>
+&nbsp;To whom all sinners lift their hands on high,<br>
+Made whole in faith through thee, their go-between:<br>
+&nbsp;In this belief I will to live and die.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<blockquote>ENVOY<br>
+<br>
+Thou didst conceive, Princess most bright of sheen,<br>
+Jesus the Lord, that hath no end nor mean,<br>
+Almighty that, departing heaven's demesne<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To succour us, put on our frailty,<br>
+Offering to death his sweet of youth and green:<br>
+Such as he is, our Lord he is, I ween:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;In this belief I will to live and die.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>CANA I</h3>
+<center>And the third day there was a marriage in Cana<br>
+of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there; and<br>
+both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.<br>
+<br>
+S. John II, 1.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Grant, O Lord, we beseech thee, that we thy servants
+may enjoy constant health of body and mind, and by the glorious
+intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be delivered from all
+temporal afflictions, and come to those joys that are eternal.
+Through.<br>
+<br>
+Having received, O Lord, what is to advance our salvation; grant we
+may always be protected by the patronage of blessed Mary, ever a
+virgin, in whose honor we have offered this sacrifice to thy
+majesty. Through.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">Old Catholic.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/quote-t.png" width="23%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>here was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus
+was there." To S. John Blessed Mary is ever the "mother of Jesus."
+He never calls her by her name in any mention of her. Jesus who
+loved him and whom he loved and loves always with consuming
+passion, held the foreground of his consciousness; all other
+persons are known through their relation to Him. As he is writing
+his Gospel-story toward the end of his life, the Blessed Virgin has
+long been gone to join her Son in the place of perfect love. We
+cannot conceive of her living long on earth after His Ascension.
+Her "conversation" would in a special way be "in heaven." Whatever
+the time she remained here awaiting the will of God for her, we may
+be sure that the days she spent under the protection of S. John
+were wonderful days for him, wherein their communing would have
+been the continual lifting of their hearts and souls to Him, Child
+and Friend, who is also God enthroned at the Right Hand of the
+Father. It is not unlikely that the marvellous spiritual maturity
+of which we are conscious in the writings of S. John was aided in
+its unfolding by the intimacy of his relations with S. Mary. But
+always she remained to him what she was because of what Jesus was;
+she remained to the end "the mother of Jesus."</p>
+<p>Here at the marriage of Cana the way in which she is mentioned
+suggests that she was staying in the house where the marriage was
+celebrated: she was simply there; Jesus and the disciples were
+called, invited, to the wedding. Some relationship, it has been
+suggested, between S. Mary and the bride or groom led to her
+presence in the house. That however is mere conjecture. The
+marriage in any case was a wonderful one, for both Jesus and Mary
+were there. It was therefore the ideal of all weddings which seem
+to lack the true note of the new matrimony which springs from the
+Incarnation if they take place without such guests. As in
+imagination we follow Mary as she goes quietly about the house,
+which like her own was a home of the poor, helping in the
+arrangements of the wedding, one cannot help recalling many
+weddings with which one has had something to do, and in the
+arrangements of which we cannot think of Mary as having any part.
+They were the arrangements of the weddings of Christians, and the
+weddings took place in a Christian church; but neither is Mary
+there nor Jesus called. We are unable to think of Mary as present
+amid the tumult of worldiness and frivolity, the endless chatter
+over dress and decoration, which so commonly precedes the
+celebration of a sacrament which is the symbol of "the mystical
+union that there is betwixt Christ and His Church." That deep piety
+which puts God and God's will before all else would strike a
+jarring note here, where the dominant note is still the pagan note
+of the decking of the slave for her new master. It is perhaps not
+without significance of the direction of the movement of the modern
+mind that the protests of the emancipated woman are against the
+Christian, not the pagan elements in matrimony: she tends to regard
+marriage as a state of temporary luxury rather than the perfect
+union of two souls in Christ. Clearly in marriages which are
+regarded as purely temporary engagements, dependent on the will of
+the parties for their continuance, there is no place for the mother
+of Jesus. The purity that emanates from her will be a silent but
+keenly felt criticism on the whole conception underlying a vast
+number of modern marriages. Even as I write I read that in a
+certain great city in the United States the number of divorces
+granted was one fourth of the number of the marriages
+celebrated.</p>
+<p>Clearly at marriages which are surrounded with this atmosphere
+of paganism, be they celebrated where they may, there is no place
+for the Blessed Mother; and neither is Jesus called. His priest,
+unfortunately, is often called, and dares celebrate a sacrament
+which in the circumstances he can hardly help feeling is a
+sacrilege. There are many cases in which what purports to be
+Christian marriage is between those who are not Christians, or of
+whom only one is a Christian in any complete sense. One hears
+frequently of the sacrament of matrimony being celebrated when only
+one of the parties is baptised. It is of course possible for any
+priest to act on the authority conferred upon him by the state and
+in his capacity as a state official perform marriages between those
+whom the state authorises to be married: but why do it under the
+character of a priest? or why throw about the ceremony the
+suggestions of a sacrament?</p>
+<p>If Jesus is really to be called to a marriage, it means that the
+preparations for the marriage will be largely spiritual. The
+parties to the marriage will approach the marriage through other
+sacraments. They will both be members of the Church of God by
+baptism; and they will be, or look forward to becoming,
+communicants. They will prepare for the sacrament of matrimony by
+receiving the sacrament of penance, and receiving the communion.
+What better preparation for starting a new life, for setting out to
+create a new family in the Kingdom of God, a family in which the
+ideals of the life at Nazareth are to be the ruling ideals, than
+that cleansing of soul that fits them for the beginning of a new
+life? A priest has great joy when he knows that those who are
+kneeling before him to receive the nuptial blessing are souls pure
+in God's sight, dwellings ready and adorned for the coming of
+Christ.</p>
+<p>For it is the normal and fitting crown of the ceremonies of
+marriage that Jesus be there, that the Holy Mass be celebrated and
+that those who have just been indissolubly united may as their
+first act partake of the Bread of Heaven which giveth life to the
+world. I myself would rather not be asked to celebrate a wedding
+unless it is to be approached with the purity of Mary, and sealed
+by the partaking of Jesus. It is so great and wonderful a thing,
+this sacrament of matrimony. Here are two human beings setting out
+to fulfil the vocation of man to build up the Kingdom of God, to
+set up a new hearth where the love of God may be manifest and where
+children may be trained in the knowledge and love of God; where the
+life of Christ may find contact with human life and through it
+manifest God to the world--how wonderful and beautiful and holy all
+that is! And then to remember what commonly takes place is to be
+overcome with a sense of what must be the pain of God's heart.</p>
+<p>We go back to look into the home where Mary seems to be
+directing the arrangements of the wedding feast. It was a poor home
+and not much could be provided; the wine, so essential to the
+feast, failed. What was to be done? To whom would Mary look? She
+could have no money to buy wine. One feels that after Joseph's
+death she had come more and more to look to Jesus for help of all
+sorts. The deepening of their mutual love, the completeness of
+their understanding, would make this the natural thing. S. Mary
+feels that if there is any help in these embarrassing
+circumstances, any way of sparing the feelings of the bridegroom,
+Jesus will know it and help. There is no doubt in her mind; but the
+certainty that He can help. So she turns to Him with her "they have
+no wine." The words as we read them contain at once an appeal and a
+suggestion: an appeal for help, advice, guidance, with the hint
+that Jesus can effectually help if He will. It is not as some have
+rather crudely thought a suggestion that He perform a miracle, but
+the appeal of one who has learned to have unlimited trust in
+Him.</p>
+<p>The reply of our Lord cannot fail to shock the English reader;
+and the very nature of the shock ought to indicate that there is
+something wrong with the translation. The words sound brusque and
+ill-mannered; and our Lord was never that nor could be, least of
+all to His blessed Mother. The dictionaries all tell us that the
+word translated woman is quite as well translated lady, in the
+sense of mistress or house mother. There is really a shade of
+meaning that we have no word for. Perhaps we best understand what
+it is that is missed if we recall the fact that when our Lord
+addressed S. Mary from the Cross He used the same word: "Woman,
+behold thy son." In such circumstances we understand that the word
+on our Lord's lips is a word of infinite tenderness. I do not
+believe that we could do better than to translate it mother. We
+might paraphrase our Lord's saying thus: "Mother, we are both
+concerned with the trouble of these friends; but do not be anxious;
+I will act when the time comes." His words are perfectly simple and
+courteous, though they do, no doubt, suggest that her anxiety is
+unnecessary and that He will act in due time. If we are to
+understand that our Lady was suggesting that He perform a miracle,
+then He certainly yielded to her intercession.</p>
+<p>Indeed, this short aside in the rejoicing of the marriage
+celebration is suggestive of wide reaches of thought. It suggests,
+which concerns us most here, something of the mode of prayer.
+Prayer is not a force exercised upon God, it is an aspiration that
+He answers or not as He sees fit, according as He sees our needs to
+be: and if He answers, He answers in His own way and at His own
+time--when His hour is come. The intercession of the saints, and of
+the highest saint of all, the holy Mother, must thus be conceived
+as aspiration not as force. We hardly need to remind ourselves that
+Blessed Mary though the highest of creatures is still a creature
+and infinitely removed from the uncreated God. When we think of her
+prayers or the prayers of the saints as having "influence" or
+"power" with God, we must remember the limitations of human
+language. It is quite possible through inaccurate use of language
+to create the impression that we believe the prayers of the saints
+to be prevailing with God because of some peculiar spiritual energy
+that belongs to them, or, still worse, because we regard them as a
+sort of court favourites who have special influence and can get
+things done that ordinary people cannot. We need only to state the
+supposition to see that we do not mean it. When we think what we
+mean by the influence of the prayers of the saints, of their
+prevailingness with God, we know that we mean that the superior
+value of the prayers of the saints is due to the superior nature of
+their spiritual insight, to their better understanding of the mind
+and purpose of God. Blessed Mary is our most powerful intercessor
+because by her perfect sanctity she understands God better than any
+one else. No educated Christian believes that she can persuade God
+to change His mind or alter His judgment, or that she or any saint
+would for a moment want to do so. Nor do we who cry for aid in the
+end want any other aid than aid to see God's will and power to do
+it: we have no wish or hope to impose our will on God. Prayer is
+aspiration, the seeking for understanding, the submitting our
+desires to the love of God; and the prayer of the saints helps us
+because they are our brothers and sisters, of the same household,
+and join with us in the offering of ourselves to God that we may
+know and do His holy will. And we can see here in this incident at
+Cana the whole mode of prayer. There is the just implied suggestion
+of the need, the hint of her own thought about the matter, in the
+way in which S. Mary presents the case to Jesus. There is the
+divine method which approves the end sought but reserves the time
+and method of fulfilling it to the "hour" which the divine wisdom
+approves. There is the ideal Christian attitude which accepts the
+divine will perfectly, and says to the servants: "Whatsoever he
+saith unto you, do it."</p>
+<p>"They have no wine": S. Mary's word expresses the present
+weakness of humanity, Man is born in sin, that is, out of union
+with God. That hoary statement of dogmatic theology seems to stir
+the wrath of the modern mind more than any other dogma of the
+Christian Faith, except it be the dogma of eternal punishment. It
+is rather an amusing phenomenon that those who have no visible
+basis for pride are likely to be the most consumed with it. The
+pride of Diogenes was visible through the holes in his carpet; the
+pride of liberalism is visible in its irritability whenever the
+subject of sin, especially original sin, is mentioned. Yet the very
+complacency of liberalism about the perfection of man, is but
+another evidence (if we needed another) of his inherent sinfulness,
+his weakness in the face of moral ideals. If we confess our sins we
+are on the way to forgiveness; but if we say that we have no sin
+the truth is not in us.</p>
+<p>This boasting of capacity to be pure and strong without God,
+theologically the Pelagian heresy, is sufficiently answered by a
+cursory view of what humanity has done and does do. Even where the
+Christian religion has been accepted the accomplishment is hardly
+ground for boasting. The plain fact is (and you may account for it
+how you like, it remains in any case a fact) that human beings are
+terribly weak in the face of moral and spiritual ideals. They are
+not sufficiently drawn by them to overcome the tendency of their
+nature toward a quite opposite set of ideals. We do run easily and
+spontaneously after ideals which the calm and enlightened judgment
+of the race, whether Christian or non-Christian, has continuously
+disapproved. We know that Buddha and Mahomet and Confucius would
+repudiate Paris and Berlin and New York and London with the same
+certainty if not with the same energy as Christ. We live in a time
+when a decisive public opinion gets its way; and therefore we are
+quite safe in saying that the misery and sin which go unchecked in
+the very centres of modern civilisation exist and continue because
+there is no decided public opinion against them.</p>
+<p>All attempts at reform which are merely attempts to reform
+machinery are futile, they can produce only passing and superficial
+results. There is only one medicine for the disease of the world,
+and that medicine is the Blood of Christ. Ultimately, one believes,
+that will be applied; but evidently it will not be applied in any
+broad way as a social treatment till all the quack remedies have
+demonstrated their uselessness. The last two centuries have been
+the flowering time of quacks. The mere history of their theories
+fills volumes. Our own time shows no decline in productiveness, nor
+decline in hopefulness in the efficacy of the last remedy to bid
+for support. But the time of disillusionment must some time
+come.</p>
+<p>When that time comes all men will lift their eyes, as individual
+men have always lifted them, up to the hills whence cometh their
+help. Except they had kept their eyes so resolutely fastened on the
+earth at their feet they would have seen, what has always been
+visible to those who lift up their eyes, a crucified Figure on the
+one supreme hill of earth,--the hill called Calvary. There "one
+Figure stands, with outstretched hands" saying, with
+inextinguishable optimism, the indestructible optimism of God, "and
+I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me."</p>
+<p>What in the end will prevail with them, what will make them turn
+to the Tree which is for the healing of the nations, is the
+perception that in it is the remedy for the weakness that they have
+either sought to heal by other means, or have resolutely denied to
+exist at all. There are men whose wills are so strong that even in
+the grip of some serious disease they will long go on about their
+business asserting that there is nothing the matter with them and
+overcoming bodily pain and weakness by sheer will power; but the
+end comes finally with a collapse that is perhaps beyond remedy. We
+live in a society which has the same characteristics, but it may be
+that it will see its state and turn to healing. For God cannot heal
+except with our co-operation. Christ pleads from the Cross, but he
+can do no more. He will not submit to our tests; He will not come
+down that we may believe in Him. We must come to Him, laying aside
+all our pride and self-will, and kneel by the Cross to ask His
+help.</p>
+<p>We know, do we not? that that is the law for the individual;
+that we found the meaning of Christ, and what He can do in life,
+when we laid aside pride and self-will and humbly asked help and
+pardon. It may be that we resisted a long while, struggling against
+the pull of the divine magnet; but if we have attained to spiritual
+peace it is because the Cross won, because we found ourselves
+kneeling at the feet of Jesus. Perhaps we have not got there yet,
+but are only on the way. Perhaps our religion as yet is a formality
+and not a devotion. Perhaps our pride still struggles against the
+Catholic practice of religion. Then why not give way now, to-night?
+Let Mary take you and lead you to Jesus. She will bring you to him
+with her half-suggestion, half-prayer: "He has no wine." He has got
+to the end of his strength, and he has found the weariness of self,
+he is ready for healing. O my divine Son, is not this your
+opportunity, your "hour"?</p>
+<p>Jesus loves to have us bring one another to Him. It is so
+obviously the response to His Spirit, that carrying out of His
+teaching, so to love the brother that we may bring him to the
+healing of the Cross. To care for the spiritual needs of the
+brother is a real ministry: it is an extension of Christ in us that
+clothes us with the power to aid other souls in work or prayer.
+What a beautiful picture of this work there is in the Gospel of St.
+John. "And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to
+worship at the feast: the same came therefore to Philip, which was
+of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see
+Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and
+Philip tell Jesus." And this work of presenting souls to Jesus
+which is so clearly one of our chief privileges, how should not
+that be also the privilege of all the saints, and especially of the
+Holy Mother? Blessed Mary, we may be sure, delights in leading
+souls who so hesitatingly come to her, to the presence of her
+Son,--just presenting them in their need and with her prayer, which
+is all the plea that is needed to attract the love and mercy of
+Jesus. "Why not," ask certain people who have not thought out the
+meaning of Catholic dogma, "why not go at once to our Lord; why go
+in this roundabout way?" Why not? Because of our human qualities.
+Because we need company and sympathy. For the same reason precisely
+that makes us ask one another's prayers here. "The Father Himself
+loveth you." Why in this roundabout way ask me to pray? You do not
+come to me because you lack faith in God or in God's love; you come
+to me because you feel, if only implicitly, that in the Body of
+Christ association in love and sympathy and work is a high
+privilege, and that it is God's will that we should work together
+and "bear one another's burdens." And the frontiers of the Kingdom
+of God are not the frontiers of the Church Militant, and its
+citizens are not only the citizens of the Church here below,
+but--we believe in the Communion of saints.</p>
+<p>The hour of God strikes for any soul when that soul yields to
+prevenient grace and places itself utterly at the disposal of God,
+confiding wholly in His divine wisdom. When our Lord had answered
+His Blessed Mother she turned away satisfied. She did not have to
+concern herself any further; it was now in Jesus' hands to provide
+as He would. It remained but to see that His will should be carried
+out when He made it known.</p>
+<p>Submission is a difficult attitude to acquire; but it is such a
+happy attitude when once one has acquired it. The critics of it
+wholly mistake it and confound it with fatalism. It is not
+fatalism, or passive acquiescence in another's will--a will that we
+have no part in forming and cannot reject. Submission is the
+acceptance of God's will as the expression of the highest wisdom
+for us. It is not true that we have no part in forming it; it is at
+any time an expression of God's will for us which is determined by
+the way in which we hitherto have corresponded to that will.
+Submission means that we have put ourselves in a position of active
+co-operation with that will, that we have made it ours: because it
+is the expression of a divine wisdom and love we make it wholly
+ours. And we have found in the acceptance of it not bondage but
+liberty. It is wonderful how our preconceived notion of God and
+religion vanishes before the first gleams of experience. To the
+unregenerate the service of God is utter bondage; to the regenerate
+it is perfect freedom. And the difference seems to be accounted for
+by the reversal of ideals, by a new direction of affections. "I
+will run the way of thy commandments, when thou hast set my heart
+at liberty,"</p>
+<p>A true conversion is, perhaps, signified, more than in any other
+way, by the liberty of the heart,--by this change in the object of
+our love. That has been the constant exhortation to us, to love
+that which is worthy of love. "Set your affection on things above."
+"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." And
+we, loving the world and the things that are in the world, listen
+impatiently. But there is no possibility of a sincere conversion
+without a change of love. "A change of heart" conversion is often
+called, and so inevitably it is. And as we go through our
+self-examination one of the most profitable questions we can ask
+is, "What do I love?" That will commonly tell the whole story of
+the life, for "where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be
+also."</p>
+<p>Richard Rolle said: "Truly he who is stirred with busy love, and
+is continually with Jesu in thought, full soon perceives his own
+faults, the which correcting, henceforward he is ware of them; and
+so he brings righteousness busily to birth, until he is led to God
+and may sit with heavenly citizens in everlasting seats. Therefore
+he stands clear in conscience and is steadfast in all good ways the
+which is never noyed with worldly heaviness nor gladdened with
+vainglory."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>CANA I<br>
+<br>
+O Glorious Lady, throned in light,<br>
+Sublime above the starry height,<br>
+Whose arms thine own creator pressed,<br>
+A Suckling at thy sacred breast.<br>
+Through the dear Blossom of thy womb,<br>
+Thou changest hapless Eva's doom;<br>
+Through thee to contrite souls is given<br>
+An opening to their home in heaven.<br>
+Thou art the great King's Portal bright,<br>
+The shining Gate of living light;<br>
+Come then, ye ransomed nations, sing<br>
+The Life Divine 'twas hers to bring.<br>
+Mother of Love and Mercy mild,<br>
+Mother of graces undefiled.<br>
+Drive back the foe, and to thy Son<br>
+Lead thou our souls when life is done.<br>
+All glory be to thee, O Lord,<br>
+A Virgin's Son, by all adored,<br>
+With Sire and Spirit, Three in One,<br>
+While everlasting ages run.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>CANA II</h3>
+<center>And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus<br>
+saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith<br>
+unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee?<br>
+mine hour is not yet come.<br>
+<br>
+S. John II, 3, 4.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>We, the faithful, bless thee, O Virgin Mother of God,
+and glorify thee as is thy due, the city unshaken, the wall
+unbroken, the unbreakable defence and refuge of our
+souls.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">BYZANTINE.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/quote-w.png" width="23%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hatsoever He saith unto you, do it." These words have often been
+called the Gospel according to S. Mary. They certainly sum up her
+whole attitude in life. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it
+unto me according to thy word," she had said in reply to the
+message S. Gabriel brought her: and that is the meaning of her
+whole life-story, that she is at all times ready to accept the will
+of God, to give herself to the fulfilment of the divine purpose.
+There is no more perfect attitude, for it is the attitude of her
+divine Son whose meat it was to do the will of the Father and to
+finish His work, whose whole life's attitude was compressed into
+the words of His self-oblation in Gethsemane, "Not my will, but
+thine be done."</p>
+<p>And this is the virtue that Jesus Christ inculcates upon us.
+"When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven ... thy will be
+done." There is no true religion possible without that attitude.
+And therefore one is deeply concerned about the immediate future
+inasmuch as the spirit of obedience, the spirit of Jesus, the
+spirit of Mary, is so rare. As one looks into the social
+development of the Christian era, one feels that the life and
+example of S. Mary has been of immense influence in the development
+of the ideal of womanhood. The rise of woman from a wholly
+subordinate and inferior condition to a condition of complete
+equality with man has owed more to S. Mary than to any other
+factor. I am not concerned with political equality; that under our
+present conditions of social development women should have that
+equality if they want it seems to me just, but I am by no means
+satisfied that in the long run it will prove a boon either to them
+or to society at large. But I am at present thinking of their
+spiritual equality, which after all is the basis of their other
+claims; and this comes to them through the Gospel, and was shown to
+the mind of the Church largely through S. Mary. In the earliest
+records of the Church woman stands on the same level of privilege
+as man, and the same sort of spiritual accomplishment is expected
+of her.</p>
+<p>There are many members of the Body of Christ and there is a
+certain spiritual equality among them; but "all members have not
+the same office." In the Holy Spirit's distribution of functions
+within the Body there is a difference. Some functions, by the
+allotment of God, women are not called to exercise: these are
+sacramental and ruling functions. Others, as prophecy (the
+daughters of S. Philip), and ministry (the deaconess), are given
+them. For centuries she recognised this allotment and gave her best
+energies to her appointed works. She showed herself a true daughter
+of Mary in her loyal acceptance of the divine will and her zeal in
+its accomplishment. And what was the result? The Calendar of
+Saints, filled with the names of women, is the answer. There are no
+more wonderful works of God than the women whose names are
+commemorated at the altars of the Church and whose intercession is
+constantly asked throughout Catholic Christendom. There can be no
+thought of narrowness of opportunity or limitations in life as we
+study that wonderful series of women who have illumined the history
+of the Church from the day of S. Gabriel's message to this very
+moment when there are many many women who are faithfully following
+their vocation and doing God's will, and who will one day be our
+intercessors about the throne of God and of the Lamb, as they are
+our intercessors in the Church on earth to-day. Why any woman
+should complain of lack of opportunity and of the narrowness of the
+Church--the Church that has nourished S. Mary and S. Monica, S.
+Catherine of Genoa and S. Theresa; the foundresses of so many and
+so varied Religious Orders, so many who have devoted their lives to
+teaching, nursing, conducting works of charity, I am at a loss to
+understand. To-day we are witnessing all over the world a revolt of
+women against the Church; we hear not infrequent threats of what is
+to be done to the Church by those revolted members. I am afraid
+that woman is on the edge of another tragedy. She is once more
+looking fascinated at the fruit which "is good for food, and
+pleasant to the eyes and to be desired to make one wise," and
+listening to a voice that whispers: "Thou shalt be as God."</p>
+<p>The question which is becoming more urgent everywhere is, What
+are the women of the future to be,--the daughters of Eve, or the
+daughters of Mary? It is not a question for declamation, but a
+question that calls for immediate action: and the action must be
+the action of women. If women clamour for work in the Church of
+God, here it is, and here it is abundantly; and to accomplish it
+there is no need that they "seek the priesthood also." The work in
+the Church of God is in the first place a work that God has given
+mothers to do; it is the primary duty of a mother to bring up her
+children, and especially her daughters, in fear of the Lord. That
+she can always succeed I do not for a moment claim; there are many
+adverse factors in the situation that she has to deal with. But she
+is inexcusable if she does not give her effort to the work as the
+most important work of her life. She is utterly inexcusable and
+must answer to God for the result if she turn her children over to
+the care of maids and teachers while she occupies herself with
+society or any exterior work.</p>
+<p>In the second place the work of the Church of God is a work that
+ought to appeal to all women and a work that any woman can help in.
+All women can help the spiritual progress of the Church by
+meditating upon the life of Blessed Mary and fashioning their lives
+upon her example. We are all tremendously affected by example, and
+that is especially true of young girls. Their supreme terror seems
+to be that they should be caught doing or saying something
+different from what all other girls say or do or wear. Their
+opinions are as imitative as their clothes. Hence the need of the
+pressure of a strong Christian example, which would result most
+readily in the union of Christian women in a single ideal. Our
+present difficulty is that so many of our women who are devout
+members of the Church in their private capacity, so far succumb to
+the group-mind in their social relations that they are possessed by
+the same terror as the young girl in the face of the possibility of
+being different. Therefore are they careful to hide their real
+feeling for religion and their devotion to spiritual things under
+the mask of worldly conformity which evacuates their example of
+much of the power that it might have. I am quite convinced that
+fear of the world is about as strong an impulse toward evil as love
+of the world.</p>
+<p>We need that women should clear their ideals and realise their
+public responsibility for the presentation of them. We need
+terribly at this moment insistence on the purity and simplicity of
+the Holy Mother of God. One is stunned at the abandonment of the
+ideal of reserve and modesty that the last few years have seen.
+Women seem to take it quite gaily: men, one notes, take it much
+more seriously. I have been consulted by more than one father
+during the past year as to the possibility of sending a boy to a
+school where he would be kept out of the society of half-naked
+girls. Have mothers no longer any sense of the value of purity? Or
+have they simply abandoned all responsibility that normally goes
+with being a mother? One recognises how helpless a man is under the
+circumstances, that his intervention in such matters simply casts
+him for the part of family tyrant; but why should a mother abandon
+her duty simply because her daughter says: "You don't understand.
+Girls are not as they were when you were young. All the girls do
+this. No other mother takes the line that you do. You are not
+modern."</p>
+<p>One knows, of course, that the whole matter of decline in
+manners and morals is but a part of the world-wide revolt against
+the morality of Jesus Christ that we are witnessing everywhere.
+Social and religious teachers, students of history and social
+movements have seen the approach of this revolt for a long time,
+have been watching its rise and growth. When they have pointed out
+the end of the path that we have been travelling, they have been
+disposed of by calling them pessimists. These "pessimists" pointed
+out long ago that the denial of the obligation to believe would be
+followed by an abandonment of all moral standards. They pointed out
+to the devotees of "liberal religion" that they are in reality the
+leaders of a moral revolt, that if it does not make any difference
+what you believe it will soon come to make no difference what you
+do. It is a rather silly performance to blow up the dam which holds
+back the mass of water of an irrigation system and imagine that no
+more water will flow out than you want to flow out. When the
+Protestant revolt blew up the restraining dams of the Catholic
+Religion they had no right to expect that only so much denial of
+Catholic truth as it suited them to dispense with would be the
+result. Through the broken dams the whole religion of Christ has
+been flowing out and it is mere empty pretence to claim that all
+that is of any value is left. It is impossible to maintain anything
+of the sort now that all the moral content of the Christian system
+is openly thrown overboard by vast numbers of the population of the
+world, in every country that claims to be civilised. It is useless
+to say that there has always been evil in the world and that the
+maintenance of the Catholic religion has never anywhere abolished
+sin. That is true, but it is not to the present point. The social
+situation is one where there are definite religious and moral
+ideals strongly maintained and universally recognised, though there
+are many men and women who violate them; it is quite another
+situation when the ideals themselves are repudiated and set aside
+as superstitions. That is our case to-day. The Christian theory is
+confronted with a theory of naturalism in morals, and those who
+follow that theory do not do so with a feeling that they are
+violating accepted ideals, but with the assumption that they are
+missionaries setting forth a new faith. Those who have revolted
+from the Kingdom of God have now set up another kingdom and
+proclaimed openly, "We will not have this Man to reign over us."
+The revolt which began with a breach in the dogmatic system of the
+Church and denial of the authority of the Catholic Church in favour
+of the right of private judgment, has ended, as it could not help
+but end, in open abandonment of the life-ideal of the Gospels. We
+now have the application of the right of private judgment in the
+theory that one's morals are one's own concern. Such things have
+happened before. "In those days there was no king in Israel, but
+every one did what was right in his own eyes." The social state
+depicted in the Book of Judges reflects this revolt. The result of
+the same repudiation of authority is seen in modern society where
+what is right in one's own eyes is the whole Law and Gospel. Are we
+to remain quiescent, or are we to make the attempt to generate
+moral force?</p>
+<p>But how can Christendom generate any more moral force? The
+teaching of the Gospel which it proclaims is perfectly plain. True,
+but is the adherence of the Church to its statements perfectly
+plain? Is there no falling away, no compromise, there?</p>
+<p>When one speaks thus of the Church one is conscious of a
+confusion of thought in the use of the word. The teaching of the
+formal documents of the Church is not here in question; what we
+necessarily mean is the effect that the existing membership of the
+Church is having upon contemporary life. What we have especially in
+mind is the attitude of the clergy and the action of the
+congregation in the way of moral force. What sort of a front is the
+church presenting to the world, what sort of moral influence is it
+exercising?</p>
+<p>It seems to me perfectly evident that all along the line the
+conventions of contemporary society have been accepted in the place
+of the life-ideals of the Gospel of Jesus. We have accepted plain
+departures from or compromises with Christian teaching as the
+recognised law of action. This is due largely to the natural sloth
+of the human being and his disinclination to struggle for superior
+standards. He feels safe and comfortable if he can succeed in
+losing himself in a crowd: thus he escapes both trouble and
+criticism. A violation of law may become so common that there is no
+public spirit to oppose it. The same thing may happen in
+morals,--violations of the Christian standard, if sufficiently
+widespread, command almost universal acquiesence. What is actually
+uncovered in the process is the fact that the plain man has no
+morals of his own, but imitates the prevailing morality; and if
+fashion sets against some particular ruling of the Christian
+Religion he feels quite secure in following the fashion. The <i>vox
+dei</i> in Holy Scripture and in Holy Church affect him not at all
+if he be conscious that he is on the side of the <i>vox
+populi</i>.</p>
+<p>It is easy to illustrate this. The non-Catholic Christian world
+has the Bible, and boasts of its adherence to it as the sole guide
+of life; but in the matter of divorced persons it utterly
+disregards its teachings. By this acceptance of an unchristian
+attitude it has vastly weakened the fight for purity in the family
+relation which the Catholic Church, at least in the West, has
+always waged. It deliberately divides the Christian forces of the
+community and to a large extent thereby nullifies their action. The
+divisions of Christendom are terrible from every point of view; but
+there are certain questions on which a united mind might well be
+presented, and in relation to which an united mind would go far to
+control the attitude of society. An united Christian sentiment
+against divorce would go far to reduce the evil.</p>
+<p>On the other hand the progress of the movement to abolish the
+evils growing out of the use of alcohol has had its strength in the
+Protestant bodies. On the whole (there were no doubt individual
+exceptions) the Churches of the Catholic tradition have been
+lukewarm in the matter. It is quite evident that the reform could
+never have been carried through if left to them, and especially if
+left to the bishops and clergy of the Roman and Anglican
+Communions. It is a plain case of failure to support a vast moral
+reform because of the pressure of opinion in the social circles in
+which they move, combined with a purely individualistic attitude
+toward a grave social question.</p>
+<p>Another instance is ready at hand in the practical abandonment
+of the religious observance of Sunday. To Christians Sunday is the
+Lord's day, and is to be observed as such. It is not true that an
+hour in the morning is the Lord's day, and is to be given to
+worship, and that the rest of the day is given to us to do what we
+will with. But in our own Communion do we get any strong protest in
+favour of the sanctity of the day? Or are not the clergy
+compromising in the hope that if they surrender the greater part of
+the day to the world they will be able to save an hour or two for
+God? But is anything actually saved by this sort of compromise? Do
+we not know that the encroachments of worldliness that have
+narrowed down Sunday observance to an hour a day will ultimately
+demand that hour, that is, will deny any obligation other than the
+obligation of inclination? Are we not bound to stand by the Lord's
+day? Are we to be made lax by silly talk about puritanism? Those
+who talk about the "Puritan Sunday" would do well to read a little
+of the Medieval legislation of the Church. Are we to keep silent in
+the pulpit because wealthy and influential members of the
+congregation want to play golf and tennis on Sunday afternoons, or
+children want to play ball or go to the movies? Are we to be taken
+in by talk of hard work during the week and consequent need of
+rest? It is no doubt well that a man should arrange his work with a
+view to an adequate amount of rest; but it is also well that he
+should rest in his own time and not in God's. The Lord's day is not
+a day of rest. It ought to be, and is intended to be, a very
+strenuous day indeed.</p>
+<p>One could easily spend hours in pointing out where and how the
+Gospel standard of life has been abandoned or compromised, and the
+life of the Christian in consequence conformed to the world. The
+result would only strengthen the position that has been already
+sufficiently indicated that a wholly different standard of living
+has been quietly substituted throughout the Western world for the
+standard that is contained in Holy Scripture. Now we are either
+bound to be Christians or we are not; and we are not Christians
+solely by virtue of certain beliefs more or less loosely held. Our
+Lord's word is: "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command
+you." And the Gospel view of life is a perfectly plain one, and is
+as far removed from the common life of Christians to-day as it
+possibly can be. The Gospel conception of the Christian life is
+contained first of all in our Lord's life. That is the perfect
+human life; and the New Testament optimism is well illustrated by
+its conviction that that life in its essential features can, with
+the grace of God, be imitated by man. And by those who have
+approached it in this spirit of optimism it has been found
+imitable. Innumerable men and women have lived the Christian life
+in the past and are living it in the present. To-day the
+possibility of living the Christian life, of bringing life
+approximately to the standard of the Gospel, is declared to be an
+impracticable piece of optimism, and our Lord's teaching hopelessly
+out of touch with reality. When people talk of the difficulty of
+living the Christ-life under modern conditions, the plain answer is
+that there is in fact only one difficulty in the matter, and that
+is the difficulty of wanting to do it. It is a confession of utter
+spiritual incompetence to say that we cannot follow the Gospel
+standards under modern conditions because of the isolation in which
+we at once find ourselves if we attempt it. If the attempt to be a
+Christian isolates us, it tells a pretty plain tale about our
+chosen companionship. It is asserting that it is hard for us to be
+Christians because we are devoted to the society of those who are
+not Christians, of those who ignore it and habitually insult the
+teachings of our Saviour. That is surely an extraordinary
+confession for a Christian to make! Can we imagine a Christian of
+the first period of the Church excusing himself for offering
+incense to the divinity of Augustus on the ground that if he did
+not do so certain court festivities would be closed to him, and
+that his friends would think him odd!</p>
+<p>"Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you," "The
+friendship of this world is enmity with God." We have to choose. It
+is not that we may choose. It is not that it is possible to have a
+little of both. As Christians it is quite impossible in any real
+sense to have the friendship of the world, though many Christians
+think that they can. What really is open to us is the enmity of the
+world if we are sincere and strict in our profession, and the
+contempt of the world if we are not. You have not to read very deep
+in contemporary literature to learn what the world thinks about the
+Christian who ignores or compromises his standards. The world knows
+perfectly well what constitutes a Christian life, and it shows a
+well merited scorn of those who, not having the courage openly to
+abandon it, yet show by their lives that they do not value it. We
+may not show the same sort of contempt for the "weak brother" as S.
+Paul calls him, but we ought to make it plain that we have no sort
+of approval of the brother who pleads weakness as an excuse for
+laxity.</p>
+<p>There is one law of life and only one; and that is summed up in
+our Lady's direction to the servants at Cana in Galilee:
+"Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." There is no ground for
+pleading that our Lord's will is an obscure will, or that
+circumstances have so changed that much that He set forth in word
+and example has no application to-day in the America of the
+twentieth century. Perhaps if any one feels that there is some
+truth in the last statement, he would do well to examine the case
+and to find out just what and how much of the Gospel teaching is
+obsolete, and how much has contemporary application, and to ask
+himself whether he is constantly putting in action that part which
+he thinks still holds good. It will, I think, on examination be
+found that none of our Lord's teaching is obsolete, though in some
+cases changed circumstances may have changed its mode of
+application. Certainly there is nothing obsolete in His teaching in
+the matter of purity. The virtues that He dwells upon--humility,
+meekness and the rest--are universal qualities on which time and
+social change have no effect.</p>
+<p>What Christian conduct needs on our part is interest. We have to
+make clear to ourselves that a certain kind of life is like the
+life of God, and therefore is the medium for understanding God, and
+ultimately for enjoying God. The Christian life is not an arbitrary
+thing; it is the highest expression of humanity. Any other life is
+a distortion of the human ideal. People talk as though they thought
+that by the arbitrary will of God they were obliged to be good--a
+thing wholly contrary to our nature and to our present interests.
+But goodness is the natural unfolding of our nature as God made it:
+we find our true expression in the likeness of God. Perfection is
+what nature aspires to. Religion is not a curb on nature; religion
+is a help to enable nature to express itself. Nature reaches its
+perfect expression when by the grace of God it becomes godlike.</p>
+<p>And the words of Christ are our guide to the perfect expression
+of our best. Therefore the earnest Christian is willing to give
+time to the careful study of them, and of the whole ideal of life
+that is contained in them. He is not concerned with what they will
+cut him off from; he is concerned with that to which they will
+admit him. He is concerned to find the meaning of Christ's
+teaching. This that S. Paul says is fundamental is his rule of
+life: "Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the
+renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and
+acceptable, and perfect, will of God."</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Of one that is so fayr and bright<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Velut maris stella</i>,<br>
+Brighter than the day is light,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Parens et puella</i>;<br>
+I crie to thee, thou see to me,<br>
+Levedy, preye thi Sone for me,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Tam pia</i>,<br>
+That I mote come to thee<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Maria</i>.<br>
+<br>
+Al this world was for-lore<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Eva peccatrice</i>,<br>
+Tyl our Lord was y-bore<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>De te genetrice</i>.<br>
+With <i>Ave</i> it went away<br>
+Thuster nyth and comz the day<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Salutis</i>;<br>
+The welle springeth ut of the,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Virtutis</i>.<br>
+<br>
+Levedy, flour of alle thing,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Rosa sine spina</i>,<br>
+Thu here Jhesu, hevene king,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Gratia divina</i>;<br>
+Of alle thu ber'st the pris,<br>
+Levedy, quene of paradys<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Electa</i>:<br>
+Mayde milde, moder <i>es<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Effecta</i>.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>WHO IS MY MOTHER?</h3>
+<center>Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in
+heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother,<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. XII, 50.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we may keep
+with an immaculate heart the sacrament which we have received in
+honour of the blessed virgin mother Mary; so that we who celebrate
+her feast now, may be found worthy when we have left this life to
+pass into her company. Through &amp;c.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">SARUM MISSAL.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-o.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>Our Blessed Lord had begun his ministry of preaching. The mark
+of the early days of that preaching was success. Crowds came about
+Him wherever He taught. The fact that there were frequent miracles
+of healing no doubt added to the popularity that He achieved. It
+was largely the popularity of a new and strange movement, of a
+preaching cutting across the normal roads of instruction to which
+the Jewish people were accustomed. There was a fascination about
+its form, its picturesque way of conveying its meaning, its use of
+the parable drawn from the everyday circumstances of life. There
+was nothing of hesitation in the words of the new Preacher, but the
+ring of a dogmatic certainty. "He taught as one having authority,
+and not as the scribes." He pushed aside the rulings of the
+traditional teaching with His, "Ye have heard it said ... but I
+say." "Verily, verily, I say unto you." And yet there are people
+who tell us that there was nothing dogmatic about our Lord and His
+teaching! One would infer from much that is written upon the
+subject of our Lord's teaching that He was a very mild giver of
+good advice but evidently the Scribes and Pharisees did not think
+so. They saw in Him a man who was setting himself to undermine
+their whole authority.</p>
+<p>This popularity was at a high point when an interesting event
+happened of which we have an account in the first of the Gospels.
+"His mother and His brethren stood without, desiring to speak with
+Him." One gathers from the whole tone of the narrative that they
+were anxious about Him, that they looked with doubt upon this
+career of popular teacher that He was launched upon and felt that
+He was going too far. He needed advice and restraint, perhaps; it
+may be that there were already reports of possible interference by
+the national authorities. The fact that His "brethren" were present
+suggests the well meant interference of the older members of the
+family, who must always have thought Jesus rather strange. That
+they had induced His mother to come with them makes us think that
+they were counting on the influence naturally hers, an influence
+which must always have been apparent in their family relations. So
+we reconstruct the incident.</p>
+<p>No doubt S. Mary herself was anxious. She must always have been
+anxious as to what would be the next step in the development of her
+mysterious Child. And while there was one side of her relation to
+Jesus which would always have run out into mystery, the mystery of
+the as yet unrevealed will of God; on the other side she was no
+doubt a very real normal human mother, with all a mother's anxiety
+and need of constant intervention in the life of her Child. I do
+not suppose that S. Mary, any more than any other mother, ever
+understood that her Son had grown up and could be trusted to
+conduct the ordinary affairs of the day without her help. She was
+no doubt as much concerned as any mother with the fact that His
+feet might be wet, or that He might not have had any lunch, or that
+he might have got run over by a passing chariot, or have been taken
+mysteriously ill. It was, we may think, this mother-attitude which
+brought her along with the brethren to give some advice as to how
+to carry on the preaching mission and avoid getting into trouble
+with the religious authorities. "One said unto him, Behold, thy
+mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.
+But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother?
+and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his
+disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For
+whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the
+same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother."</p>
+<p>Our Lord had a way of turning the passing incidents of the
+moment to account in His preaching, making them the texts of moral
+and spiritual teaching. One gathers that more than one of the
+parables and parabolic sayings was suggested by something that was
+before the eyes of His hearers. He was quick to seize any spoken
+word, any question, any exclamation, and to turn it to immediate
+account. It was so now. The report that His mother and His brethren
+were seeking Him, He made the occasion of a statement of vast
+import. When we try to think it out, it was not in the least, as it
+has been perversely understood, an impatient rebuff of an untimely
+interference, an indication that He did not care for their
+intervention in a work that they did not understand. There is
+really nothing of all that, but a seizing of a passing incident as
+the medium of an universal truth. It is the skill of one who knows
+that the human attention is caught by a matter, however trifling,
+which is vividly present. The scene is sharply defined for us: our
+Lord interrupted in His talk; the report of the mother and the
+brethren seeking Him; the obvious interest of the people as to how
+He will take their intervention; and then the rapid seizing of this
+interest to make His declaration: "Whosoever shall do the will of
+my Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister,
+and my brother."</p>
+<p>And what are we to understand Him to mean? Surely He is
+declaring that through the revelation of God that He is, there is a
+new stage in God's work for man being entered upon, and that this
+new stage will be characterised by the emergence of a new set of
+relations, relations so important that they throw into the
+background the ordinary relations of life. He is proclaiming to
+them the advent of the Kingdom of God; and in that Kingdom, the
+service of God will be put first, before all human relations. It
+will not be antagonistic to human relations; indeed, it will hallow
+them and raise them to a higher level; but in case they, as not
+infrequently they will, decline to adjust themselves to the work of
+the Kingdom, or set themselves in opposition to it, then will they
+be brushed aside, no matter what they be. If we can consecrate our
+human relations and bring them into God, then will they be ours
+still with a vast enrichment and a rare spiritual beauty; but if
+they remain selfish, insist on absorbing all attention and energy,
+then they must be broken. The love of father and mother and
+children is an holy thing wherever we find it, but it is capable of
+becoming a selfish and perverse thing, insistent upon its own ends
+and declining wider responsibilities. In that case it must be
+regarded from the standpoint of a higher good: if it stand in the
+path of the Kingdom it must be swept aside. So our Lord declared in
+one of the most searching of His utterances; one of the utterances
+which we feel could come only from the lips of God: "Think not that
+I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a
+sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father,
+and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law
+against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be those of his
+own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not
+worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is
+not worthy of me."</p>
+<p>That is the teaching of the incident before us. Our Lord's
+primary mission is to declare the will of God, and to make known
+the mind of the Father to all who will heed. Their acceptance of
+this will of the Father will bring them into a new relation to Him
+more important than, and transcending, all relations of flesh and
+blood. But--and this is important to mark--it does not exclude
+relations of flesh and blood; but it demands that they shall be put
+on a new basis and be assimilated to the higher relation. In our
+Lord's case they were in fact so assimilated. The blessed Mother
+and the brethren did not resist God's will when they came to
+understand it. They were, we know, glad of the higher relation, the
+new privilege. There is no ground at all for the suggestion of any
+breach between them. They are of the inner circle always in the
+Kingdom of the regenerate.</p>
+<p>This fundamental truth of Christ's teaching, that through Him a
+new and closer relation to the Father becomes possible, and that
+the Kingdom is its embodiment, is one of the truths which have
+received constant lip-service, but have never been really
+assimilated in the working life of the Church. That the Church is
+the Body of Christ and we His members, and that by virtue of this
+membership in Him we are also members one of another; that we are,
+at our entrance into the Kingdom, made, as the Catechism puts it,
+members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the kingdom of
+Heaven are truths of most marvellous reach and of splendid social
+implications. But can we say that they have very wide or real
+acknowledgment?</p>
+<p>In face of a divided Christendom it seems almost farcical to
+talk of a Christian Brotherhood. The baptismal membership of the
+Church of God has fallen into group organisations whose mutual
+antagonism is of the bitterest kind. The so-called "religious
+press" is perhaps the saddest picture of modern Christian life. One
+could name a half dozen journals off hand, organs of this or that
+group, every one a sufficient refutation of the claim of the
+Christian Religion to be a Brotherhood of the Redeemed. There is no
+possible excuse for the tone of such publications.</p>
+<p>No doubt it is an inevitable result of the state of a divided
+Christendom that there should be disputes and controversies. We
+shall never reach any expression of the Brotherhood that is the
+Church by saying, Peace, Peace, where there is no Peace. The unity
+we look to must be reached through painful sacrifice and through
+conflict; and we know that the wisdom that is from above is "first
+pure, and then peaceable," But it is quite possible while holding
+with all firmness to the truth, to hold it in the fear and love of
+God.</p>
+<p>So long as Christendom is thus divided into hostile camps the
+ideal of brotherhood is impossible of realisation. I do not want
+however to discuss this matter from the point of view of Church
+unity. I want to point out that within the groups themselves there
+is small vision of the meaning of the oneness of Christ. For
+brotherhood is the expression of a spiritual reality. It looked for
+a moment in the early days of the Church as though the ideal would
+be realised. The description of the Church was that "all that
+believed were together, and had all things in common: and sold
+their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every
+man had need." That was, no doubt, a passing phase of the life of
+the Church in Jerusalem, but we have evidence that elsewhere all
+distinctions based upon social considerations were for the moment
+swept away. There is "neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond
+nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in
+Christ Jesus." Our glimpses of the congregations of the early
+Church are of men and women of all classes held together by the
+bond of a common membership in Christ, so strongly felt as to
+enable them to forget all worldly distinctions. Their sense of
+redemption was strong. They thrilled with the joy of deliverance
+from the old life "after the flesh." They knew that they were
+regenerate, new creations, and that this was the distinction of the
+brother who knelt beside them at their communions. It mattered not
+at all what he was in the world, whether he were Greek or
+Barbarian, whether he were patrician or freedman, whether he were
+of the slaves of Rome or of Caesar's household. The man who knelt
+to receive his communion might be a great nobleman, the priest who
+communicated him might be a slave: that did not matter; the
+significant thing was that they were both one in Jesus Christ.</p>
+<p>That did not last. I suppose that it could not be expected to
+last in an unconverted or half converted world. It could only last
+on condition of the fairly complete isolation of the Christian
+group from the rest of society, pending the conversion of society
+as a whole. But it proved impossible to secure the isolation. The
+only real isolation was in monastic groups which naturally could
+contain only such men and women as God called to a special sort of
+life: the whole of society could not be so organised. As the Church
+grew and took in the various social constituents included in the
+Empire, it took them in differentiated as they were. There seems to
+have been no real effort to break down race distinctions or class
+distinctions. There were no doubt protests, but the protests were
+as ineffective then as now. "You cannot change human nature," men
+say; but that in fact is precisely what Christianity claims to do.
+Unless it can change human nature it is a failure.</p>
+<p>The ideal of Christianity is not the abolition of inequality
+(only a certain sort of social theorists are insane enough to
+expect that). All men are born unequal in a variety of ways,
+physical, intellectual, moral; and under any form of society that
+so far has been invented they are born in social classes which
+remain very hard realities in spite of our theories. What
+Christianity aims at accomplishing is to transcend these
+inequalities, natural and artificial, by raising men to a state of
+spiritual equality, a state which ensures true and full enjoyment
+of all the privileges of the child of God. In this state there is
+open to all the gift of sanctifying grace which is the possession
+of God now, and in the future will unfold into the capacity of the
+complete participation of the life of heaven. This belongs to, is
+within the grasp of, any child, any ignorant peasant, any toiler,
+as much as it is within the grasp of bishop or priest or Religious.
+And this much--and how much it is!--the Church has succeeded in
+accomplishing. It may be slow in offering the riches of the Gospel
+to the unconverted world, but where it has presented the Gospel, it
+presents it to all men as a Gospel of salvation and sanctification.
+When tempted to discouragement let us remember that whatever the
+shortcoming of the Church, it is yet true that every man, woman and
+child in these United States of America can through its
+instrumentality, become a saint whenever he desires. But,
+naturally, to become a saint, effort is necessary.</p>
+<p>Where the Church has failed is not in the offer of salvation and
+sanctity, but in removing some of of the obvious obstacles to its
+attainment by many to whom it appeals, to whom its divine mission
+is. It has not succeeded in convincing us that we are members one
+of another, that is, it has not succeeded in persuading us to act
+upon what we profess in any broad way. The Church is not a
+fellowship in any comprehensive sense. The divisions which run
+through secular society and divide group from group run through it
+also. The parish which should be the exemplification of the
+Christian brotherhood in action is not so. Too often a parish is
+known as the parish of a certain social group. There are parishes
+to which people go to get "into society." Very likely they do not
+succeed, but that is the sort of impression that the parish
+membership has made upon them. Then there are parishes to which
+people "in society" would not be transferred. There are churches in
+which no poor person would set foot, not that they would be
+unwelcome, but that they would feel out of place. So long as such
+things are true, our practice of brotherhood has not much to
+commend of it.</p>
+<p>And when we go about setting things right I am not sure that we
+do not mostly make them worse. I do not believe that it is the
+business of the Church to set about the abolition of inequalities
+and the getting rid of the distinctions between man and man. Apart
+from the waste of time due to attempting the impossible, what would
+be gained? Pending the arrival of the social millenium we need to
+do something; and that something, it seems to me a mistake to
+assume must be social. "We must bring people together": but what is
+gained by bringing people together when they do not want to be
+together, and will not actually get together when you force them
+into proximity. There is nothing more expressive of the failure of
+well-meant activity than a church gathering where people at once
+group themselves along the familiar lines and decline to mix,
+notwithstanding the utmost endeavours of clergy and zealous ladies
+to bring them together. The thing is an object lesson of wrong
+method.</p>
+<p>Is there a right method? There must be, though no one seems to
+have found it yet. There is in any case a right point of departure
+in our common membership in Jesus Christ. Suppose we drop the
+supposition that we make, I presume because we think it pious, that
+if they are both Christians a dock labourer ought to be quite at
+home at a millionaire's dinner party, or a scrub-woman in a box at
+the Metropolitan opera house. Suppose we drop the attempt to force
+people together on lines which will be impossible till after the
+social revolution has buried us all in a common grave, and fasten
+attention on the one fact that, from our present point of view,
+counts, the fact that we are Christians. Suppose one learns to meet
+all men and all women simply on the basis of their religion; when
+that forms the bond that unites us when we come together, we have
+at once common grounds of interest in the life and activities of
+the Body of Christ. Suppose the millionaire going down town in his
+motor sees his clerk walking and stops and picks him up, and
+instead of talking constrainedly about the weather or about
+business, he begins naturally to talk to him about spiritual
+matters. Why could they not talk about the Mission that has just
+been held, or the Quiet Day that is in prospect? One great trouble,
+is it not? is that we fight shy of talking to our fellow-Christians
+of the interests that we really have in common and try to put
+intercourse on some other ground where we have little or nothing in
+common. The things that should, and probably do, vitally interest
+us, we decline to talk about at all. We are so stiff and formal and
+restrained in all matter of personal religious experience that we
+are unable to express the fact of Christian Brotherhood. The fact
+that you smile at the presentment of the case, that you cannot even
+imagine yourself talking about your spiritual experience with your
+clerk or your employer, shows how far you are from a truly
+Christian conception of Brotherhood.</p>
+<p>Our Lord's words that we are making our subject indicate the
+paramount importance that He laid upon the acceptance of God's will
+as the ultimate rule of life. "Whosoever shall do the will of My
+Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister,
+and my brother." "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command
+you." That is the common ground on which we are all invited to
+stand, the ground of a common loyalty to God, of intense zeal for
+the cause of God. Our Lord gave His whole life to that cause. As
+His disciples watched Him on an occasion, they remembered that it
+was written: "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." Zeal is
+not a very popular quality because it is always disturbing the
+equanimity and self-complacency of lukewarm people. And then, we
+dislike to be thought fanatics. But I fancy that there will always
+be a touch of the fanatic about any very zealous Christian, and it
+is not worth while to suppress our zeal for fear of the world's
+judgment upon it. What we have to avoid is the misdirection of
+zeal. There is, no doubt, a zeal which is "not according to
+knowledge." We need to be sure, in other words, that our zeal is a
+zeal for God, and not a zeal for party or person or cause. It is no
+doubt quite easy to imagine that we are seeking to do God's will
+when we are merely seeking to impose on our own will. Self-seeking
+is quite destructive of the friendship and service of God. The
+Kingdom whose interests we are attempting to forward may turn out
+to be a Kingdom in which we expect to sit on the right hand or the
+left of the throne because of the brilliance of the service
+rendered.</p>
+<p>Life is simplified very much when the will of God thus becomes
+its guiding principle, and all other relations of life are
+subordinated to our relation to our heavenly Father. Then have we
+brought life to that complete simplicity which is near akin to
+peace. When we have learned in deciding any line of action not to
+think what our neighbours and friends will feel, or what the world
+will think, but only what God will think, we have little difficulty
+in making up our minds. Suppose that a boy has to make up his mind
+whether he will study for the priesthood, the vital thing on which
+to concentrate his thought and prayer is whether God is calling him
+to that life, and if he is convinced that he is being called the
+whole question should be settled. In fact in most cases it is far
+from being settled because this simplicity has not been attained.
+There is a whole social circle to be dealt with, who urge the
+hardness of the life, the scant reward, the greater advantages of a
+business career, and so on; all of which have absolutely nothing to
+do with the question to be decided. It is so all through life. In
+most questions of life's decisions, no doubt, there is no sense of
+any vocation at all, of a determining will of God; but is not that
+because we assume that God has no will in such matters, and leaves
+us free to follow our own devices? Such an assumption is hardly
+justified in the case of One to Whom the fall of a sparrow is a
+matter of interest. It is our weakness, or the sign of our
+spiritual incompetence, that we have unconsciously removed the
+greater part of life from the jurisdiction of the divine will. We
+do not habitually think of God as interested in the facts of daily
+experience; we do not take Him with us into offices and factories.
+Perhaps we think that they are hardly fit places for God, and I
+have no doubt that He has many things to suffer there. But He is
+there, and will suffer, until we recognise His right there, and
+insist upon His there being supreme.</p>
+<p>Let us go back for a moment to Our Lady standing outside the
+place where Jesus was preaching, perplexed and worried at the
+course He was taking. I suppose that it is always easier to
+surrender ourselves unreservedly into God's hands than it is to so
+surrender some one we love. I suppose that S. Mary so trusted in
+God that she never thought with anxiety of what His providence was
+preparing for her; but she would not quite take that attitude about
+her Son; or rather, while she did intellectually, no doubt, take
+that attitude, her feelings never went the whole distance that her
+mind went. But surrender to the will of God means complete
+surrender of ourself and ours. It means absolute confidence in God,
+it means lying quiet in his arms, as the child lies still in the
+arms of his mother. It means that we trust God.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>&nbsp;Rose-Mary, Sum of virtue virginal,<br>
+&nbsp;Fresh Flower on whom the dew of heaven downfell;<br>
+O Gem, conjoined in joy angelical,<br>
+&nbsp;In whom rejoiced the Saviour was to dwell:<br>
+&nbsp;Of refuge Ark, of mercy Spring and Well,<br>
+Of Ladies first, as is of letters A,<br>
+&nbsp;Empress of heaven, of paradise and hell--<br>
+Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.<br>
+<br>
+O Star, that blindest Phoebus' beams so bright,<br>
+&nbsp;With course above the empyrean crystalline;<br>
+Above the sphere of Saturn's highest height,<br>
+&nbsp;Surmounting all the angelic orders nine;<br>
+&nbsp;O Lamp, that shin'st before the throne divine,<br>
+Where sounds hosanna in cherubic lay,<br>
+&nbsp;With drum and organ, harp and cymbeline--<br>
+Mother, of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,<br>
+<br>
+O Cloister chaste of pure virginity,<br>
+&nbsp;That Christ hath closed 'gainst crime for evermo';<br>
+Triumphant Temple of the Trinity,<br>
+&nbsp;That didst the eternal Tartarus o'erthrow;<br>
+&nbsp;Princess of peace, imperial Palm, I trow,<br>
+From thee our Samson sprang invict in fray;<br>
+&nbsp;Who, with one buffet, Belial hath laid low--<br>
+Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,<br>
+<br>
+Thy blessed sides the mighty Champion bore,<br>
+&nbsp;Who hath, with many a bleeding wound in fight,<br>
+Victoriously o'erthrown the dragon hoar<br>
+&nbsp;That ready was his flock to slay and smite;<br>
+&nbsp;Nor all the gates of hell him succour might,<br>
+Since he that robber's rampart brake away,<br>
+&nbsp;While all the demons trembled at the sight--<br>
+Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,<br>
+<br>
+O Maiden meek, chief Mediatrix for man,<br>
+And Mother mild, full of humility,<br>
+Pray to thy Son, with wounds that sanguine ran,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Whereby for all our trespass slain was he.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;And since he bled his blood upon a tree,<br>
+'Gainst Lucifer, our foe, to be our stay,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;That we in heaven may sing upon our knee--<br>
+Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,<br>
+<br>
+Hail, Pearl made pure; hail, Port of paradise;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Hail, Ruby, redolent of rays to us;<br>
+Hail, Crystal clear, Empress and Queen, hail thrice;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Mother of God, hail, Maid exalted thus;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;O Gratia plena, tecum Dominus;<br>
+With Gabriel that we may sing and say,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Benedicta tu in mulieribus--<br>
+Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.<br>
+<br>
+William Dunbar,<br>
+<br>
+XV-XVI. Cents.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>HOLY WEEK I</h3>
+<center>Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. XXVI, 56.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God,
+accept, O Lord, our prayers and save us.<br>
+<br>
+May the Holy Mother of God and all the saints be our intercessors
+with the Heavenly Father, that He may deign to be merciful to us,
+and in pity save His creatures. Lord God all-powerful! save us and
+have mercy upon us.<br>
+<br>
+Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God, the Immaculate
+Mother of Thine only Son, and through the prayers of all the
+saints, receive, O Lord, our supplications; hear us, O Lord, and
+have mercy upon us; pardon us, bear with us, and blot out our sins,
+and make us worthy to glorify Thee, together with Thy Son and the
+Holy Ghost, now and ever, world without end. Amen.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">Armenian.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>e try to see our Lord's passion through the eyes of His Blessed
+Mother. We feel that all through Holy Week she must have been in
+direct touch with the experiences of our Lord. Her outlook would
+have been that of the Apostolic circle the record of which we get
+in the Gospels. Our Lord's ministry had showed a period of
+popularity during which it must have seemed to those closest to Him
+that they were moving rapidly to success; and then, after the day
+at Caeserea Phillipi, when His Messianic claims had been
+acknowledged, they would have been filled with enthusiasm for the
+mission the meaning of which was now defined. Then came a period of
+disappointment. Our Lord declined to become a popular leader, and
+by the nature of His preaching, the demands that He made upon those
+who were inclined to support Him lost popularity till it was a
+question to be considered whether the very Apostles would not
+desert Him. Then came the flash of renewed enthusiasm which is
+evidenced by the Palm Sunday entry, bringing, no doubt, renewed
+hopes to those nearest our Lord who seem to have been utterly
+unable to accept the view of His failure and death that He kept
+before them. But the hope vanished as quickly as it was roused. In
+less than a week the rejoicing group of Sunday followed Him from
+the Upper Chamber to the shades of Gethsemane. The betrayal, the
+trial, the end, come quickly on.</p>
+<p>This to S. Mary was the piercing of the sword through the very
+heart. These were the days when the meaning of close association
+with Incarnate God, with God Who was pursuing a mission of rescue,
+came out. The mission of the Son for the Redemption of man meant
+submitting to the extremity of insult and torture, and it meant
+that those who were closest associated with Him should be caught
+into the circle of His pain. As our Lord was displaying the best of
+which humanity is capable, so was He calling out the worst of which
+it is capable. These last days of the life of Jesus show where man
+can be led when he surrenders himself to the dominion of the Power
+of Evil and becomes the servant of sin. The triumph of demoniac
+malice through its instruments, the Roman governor, the Jewish
+authorities, of necessity swept over all who were related to our
+Lord. The storm scattered the Apostolic group and left the Christ
+to face His trial alone. Yet not alone: He himself tells us the
+truth. "Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be
+scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet
+I am not alone, because the Father is with me." It was what the
+Prophet had foreseen: "All ye shall be offended because of me this
+night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep
+shall be scattered."</p>
+<p>We do not know where S. Mary was during these days, but we are
+sure that she was as near our Lord as it was possible for her to
+be. We know that her own thought would be of the possibility of
+ministering to Him. We know that she would not have fled with the
+Apostles in their momentary panic. She was at the Cross, and she
+was at the grave, and she would have been as near Him in the agony
+and the trial as it was possible for her to be. And she too was in
+agony. Every pang of our Lord found echo in her. Every blow that
+fell upon His bleeding back, she too felt. Every insult that the
+soldiers inflicted, hurt her. Our Lord in the consciousness of His
+mission is constantly sustained by the thought that His Passion and
+Death is an offering to the will of the Father,--an offering even
+for these miserable men who are brutally treating a man whom they
+know to be innocent. Her sorrow is the utter desolation of seeing
+the One Whom she loves above all else suffer, while she can bear
+Him no alleviation in His suffering, cannot so much as wipe the
+blood from off His wounded brow, cannot even touch His hand, and
+look her love into His eyes. She follows from place to place while
+our Lord is being hustled from Caiaphas to Pilate and from Pilate
+to Herod and back again; from time to time hearing from some one
+who has succeeded in getting nearer, how the trial is going on,
+what the accusation is, how Jesus is bearing Himself, what answers
+He has made, what the authorities have said. Once and again, it may
+be, catching a distant glimpse of Him as He is led about by the
+guards, seeing Him always more worn and weary, always nearer the
+point of collapse. Herself, too, nearer collapse; yet going on
+still with that strength that love gives to mothers, determined at
+the cost of any suffering to be near Him, as near as she can be,
+till the very end. So we see her on that day in the streets of
+Jerusalem, and think of the distance travelled since the morning
+when Gabriel said to her, wondering: "Hail thou that art highly
+favoured.... Blessed art thou among women."</p>
+<p>We, too, follow. We have so often followed, with the Gospel in
+our hands, and wondered at the method of God. We have tried hour
+after hour to penetrate the meaning of the Passion, to find what
+personal message it brings, to discover what light it throws on our
+own lives. We have gone out into Gethsemane and placed ourselves
+with the three chosen Apostles while our Lord went on to pray by
+Himself; and we have discovered in ourselves the same weariness,
+the same tendency to sleep, in the presence of what we tell
+ourselves is the most important of all interests. We call up the
+scene under the olives, and find that we wander and are inattentive
+and idle when we most want to be attentive and alert. We place
+ourselves in the group that surrounds our Lord when the soldiers,
+led by Judas, come, and ask ourselves shall I too run away? And our
+memory flashes the answer: You have run away again and again: you
+have in the face, not of grave dangers, but of insignificant
+trifles--how insignificant they look now--for fear of criticism,
+for fear of being thought odd, for fear of the opinion of worldly
+companions, for fear of being pitied or laughed at, over and over
+again you have run away. The things that seemed important when they
+were present seem pitifully insignificant in the retrospect.</p>
+<p>We follow out of the garden to the meeting-place of the
+Sanhedrin, to the Judgment seat of Pilate, to the palace of Herod.
+Any impulse to criticise S. Peter is speedily suppressed: we have
+denied so often under such trifling provocation. S. Peter was
+frightened from participation in the act of our Lord's sacrifice
+through mortal fear of his life. We have stayed away from the
+offering of the Holy Sacrifice, how often! from mere sloth, from
+disinclination to effort, from the fact that our participation
+would prevent us from joining in some act of worldly amusement. S.
+Peter, following to the high Priest's palace to see the end, looks
+heroic beside our frivolity. We follow through the details of the
+trial, we go to Herod's palace and see the brutal treatment of our
+Lord, and we remember of these men that their conduct was founded
+in ignorance. We do not for a moment believe that they would have
+spit upon our Lord and buffeted Him, and crowned Him with a crown
+of thorns, if they had believed that He was God. But we believe
+that He is God. Our desertion of Him when we sin, our contempt of
+His expressed ideals when we compromise with the world, our
+departure from His example when we excuse ourselves on the ground
+of very minor inconveniences from keeping some holy day or fasting
+day, are not founded in ignorance at all. They can hardly be said
+to be founded in weakness, so slight is the temptation that we do
+not resist. As we meditate on the Passion, as we keep Good Friday,
+very pitiful all our idleness and subterfuges appear to us. But we
+so easily shake off the effect! We emerge from our meditation
+almost convinced that the stinging sense of the truth of our
+conduct which we are experiencing is the equivalent of having
+reformed it. We go out with a glow of virtue and by night realise
+that we have sinned again!</p>
+<p>It is no doubt well that we should not be permanently depressed
+about our spiritual state, but only because we have taken all the
+pains we can to heal the wounds of sin. There is no need that any
+one should abide in a state of sin because there has been in the
+Precious Blood a fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, and
+by washing therein, though our souls were as scarlet, they shall
+become white as snow. We have the right to a certain optimism about
+ourselves if it be founded on actual spiritual activity which
+ceaselessly tries to reproduce the Christ-experience in us, even
+the experience of the Passion by the voluntary self-discipline to
+which we subject ourselves. A brilliant writer has spoken of those
+whose view of their lives is drawn from "that fountain of all
+optimism--sloth." That is a true saying: our optimism is often no
+more than an idle refusal to face facts; a quaint and good-natured
+assumption that nothing very much matters and that everything will
+be all right in the end!</p>
+<p>This easy going optimism is commonly as far as possible from
+representing any spiritual fact. If we are seeking any serious and
+fruitful relation to the Passion of our Lord, we must seek it along
+the Way of the Cross. To follow His example means to follow His
+experience, to treat life as He treated it. The content of our
+lives is quite different, but the treatment of the given fact must
+be essentially the same. We need the same repulse of temptation,
+the same quiet disregard of the appeals of the world, whether it
+offer the alleviation of difficulty or the bestowal of pleasure as
+the reward of our allegiance. And we, sinners in so manifold ways,
+need what our Lord did not need, repulsion from our sins as the
+necessary preliminary to forgiveness.</p>
+<p>My experience makes me feel very strongly that we are apt to be
+deficient in the first step in repentance--contrition. As we follow
+the Way of Sorrows we know that our Lord is suffering <i>for
+us</i>; and we feel that the starting point of our repentance must
+lie in our success in making that a personal matter. In our self
+examination, in our approach to the sacrament of penance, we are
+compelled to ask ourselves, Am I in fact sorry for my sins? It
+surely is not enough that we fear the results of sin, or that we
+are ashamed at our failure. This really is not repentance but a
+sort of pride. There must, I feel, be sorrow after a godly sort.
+That is, true contrition, true sorrow for sin, is the sort of
+sorrow which is born of the Vision of God; it has its origin in
+love. I have found in our Lord love giving itself to me, and I must
+find in myself love giving itself to Him. To my forgiveness it is
+not enough that God loves me. I know that He loves me and will love
+me to the end, whether I repent or not; but the possibility of
+forgiveness lies in my love of Him, whether it takes such hold on
+me as actually to stimulate me to forsake sin. I shall never really
+forsake sin through shame or fear; one gets used to those emotions
+after a little and disregards them. But one does not get used to
+love; it grows to be an increasing force in life, and so masters us
+as to draw us away from sin.</p>
+<p>Contrition then will be the offspring of love. It will be born
+when we follow Christ Jesus out on the Sorrowful Way and understand
+that He is going out for us. Then we want to get as near Him as
+possible: we want to take His Hand and go by His side. We want to
+stand by Him in His trial and share His condemnation. We want
+constantly to tell Him how sorry we are that we have brought Him
+here. We shall not be content that He feel all the pain. We are
+convinced that we ought to share in the pain as we share in the
+results of the Passion. When we have achieved this point of view we
+shall feel that our approach to Him to ask His forgiveness needs,
+it may be, much more care than we have hitherto bestowed upon it.
+We have thought of penance as forgiveness; now we begin to see how
+much the attitude which precedes our entrance to the confessional
+counts, and that we must value the gift of God enough to have made
+sure that we are ready to receive it. We kneel down, therefore, and
+look at our crucifix, and say: "This hast Thou done for me," and
+make our act of love in which we join ourselves to the Cross of
+Jesus. We tell ourselves that love is the beginning and end of our
+relation to Him.</p>
+<p>It is to be urged that every Christian should be utterly
+familiar with the life of our Lord, and should spend time regularly
+in meditation upon His life, and especially upon His Passion. Love
+is the constant counteractive of familiarity; and it is kept fresh
+in our souls by the contemplation of what our Lord has actually
+done for us. A general recalling of what He has done has not the
+same stimulating force as the vivid placing before us of the actual
+details of His work. To most of us visible aids to the realisation
+of our Lord's action for us are most helpful. A crucifix on the
+wall of one's room before which one can say one's prayers, and
+before which also we stop for a moment time and again in the course
+of the day, just to say a few words, to make an act of love, of
+contrition, or of union, keeps the thought of the Passion fresh. We
+gain in freshness and variety of prayer by the use of such
+devotions as the litany of the Passion or the Way of the Cross. A
+set of cards of the Stations help us to say them in our homes. It
+is much to be desired that we accustom ourselves to devotional
+helps of all sorts. We are quite too much inclined to think that
+there is something of spiritual superiority in the attempt to
+conduct our devotional life without any of the helps which
+centuries of Christian experience have provided. It is the same
+sort of feeling that makes other Christians assume that there is a
+superiority in spiritual attainment evidenced by their dispensing
+with "forms," especially with printed prayers. It is just as well
+to remember that we did not originate the Christian Religion, but
+inherited it; and that the practices of devotion that have been
+found helpful by generations of saints, and after full trial have
+retained the approval of the greater part of Christendom, can
+hardly be treated as valueless, much less as superstitious. The
+fact that saints have found them valuable and one has not, may
+possibly not be a criticism of the saints.</p>
+<p>The meditation upon the Way of the Cross, the vision of Jesus
+scourged, spitted upon, crowned with thorns, may well give us some
+searchings of heart in regard to our own easy-going, luxurious
+life. Nothing seems to disturb the modern person so much as the
+suggestion that the chief business of the Christian Religion is not
+to look after their comfort. They hold, it would appear, to the
+pre-Christian notion that prosperity is an obvious mark of God's
+favour, and that by the accumulation of wealth they are giving
+indisputable evidence of piety. It is well to recall that there is
+no such dangerous path as that of continual success. I do not in
+the least mean to imply that success is sinful or indicates the
+existence of sin, but I do mean to insist very strongly that the
+successful man needs to be a very spiritually watchful man. He is
+quite apt to think that he may take all sorts of liberties with the
+laws of God. There are, no doubt, evident dangers to the
+unsuccessful man, but the Holy Scriptures have not thought it worth
+while to spend much time in denouncing him. It has a good deal to
+say of the danger, not so much of wealth, as of prosperity in
+general: "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride,
+fullness of bread, and prosperous ease were in her." When we find
+ourselves in a satisfied and comfortable home life, so comfortable
+that we find it difficult to get up to a week-day Mass, and
+disinclined to go out to a service after dinner, we need
+watching.</p>
+<p>And the best watchman is oneself; and the best method of
+self-examination is by the Cross. Is there any sense in which we
+can be said to be following our Lord on the Sorrowful Way? Have we
+taken up the Cross to go after Him, or are we assuming that we can
+just as well drift along with the crowd of those who only look on?
+We all need from time to time to consider the Catholic teaching as
+to mortification and self-discipline. I am quite aware that to
+insist on this is not the way of popularity, but nevertheless I
+learned a long time ago that about the only way that a priest can
+take if he wishes to be saved is the way of unpopularity. And
+therefore I am going to insist that the practice of rigorous
+self-discipline is essential to any healthy Christian life. We
+cannot dispense ourselves from this, for the mere fact that we are
+dispensing ourselves is the proof that we need that upon which we
+are turning our back. Briefly, what I mean is that the assumption
+of the Cross by a Christian means that he is taking into his life,
+voluntarily, personal acts of self-sacrifice which he offers to our
+Lord as the evidence and the means of his own Cross-bearing.</p>
+<p>The unruliness of our nature can only be kept in order by
+continual acts of self-discipline. We, no doubt, recognise the need
+of the discipline of the passions, but our theory, so far as we can
+be said to have one, would seem to be that the discipline of the
+passions means resistence to special temptations as they arise. We
+may no doubt sin through the passions, and therefore we need a
+minimum of watchfulness to meet temptations which come our way. I
+submit that such a way of conducting life is quite sufficient to
+account for the vast amount of failure we witness or, perhaps,
+experience. When from time to time the country gets alarmed about
+its health, when it is threatened with some epidemic such as
+influenza, the papers are full of medical advice the sum of which
+is you cannot dodge all the disease germs that are in the air, but
+you can by a vigorous course of exercise and by careful diet, keep
+yourself in a state of such physical soundness that the chances are
+altogether favourable for your withstanding the assaults of
+disease. No doubt the vast majority of people prefer not to follow
+this advice. A considerable number of them resort to various magic
+cults, such as letting sudden drafts of cold air in upon the
+inoffensive bystander with a view to exorcising the germs. But it
+remains that the medical advice is sound: it amounts to saying,
+"Keep yourself in the best physical condition possible and you will
+run the minimum chance of being ill."</p>
+<p>The Catholic treatment of life and its recommendation of
+discipline and mortification has precisely the same basis as the
+physical advice--an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of
+cure. We are exposed to temptation constantly, and we need to
+recognise the fact and prepare ourselves to meet it; and the best
+preparation is the preparation of self-discipline for the purpose
+of keeping rebellious nature under control. Good farming does not
+consist in pulling up weeds; it consists in the choice and
+preparation of the ground in which the seed is to be sown; it looks
+primarily to the growth of the seed and not to the elimination of
+the weeds. Our nature is a field in which the Word of God is sown;
+its preparation and care is what we need to focus attention on, not
+the weeds.</p>
+<p>Self-discipline is the preparation of nature, the discipline of
+the powers of the spiritual life with a view to what they have to
+do. And one of the important phases of our preparation is to teach
+our passions obedience, to subject them to the control of the
+enlightened will. If they are accustomed to obey they are not very
+likely to get out of hand in some time of crisis. If they are
+broken in to the dominion of spiritual motive, they will
+instinctively seek that motive whenever they are incited to act.
+Hence the immense spiritual value of the habitual denial to
+ourselves of indulgence in various innocent kinds of activity. I do
+not at all mean that we are never to have innocent indulgences: I
+do mean that the declining of them occasionally for the purpose of
+self-discipline is a most wholesome practice. How frequently it is
+desirable must be determined by the individual circumstances. It is
+utterly disastrous to permit a child to have everything it wants
+because there is sufficient money to spend, to permit it to run to
+soda fountains or go to the picture houses as it desires. Any sane
+person recognises that; but does the same person recognise the sane
+principle as applying in his own life? Does he feel the value of
+going without something for a day or two, or staying from places of
+amusement for a time, or of abandoning for a while this or that
+luxury?</p>
+<p>The principle is of course the ascetic principle of
+self-mastery. It is best brought before us by the familiar practice
+of fasting, which is very mildly recommended to us in its lowest
+terms in the table in the Book of Common Prayer. Naturally, its
+value is not the value of going without this or that, but the value
+of self-mastery. The very fact that our appetites rebel at the
+notion shows their undisciplined character. The child at the table
+begins to ask, not for a sensible meal founded on sound reasons of
+hygiene, but for various things that are an immediate temptation to
+the appetite. The adult is not markedly different save that he
+preserves a certain order in indulgence. The principle of fasting
+is that he should from time to cut across the inclination of
+appetite, and either go without a meal altogether, or select such
+food as will maintain health without delighting appetite. So man
+gains the mastery over the animal side of his nature and shows
+himself the child of God.</p>
+<p>The actual practice of the ascetic life really carries us much
+farther than these surface matters of a physical nature that have
+been cited. It applies in particular to the disposition of time and
+the ruling of daily actions. The introduction of a definite order
+into the day actually seems to increase the time at one's disposal.
+I know, I can hear you saying: "If you were the head of a family,
+and had children to look after, you would not talk that way. You
+would know something of the practical difficulties of life." But
+indeed I am quite familiar with the situation. And if I were so
+situated I am certain that I should feel all the more need of
+order. Families are disorderly because we let them be; because we
+do not face the initial trouble of making them orderly. A school or
+a factory would be still more disorderly than a family if it were
+permitted to be. Any piece of human mechanism will get out of order
+if you will let it. That is precisely the reason for the insistence
+on the ascetic principle--this tendency of life to get out of
+order; that is the meaning of all that I have been saying, of the
+whole Catholic insistence on discipline. Time can be controlled;
+and, notwithstanding American experience, children can be
+controlled; and control means the rescuing of the life from
+disorder and sin, and the lifting it to a level of order and sanity
+and possible sanctity.</p>
+<p>We cannot hope to meet successfully the common temptations of
+life except we be prepared to meet them, except there be in our
+life an element of foresight. An undisciplined and untried strength
+is an unknown quantity. The man who expects to meet temptation when
+it occurs without any preparation is in fact preparing for failure.
+I do not believe that there is any other so great a source of
+spiritual weakness and disaster as the going out to meet life
+without preceding discipline, thus subjecting the powers of our
+nature to trials for which we have not fitted them. Self-control,
+self-discipline, ascetic practice, are indispensible to a
+successful Christian life.</p>
+<blockquote>O STAR of starr&egrave;s, with thy stream&egrave;s
+clear,<br>
+Star of the Sea, to shipman Light or Guide,<br>
+O lusty Living, most pleasant t'appear,<br>
+Whose bright&egrave; beames the cloud&egrave;s may not hide:<br>
+O Way of Life to them that go or ride,<br>
+Haven from tempest, surest up t'arrive,<br>
+O me have mercy for thy Joy&egrave;s five.<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+O goodly Gladded, when that Gabriel<br>
+With joy thee gret that may not be numb'r&egrave;d,<br>
+Or half the bliss who could&egrave; write or tell,<br>
+When th' Holy Ghost to thee was obumbr&egrave;d,<br>
+Wherethrough the fiend&egrave;s were utterly encombr&egrave;d?<br>
+O wemless Maid, embellished in his birth,<br>
+That man and angel thereof hadden mirth.<br>
+<br>
+John Lydgate of Bury,<br>
+XV Cent.<br>
+From Chaucerian and Other<br>
+Poems, edited by W. W. Skeat,<br>
+1894.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>HOLY WEEK II</h3>
+<center>And after they had mocked him, they took the robe off from
+him,<br>
+and put his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify
+him.<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. XXVII, 31.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Forgive, O Lord, we beseech thee, the sins of thy
+people: that we, who are not able to do anything of ourselves, that
+can be pleasing to thee, may be assisted in the way of salvation by
+the prayers of the Mother of thy Son. Who.<br>
+<br>
+Having partaken of thy heavenly table, we humbly beseech thy
+clemency, O Lord, our God, that we who honour the Assumption of the
+Mother of God, may, by her intercession, be delivered from all
+evils. Through.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p class="loc">OLD CATHOLIC.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he way of the Cross is indeed a Sorrowful Way. We have meditated
+upon it so often that we are familiar with all the details of our
+Lord's action as He follows it from the Judgment Seat of Pilate to
+the Place of a Skull. I wonder if we enough pause to look with our
+Lord at the crowds that line the way, or at those who follow Him
+out of the city. It is not a mere matter of curiosity that we
+should do so, or an exercise of the devout imagination; the reason
+why we should examine carefully the faces of those men who attend
+our Lord on the way to His death is that somewhere in that crowd we
+shall see our own faces: it is a mirror of sinful humanity that we
+look into there. All the seven deadly sins are there incarnate.</p>
+<p>It is extremely important that we should get this sort of
+personal reaction from the Passion because we are so prone to be
+satisfied with generalities, to confess that we are miserable
+sinners, and let it go at that! But to stop there is to stop short
+of any possibility of improvement, because we can only hope to
+improve when we understand our lives in detail, when we face them
+as concrete examples of certain sins.</p>
+<p>There was pride there. It was expressed by both Roman and Jewish
+officialism which looked with scorn on this obscure fanatic who
+claimed to be a king! Pilate had satisfied himself of His
+harmlessness by a very cursory examination. This Galilean Prophet
+with His handful of followers, peasants and women, who had deserted
+Him at the first sign of danger, was hardly worth troubling about.
+The only ground for any action at all was the fear that the Jewish
+leaders might be disagreeable. Those Jewish leaders took a rather
+more serious view of the situation because they knew that through
+the purity of His teaching and His obvious power to perform
+miracles, a power but just now once more strikingly demonstrated in
+the raising of Lazarus, He had a powerful hold on the people. They,
+these Jewish leaders, declined a serious examination of the claims
+of such a man in their pride of place and knowledge of the
+Scriptures. They were concerned to sweep Him aside as a possible
+leader in a popular outbreak, not as one whose claim to the
+Messiahship needed a moment's examination.</p>
+<p>This intellectual pride is one of the very greatest sins to
+which humanity is tempted. It goes very deep in its destructive
+force because it is a sin, preeminently, of the spiritual nature,
+of that in us which is akin to God, His very image. It is, you will
+remember, the sin on which our Lord centres His chief denunciation.
+And common as it has always been, it has never been so common as it
+is to-day. Pilate and the chief priests are duplicated in every
+community in the thousands who reject Christianity without any
+adequate examination as incredible in view of what they actually
+hold, or as inconvenient in view of what they desire to practice.
+We have only to read very superficially in the current literature
+of the day, we have only to examine the teaching in colleges, to be
+completely convinced of the vast extent of the revolt against the
+Christian Religion. This revolt is for the most part a revolt
+without adequate examination. It assumes that the Christian
+Religion is contrary to science, or to something else that is
+established as true. It looks at Christianity superficially through
+the eyes of those who reject it and are ignorant of it. The fact is
+that Christianity cannot be understood in any complete sense of the
+word by those who do not practice it. Its "evidence" is no doubt of
+great force; of sufficient force to lead men to experiment; but the
+actual comprehension of Christ as the Saviour of man is an
+experience. The operation of the Holy Spirit in life is necessarily
+proved, and only completely proved, by the action of the Spirit
+Himself.</p>
+<p>Another demonstration of the same pride is seen in the refusal,
+without adequate examination, to accept the Catholic Religion, and
+the picking and choosing among articles of belief and sacraments
+and practices as to what we will use or observe. Men do not like
+this or that, and they therefore decline it. The whole attitude is
+one of self-will and pride. Whatsoever comes to us with a great
+weight of Christian experience back of it certainly deserves
+careful consideration; it demands of us that we treat it as other
+than a matter of taste. Pride is the commonest of sins and the most
+dangerous for it attacks the very heart of the spiritual life. It
+runs, to be sure, through a broad range of experience and not all
+manifestations of pride are mortal sin; but all manifestations of
+it are subtle and insidious and capable of expansion to an
+indefinite degree. For there is no difference in nature between the
+spiritual attitude of the person who says, "I do not see any sense
+in that and will not do it," when the matter in question may be the
+Church's rule of fasting, and that of the man who before Pilate's
+Judgment Seat cried out, "We have no king but Caesar."</p>
+<p>It was in fact because they found their own power and place
+threatened that the Jewish authorities were so determined on our
+Lord's death. Their sin from this point of view was the sin of
+covetousness. This sin reaches its highest point when it is greed
+for power over other men's lives and destinies, when it is ready to
+sacrifice the lives of others in order to gain or maintain its
+ends. In this broad sense it is the most socially destructive of
+sins. The wars of the world for these many years have been wars for
+commercial supremacy. The world is being continually exploited by
+commercial enterprises which will stop at nothing to gain their
+ends. Some day a history of the last two hundred years will be
+written which will tell the story of the commercial expansion of
+the world we call civilised, and it will be the most horrible book
+that has ever been written. It will contain the story of the
+Spanish colonisation of America. It will contain the history of the
+slave trade. It will contain the history of the Belgian Congo, and
+of the rubber industry in South America. It will contain the
+history of the American Indian and of the opium trade of India--and
+of many like things.</p>
+<p>But while we shudder at the world-torturing ways of the pursuit
+of wealth, of the world-wide seeking of money and power, we need
+not forget that the sin of covetousness is as common as any sin can
+be. It is so common and so subtle that it is almost impossible to
+know how far one is a victim of it. It is deliberately taught to us
+as children under the guise of thrift, which if it be a virtue is
+certainly one that the saints have overlooked. We are constantly
+called on to strike a balance between what are the proper needs of
+life and what is an improper concentration of attention upon
+ourselves. Waste of money, like waste of any other energy, is a
+sin; but it is a very nice question as to what is waste. I think it
+a pretty safe rule to give expenditure the benefit of the doubt
+when it is for others, and to deny it when it is for self.</p>
+<p>However, I imagine that those who are conscientiously trying to
+conduct their lives as the children of God will have little
+difficulty in this matter. The real trouble is not in the matter of
+expenditure but in the matter of gain. The ethics of business are
+very far from being the ethics of the Gospel, and we are often
+frankly told by those engaged in business that it cannot be
+successfully conducted on the basis of the ethics of the Gospel,
+That it is not so conducted is sufficiently obvious from a cursory
+scanning of the advertising columns of any newspaper or magazine.
+The ideal of the business world is success. Naturally, one cannot
+carry on an unsuccessful business, but need it be success by all
+means and to all extents? Are there no limits to the methods by
+which business is to be pushed, except legal limits? If there is no
+room for Christian ethics in the business world there can be but
+one end; competitive business will lead the civilisation that it
+controls to inevitable disaster. Our Lord said: "Take heed and
+beware of covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the
+abundance of the things that he possesseth." And He went on to
+speak a parable which has come to be known as the Parable of the
+Rich Fool. The "practical man" may be as angered as he likes by
+this teaching, but in his soul he knows that our Lord was right.
+When such things are pointed out from the pulpit the "practical
+man" says: "What would become of the Church were it not for the
+rich and the successful?" I think that the answer is that in that
+case the Church would no more represent the rich and would have a
+fair chance of once more representing Jesus Christ.</p>
+<p>It may seem at the first sight that of the mortal sins lust was
+not represented here upon the Sorrowful Way; but that, I think is
+but a superficial analysis of the nature of lust, thinking only of
+some manifestations of it. There is however one sin that has its
+roots deep in lust which psychologists tell us is one of its
+commonest manifestations, and that is cruelty. Lust is not always,
+but commonly, cruel; and the desire to inflict pain on others is a
+very common form of its expression. There are sights we have seen
+or incidents we have read of, it may be a boy torturing an animal
+or another child, it may be a shouting mass of men about a
+prize-ring, it may be soldiers sacking a town,--when the action
+seems so senseless that we are at a loss to account for it; but the
+account of it lies in the mystery of our sensual nature, in the
+ultimate animal that we are. The savage joy that is being expressed
+by the participants in such scenes is ultimately a sensual joy.
+These men who delighted in the torture of our Lord were
+sensualists; and there are few of us who if we will watch our
+selves closely will not find traces of the animal showing itself
+from time to time. Of this crowd about the Cross relatively few
+could have known anything about the case of our Lord; but they were
+fascinated by the spectacle of a man's torture. If the executions
+of criminals were public to-day there would undoubtedly be huge
+crowds to gaze upon them.</p>
+<p>It is one of the lessons we learn from the study of sin that
+what we had thought was the essence of the sin was in fact but one
+of the manifestations of it, and that we have to carry our study
+far before we arrive at the ideal, Know thyself. It is always
+dangerous to assume that we know when we have not been at the pains
+to look at a subject on all sides. Our sensual nature needs a very
+careful discipline, and the mere freedom from certain forms of the
+sin of lust is not the equivalent of that purity which is the
+medium of the Vision of God.</p>
+<p>It is the sin of gluttony which is the least obvious in the Way
+of the Cross. There are no doubt plenty of gluttons there, but that
+is not what we are trying to find; we are trying to see how each
+sin contributed to this final act in the drama of our Lord's life,
+how each sin contributed to put men in opposition to our Lord. It
+is not the actual sin of gluttony that we shall find in operation
+here but certain inevitable effects of it, What is the effect of
+gluttony on the soul of man? Absorption in the pursuit of the
+pleasures that spring from material things; the indulgence of the
+appetite, and the natural result of such indulgence which is to
+render the soul insensitive to the spiritual. The man whose motto
+is, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," puts himself out
+of touch with the spiritual realities of life. He is materialistic,
+whatever may be his philosophy. He wants immediate results from
+life. When he is confronted with our Lord, when he is told that our
+Lord makes demands upon life for self-restraint and
+self-discipline, that He demands that the appetites be curbed
+rather than indulged, he declines allegiance. One can have no doubt
+that in our Lord's time as to-day indifference to His teaching and
+failure even to take in what the Gospel means or how it can be a
+possible rule of life is largely due to the dull spiritual state,
+outcome of the indulgence of the appetite for meat and drink. Men
+whose brains are clogged by over eating, and whose faculties are in
+a deadened state through the use of alcohol, cannot well understand
+the Gospel of God.</p>
+<p>There is abundant evidence of anger all along the Way of the
+Cross. The constant thwarting of the purpose of the Jewish
+authorities by our Lord, His unsparing criticism of them before the
+people, had stirred them to fury. If our Lord had seemed to them to
+threaten their "place and nation" we can understand that they would
+show toward Him intense hostility. Their attitude toward the people
+whose religious interests they were supposed to have in charge was
+one of utter contempt: "This people which knoweth not the Law is
+cursed." Our Lord's attitude was the opposite of all this. It was
+not, to be sure, as to-day it is represented to be an appeal to the
+people. He was not bidding for popular support, but he showed
+unbounded sympathy with the people; He cast His teaching in a form
+that would appeal to them and draw them to him. He made a popular
+appeal in that He showed Himself understanding of the popular mind
+and without social prejudice of any sort. This setting aside of the
+arrogant authorities of Israel roused them to implacable wrath.
+They felt that our Lord was setting Himself to undermine their
+authority, and as they felt that their authority was "of God" their
+indignation translated itself into terms of zeal for God.</p>
+<p>This anger that manages to wear a cloak of virtue is peculiarly
+dangerous to the soul. When we are just ordinarily mad over some
+offence committed against us it is no doubt a sin; but it is not a
+sin of the same malignity as when we feel that we can go any
+lengths because we are not angry on our own behalf, then our anger
+almost becomes an act of religion in our eyes. We have become the
+defenders of a cause. No doubt there is such a thing as "righteous
+indignation," but it is not a virtue that we are compelled to
+practice, and we would do well to leave it alone as much as
+possible lest our indignation exceed our righteousness, and we
+indentify our personal interests with the cause of God.</p>
+<p>The worst feature of tempermental flare-ups is the testimony
+they bear to our lack of discipline. When we excuse ourselves or
+others on the ground that action is "temperamental" we are in fact
+no more than restating the fact that there is sore need of
+discipline; and there is no more ground for excusing one variety of
+temperament for its lack of discipline than an other. In fact, the
+more inclined a temperament is to certain sins, the more necessity
+there is for the appropriate sort of training. People without
+self-control, who are constantly losing their temper, are public
+nuisances and ought to be suppressed. There is the worst kind of
+arrogance in the assumption that I do not have to control myself
+and can speak and act as I like. No one, whatever his position, has
+the right to ignore the feelings of others; and the more the
+position is one of authority, exempting him from a certain kind of
+criticism, the more is he bound to criticise himself and examine
+himself as to this particular sin.</p>
+<p>There are sins under this caption which do not contain much
+malice but are disturbing to life, and they are especially
+disturbing to one's spiritual life. There are peevish, complaining
+people, who do not seem to mean much harm, but keep themselves in a
+state of dissatisfaction which renders their spiritual growth
+impossible. They grow old without any of the grace and beauty of
+character which should mark a Christian old age. One knows old
+people who have been in intimate contact with the Church and the
+sacraments for many years but do not show any signs of having
+reached our Lord through them. They are dissatisfied and
+complaining and critical and generally disagreeable so that the
+task of those who take care of them is rendered very disheartening.
+What is the trouble? Has there never been any true spiritual
+discipline, but only a certain superficial conformity to a
+spiritual rule? When old age comes the will is weakened and the
+sense of self-respect undermined, with the result that what the
+person has all along been in reality, now comes to the surface and
+is, perhaps for the first time, visible to every one.</p>
+<p>Envy is closely related to pride on the one hand and to
+covetousness on the other. It begins in the perception of another's
+superiority, and carries its victim through the feeling of hurt
+pride at the contrast with himself to desire for that which is not
+his own. The envious person covets the qualities of possessions of
+another, while vividly denying that they are in fact superior to
+his own, except, it may be, in certain apparent and not very
+valuable aspects. The contrast between the superior and the
+inferior has one of two results: either the inferior is stirred to
+admiration, or he is stirred to a greater or less degree of
+envy.</p>
+<p>It was thus that contact with our Lord <i>revealed</i> the
+reality of men. It was a very true judgment to associate with him.
+His apostles were simple men who never thought of putting
+themselves in comparison with Him: the more they knew Him the more
+wonderful He seemed to them. We feel all through the Gospel story
+what an overwhelming impression His personality made upon men.
+There is no criticism raised on His character from any point of
+view. His enemies fell back on the accusation of blasphemy growing
+out of His claims, an accusation that would be true, if the claims
+were not true. What we really discover in those who oppose Him is
+envy, envy of the influence He exercises over others, envy stirred
+by His obvious superiority to themselves.</p>
+<p>Envy is one of the sins of which we are least conscious. When
+people affirm that they envy others this or that: their leisure,
+their beauty, or what not, they clearly do not envy them at all,
+but are mildly covetous of the things that they see others possess.
+Where envy does show its presence and where we do not recognise its
+nature, is in that horrible inclination to depreciate others which
+is visible in certain characters. They seem never to hear another
+mentioned but they try to think of something which limits the
+praise bestowed upon him, or altogether counteracts it. It seems to
+be an instinctive hostility to superiority as involving an implied
+criticism of one's own inferiority. It is that curious love of the
+worst that lies at the root of gossip.</p>
+<p>And what about the last of the deadly sins, the sin of sloth?
+One is almost tempted to say that it is at once the least obvious
+and the most destructive of all the deadly sins. That would no
+doubt be somewhat of an exaggeration, but it would not be very far
+off the truth. It is spiritual sloth that prevents us from
+considering as we should the spiritual problems that are presented
+to us, and therefore prevents us from gaining their promise. It is
+the quality in humanity that blocks the consideration of the new on
+the ground that we already know and can gain nothing by further
+exertion. The Jewish religious leaders declined the intellectual
+and spiritual effort of considering our Lord's claims; they just
+set them aside unconsidered. And is not that just what we are
+constantly doing, and what constitutes the most pressing danger of
+the spiritual life? We will not consider the future as the field of
+constantly new opportunity and therefore new stages of growth. We
+do not want to make the effort that is implied in that
+attitude.</p>
+<p>Our sloth binds us hand and foot and delivers us to the enemy.
+There are no doubt some who cry out: "But I am not at all slothful;
+I am busy from morning to night; of whatever else I may be guilty,
+it is not of sloth!" My friend, busy people are quite often the
+most slothful people that there are. They are busy dodging their
+rightful duties and the opportunities that God offers them, all day
+long. Have you never discovered that when you had something that
+you ought to do and do not want to do, that the easiest method by
+which you can still your conscience is to make yourself terribly
+busy about something else, and then to tell yourself that the
+reason why you have not done what you know that you ought to have
+done is that really you have not had time? Do you not know that
+being busy is one of the most effective screens that you can put
+between your conscience and your obligation? Do you not know that
+tens of thousands of men and women to-day are putting the screens
+of good works, of social service of some sort, between their souls
+and the worship of God and the practice of the sacraments? Beware
+lest while you wear yourself out with activity your besetting sin
+be found to be sloth!</p>
+<p>And shall we find there on the Way of Sorrow the virtues that
+are the opposite of the Seven Sins? Perhaps, if we had time to
+look, or had sufficient knowledge of the crowd that lines the way.
+There are certain women over there wailing and lamenting; perhaps
+they could help us. In any case we know that there is one woman who
+has succeeded in keeping near whose love of Jesus is so intense
+that it will enable her to overcome all obstacles and be near Him
+to the very last. Jesus as He staggers along the way and falls at
+length under the intolerable weight of the Cross is the embodiment
+of all virtues and of all spiritual accomplishment, and his blessed
+Mother through His grace has been kept pure from all sin. She will
+show the perfection of purely human accomplishment. She is the best
+that humanity in union with the Incarnate Son has brought forth. We
+have seen--we have caught glimpses of her life through what the
+Scriptures tell us of her--how completely she has responded to
+grace in all the actions of her life. Not much do the Scriptures
+say, but what they do say is like the opening of windows through
+which we catch passing aspects of her life which we feel are
+perfectly characteristic and revealing.</p>
+<p>And we have seen there, or we may see, may we not? the virtues
+which are the work of the Holy Spirit enabling us to overcome the
+deadly sins. We have seen the humility with which, without thought
+of self, she answered God's call to be the Mother of His Son. We
+have seen the liberality with which she places her whole life at
+God's disposal, withholding nothing from the divine service. Purity
+undefiled had been God's gift to her from the first moment of her
+existence. Hers too was that meekness which willingly accepted all
+that the appointment of God brought her, showing in her acceptance
+no withholding of the will, no trace of self-assertion. Hers was
+the great virtue of temperance, the power of self-restraint and
+self-discipline, which suppressed all movements of nature that
+would be contrary to God's will. There too was the love of the
+brother and of the neighbour which is the contrary of envy; and
+there was the eagerness in fulfilling the will of God which is the
+opposite of sloth.</p>
+<p>We have then two spotless examples,--how shall we not be stirred
+to follow them! There is Jesus manifesting the qualities of His
+sinless life, of the life of God's election, of humanity as God
+wills it to be, and as it ultimately will be when it gives itself
+to His will; and Mary in whom we see the work of God's grace
+perfectly accomplished by virtue of her perfect response to the
+love of her Sen. We look at these two lives and we see what is
+possible for us. We do not say, we cannot say, these things are too
+wonderful and great for me. We can only say, through the grace of
+God which is given me, "I can do all things." It is not my
+inevitable destiny that I should abide a sinner. I have the choice
+of being a sinner or a saint.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>MARY: Ever I cried full piteously:<br>
+"Lordings, what have ye i-brought?<br>
+It is my Son I love so much:<br>
+For God's sake bury Him nought."<br>
+They would not stop though that I swooned,<br>
+Till that He in the grave were brought.<br>
+Rich clothes they around him wound:<br>
+And ever mercy I them besought.<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+They said there was no better way<br>
+But take and bury him full snel.<br>
+They looked on my cousin John<br>
+For sorrow both a-down we fell--<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<br>
+By Him we fell that was My Child.<br>
+His sweet mouth well full oft I kissed.<br>
+John saw I was in point to spill,<br>
+That nigh mine heart did come to break.<br>
+He held his sorrow in his heart still<br>
+And mildly then to me did speak:<br>
+"Mary, if it be thy will<br>
+Go we hence; the Maudeleyn eke."<br>
+He led me to a chamber then<br>
+Where my Son was used to be,--<br>
+John and the Maudeleyn also;<br>
+For nothing would they from me flee.<br>
+I looked about me everywhere:<br>
+I could nowhere my Son&egrave; see.<br>
+We sat us down in sorrow and woe<br>
+And 'gan to weep all three.<br>
+<br>
+From St. Bernard's Lamentation on Christ's Passion.<br>
+Engl. version, probably 13th Cent, by Richard
+Maydestone.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+<h3>THE CRUCIFIXION</h3>
+<br>
+<center>And they crucified him.<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. XXVII, 35.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>In as much as we have no confidence because of our many
+sins, do thou, O Virgin Mother of God, beseech him who was born of
+thee; for a Mother's supplication availeth much to gain the
+benignity of the Master. Despise not the prayers of sinners, O
+all-august, for merciful and mighty to save is he, who vouchsafed
+to suffer for us.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">BYZANTINE.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>e have followed the Way of Sorrows to the very end and now stand
+on Calvary watching by the Cross, waiting for the death of the Son
+of God. The mystery of iniquity is consummated here where man in
+open rebellion against his God crucifies the Incarnate Son. Here is
+fulfilled the saying: "He came unto His own and His own received
+Him not." All that man can do to prove his own degredation he has
+done. In the person of Pilate he has condemned to death a man whom
+he knows to be innocent. The representative of human justice has
+denied justice for the sake of his own personal ends. In the person
+of Herod he has permitted the insult and abuse of One of whom he
+knows no ill, and has displayed toward Him wanton and brutal
+cruelty. In the person of the Jewish authorities he has rejected
+the Messenger of the God whom he recognises as his God, and will
+not listen to the voice of prophecy because he finds his personal
+ends countered by the fulfilment of the promises of the religion
+whose subject he professes to be. In the person of the disciples he
+shows himself too cowardly and self-regarding to stand by his
+innocent Master and to throw in his lot with Him. In the person of
+the people he shows himself cruel, hardened, indifferent to
+suffering and to justice, ready to be made the tool of unscrupulous
+politicians, unstable and ignorant. As we look on, we succeed in
+retaining any shred of respect for humanity only through the
+contemplation of the exceptions--of S. John and the little group of
+women who are faithful to the end: above all in the sight of
+blessed Mary standing by the Cross of her Son.</p>
+<p>It is the will of God that our Lord should follow the human lot
+to the very depth of its possible sufferings. There are no doubt
+many sufferings of humanity that our Lord does not share, they are
+those which spring out of personal sin. He in Whom was no sin could
+not suffer those things which spring from one's own wrong doing.
+That is one broad distinction between the burdens of the crosses on
+Calvary, a distinction which the penitent thief caught easily when
+he said to his reviling fellow-criminal, "Dost thou not fear God,
+seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for
+we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done
+nothing amiss." And in as much as a great part of what we suffer is
+plainly just, the pain we bear is intensified by the knowledge that
+what we are is the outcome of what we have been. But our Lord,
+while He does not suffer as the result of His own sin, does suffer
+as the result of sin in that He wills to bear the result of men's
+sin by putting Himself at their mercy. He bears the burden of sin
+to the uttermost, looking down from the Cross at the faces of these
+men whose salvation He is making possible if in the days to come
+they will associate themselves with Him. One wonders how many of
+those who saw Him crucified came, before they died, to accept Him
+as the Saviour and their God. There must have been many wonderful
+first Communions in the early Church when those who had rejected
+Jesus in His humility came to receive Him glorified.</p>
+<p>But as we look at this scene of the dying we feel that the
+powers of evil are working their uttermost, they are driving their
+slaves to incredible sins. One feels the tremendous power that evil
+is as one looks at these human beings who are body and soul wholly
+under its dominion. The Power of Darkness appears utterly in
+control of the world of humanity; but we know that this moment in
+which its triumph seems most complete is in fact the moment in
+which its defeat is at hand. The victory that is being won is the
+victory of the Vanquished: and the moment when the victory of evil
+seems assured by the dying of Jesus, is in fact the moment when the
+chains of the slaves of sin are broken, and men who will to be free
+are henceforth free indeed. From that moment a new freedom is
+within the reach of men, the freedom which comes to them through
+their participation in the redemption wrought for them by God.
+Presently S. John will announce the great message of freedom to the
+Church, a message that he will tell in his own wonderful
+simplicity, a simplicity which almost deceives us as to its
+unfathomable depth of love and mystery: "For whatsoever is born of
+God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh
+the world, even our faith.... We know that whosoever is born of God
+sinneth not: but He that was begotten of God keepeth him, and the
+evil one toucheth him not. And we know that we are of God, and the
+whole world lieth in the evil one. And we know that the Son of God
+is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him
+that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus
+Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life."</p>
+<p>This is what the dying of Jesus achieved for us, that we should
+be free as men had never been free, and that we should be strong as
+men had never been strong.</p>
+<p>On their crosses the thieves agonise in the realisation of the
+sin that has brought them there; but our Lord, Who is free from
+sin, looks out on the scene before Him in a wonderful detachment
+from His personal suffering. Being without sin our Lord is without
+egotism, and never treats life from that purely personal standpoint
+that we are constantly tempted to adopt. Our own needs, our own
+interests, occupy the foreground and determine the judgment; and we
+are rarely able to see in dealing with the concrete case that our
+own interests are ultimately indentical with the interests of the
+whole Body. The lesson that if one member suffer, all the members
+suffer with it, that we are partners in joy and sorrow alike, is
+almost impossible of assimilation by the radical individualists
+that we are. Our theories break down before the test of actuality.
+But our Lord was not an individualist. He, in His relations with
+men, is the Head of the Body; and He admits no division of
+interests between His members. He therefore can think of the needs
+of others while He Himself is undergoing the last torture of death.
+He can impartially judge the separate cases of His members; He can
+attend to the spiritual welfare of a needy soul; He can think of
+His own death as an act of sacrifice willed by God, and not as a
+matter concerning Himself alone; and in doing these things He
+teaches us a much-needed lesson of the handling of life.</p>
+<p>No lesson is to-day more needed because we are more and more
+being influenced to treat life as a private matter. I have spoken
+of this before and need not elaborate it now; but I do want to
+insist, at whatever risk of repetition, that a Christian must, if
+his religion mean anything at all, look on the interests of the
+Body, not as a separate group of interests to which he is
+privileged or obligated to contribute such help as seems to him
+from time to time appropriate, but as in fact his own primary
+interests because his true significance in the world is gained
+through his membership in the Body. His life is hid with Christ in
+God and his conversation is in heaven. The life that he now lives
+in the flesh he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him
+and gave Himself for him. To assert separate interests is to break
+the essential relation of his life. He is nothing apart from the
+Body but a dry and withered branch fit for the burning. No doubt
+our egotism rebels against this view of life, but it is certain
+that it is the view of the Christian Religion. If we would realise
+the ideals of the Religion we must act as those who are in constant
+relations with the other members of the Body and whose life gets
+its significance through those relations.</p>
+<p>There is no more outstanding lesson of our Lord's life than
+this. It is true from whichever angle you look at it. If you think
+of our Lord as a divine Person it is at once evident how much of
+His meaning is included in His relations to the other Persons of
+the Blessed Trinity. He claims no independent will; it is the will
+of the Father that He has come to do. He claims no original work:
+it is the work that the Father has given Him to do that He is
+straightened until He accomplish. He has no individual possession,
+but all things that the Father has are His. Considered as God, our
+Lord is One Person in the one divine nature, no Unitarian
+interpretation of Him is possible. On the other hand, if you look
+at Him as Incarnate, as having identified Himself with humanity, He
+is in that respect made one with His brethren. He has made their
+interests His, and as their new Head is opening for them the gate
+of the future. He is inviting them into union with Himself, that in
+the status of His "brethren" and "friends" they may be also the
+true children of the heavenly Father. There is no hint anywhere
+that these things may be accomplished apart from Him, in individual
+isolation: indeed, if they could be so accomplished the Incarnation
+would be meaningless. He is the Way and no one cometh to the Father
+but by Him. He is the Truth, and no one knows the Father but he to
+whom the Son reveals Him. He is the Life, and no one spiritually
+lives except through His self-impartation. "He that eateth my flesh
+and drinketh my blood hath eternal life. He that eateth me, even he
+shall live by me." In this outlook from the Cross which we
+recognise in our Blessed Lord when, forgetting His own sufferings
+in His appreciation of the needs of others, we see Him still
+fulfilling His ministry of mercy and of sympathy, we are certain
+that His eyes would rest upon one group which could not fail to
+pierce His heart with its pathos and tragedy. Our Lord's love is
+not a general, impersonal love of humanity; it is always love of a
+person. He no doubt felt a special love for this thief who appealed
+to Him from the cross by His side. In the whole course of His life
+our Lord had shown His oneness with us in that He loved special
+people in a special way. He loved Lazarus and his sisters, He loved
+S. John. Above all others He loved His Blessed Mother. And now
+looking down from the Cross He sees that the disciple whom He loved
+was succeeded in leading His mother into the very shadow of the
+Cross. How S. Mary had made her way there we do not know: only love
+knows how it triumphs over its obstacles and comes forth
+victorious. There is Blessed Mary, looking up into the face so
+scarred and bleeding, and there is the Son, looking down through
+the blinding blood into the face of the mother. This is the supreme
+human tragedy of Calvary. We can only stand and watch the exchange
+of love.</p>
+<p>And then comes the word--the word, by the way, which when it was
+spoken years ago in Cana of Galilee, men have interpreted as a
+harsh and rebuking word, with how much truth this scene tells--then
+comes the word: "Woman, behold thy son." In His love He gives her
+that which He had so much loved, the friendship of S. John. He
+brings together those who had so supremely loved Him in an
+association which would support them both in the trial of their
+loss. "Woman, behold thy son; behold thy mother." Bitter as was
+their sorrow in this hour, we know that they were marvellously
+comforted by this power of love which is able to transcend
+suffering and death. We know, because we know how utterly our Lord
+is one with us, that it was much to Him to look on the face that
+bent over Him in the Manger in Bethlehem. We know, because we know
+the perfect woman that was Mary, that there was deep joy as well as
+deep agony in being able to stand there at the last beneath the
+Cross.</p>
+<p>Do you think that we are going too far when we see in S. Mary
+not simply the mother of our Lord, but when we also see in her a
+certain representative character? Does she not represent us in one
+way and S. John represent us in another, in this supreme exchange
+of love? Do we not feel that in S. John we have been recommended to
+the love and care of Mary who is our mother? Do we not feel that in
+S. John the mother has been committed to our love and care? Surely,
+because we are members of her Son we have a special relation to S.
+Mary, and a special claim upon her, if it be permitted to express
+it in that way. It is no empty form of words when we call her
+mother, no exaltation of sentimentalism. The title represents a
+very real relation of love. It brings home to us that the love of
+Mary is as near infinite as the love of a creature can be, and that
+like the love of her Son it is an unselfish love. She is
+necessarily interested in all the members of the Body, and their
+cares and joys and sorrows she is glad to make her own. She is very
+close to us in her love and sympathy; she is very ready to help us
+with her prayers. We never go to her for succour but she hears us.
+"Behold thy son," her divine Son said to her on the Cross in His
+agony, and all who are members of that Son are her sons too. Her
+place in heaven above all creatures, most highly favoured as she
+is, is a place to which our prayers penetrate, and never penetrate
+unheard. For that other Son, through whose merits she is what she
+is, whose Face she ever beholds as the Face alike of her Redeemer
+and her Child, is ever ready to hear her intercessions for us
+because they come to Him with the power and the insight that
+perfect purity and perfect sympathy alone can give. So for us there
+is intense personal consolation in this word: "Behold thy
+mother."</p>
+<p>But there is another side to this committal. It is mutual:
+"Behold thy son." If we can see ourselves in S. John, committed to
+the Blessed Mother, we can also see ourselves in S. John to whom
+the blessed mother is committed. "Behold thy mother." There is a
+sense in which the blessed mother is committed to us; to-day she is
+our care. We see the fulfillment of this trust in the love and
+reverence wherewith Christendom from the beginning has surrounded
+S. Mary. It has accepted the charge with a passionate devotion. The
+growth of devotion to her is recorded in the vast literature of
+Mariology which comes to us from all parts and all eras of the
+Catholic Church. The details of the expression of this devotion
+have been wrought out through the centuries with loving care, and
+the result is that wherever there is a Catholic conception of
+religion, either in East or West, there is a grateful response to
+our Lord's trust of His Blessed mother to His Church in the person
+of S. John.</p>
+<p>We feel, do we not? that it is one of the great privileges of
+our spiritual life that we have found a personal part in this
+trust, that it is permitted us to preserve and hand on this
+reverence for Blessed Mary, and in so doing to gain personal
+contact with her as a spiritual power in the Kingdom of God. It
+means much to us that we can have the love and sympathy which are
+blended with her intercession, that we can associate our prayers
+with hers in the time of our need. Much as we value the sympathy
+and prayers of our friends here, we cannot but feel that in Mary we
+have a friend whose helpfulness is stimulated by a great love and
+directed by deep spiritual insight into the reality of our needs.
+We turn therefore to her with the certainty of her
+co-operation.</p>
+<p>Our Lord on the Cross had now fulfilled His mission in the care
+of individual persons, had prayed for His tormentors, had forgiven
+the penitent thief, and had commended those who were the special
+objects of His love to one another, and could now turn His thoughts
+away from earth to the love of the Father. His last words are
+intimate words to Him. They express the agony that tears His soul
+as the Face of the Father is for a moment hidden, and the peace of
+an accomplished work as He surrenders Himself into the hands of the
+Father that sent Him. He who had been our example all His life,
+showing us how to meet life, is our example in death, showing us
+how to meet death.</p>
+<p>But just wherein does the dying of Christ become an example for
+us? This final surrender to the Father of a will that had never
+been separate from the Father,--what can we derive from all that?
+There are many lines of approach and application. I can only touch
+on one or two:--</p>
+<p>"I have glorified Thee on the earth," our Lord said in the last
+wonderful prayer, "I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to
+do." And here on the Cross He repeats, "It is finished." When we
+think of this we are impressed with the steadiness with which our
+Lord pursued His purpose, with the way He concentrated His whole
+life upon His work. He declined to be drawn aside by anything
+irrelevant to it. People came to Him with all sorts of requests,
+from the request that He will settle a disputed inheritance to the
+request that He will become their king; and He puts them all aside
+as having no pertinence to His mission. It is interesting to go
+through the Gospel and note just what are the details of this
+winnowing process; mark what our Lord accepts as relevant to His
+mission and what not. He is never too occupied or tired to attend
+to what belongs to His work. An ill old woman or idiot child is
+important to Him and He attends to them; but He declines the sort
+of work that will involve Him and His mission in controversy and
+politics. He is not a reformer of society but a reformer of men. He
+knows that only by the reformation of men can society be
+reformed.</p>
+<p>There is no doubt much to be learned from the study of our
+Lord's method of the limits of the social and political activity of
+His Church. It has constantly fallen a victim to the temptation to
+undertake the reform of the world by some other means than the
+conversion of it. It has shown itself quite willing to be made "a
+judge and divider." It has not always declined the invitation it
+has received to assume the purple. "Your business is to reform this
+miserable world which so sadly and so obviously needs you," men say
+to it; "You are not living up to your principles and you are
+neglecting your duty by not supporting this great movement for the
+betterment of the race," others say. Still others urge, "You are
+losing great masses of men through your inexplicable failure to
+adopt their cause." And the Church in the whole course of its
+history has constantly yielded to this temptation, and has not seen
+until too late that in so doing it was making itself the tool or
+the cat's-paw of one interest or another whose sole interest in
+religion was the possibility of exploiting the influence of the
+Church. In the stupid hope of forwarding its spiritual interests
+the Church has entangled itself with the responsibilities of
+temporal power; it has made itself the backer of "the divine right
+of kings"; and it has found itself bound hand and foot in the
+character of a national or state Church; and with a curious
+incapacity to learn anything from experience is now
+enthusiastically cheering for democracy! Poor Church, whose leaders
+are so constantly misleaders.</p>
+<p>It is all due to the hoary temptation to try to get to one's end
+by some sort of a short cut: "All these things will I give you if
+you will fall down and worship me." Our Lord knew that Satan could
+not really give Him the ends He was seeking; but His followers are
+constantly confident that he can, and are therefore his constant
+and ready tools for this or that party or interest. They sell
+themselves to monarchy or democracy, to capital or labour, with the
+same guileless innocence of what is happening to them, with the
+same simple-minded incapacity to learn anything from the lessons of
+the past. There are no short cuts to spiritual ends, and those ends
+can never be accomplished by secular means. The interests of the
+Kingdom of God can never be forwarded by alliance with the powers
+of this world; the interests of particular persons or parties in
+the Church may be--but that is quite another thing.</p>
+<p>The lesson is one that is not without application to the
+individual life. There again the tendency to mind something other
+than one's own business is almost ineradicable. We have before us
+the work of building our spiritual house, of finishing the work
+that the Father has given us to do, of carrying to a successful
+conclusion the work of our sanctification. In view of the
+experience of nearly two thousand years of Christianity and of our
+own personal experience, that would seem a sufficiently difficult
+and obligatory work to occupy the undivided energies of a
+life-time. But we are accustomed to treat this primary business of
+life quite as though it were a parergon, a thing to play with in
+our unoccupied hours, the fad of a collector rather than the
+supreme interest of an immortal being. That spiritual results are
+no oftener achieved than they are can occasion no surprise when one
+understands the sort of spirit wherewith they are approached. If
+the average man adopted toward his business the attitude he adopts
+toward his religion he would be bankrupt within a week,--and he
+knows it. You know that the attention you are paying to religion
+and the sort of energy and sacrifice you are putting into it are
+insufficient to secure any sort of a result worth having.
+Spiritually speaking, your life is an example of misdirected and
+dissipated energy. There is no spiritual result because there is no
+continuous and energetic effort in a spiritual direction. You are
+not like a master-builder planning and erecting a house. You are
+like a child playing with a box of blocks who begins to build a
+house with them and, when it is half built, is attracted by
+something else and runs after that--not even waiting to put the
+blocks back into the box!</p>
+<p>Life, no doubt, this modern city life into which we are plunged,
+is terribly distracting. Concentration upon a single aim is hard to
+attain. So we plead in our excuse, but the excuse is a false one
+and we know it. We know it because we know many people who have
+achieved the sort of concentration and simplicity of aim that we
+complain of as so difficult. They to be sure have other ends than
+those we claim to be ours, but that would not seem to be important.
+By far the greater part of the male population of this city is
+intensely concentrated in money making. I do not believe that I
+have overheard during the last year two men talking in a car or on
+the street who were not talking about money. There is a good enough
+example of the possibility of concentrating on a single end under
+the conditions of our life. There are other people, you know some
+of them, whose lives are devoted in the most thorough manner to the
+pursuit of pleasure. They find no difficulty in such concentration,
+and they afford an even better example of what we are discussing
+than the money-makers. The money-maker says, "I have to live and my
+family has to live, and we cannot live unless I devote myself to
+business. It is all very well to talk about spiritual interests,
+but those are the plain common sense facts. A man who spends all
+his time on religion will find it pretty difficult to live in New
+York." Very well, that seems unanswerable. But go back to the men
+and women whose sole interest is amusement--how do they live? In
+some way they seem to have so succeeded in subordinating business
+to pleasure that they get what they want, and they somehow escape
+starvation!</p>
+<p>There, I fancy, is the explanation--they get what they want. In
+a broad way we all get what we want. We accomplish in some degree
+at least the ends which we make the supreme ends of life. We are
+back therefore where we started: What are our supreme ends? Are
+they in fact spiritual? Have we mastered the technique of the
+Christian life sufficiently to be single-eyed and pure-hearted in
+our pursuit of life's ends? Are we devoted to the aim of
+manifesting the glory of God and finishing the work that He has
+given us to do?</p>
+<p>This, once more, was the secret of our Lord's life, and it is
+the secret of all those who have at all succeeded in imitating Him.
+They have followed Him with singleness of purpose. They have felt
+life to be before all else a vocation to manifest the will of God
+and to finish a given work. That was the attitude of our Blessed
+Mother; she began on that note: "Behold the hand-maid of the Lord;
+be it unto me according to thy word." It was the Gospel that she
+preached: "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." Her whole life was
+a response--the response of love to love.</p>
+<p>That no doubt, goes to the heart of the spiritual problem. If we
+are to accomplish anything at all in the way of spiritual
+development, if we are to conduct life in simplicity toward
+spiritual ends, it will only be when the source of life's energy is
+found in love. He who does not love has no compelling motive toward
+God and no abiding principle to control life. If we conceive the
+Christian life as a task that is forced upon us, and which in some
+way we are bound to fulfil, we may be sure that the way in which we
+shall fulfil it will be weak and halting. We may be as
+conscientious as you please, but we shall not be able to
+concentrate on a work which is merely a work of duty and not the
+embodiment of a great love. Our primary activity should be devout
+meditation and study of our Lord's life, with prayer for guidance
+and help, till something of the love of God is shed abroad in our
+hearts, till we feel our hearts burn within us and our spirits glow
+and we become able to offer ourselves, soul and body, a living
+sacrifice unto Him.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>
+<table summary="">
+<tr>
+<td>MARY:</td>
+<td>I cried: "Maudeleyn, help now!</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>My Son hath loved full well thee;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Pray Him that I may die,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>That I not forgotten be!</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Seest thou, Maudeleyn, now</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>My Son is hanged on a tree,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Yet alive am I and thou,--</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>And thou, thou prayest not for me!"</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MAUDELEYN</td>
+<td>said: "I know no red,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Care hath smitten my heart sore.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>I stand, I see my Lord nigh dead;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>And thy weeping grieveth me more.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Come with me; I will thee lead</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Into the Temple here before</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>For thou hast now i-wept full yore."</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MARY:</td>
+<td>"I ask thee, Maudeleyn, where is that place,--</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>In plain or valley or in hill?</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Where I may hide in any case</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>That no sorrow come me till.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>For He that all my joy was,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Now death with Him will do its will;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>For me no better solace is</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Than just to weep, to weep my fill."</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Maudeleyn comforted me tho.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To lead me hence, she said, was best:</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But care had smitten my heart so</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;That I might never have no rest.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>"Sister, wherever that I go</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>The woe of Him is in my breast,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>While my Sone hangeth so</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>His pains are in mine own heart fast.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Should I let Him hangen there</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Let my Son alone then be?</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>Maudeleyn, think, unkind I were</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>If He should hang and I should flee."</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>
+<hr style="width: 25%;"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I bade them go where was their will,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This Maudeleyn and everyone,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And by myself remain I will</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For I will flee for no man.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+From St. Bernard's "Lamentation On Christ's Passion."<br>
+<br>
+Engl. version, 13th Cent., by Richard Maydestone.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE DESCENT AND BURIAL</h3>
+<center>And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped<br>
+it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own<br>
+new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock.<br>
+<br>
+S. Matt. XXVII, 59, 60.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>It is meet in very truth to bless thee the Theotokos,
+the ever-blessed and all-immaculate and Mother of our God. Honoured
+above the Cherubim, incomparably more glorious than the Seraphim,
+thou who without stain gavest birth to God the Word, and art truly
+Mother of God, we magnify thee.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">BYZANTINE.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he end had come--so it must have seemed to those who had loved
+and followed our Lord. As they came back from the burial, those of
+them who had remained true to the end, as they came out of their
+hiding places, those others who forsook Him and fled, they met in
+that "Upper Room" which was already consecrated by so many
+experiences. They came back from Joseph's Garden, S. John leading
+the blessed Mother, the Magdalen and the other Mary following, S.
+Peter came from whatever obscure corner he had found safety in. The
+other Apostles came one by one, a frightened, disheartened group,
+shame-faced and doubtful as to what might next befall them. The
+thing that to us seems strangest of all is that no one seems to
+have taken in the meaning of our Lord's words about His
+resurrection. Not even S. Mary herself appears to have seen any
+light through the surrounding darkness. I suppose that so much of
+what our Lord taught them was unintelligible until after the coming
+of the Holy Spirit that they rarely felt sure that they understood
+His meaning; and when the meaning was so unprecedented as that
+involved in His sayings about the resurrection we can understand
+that they should have been so little influenced by them.</p>
+<p>S. Mary's grief would have been so deep, so overwhelming, that
+she would have been unable to think of the future at all save as a
+dreary waste of pain. She could only think that her Son who was all
+to her, was dead. She had stood by the Cross through all the agony
+of His dying: she had heard His last words. That final word to her
+had sunk very deep into her heart. She had once more felt His Body
+in her arms as it was taken down from the Cross; and she had
+followed to the place where was a Garden and a new tomb wherein man
+had never yet lain, there she had seen the Body placed and hastily
+cared for, as much as the shortness of the time on the Passover Eve
+would permit. And then she had gone away, not caring at all where
+she was taken, with but one thought monotonously beating in her
+brain,--He is dead, He is dead.</p>
+<p>It would not be possible in such moments calmly to recall what
+He Himself had taught about death. Death for the moment would mean
+what it had always meant to religious people of her time and
+circle. What that was we have very clearly presented to us in the
+talk with Martha that our Lord had near the place where Lazarus lay
+dead. There is a fuller knowledge than we find explicit in the Old
+Testament, showing a growth in the understanding of the Revelation
+in the years that fall between the close of the Old Testament canon
+and the coming of our Lord. There is a belief in survival to be
+followed by resurrection at the last day. That would no doubt be
+St. Mary's belief about death. That is still the belief of many
+Christians to-day. "I know that he shall rise again in the
+resurrection at the last day." There are still many who think that
+they have accepted the full Revelation of God in Christ who have
+not appreciated the vast difference that the triumph of Christ over
+death has made for us here and now.</p>
+<p>So we have no difficulty in understanding the gloom that fell on
+the Apostolic circle, accentuated as it was by the very vivid fear
+that at any moment they might hear the approaching feet of the
+Jewish and Roman officials and the knock of armed hands upon the
+door. What to do? How escape? Had they so utterly misunderstood and
+misinterpreted Christ that this is the natural outcome of His
+movement? Had they been the victims of foolish hopes and of a
+baseless ambition when they saw in Him the Christ, the one who
+should at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel? They had
+persistently clung to this nationalistic interpretation of His work
+although He had never encouraged it; but it was the only meaning
+that they were able to see in it. And now all their expectations
+had collapsed, and they were left hopeless and leaderless to face
+the consequences of a series of acts that had ended in the death of
+their Master and would end, they knew not how, for them. Was it at
+all likely that the Jewish authorities having disposed of the
+leader in a dangerous movement would be content to let the
+followers go free? Would they not rather seek to wipe out the last
+traces of the movement in blood?</p>
+<p>So they would have thought, gathered in that Upper Room, while
+outside the Jewish authorities were keeping the Passover. What a
+Passover it was to them with this nightmare of a rebellion which
+threatened their whole place and power passed away. What mutual
+congratulations were theirs on the clever way in which the whole
+matter had been handled. There had been a moment when they were on
+the very point of failure, when Pilate was ready to let Jesus go
+free. That was their moment of greatest danger; and they took their
+courage in both hands and threw the challenge squarely in the face
+of the cowardly Governor: "If thou let this man go, thou art not
+Caesar's friend!" The chief priests knew their man, and they
+carried their plan against him with a determined hand, declining to
+accept any compromise, anything less than the death of Jesus. Great
+was the rejoicing; hearty were the mutual congratulations in the
+official circles of Jerusalem. It had been long since they had
+celebrated so wonderful a Passover as that!</p>
+<p>So limited, so mistaken, is the human outlook on life. They had
+but to await another night's passing and all would be changed. But
+in the meantime the position of the disciples was pitiful. They
+were in that state of dull, hopeless discouragement that is one of
+the most painful of human states. It is a state to which we who are
+Christians do from time to time fall victims with much less excuse.
+We are hopeless, we say and feel. We look at the future, at the
+problems with which we are fronted, and we see no ray of light, no
+suggestion of a solution. We have been robbed of what we most
+valued and life looks wholly blank to us. For those others there
+was this of excuse,--they did not know Jesus risen, they did not
+know the power of the resurrection life. For us there is no such
+excuse because we have a sure basis of hope in our knowledge of the
+meaning of the Lord.</p>
+<p>Hope is one of the great trilogy of Christian Virtues, the gift
+to Christians of God the Holy Ghost. As Christians we have the
+virtue of hope, the question is whether we will excercise it or no.
+It is one of the many fruits of our being in a state of grace. Many
+blunder when they think of hope in that they confound it with an
+optimistic feeling about the future. We hear of hopeful persons and
+we know that by the description is meant persons who are confident
+"that everything will be all right," when there seems no ground at
+all for thinking so. They have a "buoyant temperament," by which I
+suppose is meant a temperament which soars above facts. That not
+very intelligent attitude has nothing to do with the Christian
+virtue of hope. Hope is born of our relation to God. It is the
+conviction: "God is on my side; I will not fear what man can do
+unto me." It is the serene and untroubled trust of one who knows
+that he is safe in the hands of God, and that his life is really
+ordered by the will and Providence of God.</p>
+<p>This virtue, had they possessed it, would have carried the
+disciples through the crisis of our Lord's death. They had had
+sufficient experience of Him to know that they might utterly rely
+on Him in all the circumstances of their lives. He had always
+sustained them and carried them through all crises. They had often
+been puzzled by Him, no doubt; they had felt helpless to fathom
+much of His teaching, but they had slowly arrived at certain
+conclusions about Him which He Himself had confirmed. On that day
+at Caesarea Phillipi they had reached the conclusion of His
+Messiahship, a slumbering conviction had broken into flame and
+light in the great confession of S. Peter. The meaning of
+Messiahship was a part of their national religious tradition; and
+although in some important respects mistaken, they yet, one would
+think, have been led to perfect trust in our Lord when they
+acknowledged His Messianic claims. But death? They could not get
+over the apparent finality of death. But, again, perhaps we are not
+very far beyond this in our understanding of it. To us still death
+seems very final.</p>
+<p>But it was just that sense of its finality--of its constituting
+a hopeless break in the continuity of existence--that our Lord was
+engaged in removing during these days which to them were days of
+hopelessness and despair. When they came to know what in these days
+was taking place; and when the Church guided by the Holy Spirit
+came to meditate upon the meaning of our Lord's action it would see
+death in a changed light. The sense of a cataclysmic disaster in
+death would pass and be replaced by a sense of the continuity of
+life. Hitherto attention had been concentrated on this world, and
+death had been a disappearence from this world, the stopping of
+worldly loves and interests. Presently death would be seen to be
+the translation of the human being to a new sphere of activities,
+but involving no cessation of consciousness or failure of personal
+activities. Men had thought, naturally enough in their lack of
+knowledge, of the effect of death on the survivors, of the break in
+their relations with the dead. Now death would be viewed from the
+point of view of the interests of the person who is dead; and it
+would emerge that he continued under different conditions, and in
+the end it would come to be seen that even in the relations of the
+survivors with the dead there was no necessary and absolute break,
+but that the new conditions of life made possible renewed
+intercourse under altered circumstances.</p>
+<p>Our Lord, the disciples learned not long after, during these
+days went to preach to the spirits in prison, which the thought of
+the Church has interpreted to mean that He carried the news of the
+Redemption He had wrought through His dying, to the place of the
+dead, to the region where the souls of the faithful were patiently
+waiting the time of their perfecting. The doors of the heavenly
+world could not be opened till the time when He by His Cross and
+Passion, by His death and resurrection, opened them. The Heads of
+the Gates could not be lifted till they were lifted for the
+entrance of the King of Glory. But once lifted they were lifted
+forever; and when He ascended up on high He led His troop of
+captives redeemed from the bondage of death and hell.</p>
+<p>It is through these lifted Gates that the companies of the
+sanctified have been streaming ever since; and the difference that
+has been made in our view of death has been immense. If we have the
+faith of a Christian death has been transformed. There remains, of
+course, the natural grief which is ours when we part from those
+whom we love. This grief is natural and holy as it is in fact an
+expression of our love. It is not rebellion against the will of
+God, but is the expression of a feeling wherewith God has endowed
+us. But there is no longer in it the sting of hopelessness that we
+find, for instance, in the inscriptions on pagan tombs, nay, on
+tombs still, though created by Christians and found in Christian
+cemeteries. Rather it is the expression of a love which is learning
+to exercise itself under new conditions. We do not find it possible
+to reverse all our habits in a moment; and the new relation with
+the dead is one to which we have to learn to accustom ourselves. I
+remember a case where a mother and a son had never been separated
+for more than a day at a time, though he was far on in manhood.
+There came a time of indeterminate separation and the mother's
+grief was intense notwithstanding that there was no thought of a
+permanent separation. It took some time for her to accustom herself
+to the new mode of communication by letter. It is not far otherwise
+in death; it takes some time for us to accustom ourselves to the
+new mode of intercourse through prayer, but we succeed, and the new
+intercourse is very real and very precious. In a sense, too, it is
+a nearer, more intimate intercourse. It lacks the homely, daily
+touches, no doubt; but in compensation it reveals to us the
+spiritual values in life. We speedily learn, we learn almost by a
+spiritual instinct, what are the common grounds on which we can now
+meet. By our intercourse with our dead we get a new grasp on the
+truth of our common life in Christ: it is in and through Him that
+all our converse is now mediated. We have little difficulty in
+knowing what are the thoughts and interests which may be shared
+under the new conditions in which we find ourselves. Our perception
+of spiritual interests and spiritual values grows and deepens, and
+our communion with our dead becomes an indication of the extent of
+our own spiritual growth.</p>
+<p>There come times in the spiritual experience of most of us when
+we seem to have got to the end. There is a deepening sense of
+failure which is not, when we analyse it, so much a failure in this
+or that detail, as a general sense of the futility of the life of
+the Church as expressed in our individual lives. It came to those
+primitive congregations, you remember, to which S. Peter was
+writing; "Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers
+fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of
+creation." It is the weariness of continuous effort from which we
+conclude that we are getting quite insufficient results.</p>
+<p>No doubt that is true. The results are never what we expect,
+possibly because the effort is never what we imagine it to be. We
+continually underestimate the opposing force of evil, the
+difficulty of dealing with a humanity which falls so easily under
+the slightest temptation. It is not that sinners decline to hear
+the Word of God, but that those who profess themselves to be the
+servants of God, and who in fact intend to be such, are so
+lamentably weak and ineffective. We think of the effort of God in
+the Incarnation; we have been following that effort in some detail
+through the Passion. We are surprised, shocked, disheartened by the
+spectacle of the hatred that innocence stirs up, at the lengths men
+will go when they see their personal ends threatened. We are
+horrified by Caiphas, Pilate, Herod. But is that the really
+horrifying thing about the Passion of our Lord? To me the supreme
+example of human incomprehension is that all the disciples forsook
+Him and fled, that He was left to die almost alone. There we get
+the most disheartening failure in the tragedy.</p>
+<p>For we expect the antagonism of the world, especially that part
+of the world that has seen and rejected Christ. There we find
+Satanic activities. One of the outstanding features of the
+literature of to-day in the Western world, the world that had known
+from childhood the story of Jesus, is its utter hatred of
+Christianity; its revolt from all that Christianity stands for.
+This is markedly true in regard to the Christian teaching in the
+matter of purity. The contemporary English novel is perhaps the
+vilest thing that has yet appeared on this earth. There have been
+plenty of unclean books written in the course of the world's
+history--we have only to recall the literature of the
+Renaissance--but for the most part they have been written in
+careless or boastful disregard of moral sanctions which they still
+regarded as existing; but the novel of the present is an immoral
+propaganda--it is deliberately and of malice immoral, not out of
+careless levity, but out of deliberate intention. You do not feel
+that the modern author is just describing immoral actions which
+grow out of his story, but that he is constructing his story for
+the purpose of propagating immoral theory. He hates the whole
+teaching of the Christian Religion in the matter of purity. He has
+thrown it overboard on the ground that it is an "unnatural"
+restraint. To those who have studied the development of thought
+since the Renaissance there is nothing surprising in this.</p>
+<p>But what does still surprise those who are as yet capable of
+being surprised is the light way in which the mass of Christians
+take their religion. Occasionally, in moments of frankness, they
+admit that they are not getting anything out of it; but it is
+harder to get them to admit that the reason is that they are not
+putting anything into it. You do not expect to get returns from a
+business into which you are putting no capital, and you have no
+right to expect returns from a religion into which you are putting
+no energy. What is meant by that is that those Christians who are
+keeping the minimum routine of Christianity, who are going to High
+Mass on Sunday (or perhaps only to low Mass) and then making the
+rest of the day a time of self-indulgence and pleasure; who make
+their communions but rarely; who do not go to confession, or go
+only at Easter; who are giving no active support to the work of the
+Gospel as represented in parish and diocese have no right to be
+surprised if they find that they do not seem to get any results
+from their religion; that it is often rather a bore to do even so
+much as they do, and that they see no point in permitting it
+further to interfere with their customary amusements and
+avocations. I do not know what such persons expect from their
+religion, but I am sure that they will be disappointed if they are
+expecting any spiritual result. Naturally, they will be
+disappointed if they look in themselves for any evidence of the
+virtue of hope. The most that can be looked for under the
+circumstances is that mockery of hope, presumption.</p>
+<p>We are not to be discouraged in our estimate of the Christian
+Religion by this which seems to be the failure of God. We are not
+to echo the cry: "Since the fathers fell asleep, all things
+continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." S. Peter
+pointed out to those pessimists that all things do not continue the
+same, that there are times of crisis which are the judgments of
+God. Such a judgment was that of old which swept the wickedness of
+the world away, "whereby the world that then was, being overflowed
+with water, perished." He goes on to state that the present order
+likewise will issue in judgment: "The heavens and the earth which
+are now ... are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day
+of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." What renders men
+hopeless is the feeling of God's inactivity; but this declaration
+of impending judgment certifies the active interest of God. God's
+dealing with the world is a perpetual judgment of which we are apt
+to decline the evidence until the cataclysm reveals the final
+scene. But every society, every individual life, is being judged
+through the whole course of its existence, and there is no need
+that either society or individual should be blind to the fact that
+such a judgment is taking place. There is no failure of God. There
+is a failure on our part to understand the works of God.</p>
+<p>We may very well consider the problem an individual one and ask
+ourselves what ground of hope we have. On the basis of our present
+effort can we, ought we, to have more than we have? The spiritual
+life is not an accident that befalls certain people; it is an art
+that is acquired by such persons as are interested in it. It is
+attained through the careful training and exercise of the faculties
+wherewith we have been endowed. The answer to our question is
+itself a perfectly simple one, as simple as would be the answer to
+the question: "Do you speak French?" We speak French if we have
+taken the trouble to learn French; and we have gained results in
+the way of spiritual development and culture if we have taken the
+trouble to do so. I do not know why we should expect results on any
+other ground than that.</p>
+<p>But certain persons say: "I have tried, and have not attained
+any results." Well, I should want to know what the trying means in
+that case. It is well for a person who aspires to spiritual culture
+to think of his past history. What sort of character-development
+has so far been going on? Commonly it happens that there has been
+no spiritual effort that is worth thinking about; but that does not
+mean that nothing spiritual has been happening. It means on the
+contrary that there has been going on a spiritual atrophy, the
+spiritual powers have been without exercise and will be difficult
+to arouse to activity. In such a case as that spiritual awakening
+will be followed by a long period of spiritual struggle against
+habits of thought and action which we have already formed, a period
+in which unused and immature spiritual powers must be roused to
+action and disciplined to use. The simplest illustration of this is
+the difficulty experienced by the enthusiastic beginner in holding
+the attention fixed on spiritual acts such as the various forms of
+prayer. In all such attempts at spiritual activity there will be
+the constant drag of old habits, the recurrence of states of mind
+and imagination that had become habitual. These hindrances can be
+overcome, but only by steady and rather tedious labour. They call
+for the display of the virtue of patience which is not one of the
+virtues characteristic of spiritual immaturity. Hence reaction and
+the feeling that one is not getting on, the feeling that we have
+quite possibly made a mistake about the whole matter.</p>
+<p>This is the place for the exercise of hope; and hope will come
+if we look away from our not very encouraging acquirement to the
+ground that we have for expecting any acquirement at all. If we
+ask: "Why hope?" we shall see that our basis of hope is not in
+ourselves at all but in God. We hope because of the promises of
+God, because of His will for us as revealed in His Son. "He loved
+us and gave Himself for us"; and that giving will not be in vain.
+"He gave Himself for me," I tell myself, "and therefore I am
+justified in my expectation of spiritual success." So one tries to
+learn from the present failure as it seems; so one repents and
+pushes on; so one learns that it is through tenacity of purpose
+that one attains results.</p>
+<p>And again: I am sustained by hope because I see that the results
+that I covet are not imaginary. They exist. I see them in operation
+all about me. I learn of them as I study the lives of other
+Christians past and present. They are reality not theory, fact not
+dream. And what has been so richly and abundantly the outcome of
+spiritual living in others must be within my own reach. The results
+they attained were not miraculous gifts, but they were the working
+of God the Holy Spirit in lives yielded to Him and co-operating
+with Him.</p>
+<p>Once more: is it not true that after a period of honest labour I
+do find results? Perhaps not all that I would like but all that I
+am justified in expecting from the energy I have spent? I do not
+believe that any one can look back over a year's honest labour and
+not see that the labour has born fruit.</p>
+<p>In any case the fact that we do not see just what we are looking
+for does not mean that no spiritual work is going on. It may seem
+that our Lord is silent and that to our cries there is no voice nor
+any that answers; but that may mean that we are looking in the
+wrong place or listening for the wrong word. The disciples looked
+that the outcome of our Lord's life should be that the Kingdom
+should be restored to Israel; and when they turned away from the
+tomb in Joseph's Garden they felt that what they had looked for and
+prayed for was hopeless of accomplishment. But the important point
+was not their vision of the Kingdom at all, but that they had
+yielded themselves to our Lord and become His disciples and lovers.
+This is not what they intended to do, but it is what actually had
+happened: and when the grave yielded up the dead Whom they thought
+that they had lost forever, Jesus came back with a mission for them
+that was infinitely wider than their dream: the mission of founding
+not the old Kingdom of David, but the Kingdom of David's Son. All
+their aspirations and prayers were fulfilled by being transcended,
+and they found themselves in a position vastly more important than
+had been reached even in their dreams.</p>
+<p>Something like that not infrequently happens in our experience.
+We conceive a spiritual ambition and work for a spiritual end, and
+seem always to miss it; and then the day comes when God reveals to
+us what He has been doing, and we find that through the very
+discipline of our failure we have been being prepared for a success
+of which we had not thought: and when we raise our eyes from the
+path we thought so toilsome and uninteresting, it is to find
+ourselves at the very gate of the City of God. It will be with us
+as with the Apostles who in the darkest hour of their imagined
+failure, when they were gathered together in hiding from the Jews
+were startled by the appearence among them of the risen Jesus, and
+were filled with the unutterable joy of His message of peace.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>"His body is wrapp&egrave;d all in woe,<br>
+Hand and foot He may not go.<br>
+Thy Son, Lady, that thou lovest so<br>
+Naked is nailed upon a tree.<br>
+<br>
+"The Bless&egrave;d Body that thou hast born,<br>
+To save mankind that was forlorn,<br>
+His body, Lady, the Jews have torn,<br>
+And hurt His Head, as ye may see."<br>
+<br>
+When John his tale began to tell<br>
+Mary would not longer dwell<br>
+But hied her fast unto that hill<br>
+Where she might her own Son see.<br>
+<br>
+"My sweete Son, Thou art me dear,<br>
+Oh why have men hanged thee here?<br>
+Thy head is closed with a brier,<br>
+O why have men so done to Thee?"<br>
+<br>
+"John, this woman I thee betake;<br>
+Keep My Mother for My sake.<br>
+On Rood I hang for mannes sake<br>
+For sinful men as thou may see.<br>
+<br>
+"This game alone I have to play,<br>
+For sinful souls that are to die.<br>
+Not one man goeth by the way<br>
+That on my pains will look and see.<br>
+<br>
+"Father, my soul I thee betake,<br>
+My body dieth for mannes sake;<br>
+To hell I go withouten wake,<br>
+Mannes soul to maken free".<br>
+<br>
+Pray we all that Blessed Son<br>
+That He help us when may no man<br>
+And bring to bliss each everyone<br>
+Amen, amen, amen for Charity.<br>
+<br>
+Early English Lyrics, p. 146.<br>
+From an MS. in the Sloane collection.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<h3>THE RESURRECTION</h3>
+<br>
+<center>And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted; ye<br>
+seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he<br>
+is risen; he is not here.<br>
+<br>
+S. Mark XVI, 6.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>O God, who wast pleased that thy Word, when the angel
+delivered his message, should take flesh in the womb of the blessed
+Virgin Mary, give ear to our humble petitions, and grant that we
+who believe her truly to be the Mother of God, may be helped by her
+prayers. Through.<br>
+<br>
+O Almighty and merciful God, who hast wonderfully provided
+perpetual succour for the defence of Christian people in the most
+blessed Virgin Mary; mercifully grant that, contending during life
+under the protection of such patronage, we may be enabled to gain
+the victory, over the malignant enemy in death.
+Through.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p class="loc">OLD CATHOLIC.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hatever may be our grief, however life may seem to have been
+emptied of all interest for us, nevertheless the routine of life
+reasserts itself and forces us back to the daily tasks no matter
+how savourless they may now seem. We speedily find that we are not
+isolated but units in a social order which claims us and calls on
+us to fulfil the duties of our place. Blessed Mary was led away
+from the tomb of her Son in the prostration of grief; but her very
+duty to Him would have forced her thought away from herself and led
+her to join in the preparations which were being made for the
+proper care of the Sacred Body. And in that sad duty she would find
+solace of a kind; there is an expression of love in the care we
+give our dead. This body now so helpless and unresponsive, has been
+the medium through which the soul expressed itself to us; it has
+been the instrument of love and the sacrament of our union. How
+well we know it! How well the mother knows every feature of her
+child, how she now lingers over the preparations for the burial
+feeling that the separation is not quite accomplished so long as
+her hands can touch and her eyes see the familiar features. In the
+pause that the Sabbath forced on the friends of Jesus we may be
+sure that they were making what preparations might be made under
+the restrictions of their religion, and that they looked eagerly
+for the passing of the Sabbath as giving them one more opportunity
+of service to the Master. There was the group of women who had
+followed Him and "ministered of their substance" who were faithful
+still. The Mother had no "substance"; she shared the poverty of her
+Son. Her support during the Sabbath would be the expectancy of
+looking once more upon His Face.</p>
+<p>But when the first day of the week dawned it proved to be a day
+of stupendous wonder. They, the Disciples and these faithful women,
+seemed to themselves, no doubt, to have passed into a new world
+where the presuppositions of the old world were upset and reversed.
+There were visions of angels, reported appearances of Jesus, an
+empty tomb. Through the incredible reports that came to them from
+various sources the light gradually broke for them. It was true
+then, that saying of Jesus, that He would rise again from the dead!
+It was not some mysterious bit of teaching, the exact bearing of
+which they did not catch, but a literal fact! And then while they
+still hesitated and doubted, while they still hid behind the closed
+doors, Jesus Himself came and stood in the midst with His message
+of peace. It is often so, is it not? While we are in perplexity and
+fear, while we think the next sound will be the knock of armed
+hands on the door, it is not the Jews that come, but Jesus with a
+message of peace. Our fears are so pathetic, so pitiful; we meet
+life and death with so little of the understanding and the courage
+that our Lord's promises ought to inspire in us! We stand so
+shudderingly before the vision of death, are so much appalled by
+the thought of the grave! We shudder and tremble as the hand of
+death is stretched out toward us and ours. One is often tempted to
+ask as one hears people talking of death: "Are these Christians? Do
+they believe in immortality? Have they heard the message of the
+first Easter morning, the angelic announcement of the resurrection
+of Christ? Have they never found the peace of believing, the utter
+quiet of the spirit in the confidence of a certain hope which
+belongs to those who have grasped the meaning of the resurrection
+of the dead?" Here in Jerusalem in a few days the whole point of
+view is changed. The frightened group of disciples is transformed
+by the resurrection experience into the group of glad and
+triumphant missionaries who will be ready when they are endowed
+with power from on high to go out and preach Jesus and the
+resurrection to the ends of the earth.</p>
+<p>What in these first days the resurrection meant to them was no
+doubt just the return of Jesus. He was with them once more, and
+they were going to take hope again in the old life, to resume the
+old mission which had been interrupted by the disaster of Calvary.
+All other feeling would have been swallowed up in the mere joy of
+the recovery. But it could not be many hours before it would be
+plain that if Jesus was restored to them He was restored with a
+difference. A new element had entered their intercourse which was
+due to some subtle change that had passed upon Him. We get the
+first note of it in that wonderful scene in Joseph's Garden when
+the Lord appears to the Magdalen. There is all the love and
+sympathy there had ever been; but when in response to her name
+uttered in the familiar voice the Magdalen throws herself at His
+Feet, there is a new word that marks a new phase in their relation:
+"Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended."</p>
+<p>This new thing in our Lord which held them back with a new word
+that they had never experienced before must have become plainer
+each day. S. Mary feels no less love in her Son restored to her
+from; the grave, but she does not find just the same freedom of
+approach. S. John could no longer think of leaning on His Heart at
+supper as before. Jesus was the same as before. There was the same
+thoughtful sympathy; the same tender love; but it is now mediated
+through a nature that has undergone some profound change in the
+days between death and resurrection. The humanity has acquired new
+powers, the spirit is obviously more in control of the body. Our
+Lord appeared and disappeared abruptly. His control over matter was
+absolute. And in His intercourse with the disciples there was a
+difference. He did not linger with them but appeared briefly from
+time to time as though He were but a passing visitor to the world.
+There were no longer the confidential talks in the fading light
+after the day's work and teaching was over. There was no longer the
+common meal with its intimacy and friendliness. There was, and this
+was a striking change, no longer any attempt to approach those
+outside the apostolic circle, no demonstration of His resurrection
+to the world that had, as it thought, safely disposed of Him. He
+came for brief times and with brief messages, short, pregnant
+instructions, filled with meaning for the future into which they
+are soon to enter.</p>
+<p>What did it mean, this resurrection of Jesus? It meant the
+demonstration of the continuity of our nature in our Lord. The Son
+of God took upon Him our nature and lived and died in that nature.
+Our pressing question is, what difference has that made to us? How
+are <i>we</i> affected? Has humanity been permanently affected by
+the resumption of it by God in the resurrection? If the assumption
+of humanity by our Lord was but a passing assumption; if He took
+flesh for a certain purpose, and that purpose fulfilled, laid it
+aside, and once more assumed His pre-incarnate state, we should
+have difficulty in seeing that our humanity was deeply affected by
+the Incarnation. There would have been exhibited a perfect human
+life, but what would have been left at the end of that life would
+have been just the story of it, a thing wholly of the past. It is
+not much better if it is assumed that the meaning of the
+resurrection is the revelation of the immortality of the human
+spirit, that in fact the resurrection means that the soul of Jesus
+is now in the world of the spirit, but that His Body returned to
+the dust. We are not very much interested in the bare fact of
+survival. What interests us is the mode of survival, the conditions
+under which we survive. We are interested, that is to say, in our
+survival as human beings and not in our survival as something
+else--souls.</p>
+<p>A soul is not a human being; a human being is a composite of
+soul and body. It is interesting to note that people who do not
+believe in the resurrection of our Lord, do not believe in our
+survival as human beings, consequently do not believe in a heaven
+that is of any human interest. But we feel, do we not? a certain
+lack of interest in a future in which we shall be something quite
+different in constitution from what we are now. We can think of a
+time between death and the resurrection in which we shall be
+incomplete, but that is tolerable because it is disciplinary and
+temporary and looks on to our restitution to full humanity in the
+resurrection at the Last Day. And we feel that the promise, the
+certainty of this is sealed by our Lord's resurrection from the
+dead. We are certain that that took place because it is needful to
+the completion of His Work.</p>
+<p>The Creed is one: and if one denies one article one speedily
+finds that there is an effect on others. The denial of the
+resurrection is part and parcel of the attempt to reduce
+Christianity to a history of something that once took place which
+is important to us to-day because it affords us a standard of life,
+a pattern after which we are to shape ourselves. Else should we be
+very much in the dark. We gain from the Christian Revelation a
+conception of God as a kindly Father Who desires His children to
+follow the example of His Son. That example, no doubt, must not be
+pressed too literally, must be adapted to modern conditions; but we
+can get some light and guidance from the study of it. Still, if you
+do not care to follow it nothing will happen to you. It is merely a
+pleasing occupation for those who are interested in such things.
+The affirmation of the resurrection, on the other hand, is the
+affirmation of the continuity of the work of God Incarnate; it is
+an assertion that Christianity is a supernatural action of God
+going on all the time, the essence of which is, not that it invites
+the believer to imitation of the life of Christ, so far as seems
+practical under modern conditions, but that it calls him to union
+with Christ; it makes it his life's meaning to recreate the
+Christ-experience, to be born and live and die through the
+experience of Incarnate God. It fixes his attention not on what
+Jesus did but on what Jesus is. It insists on a present vital
+organic relation to God, mediated by the humanity of Jesus; and if
+there be no humanity of Jesus, if at His death He ceased to be
+completely human, then there is no possibility of such a relation
+to God in Christ as the Catholic Religion has from the beginning
+postulated; and unless we are to continue human there seems no
+continuing basis for such a relation to one another in the future
+as would make the future of any interest to us. For us, as for S.
+Paul, all our hope hangs on the resurrection of Christ from the
+dead; and if Christ be not risen from the dead then is our faith
+vain.</p>
+<p>For us then, as for the men who wrote the Gospel, and for the
+men who planted the Church and watered it with their blood, the
+resurrection of Jesus means the return of His Spirit from the place
+whither it had gone to preach to the spirits in prison and its
+reunion with the Body which had been laid in the tomb in Joseph's
+Garden, and the issuing of perfect God and perfect man from that
+tomb on the first Easter morning. That humanity had, no doubt,
+undergone profound changes to fit it to be the perfect instrument
+of the spirit of Christ Jesus henceforward. It is now the
+resurrection body, the spiritual body of the new man. We understand
+that it is now a body fitted for the new conditions of the
+resurrection life, and we also understand that it is the exemplar
+of what our risen bodies will be. They will be endowed with new
+powers and capacities, but they will be human bodies, the medium of
+the spirit's expression and a recognisable means of intercourse
+with our friends. We lie down in the grave with a certainty of
+preserving our identity and of maintaining the capacity of
+intercourse with those we know and love. That is what really
+interests us in the future which would be uninteresting on other
+terms; and that is what our Lord's appearances after the
+resurrection seem to guarantee. He resumed a human intercourse with
+those whom He had gathered about Him. He continued His work of
+instruction and preparation for the future. And when at length He
+left them they were prepared to understand that His departure was
+but the beginning of a new relation. But also they would feel much
+less that there was an absolute break with the past than if He had
+not appeared to them after the Crucifixion, and they had been left
+with but a belief in His immortality. They would, too, now be able
+to look on to the future as containing a renewal of the relations
+now changed, to read a definite meaning into His promises that
+where He is there shall His servants be.</p>
+<p>It is much to know that we are immortal: it is much more to know
+that this immortality is a human immortality. One feels in studying
+the pre-Christian beliefs in immortality that they had very little
+effectiveness, and that the reason was that there was no real link
+connecting life in this world with life in the next. Death was a
+fearful catastrophe that man in some sense survived, but in a sense
+that separated his two modes of existence by a great gulf. Man
+survived, but his interests did not survive, and therefore he
+looked to the future with indifference or fear. This life seemed to
+him much preferable to the life which was on the other side of the
+grave. So far as the Old Testament writings touch on the future
+world, they touch upon it without enthusiasm. There is an immense
+difference between the attitude of the Old Testament saint toward
+death and that, for instance, of the early Christian martyr. And
+the difference is that the martyr does not feel that death will put
+an end to all he knows and loves and set him, alive it may be, but
+alive in a strange country. He feels that he is about to pass into
+a state of being in which he will find his finer interests not lost
+but intensified. At the center of his religious expression is a
+personal love of Jesus and a martyr's death would mean immediate
+admission to the presence and love of His Master. He would--of this
+he had no shadow of doubt--he would see Jesus, not the spirit of
+Jesus, but the Jesus Who is God Incarnate, whose earthly life he
+had gone over so many times, Whom he felt that he should recognise
+at once. Death was not the breaking off of all in which he was
+interested but was rather the fulfilment of all that he had
+dreamed. And this must be true always where our interests are truly
+Christian interests. It is no doubt true that we find in Christian
+congregations a large number of individuals whose attitude toward
+death and the future is purely heathen. They believe in survival,
+but they have no vital interest in it. I fancy that there are a
+good many people who would experience relief to be persuaded that
+death is the end of conscious existence, that they do not have to
+look forward to a continuous life under other conditions. And this
+not at all, as no doubt it would in some cases be, because it was
+the lifting of the weighty burden of responsibility for the sort of
+life one leads, because it was relief from the thought of a
+judgment to be one day faced, but because the world to come, as
+they have grasped its meaning, is a world in which they have no
+sort of interest. Our Lord in His Presentation of the future does
+actually point us to the natural human interest by which our
+affection will follow that which we do in fact value. "Where your
+treasure is, there will your heart be also." But the class of whom
+I am thinking have no treasures. Notwithstanding some sort of
+conformity to the Christian Religion, conceived most likely under
+the aspect of a compulsory moral code, there is nothing in their
+experience that one can call a love of our Lord, no actually felt
+personal affection for Him that makes them long to see Him. There
+were those with whom they had intimately lived and whom they had
+loved and who have passed through the experience of death, but in
+the years that have passed they have become used to living without
+them and there is no passionate longing to be with them again.
+There are no interests in their lives which when they think of them
+they feel that they can carry with them to the world beyond.
+Whatever they have succeeded in accumulating in life is hardly to
+be regarded as heavenly treasure!</p>
+<p>There then is the vital centre of the Christian doctrine of the
+world to come,--that it is a life continuous with this life, not in
+bare existence, but in the persistence of relations and interests
+upon which we have entered here. At the center of that world as it
+is revealed to us, is Jesus Christ, God in our nature, and about
+Him ever the saints of His Kingdom, who are still human with human
+interests, and who look on to the time when the fulness of humanity
+will be restored to them by the resurrection of the body. The
+interests that are vital here are also the interests that are vital
+there, the interests of the Kingdom of God. As the Christian thinks
+of the life of the world to come he thinks of it as the sphere in
+which his ambitions can be and will be realised, where the ends of
+which he has so long and so earnestly striven will be attained. His
+life has been a life given to the service of our Lord and to his
+Kingdom, and it had, no doubt, often seemed to small purpose; it
+has often seemed that the Kingdom was not prospering and the work
+of God coming to naught. And then he looks on to the future and
+sees that the work that he knows is an insignificant fragment of
+the whole work; and he thinks with longing of the time when he
+shall see revealed all that has been accomplished. He feels like a
+colonist who in some outlying province of an empire is striving to
+promote the interests of his Homeland. His work is to build up
+peace and order and to civilise barbarous tribes. And there are
+days when the work seems very long and very hopeless; and then he
+comforts himself with the thought that this is but a corner of the
+empire and that one day he will be relieved and called home. There
+at the centre he will be able to see the whole fact, will be able
+to understand what this colony means, and will rejoice in the
+slight contribution to its upbuilding that it has been his mission
+to make. The heart of the Christian is really in the Homeland and
+he feels acutely that here he is on the Pilgrim Way. But he feels
+too that his present vocation is here and that he is here
+contributing the part that God has appointed him for the upbuilding
+of the Kingdom, and that the more he loves our Lord and the more he
+longs for Him the more faithfully and exactly will he strive to
+accomplish his appointed work.</p>
+<p>They are right, those who are continually reproaching Christians
+with having a centre of interest outside this world; but we do not
+mind the reproach because we are quite sure that only those will
+have an intelligent interest in this world who feel that it does
+not stand by itself as a final and complete fact, but is a single
+stage of the many stages of God's working. We no more think it a
+disgrace to be thinking of a future world and to have our centre of
+interest there than we think it a disgrace for the college lad to
+be looking forward to the career that lies beyond the college
+boundaries and for which his college is supposed to be preparing
+him. We do not consider that boy ideal whose whole time and energy
+is given to the present interests of a college, its athletics, its
+societies, and in the end is found to have paid so little attention
+to the intellectual work that he is sent there to perform that he
+fails to pass his examinations. Christians are interested in this
+world because it is a province of the Kingdom of God and that they
+are set here to work out certain problems, and that they are quite
+sure that the successful solution of these problems is the best and
+highest contribution that they can make to the development of life
+in this world. They do not believe that as a social contribution to
+the betterment of human life a saint is less valuable than an
+agnostic professor of sociology or an atheistic socialistic leader;
+nor does the Christian believe that strict attention to the affairs
+of the Kingdom of God renders him less valuable as a citizen than
+strict attention to a brewery or a bank. A whole-hearted Christian
+life which has in view all the relations of the Kingdom of God in
+this or in any other world, which loves God and loves its neighbour
+in God, is quite the best contribution that a human being can make
+to the cause of social progress. If it were possible to put in
+evidence anywhere a wholly Christian community I am quite convinced
+that we should see that our social problems were there solved. I
+think then we shall be right to insist that what is needed is not
+less otherworldliness but more: that more otherworldliness would
+work a social revolution of a beneficent character. The result
+might be that we should spend less of our national income on
+preparations for war and more in making the conditions of life
+tolerable for the poor; that we should begin to pay something of
+the same sort of care for the training of children that we now
+bestow on the nurture of pigs and calves. We might possibly look on
+those whom we curiously call the "inferior races" as less objects
+of commercial exploitation and more as objects of moral and
+spiritual interest.</p>
+<p>We shall no doubt do this when we have more fully grasped what
+the resurrection of Christ has done and made possible. It is no
+account of that resurrection to think of it as a demonstration of
+immortality. It only touches the fringes of its importance when we
+think of it as setting the seal of divine approval upon the
+teaching of Jesus. We get to the heart of the matter when we think
+of the risen humanity of our Lord as having become for us a source
+of energy. The truth of our Lord's life is not that He gave us an
+example of how we ought to live, but that He provided the power
+that enables us to live as He lived. Also He gave us the point of
+view from which to estimate life. The writer of the Epistles to the
+Hebrews uses a striking phrase when he speaks of "the power of an
+endless life." Is not that an illuminating phrase when we think of
+our relation to our Lord? His revelation of the meaning of human
+life has brought to us the vision of what that life may become and
+the power to attain that end. The fact of our endlessness at once
+puts a certain order into life. Things, interests, occupations fall
+into their right places. There are so many things which seem not
+worth while because of the revelation of the importance of our
+work. Other things there are which we should not have dared to
+undertake if we had but this life in which to accomplish them. But
+he who understands that he is building for eternity can build with
+all the care and all the deliberation that is needed for so vast a
+work. There is no haste if we select those things which have
+eternal value. We can undertake the development of the Christian
+qualities of character with entire hopefulness. The very conception
+of the beauty and perfectness of the fruits of the Spirit might
+discourage us if our time were limited. But if we feel that the
+work we have done on them, however elementary and fragmentary, as
+long as it is honest and heartfelt, will not be lost when death
+comes, then we can go securely on. We can go on in any spiritual
+work we have undertaken without that sense of feverish haste lest
+death overtake us and put an end to our labour which so affects men
+in purely secular things. To us death is not an interruption. Death
+does not destroy our human personality, nor does it destroy our
+interest in anything that like us is permanent. We feel perfectly
+secure when we have identified ourselves with the business of the
+Kingdom of God. Then we almost feel the throb of our immortality;
+the power of an endless life is now ours. We have not to wait for
+death and resurrection to endue us with that power because it is
+the gift of God to us here, that gift of enternal life which our
+Lord came to bestow upon us. Only the gift which we realise
+imperfectly or not at all at its bestowal we come to understand in
+something of its real power; and henceforth we live in the
+possession and fruition of it, growing up "into Him in all things,
+which is the Head, even Christ."</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Hail, thou brightest Star of Ocean;<br>
+Hail, thou Mother of our God;<br>
+Hail, thou Ever-sinless Virgin,<br>
+Gateway of the blest abode.<br>
+Ave; 'tis an angel's greeting--<br>
+Thou didst hear his music sound,<br>
+Changing thus the name of Eva--<br>
+Shed the gifts of peace around.<br>
+Burst the sinner's bonds in sunder;<br>
+Pour the day on darkling eyes;<br>
+Chase our ills; invoke upon us<br>
+All the blessings of the skies.<br>
+Show thyself a watchful Mother;<br>
+And may He our pleadings hear,<br>
+Who for us a helpless Infant<br>
+Owned thee for His mother dear.<br>
+Maid, above all maids excelling,<br>
+Maid, above all maidens mild,<br>
+Freed from sin, oh, make our bosoms<br>
+Sweetly meek and undefiled.<br>
+Keep our lives all pure and stainless,<br>
+Guide us on our heavenly way,<br>
+'Till we see the face of Jesus,<br>
+And exult in endless day.<br>
+Glory to the Eternal Father;<br>
+Glory to the Eternal Son;<br>
+Glory to the Eternal Spirit:<br>
+Blest for ever, Three in One.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>THE FORTY DAYS</h3>
+<center>To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by
+many infallible proofs,<br>
+being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things
+pertaining to the kingdom of God.<br>
+<br>
+Acts I, 3.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Open unto us the door of thy loving kindness, O blessed
+Mother of God; we have set our hope on thee, may we not be
+disappointed, but through thee may we be delivered from adversity,
+for thou art the saving help of all Christian people.<br>
+<br>
+O Mother of God, thou who art a deep well of infinite mercy, bestow
+upon us thy compassion; look upon thy people who have sinned, and
+continue to make manifest thy power. For thee do we trust, and to
+thee do we cry, Hail! even as of old did Gabriel, the chief of the
+angelic hosts.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">RUSSIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hese Forty Days that intervened between our Lord's resurrection
+and ascension must have been utterly bewildering in the experience
+of the Apostles. Our Lord was once more with them; He had come back
+from the grave; that would have been the central experience. But in
+His intercourse with them He was so changed, the same and yet with
+a vast difference. We think of the perplexed group of the disciples
+gathered in the familiar place, going over the recent facts and
+trying to adjust themselves to them. Just what is the difference
+that death and resurrection have made, we hear them discussing. Is
+it that He appears and disappears so strangely, not coming any
+longer to be with them in the old way, with the old familiar
+intercourse? There is obviously no failure in Himself, no decline
+in love; but there is a decline in intimacy. They themselves feel a
+strange awe in His presence such as they had not been accustomed to
+feel in the past. They feel too that this restrained intercourse is
+but temporary, that at any moment it may end. The instructions He
+is giving them are so obviously final instructions, fitting them
+for a future in which He will not be with them.</p>
+<p>Amid all this perplexity we try to see Our Lady and to get at
+her mind. She was no doubt in the small group eagerly waiting our
+Lord's coming, dreading each time He left them that He would return
+no more. One thinks of her as less bewildered than the others
+because her interest was more concentrated. She had no problems to
+work out, no perplexities to absorb her; she had simply to love.
+Life to her was just love--love of the Son Whom she had brought
+forth and Whom she had followed so far. She lived in His
+appearings; and between them she lived in remembrance of them. One
+does not think of her as dwelling very much on what He says, but as
+dwelling upon Him. The thought of Him absorbs her. She has passed
+into that relation to our Lord that in the years to come many souls
+will strive to acquire--the state of absorbed contemplation, the
+state in which all things else for the time recede and one is alone
+with God. God so fills the soul that there is room there for
+nothing else.</p>
+<p>For the Apostles these were days of immense importance as days
+in which they were compelled to reconstruct their whole view of the
+meeting of our Lord's mission and of their relation to it. They
+came to these days with their settled notion about the renewed
+Kingdom of Israel and of our Lord's reign on earth which His
+teaching hitherto had not been able to expel; but now they are
+compelled to see that the Kingdom of God of which they are to be
+the missionaries is a Kingdom in another sense than they had so far
+conceived it. It differs vastly from their dream of an Israelite
+empire. It is no doubt true that this mental revolution is of slow
+operation, and that even when certain truths are grasped it will
+still take time to grasp them in all their implications. For long
+their Judaism will impede their full understanding of the meaning
+of the Kingdom of God. It will be years before they can see that it
+is a non-Jewish fact and that other nations will stand on an
+equality with them. But they will by the end of the Forty Days have
+grasped the fact that they are not engaged in a secular revolution
+and are not entering on a career of worldly power. They will be
+ready for their active ministry after Pentecost, a ministry of
+spiritual initiation into the Kingdom of God. When in response to
+their preaching men asked the question: "Men and brethren, what
+shall we do?" They were ready with their answer: "Repent and be
+baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the
+remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
+Ghost."</p>
+<p>So the Forty Days were filled with new meanings emerging from
+the old teaching, of suddenly grasped significance in some saying
+of our Lord that they had assumed that they understood but in
+reality had attributed little meaning to. It is one of the striking
+things about our relation to spiritual truth that we can go on for
+long thinking that we are attaching a meaning to something which in
+fact, it turns out, has meant almost nothing to us. Some day a
+phrase which we have often read or repeated suddenly is lighted up
+with a significance we had never dreamed of. We have long been
+looking some truth in the face, but in fact it has never laid hold
+of us; we have made no inferences from it, deduced no necessity of
+action, till on a day the significance of it emerges and we are
+overwhelmed by the revelation of our blunder, of our stupidity. The
+fact is that we assume that our conduct is quite right, and we
+interpret truth in the light of our conduct rather than interpret
+conduct in the light of truth. It is the explanation, I suppose, of
+the fact that so many people read their Bible regularly without, so
+far as one can see, the reading having any effect upon their
+conduct. The conduct is a settled affair and they are finding it
+reflected in the pages of the Gospel. Their minds are already
+definitely made up to the effect that they know what the Gospel
+means, and that is the meaning that they put into the Bible. One
+does not know otherwise how to account for the fact that it is
+precisely those who think themselves "Bible Christians" who are
+farthest from accepting the explicit teaching of the Bible. If
+there is anything plain in the New Testament it is that the whole
+teaching of our Lord is sacramental. If anything is taught there
+one would think it was the nature and obligation of baptism, the
+Presence of our Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar, the gift of
+Confirmation, the meaning of absolution. Yet it is to "Bible
+Christians" that sacraments appear to have no value, are things
+which can be dispensed with as mere ornaments of the Christian
+Religion.</p>
+<p>I wonder if we have wholly got beyond that point of view? I
+wonder if we have got a religious practice which is settled or one
+that is continually expanding? I wonder if we force our meaning on
+the Bible or if we are trying to find therein new stimulus to
+action? That in truth is the reason for reading the Holy Scriptures
+at all--to find therein stimulus, stimulus for life; that we may
+see how little or how much our conduct conforms to the ideal set
+out there. We do not read to learn a religion, but to learn to
+practice the religion that we already have.</p>
+<p>Now to take just one point in illustration. The commission of
+our Lord to His Church in the person of the Apostles was a
+commission to forgive sins. "He breathed on them, and saith unto
+them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they
+are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are
+retained." As to how in detail, this commission is to be exercised
+is a matter for the Church to order as the circumstances of its
+life require. As I read my Bible certain facts emerge: I am a
+sinner; Christ died for my sins; He left power in His Church for
+the forgiveness of sin--of my sin. And then the question arises:
+What is the bearing of all that on my personal practice? Have I
+settled a practice for myself to which I am subjecting the teaching
+of the Bible and the Church? Or am I alert to see a contrast or a
+contradiction between my practice and the teaching of the Bible and
+the Church, if such exist? Now there are many people in the Church
+who make no use of the sacrament of penance, and there are many
+others who make use of it very sparingly. It is clear that either
+they must be right, or the Bible and the Church must be right. It
+is clear that such persons, to press it no farther, are imposing
+the interpretation of their own conduct on the teaching of the
+Christian Religion and asserting by their constant practice that
+that interpretation is quite inadequate, notwithstanding the
+contrary practice of the entire Catholic world. That, to put it
+mildly, is a very peculiar intellectual and spiritual attitude.</p>
+<p>We can most of us, I have no doubt, find by searching somewhere
+in our religious practice parallel attitudes toward truth. We have
+settled many questions in a sense that is agreeable to us. We
+cannot tell just how we got them settled, but settled they are.
+Take a very familiar matter which greatly concerns us in this
+parish dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the question of the
+honour and reverence due to our Blessed Mother. We had got settled
+in our practice that certain things were right and certain wrong. I
+doubt if a very intelligent account of this--why they were right or
+wrong--could, in many cases have been given. But the settled
+opinion and practice was there.</p>
+<p>And then came the demand for a review; that we look our practice
+squarely in the face and ask, "What is the ground of this? Does it
+correspond with the teaching of Scripture and of the Catholic
+Church? And if it does not, what am I going to do about it? Have I
+only a collection of prejudices there where I supposed that I had a
+collection of settled truths? Do I see that it is quite possible
+that I may be wholly wrong, and that I am hindered by pride from
+reversing my attitude?" For there is a certain pride which operates
+in these matters of belief and practice as well as elsewhere. We
+are quite apt to pride ourselves on our consistency and think it an
+unworthy thing to change our minds. That is rather a foolish
+attitude; changing one's mind is commonly not a mark of fickleness
+but of intellectual advance. It means oftentimes the abandonment of
+prejudice or the giving up of an opinion which we have discovered
+to have no foundation. This is rather a large universe in which we
+live, and it is improbable that any man's thought of it at any time
+should be adequate. Intellectual progress means the assimilation of
+new truths. The Christian Religion is a large and complex
+phenomenon, and any individual's thought of it at any time must be,
+in the nature of things, an inadequate thought. Progress in
+religion means the constant assimilation of new truths--new, that
+is, to us. Surely it is a very peculiar attitude to be proud of
+never learning anything, making it a virtue to have precisely the
+same opinions this year as last! I should be very much ashamed of
+myself if a year were to pass in which I had learned nothing, had
+changed my mind about nothing. In religion, one knows that the
+articles of the Faith are expressed in the dogmatic definitions of
+the Church; but one will never know, seek as one will, all that
+these mean in detail, all that they demand in practice. And our
+only tolerable attitude is that of learners constantly seeking to
+fill up the <i>lacunae</i> in our beliefs and practice.</p>
+<p>In fact, any living Christian experience is always in process of
+adjustment. Those who conceive a dogmatic religion as an immovable
+religion, as a collection of cut and dried formulae which each
+generation is expected to learn and repeat and to which it has no
+other relation, are quite right in condemning that conception, only
+that is not, in fact, what the Christian Religion is. The content
+of the Christian dogmas is so full and so complex that there is
+never any danger of intellectual sterility in those who are called
+to deal with them; and their application to life is so rich and so
+manifold that there is not the least danger that those who set out
+to apply them to the problems of daily existence will become mere
+formalists. The attempt to live a truly Christian life is a
+never-ending, inexhaustible adventure. Only those can miss this
+fact who have utterly misconceived Christianity as a barren set of
+prohibitions, warning its devotees off the field of great sections
+of human experience. There are those who appear to imagine that the
+primary business of Christianity is to deal with sin, and that in
+order to keep itself occupied it has to invent a large number of
+unreal sins. Unfortunately sin, as the deliberate rejection of the
+known will of God, exists; and, fortunately, the grace of our Lord
+Jesus Christ Who came into the world to save sinners also exists.
+We can be unendingly thankful for that. But it is also true that
+the action of Christianity is not exhausted in the negative work of
+dealing with sin. Christianity is primarily a positive action for
+the bringing about and development of the relation of the soul with
+God in the state of union. We may say that Christianity has to turn
+aside from this its proper business of developing the spiritual
+life to the preliminary work of dealing with sin which kills
+spirituality and hinders its development. But it is not necessary
+to make the blunder of assuming that this dealing with sin is the
+essential work of Christianity because it has so continually to be
+at it, any more than it is necessary to assume that the essential
+work of a farmer is the digging up of weeds. Surely it would be no
+adequate treatise on agriculture which would confine itself to
+description of the nature of weeds and of methods of dealing with
+them. There is a branch of theology which deals with sin, the
+methods of its treatment and its cure; but there are also other
+branches of theology: and the direction of the Holy Scripture is
+not to get rid of sin and stop; but having done that, to go on to
+perfection.</p>
+<p>Christian experience is a constant process of adjustment, a
+constantly growing experience. By the study of the Christian
+revelation it is always finding new meanings in old truths, new
+modes of application of familiar practices. This simply means that
+the Christian is alive and not a fossil. It means that his relation
+to our Lord is such that it opens to him inexhaustible depths of
+experience. It is easy to see this in the concrete by taking up the
+life of almost any saint. It is easy to trace the growth of S. John
+from the young fisherman, fiery, impatient, who wished to call down
+fire from heaven upon his adversaries as Elijah did, and gained the
+rebuke: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of," to the
+mature and supremely calm and simple experience which is reflected
+in the Gospel and Epistles. It is easy to trace the development of
+the impulsive, zealous Pharisee that Paul of Tarsus was, through
+all the stages of spiritual growth that are reflected in his
+Letters, till he is Paul the aged waiting to depart and be with
+Christ "which is far better." You can study it in the confessions
+of S. Augustine in its first stage and follow it through its later
+stages in his letters and other writings, and in many another saint
+beside. If you have any spiritual experience at all you can trace
+it in your own case: you have grown, not through dealing with sin,
+but through the pursuit of ideal perfection, that perfection which
+is set before you by the Christian Religion. You may not feel that
+you have gone very far: that is not the point at present; you know
+that you have found a method by which you may go on indefinitely;
+that there is no need that you should stop anywhere short of the
+Beatific Vision. You do know that your religion is not the
+deadening repetition of dogmas which the unbeliever conceives it to
+be, but is the never ceasing attempt to master the inexhaustible
+truth that is contained in your relation to our Lord. You do know
+that however far you have gone you feel that you are still but on
+the threshold and that the path before your feet runs out into
+infinity. Let us go back again to our examination of the experience
+of the Apostles. When we examine their training we find there, I
+think, two quite distinct elements both of which must have had a
+formative influence upon their ministry. In the first place there
+was the element of dogmatic teaching. There is a class of persons
+who are accustomed to tell us that there is no dogma in the New
+Testament, by which they appear to mean that the particular
+dogmatic affirmations of the Creed are not formulated in the pages
+of the New Testament, but are of later production. That, no doubt,
+is true; but nevertheless it would be difficult to find a more
+dogmatic book than the New Testament, or a more dogmatic teacher
+than was our Lord. And our Lord taught the Apostles in a most
+definite way the expected acceptance of His teaching because He
+taught it. "He taught as one having authority, and not as the
+scribes," it was noted. The point about the teaching of the scribes
+was that it was traditional, wholly an interpretation of the
+meaning of the Old Testament. It made no claim to originality but
+rather based its claim on the fact it was not original. Our Lord,
+it was noticed, did not base His claim on tradition. In fact He
+often noticed the Jewish tradition for the purpose of marking the
+contrast between it and His own teaching. "Ye have heard that it
+hath been said of old time ... but I say unto you." He commonly
+refused to give an explanation of what He had said, but demanded
+acceptance on His authority. He brought discipleship to the test of
+hard sayings, and permitted the departure of those who could not
+accept them. He cut across popular prejudices and took small
+account of the "modern mind" as expressed by the Sadducees. He
+expected the same unhesitating submission from the Apostles whom He
+was training, though it was also a part of their training to be the
+future heralds of the Kingdom that they should have the "mysteries
+of the Kingdom" explained to them. But from the time when Jesus
+began to preach, saying "the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," He
+preached and taught with the same unhesitating note of certainty,
+and with the same demand for intellectual submission on the part of
+those who heard Him.</p>
+<p>And that continues to the end. During the Forty Days, the few
+sayings that have come to us have the same ring of authority, of
+dogmatic certainty. The result was that when the Apostles went out
+to teach they were equipped with a body of truth which they
+presented to the world in the same unhesitating way. Indeed, that
+is the only way in which the central truths of the Christian Faith
+can be presented. They are not the conclusions of argument, which
+may be taken up and argued over again to the end of the
+world,--they are the dicta of revelation. We either know them to be
+true because they have been revealed, or we do not know them to be
+true at all. They are mysteries, that is, truths beyond the
+possibility of human finding which have been made known to man by
+God Himself. They are the appropriate data of religion and what
+distinguishes it from philosophy. The presence of mystery in
+philosophy is annoying, and the aim is to get rid of it, but a
+religion without mystery is absurd. Religion deals with the
+fundamental relations between God and man and the light it brings
+us must be a supernatural light. Such a religion in its
+presentation naturally cut across the preconceptions of the
+traditionalists in Jerusalem to whom nothing new could be true, as
+across the preconceptions of the sophists of Athens, to whom
+nothing that was not new was interesting.</p>
+<p>This dogmatic equipment was but one side, however, of the
+Apostolic training for their future work, a training to which the
+finishing touches, so to say, were put during the Forty Days. The
+other side of the training was the impression upon them of the
+Personality of our Lord, the effect of their close association with
+Him. This has an importance that dwarfs all other influences of the
+time; and we feel all through the Gospel that it was what our Lord
+himself counted upon in forming them for their mission. In the
+beginning "He chose twelve to be with Him," and their day by day
+association with Him was constantly changing their point of view
+and reforming their character. It was not the teaching, the
+explanation of parables, or the sight of the miracles; it was the
+silent effect of a personality that was in contact with them
+constantly and was constantly presenting to them an ideal of life,
+an ideal of absolute submission to the will of the Father and of
+utter consecration to the, mission that had been committed to
+Him.</p>
+<p>We all know this silent pressure of life upon life. We have most
+of us, I suppose, experienced it either from our parents or from
+friends in later life; and we can through that experience of ours
+attempt the explanation of our Lord's influence on the Apostles.
+There were not only the hours of formal teaching--they, in a way,
+were perhaps the less important from our present point of view. We
+have more in mind the informal talks that would go on as they went
+from village to village in Galilee, or as they gathered about the
+door of some cottage in the evening or sat in the shelter of some
+grove during the noon-day heat. It was just talk arising naturally
+out of the incidents of the day, but it was always talk guided by
+Jesus--talk in which Jesus was constantly revealing Himself to
+them, impressing upon them His point of view, making plain his own
+judgment upon life. And when we turn to His formal teaching we
+realise how revolutionary was His point of view in regard to life,
+how He swept aside the customary conventions by which they were
+accustomed to guide life, and substituted the radical principles
+that they have left on record in the Sermon on the Mount for the
+perplexity of a world yet far from understanding them. Evidently
+the Apostles would find their accustomed values tossed aside and a
+wholly new set of values presented to them.</p>
+<p>I suppose we find it difficult to appreciate how utterly
+revolutionary the Gospel teaching continually is, not because we
+have become accustomed to follow it, but because we have got used
+to hearing it and evacuating it of most of its meaning by clever
+glossing. It was thus that the teaching classes in Jerusalem
+avoided the pressure of Old Testament ideals by a facile system of
+interpretation which made "void the Word of God by their
+traditions." Human nature has not altered; and we succeed by the
+same method in making the Gospel of none effect. We are so well
+accustomed to do this that we lose the point and pungency of much
+of our Lord's teaching. But we know that the apostles did not. We
+know that they presented that teaching in all its sharpness to
+would-be disciples. It could not be otherwise with those who for
+three years had been in day by day intimacy with our Lord and had
+assimilated His point of view and his judgment on life.</p>
+<p>One effect of their contact with our Lord in the days following
+the resurrection would be that whatever changes the passage to a
+new level of existence had wrought in Him, it had not changed
+either the tone of His teaching or the beauty and attractiveness of
+His Personality. The concluding charges that were given them, the
+great commission of proclaiming the Kingdom with which they were
+now definitely endued, the powers which were committed to them in
+the great words: "All power is given unto me in heaven and in
+earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the
+name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching
+them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and,
+lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," would but
+confirm and strengthen all that had gone before in their experience
+of Him. The Jesus of the resurrection was no pale ghost returned
+from the grave, intermittently to appear to them to assure them of
+the fact of immortality. He was "the same Jesus" Whom they had
+known for three years, and whose return from the dead triumphant
+over the powers that had opposed Him, set quite plainly and
+definitely the seal of indisputable authority upon all the teaching
+and the example that had gone before. The period of their probation
+was over: The commission was theirs: It remained that they should
+abide in Jerusalem until they should be "endued with power from on
+high."</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Proclaimed Queen and Mother of a God,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;The Light of earth, the Sovereign of saints,<br>
+With pilgrim foot up tiring hills she trod,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;And heavenly stile with handmaids' toil acquaints;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Her youth to age, her health to sick she
+lends;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Her heart to God, to neighbor hand she
+bends.<br>
+<br>
+A Prince she is, and mightier Prince doth bear,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet pomp of princely train she would not have;<br>
+But doubtless, heavenly choirs attendant were,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Her Child from harm, herself from fall to save:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Word to the voice, song to the tune she
+brings,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The voice her word, the tune her ditty
+sings.<br>
+<br>
+Eternal lights enclos&egrave;d in her breast<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Shot out such piercing beams of burning love,<br>
+That when her voice her cousin's ears possessed<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;The force thereof did force her babe to move:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With secret signs the children greet each
+other;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But, open praise each leaveth to his mother.<br>
+<br>
+Robert Southwell, S.J.<br>
+1560-1595.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+<h3>THE ASCENSION</h3>
+<center>And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he<br>
+was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.<br>
+<br>
+S. Luke XXIV, 51.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>O Mother of God, since we have obtained confidence in
+thee, we shall not be put to shame, but we shall be saved.<br>
+<br>
+And since we have obtained thy help and thy meditation, O, thou
+holy, pure, and perfect one!<br>
+<br>
+We fear not but that we shall put our enemies to flight and scatter
+them.<br>
+<br>
+We have taken unto us the shelter of thy mighty help in all things
+like a shield.<br>
+<br>
+And we pray, and beseech thee that we may call upon thee, O Mother
+of God, so that thou deliver us through thy prayers.<br>
+<br>
+And that thou mayest raise us up again from the sleep of darkness,
+to offer praise through the might of God Who took flesh in
+thee.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">COPTIC.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>here would be no doubt of the finality of our Lord's physical
+withdrawal this time. As the group of disciples stood on the
+hilltop in Galilee and watched the clouds close about Him, they
+would feel that this was the end of the kind of intercourse to
+which they had been accustomed. The past Forty Days would have done
+much to prepare them for the separation. Their conception of our
+Lord's work as issuing in the establishment of an earthly Kingdom
+had been swept away; the changed terms of their intercourse with
+Him in the resurrection state had emphasised the change that had
+taken place; His teaching during these weeks which was centered on
+the work of the future in which they were to carry on the mission
+He had initiated; all these elements prepared them for the definite
+withdrawal of the ascension. Nevertheless we can understand the
+wrench that must have been involved in His actual withdrawal. We
+face the dying of some one we love. We know that it is a matter of
+weeks; the weeks shorten to days, and we are "prepared" for the
+death; but what we mean is that the death will not take us by
+surprise. However prepared we may be, the pain of parting will be a
+quite definite pain; there is no way of avoiding that.</p>
+<p>We know that there was no way for the disciples to avoid the
+pain of the going of Jesus. It was not the same sort of pain that
+they felt now, as they gazed up from the hill top to the cloud
+drifting into the distance, as the pain that had been theirs as
+they hurried trembling and affrighted through the streets of
+Jerusalem on the afternoon of the Crucifixion. This pain had no
+sting of remorse for a duty undone, or of fear for a danger to be
+met. It was the calm pain of love in the realisation that the
+parting is final.</p>
+<p>We know that among the group that watched the receding cloud the
+eyes that would linger longest and would find it hardest to turn
+away would be those of the Blessed Mother. Her mission about our
+Lord during all these past years had been a very characteristically
+womanly mission, a mission of silence and help and sympathy. She
+was with the women who ministered to Him, never obtrusive, never
+self-assertive; but always ready when need was. It was the silent
+service of a great love. That is the perfection of service. There
+are types of service which claim reward or recognition. We are not
+unfamiliar in the work of the Kingdom with people who have to be
+cajoled and petted and made much of because of what they do.
+Verily, they have their reward. But the type we are considering, of
+which the Blessed Mother is the highest expression, is without
+thought of self, being wholly lost in the wonder of being permitted
+to serve God at all. To be permitted to give one's time and
+personal ministry to our Lord in His Kingdom and in His members is
+so splendid a grace of God that all thought of self is lost in the
+joy of it. We know that S. Mary could have had no other thought
+than the offering of her love in whatever way it was permitted to
+express itself; and we know that the quality of that love was such
+that the moment of the ascension would have left her desolate,
+watching the cloud that veiled Him from her eyes.</p>
+<p>All of which does not mean that we are wrong when we speak of
+the ascension as one of the "Glorious Mysteries" of S. Mary. There
+we are viewing it in its wide bearing as S. Mary would come to view
+it in a short while. When the meaning of the ascension became
+plain, when under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, S. Mary was able
+to view her Son as "the One Mediator between God and man, the man
+Christ Jesus," when she was able to think of the human nature that
+God had taken from her as permanently enthroned in heaven,--then
+would all this be to her creative of intense joy. We, seeing so
+clearly what the ascension essentially meant, can think of it as a
+mystery of intense joy, but as our Lord passed away from sight the
+passing would for the moment be one last stab of the sword through
+this so-often wounded heart.</p>
+<p>There would be no lingering upon the hill top. The angel
+messengers press the lesson that the life before them is a life of
+eager contest, of energetic action. Jesus had indeed gone in the
+clouds of heaven, but they were reminded that there would be a
+reappearance, a coming-again in the clouds of heaven, and in the
+meantime there was much to do, work that would require their
+self-expenditure even unto death. Back must they go to Jerusalem
+and there await the opening of the next act of the drama of the
+Kingdom of God.</p>
+<p>As we turn to the Epistles of the New Testament and to the
+slowly shaping theology of the early Church, we find set out for us
+the nature of our Lord's heavenly activity; we see the full meaning
+of His Incarnation. The human nature which the Son of God assumed
+from a pure Virgin, He assumed permanently. He took it from the
+tomb on the resurrection morning, he bore it with Him from the
+Galilean hill to the very presence of uncreated God. When the Gates
+lift and admit the Conqueror to heaven, what enters heaven is our
+nature, what is enthroned at the Right Hand of God is man, forever
+united to God. And when we ask, "What is the purpose of this?" The
+answer is that it is the continual purpose of the incarnation, the
+purpose of mediatorship between the created and the uncreated,
+between God and man. The constant purpose of the incarnation is
+mediation--of the need of mediation there is no end. Our Lord's
+work was not finished, though there are those who appear to believe
+that it was finished, when, as a Galilean Preacher He had taught
+men of the Father: nor was it finished when He bought redemption
+for us on the Cross, and triumphing over death in the resurrection,
+returned to heaven at the ascension. There is a very real sense in
+which we can say that all those acts were the preliminaries of His
+work, were what made the work possible. We then mean by His work
+the age-long work of building the Kingdom of Heaven, and through it
+bringing souls to the Father. To insist perhaps over-much: We are
+not saved by the memory of what our Lord did, we are saved by what
+He now does. We are saved by the present application to us of the
+work that was wrought in the years of His earthly life.</p>
+<p>We need to grasp this living and present character of our Lord's
+work if we will understand the meaning of His mediation. There is a
+gulf between the divine, the purely spiritual, and the human, which
+needs some bridge to enable the human to cross it. That bridge was
+thrown across in the incarnation when God and man became united in
+the Person of the second Person of the ever blessed Trinity. When
+God the Son became incarnate, God and man were forever united and
+the door of heaven was about to swing open. Henceforth from the
+demonstrated triumph of our Lord in the Ascension the Kingdom of
+Heaven is open to all believers, and there is an ever-ready way of
+approach to God the Blessed Trinity by the Incarnate Person of the
+Son Who is the One Mediator between God and man. Whoever approaches
+God, whoever would reach to the Divine, must approach by that path,
+the path of Jesus Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.</p>
+<p>He is the Way to God: and that Way is one that we follow by
+participation in His nature, by being taken up into Him. We do not
+reach God by thinking about our Lord, or by believing about our
+Lord: thinking and believing are the preliminaries of action. There
+are wonderful riches in the King's Treasury, but you do not get
+them because you think of them or because you believe that they are
+there. You get them when you go after them. And you get the ends of
+the Christian Religion not because you believe them to exist, but
+because you go after them in the way in which Christ directed.
+Inasmuch as He is the Way to the Father, we reach the Father by
+being made one with the Son, by being made a member of Him, by
+being taken into Him in the life of union. "No man cometh unto the
+Father but by me," He says. And the process of coming is by
+believing all that He said and acting upon His Word to the
+uttermost. Those who by partaking of the Sacraments are in Christ
+have passed by His mediation to the knowledge of the Father.</p>
+<p>For a road can be travelled in either direction. Christ is the
+road by which we come to the Father, to participation in the life
+of the Blessed Trinity; but also we can think of Him as the road by
+which the Father comes to us. We can think of ourselves as drawing
+near to God in His Beloved Son: I love to think the other way of
+the road, of God drawing near to me, of God pouring of His riches
+into human life and elevating that life to His very Self. I like to
+think of the Christian life as a life to which God continually
+communicates Himself, till we are filled "with all the fulness of
+God." Can we imagine any more wonderful expression of the life of
+holiness to which we are called than that? We "grow up into Him in
+all things." That is the true account of the Christian life, not
+some thin and dull routine of moral duty, but the spiritual
+adventure of the road that travels out into the infinite pursuit of
+spiritual accomplishment till it is lost in the very heart of
+God.</p>
+<p>This was the starting point of Blessed Mary. She was filled with
+all the fulness of God from the moment of her conception, and was
+never separated from the joy of the great possession. We are born
+in sin and have to travel the road to the very end. Yet we, too,
+begin in union, because we are born of our baptism into Christ soon
+after our natural birth, and our problem is to achieve in
+experience the content of our birthright. In other words: our feet
+are set in the Way from the beginning, and our part is to keep to
+the Way and not wander to the right hand or to the left; that this
+may be possible for us Christ lived and died and to-day is at the
+Right Hand of the Father where He ever liveth to make intercession
+for us. We need never walk without Christ. The weariness of the
+journey is sustained by His constant and ready help. The way is
+lighted by the Truth which is Himself, and the life that we live is
+His communicated life. "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in
+me." There are those who find the road godward, the road of the
+Christ-life, wearisome because they keep their eyes fixed on the
+difficulties of the way and treat each step as though it were a
+separate thing and not one step in a wonderful journey. The way to
+avoid the weariness of the day's travel is to keep one's eye fixed
+on the end, to raise the eyes to the heavens where Jesus sitteth
+enthroned at the Right Hand of the Father. The day's song is the
+Sursum Corda,--"Lift up your hearts unto the Lord!"</p>
+<p>The mediatorial office of our Lord is exercised chiefly through
+His Sacrifice. He ever liveth to make intercession for us; and this
+intercession is the presentation of the Sacrifice that He Himself
+offered once for all in Blood upon the Cross, and forever presents
+to the Father in heaven "one unending sacrifice." This heavenly
+oblation of our Lord which is the means wherethrough we approach
+pure Divinity, is also the Sacrifice of the Church here on earth.
+The heavenly Altar and the earthly Altar are but one in that there
+is but one Priest and one Victim here and there. The Eucharistic
+Sacrifice is the Church's presentation of her Head as her means of
+approach to God, as the ground of all her prayers. These prayers
+make their appeal through Jesus Who died and rose again for us and
+is on the Right Hand of Power. We know of no other way of approach,
+we plead no other merit as the hope of our acceptance. Let us be
+very clear about this centrality of our Lord's mediation because I
+shall presently have certain things to say which are often assumed
+to be in conflict with his Mediatorial Office, but which in reality
+do not so conflict, but exist at all because of the Office.</p>
+<p>We approach Divinity, then, through our Lord's humanity; and we
+at once see how that teaching, so common to-day, which denies the
+Resurrection of our Lord's Body, and believes simply in the
+survival of His human soul strikes at the very heart of the
+Catholic Religion. If Revelation be true, our approach to God is
+rendered possible because there is a Mediator between God and man,
+the MAN Christ Jesus. All our prayers have explicitly, or
+implicitly, this fact in view. All our Masses are a pleading of
+this fact.</p>
+<p>How great is our joy and confidence when we realise this! We
+come together, let us say, on Sunday morning at the High Mass. We
+are coming to offer the Blessed Sacrifice of our Lord's Body and
+Blood. But who, precisely, is to make the offering? When we ask
+what this congregation is, what is the answer? The congregation is
+the congregation of Christ's Flock: it is the Body of Christ
+gathered together for the worship of Almighty God. The act that is
+to be performed is the act of a Body, not primarily of individuals.
+Our participation in the act of worship in the full sense of
+participation is conditioned upon our being members of the Body. If
+we are not members of the Body we have no recognised status as
+worshippers. No doubt we each one have our individual aspirations
+and needs which we bring with us, but they are the needs and
+aspirations of a member of the Body of Christ, and our ability to
+unite them with the act that is to be performed grows out of our
+status as members of the Body; as such, we join our own intention
+to the sacrificial act and make our petitions through it. But we
+are here as offerers of the Sacrifice, and may not neglect our
+official significance, and attempt to turn the Mass into a private
+act of worship.</p>
+<p>We, then, the Body of Christ in this place, offer the Sacrifice
+of Christ. What is the status of the priest? He is a differentiated
+organ of the Body, not created by the Body, but created by God in
+the creation of the Body. He is not separate from the Body, an
+official imposed upon it from the outside, nor is he a creation of
+the Body set apart to act upon its behalf. He is one mode of the
+expression of the Body's life--the Body could not perfectly perform
+its functions without him any more than a physical body can
+perfectly function without a hand or an eye. But neither has the
+priest any existence apart from the Body of which he is a function.
+The Sacrifice that he offers is not his on behalf of the Body, but
+the Body's own Sacrifice which is made through his agency.</p>
+<p>But a complete body has a head; and of the Body which is the
+Church the Head is Christ. We, the members, have our life from Him,
+the Head; we are able at all to act spiritually because of our
+union with Him. He is our life; and the acts of the Body are
+ultimately the acts of the Head. The Sacrifice which the Body
+offers as the means of its approach to Divinity is One Sacrifice of
+the Head: and the priestly function of the Body has any vitality
+because it is Christ Who is its life, Who functions through the
+priest, Who is, in fact, the true Priest. He Himself is both
+Sacrifice and Priest; and that which is offered here is indentical
+with that which is offered there.</p>
+<p>Our life flows from our Head, is the life of Christ in us. So
+closely are we associated with Him that we are called His members,
+the instrument through which His life expresses itself, through
+which He acts. By virtue of the life of Christ of which all we are
+partakers, we are not only members of Christ, but members one of
+another. Our spiritual life is not our own affair, but we have
+duties one to another, and all the members of the Body are
+concerned in our exercise of our gifts, have, in fact, claims on
+the exercise of them.</p>
+<p>This mutual inherence of the members of the Body and these
+obligations to one another are in strict subordination to the Head;
+but they are very real duties and privileges which are ours to
+exercise. What we are concerned with at present is that from, this
+view of them that I have been presenting there results the
+possibility and obligation of intercession; the love and care of
+the members for one another is exercised in their prayers for one
+another. This privilege of intercession is one of the privileges
+most widely valued and most constantly exercised throughout the
+Church. Days of intercession, litanies, the offering of the Blessed
+Sacrifice with special intention, the constant requests for prayers
+for objects in which people are interested, all testify to the
+value we place on the privilege. Here is one action in regard to
+which there is no doubting voice in Christendom.</p>
+<p>But curiously, and for some reason to me wholly unintelligible,
+there are a great many who think of this right and duty of
+intercession between the members of the One Body as exclusively the
+right and duty of those who are living here on earth; or at least
+if it pertain to the "dead" it is in a way in which we can have no
+part. One would think--and so the Catholic Church has always
+thought--that those whom we call dead, but who are really "alive
+unto God" with a life more intense, a life more spiritually
+clear-visioned, than our own, would have a special power and
+earnestness in prayer, and that a share in their intercessions is a
+spiritual privilege much to be valued. They are members with us of
+the same Body; death has not cut them off from their membership,
+rather, if possible, it has intensified it, or at least their
+perception of what is involved in it. They remain under all the
+obligations of the life of the Body and consequently under the
+obligation to care for other members of the Body. The intercession
+of the saints for us is a fact that the Church has never doubted
+and cannot doubt except under penalty of denying at the same time
+the existence of the Body. That certain members of the Church have
+of late years doubted our right to invoke the saints, to call upon
+them for the aid of their prayers, is true; but there seems no
+ground for rejecting the tradition of invocation except the rather
+odd ground that we do not know the mode by which our requests reach
+them! As there are a good many other spiritual facts of which we do
+not know the mode, I do not think that we need be deterred from the
+practice of invocation on that ground: certainly the Church has
+never been so deterred.</p>
+<p>It is strange how little people attempt to think out their
+religion, and especially their obligation to religious practice. I
+have so often heard people say, when the practice of invocation of
+saints was urged: Why ask the saints? Why not go directly to God?
+And these same people are constantly asking the prayers of their
+fellow Christians here on earth! Suppose when some pious soul comes
+to me and asks me if I will not pray for a sick child, or a friend
+at sea, I were to reply: "Why come to me? Why not go directly to
+God?" I should be rightly thought unfeeling and unchristian. But
+that is precisely what the same person says when I suggest that the
+saints or the Blessed Mother of God be invoked for some cause that
+we have in hand! A person comes to me and asks my prayers, and I go
+to a saint and ask his prayers on precisely the same basis and for
+precisely the same reason, namely, that we are both members of the
+Body of Christ and of one another. We have the right to expect the
+interest and to count on the love of our fellow-members in Christ.
+We go to the saints with the same directness and the same
+simplicity with which we go to the living members of the Body,
+living, I mean in the Church on earth. If it be not possible to do
+that, then death has made a very disastrous break in the unity of
+the Body of Christ.</p>
+<p>And if we can count so without hesitation upon the love and
+sympathy and interest of the saints, surely we can count upon
+finding the same or greater love and sympathy in the greatest of
+all the saints, our blessed Mother, who is also the Mother of God.
+She in her spotless purity is the highest of creatures. She by her
+special privilege has boundless power of intercession; not power as
+I have explained before, because of any sort of favouritism, but
+power because her spiritual perfection gives her unique insight
+into the mind of God. Power in prayer really means that, through
+spiritual insight we are enabled to ask according to His will "And
+this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask
+anything according to his will, he heareth us." That is why
+righteousness is the ground of prevailing intercession, because
+righteousness means sympathetic understanding of the mind of
+God.</p>
+<p>And in none is there such sympathetic understanding because in
+none is there such nearness to God, as in Blessed Mary. To go to
+her in our prayers and to beg her to intercede for us is, of
+course, no more a trenching upon the unique mediatorship of our
+Lord than it is to ask my human friend to pray for me. We tend, do
+we not? to select from among the circle of our acquaintance those
+whom for some reason we feel to have what we call a special power
+in prayer when we seek for some one to pray for us in our need. Is
+it not wholly natural then that we should go to our Blessed Mother
+on whose sympathy we can unfailingly count and in whose spiritual
+understanding we can implicitly trust, when we want to interest
+those who are dear to our Lord in our special needs? We have every
+claim upon their sympathy because they are fellow-members of the
+same Body; and we know, too, that He Who has made us one in His
+Body wills that we should receive His graces through our mutual
+ministrations.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Mary, Maiden, mild and free,<br>
+Chamber of the Trinity,<br>
+A little while now list to me,<br>
+&nbsp;As greeting I thee give;<br>
+What though my heart unclean may be,<br>
+&nbsp;My offering yet receive.<br>
+<br>
+Thou art the Queen of Paradise,<br>
+Of heaven, of earth, of all that is;<br>
+Thou bore in thee the King of Bliss<br>
+&nbsp;Without or spot or stain;<br>
+Thou didst put right what was amiss,<br>
+&nbsp;What man had lost, re-gain.<br>
+<br>
+The gentle Dove of Noe thou art<br>
+The Branch of Olive-tree that brought,<br>
+In token that a peace was wrought,<br>
+&nbsp;And man to God was dear:<br>
+Sweet Ladye, be my Fort,<br>
+&nbsp;When the last fight draws near.<br>
+<br>
+Thou art the Sling, thy Son the Stone<br>
+That David at Goliath flung;<br>
+Eke Aaron's rod, whence blossom sprung<br>
+&nbsp;Though bare it was, and dry:<br>
+'Tis known to all, who've looked upon<br>
+&nbsp;Thy childbirth wondrous high.<br>
+<br>
+In thee has God become a Child,<br>
+The wretched foe in thee is foiled;<br>
+That Unicorn that was so wild<br>
+&nbsp;Is thrown by woman chaste;<br>
+Him hast thou tamed, and forced to yield,<br>
+&nbsp;With milk from Virgin breast.<br>
+<br>
+Like as the sun full clear doth pass,<br>
+Without a break, through shining glass,<br>
+Thy Maidenhood unblemished was<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;For bearing of the Lord:<br>
+Now, sweetest Comfort of our race,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;To sinners be thou good.<br>
+<br>
+Take, Ladye dear, this little Song<br>
+That out of sinful heart has come;<br>
+Against the fiend now make me strong,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Guide well my wandering soul:<br>
+And though I once have done thee wrong,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Forgive, and make me whole.<br>
+<br>
+Wm. De Shoreham's translation<br>
+from the Latin, or French of<br>
+Robt. Grosseteste; C. 1325.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+<h3>THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT</h3>
+<br>
+<center>And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of
+fire, and it sat upon each of them.<br>
+And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak
+with other tongues,<br>
+as the Spirit gave them utterance.<br>
+<br>
+Acts II, 3.</center>
+<blockquote>Holy Mother of God, Virgin ever blessed, glorious and
+noble, chaste and inviolate, O Mary Immaculate, chosen and beloved
+of God, endowed win singular sanctity, worthy of all praise, thou
+who art the Advocate for the sins of the whole world; O listen,
+listen, listen to us, O holy Mary, Pray for us. Intercede for us.
+Disdain not to help us. For we are confident and know for certain
+that thou canst obtain all that thou wiliest from thy Son, our Lord
+Jesus Christ, God Almighty, the King of ages, Who liveth with the
+Father and the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever.<br>
+<br>
+MS. Book of Cerne, belonging<br>
+to Ethelwald, BP. of Sherbourne,<br>
+760.</blockquote>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/quote-w.png" width="23%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>hen the Day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one
+accord in one place"--I suppose the "all" will be not merely the
+"twelve," but the "all" that were mentioned by S. Luke a few verses
+before. He mentions the Apostles by name and then adds, "These all
+continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the
+women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren."</p>
+<p>We think of our Lady as sharing in the Pentecostal gift. This
+was the first act of her ascended Son, this sending forth of the
+Holy Spirit whom He had promised. It was the fulfilment of the
+prophecy: "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons
+and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see
+visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." I do not know of
+anything in the teaching of the Church to lead us to suppose that
+this gift was to the Apostles alone: rather the thought of the
+Church is that to all Christians is there a gift of the Spirit. The
+Holy Spirit is imparted to the Church as such, and within the
+organisation He functions through appropriate organs. "There are
+diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." Whatever the operations
+of God through the Body of Christ, the same divine energy is making
+them possible. "All these worketh that one and selfsame Spirit,
+dividing to every man severally as he will."</p>
+<p>That the Holy Spirit should manifest Himself in her life was, of
+course, no new experience for S. Mary. Her conscious vocation to be
+the Mother of God had begun when the Holy Ghost had come upon her,
+and she had conceived that "Holy Thing" which was called the Son of
+God. And we cannot think that the Spirit Who is the Spirit of
+sanctity had ever been absent from her from the moment of her
+wonderful conception when by the creative act of the Spirit she was
+conceived without sin, that is, in union with God. But as there are
+diversities of gifts, so the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost
+would have meant to her some new or increased gift of God.</p>
+<p>For the Church as such this coming of the Spirit meant the
+entrance of the work of the Incarnation upon a new phase of its
+action. We may, I suppose, think of the work of our Lord during the
+years of His Ministry as intensive. It was the work of preparing
+the men to whom was to be committed the commission to preach the
+Kingdom of God. They had been chosen to be with Him, and their
+training had been essentially an experience of Him, an experience
+which was to be the essence of their Gospel and which their mission
+was to interpret to the world. "Who is this Jesus of Nazareth Whom
+ye preach? What does He mean?" was to be the question that they
+would have to answer in the coming years; and they would have to
+answer it to all sorts of men; to Jews who would find this
+conception of a suffering and rejected Messiah "a stumbling-block";
+to the Greeks who would find "Jesus and the resurrection"
+"foolishness"; to all races of men who would have to be persuaded
+to leave their ancestral religions and revolutionise their lives,
+and before they would do so would wish to know what was the true
+meaning of Christ in whose name their whole past was challenged. As
+we watch the perplexity, the bewilderment, of these Apostles in the
+face of the collapse of all their hopes on the first Good Friday,
+as we see them struggling with the fact of the Resurrection, and
+attempting to adjust their lives to that; and then listen to their
+preaching and follow their action in the days succeeding Pentecost,
+we have brought home to us the nature of the action of the Holy
+Spirit when He came to them as the Spirit of Jesus to enable them
+to carry on the work that Jesus had committed to them.</p>
+<p>We understand that the work of the Spirit was first of all the
+work of interpreting the experience of the last three years. During
+these years they had been with Jesus, and the result was an
+experience which, however wonderful, or rather, just because it was
+wonderful, was in their consciousness at present little more than a
+chaotic mass of impressions and memories. It was the work of the
+Spirit to enkindle and illuminate their understanding so that they
+could put the experiences of the last three years in order, if one
+may put it in that way. He enabled them to draw out the meaning of
+what they had gone through. We are at once impressed with the
+reality of the work of the Spirit when we listen to the sermon of
+S. Peter to those who have witnessed the miracle of Pentecost. Here
+is another miracle of which we have, perhaps, missed something of
+the wonder. This man who in answer to the mockeries of the
+crowd--"these men are full of new wine"--stands forth to deliver
+this exposition of Jesus is the same man who but a few days before
+had denied his Lord through fear; he is the same man who even after
+the Resurrection was filled with such discouragement that he could
+think of nothing to do but to return to the old life of a
+fisherman, who had said on a day, "I go a-fishing." If we wish to
+understand the meaning of the coming of the Spirit, let us forget
+for the moment the tongues of fire, which are the symbol, and read
+over the words of S. Peter which are the true miracle of
+Pentecost.</p>
+<p>And this action of the Spirit is not sporadic or temporary. We
+follow the annals of the Church and we find the constant evidence
+of the Spirit's power and action in the Christian propaganda. The
+courage with which the Christians meet the opposition of Jews and
+Romans, in their resourcefulness in dealing with the utterly
+unprecedented problems they are called on to face, in the
+intellectual grip of the Apologists who have to meet the criticism
+of very diverse sets of opponents, in their rapidly growing
+comprehension of what the Incarnation means, and of all in the way
+of action that our Lord's directions involve,--all these, when we
+recall the antecedents of these men, lead us to a clearer
+apprehension of the nature of the Spirit's work in the Church. As
+our Lord had promised, He is bringing "all things to their
+remembrance" and "leading them into all the truth." If we need
+proof of the constant supernatural action of God in the Church, we
+get all we can ask in the preaching of Jesus by His followers in
+these opening years of their ministry.</p>
+<p>I said that our Lord's work in the time of His ministry was
+intensive, the preparing of instruments for the founding of the
+Kingdom. With Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit it passes into
+a new stage; it becomes <i>extensive</i> in that it now reaches out
+to gather all men into the Kingdom. To this end there is now a vast
+development of the machinery (so to call it) of the Gospel, a
+calling into existence of the means whereby Christ is to continue
+His action in men's souls. For there must continue a direct action
+of Christ or the Gospel will sink to the condition of a twice-told
+tale: it will be the constant repetition of the story of Jesus of
+Nazareth Who went about doing good: and it will have less and less
+power to be of any help to men as it receeds into the past. Without
+the means which are called into existence to produce continual
+contact between the Redeemer and the Redeemed we cannot conceive of
+the Gospel continuing to exist as power.</p>
+<p>This is not a matter of pure theory: it is a thing that we have
+seen happen. We have seen the growth of a theory of Christianity
+which dispenses wholly or nearly wholly with the means of grace,
+and reduces the presentation of the Gospel to the presentation of
+the ideal of a good life as an object of imitation. When one asks:
+"Why should I imitate this life which, however good in an abstract
+way, is not very harmonious with the ideals of society at present?"
+one is told that it is the best life ever lived, the life that best
+interprets God, our heavenly Father to us. If one asks: "What is
+likely to happen if one does not imitate this life, but prefers
+some more modern type of usefulness?" the answer seems to be:
+"Nothing in particular will happen." In other words, the preaching
+of the Gospel divorced from the means of grace tends more and more
+to decline to the presentation of a humanitarian ideal of life
+which has little, and constantly less, driving power.</p>
+<p>We see then as we study the history of the early days of the
+Church the constant presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the
+mode and means by which the Gospel is presented. We see it
+particularly in the development of the ministry and the growth of
+the sacramental system. It seems to me not very important to find a
+detailed justification of all the things that were done or
+established in explicit words or acts in the New Testament. If we
+are dealing, as we believe that we are, with an organism of which
+the life is God the Holy Ghost Who is the Vicar of Christ in the
+building and administration of His Kingdom, I do not see why we
+should not find in the action of the Kingdom as much of inspiration
+as we find in its writings. I do not see why we should accept
+certain things on the authority of the action of the early
+Christian community, as the baptism of infants and the communion of
+women, and reject others, as the reservation of the Blessed
+Sacraments and prayers for the dead. Nor do I see why we should
+draw some sort of an artificial line through the history of the
+Church and declare all the things on one side of it primitive and
+desirable, and all on the other late and suspect! Especially as no
+one seems to be able to explain why the line should be drawn in one
+place rather than in another.</p>
+<p>If the Holy Spirit was sent by our Lord as His Vicar to preside
+in the Church, as I suppose we all believe, it was in fulfilment of
+our Lord's promise to be with it till the end of the world and that
+the gates of hell should not prevail against it. There is nothing
+anywhere in Holy Scripture indicating that the Holy Spirit was to
+be sent to the "primitive Church," even if any one could tell what
+the primitive Church is, or rather when the Church ceased to be
+primitive. The Holy Spirit is present as a guide to the Church
+to-day quite as fully as He was in the first century. His presence
+then was not a guarantee that all men should believe the truth or
+do the right, nor is it now. The state of Christendom is a
+sufficient evidence of the ability of men to defy the will of God,
+the Holy Spirit; but that does not mean that the Holy Spirit has
+withdrawn any more than the state of things at Corinth which called
+out S. Paul's two Epistles to that Church is a proof that God the
+Holy Ghost never came or did not stay with that primitive Christian
+community. The power of the Spirit is not an irresistible power,
+but a spiritual influence which will guide those who are willing to
+be guided, who will to be submissive to His will. But the will of
+God can always be resisted--and always is. Nevertheless the Holy
+Spirit is in the Church. He shaped and is shaping its beliefs and
+institutions: and to-day we trust that He is leading us back to His
+obedience that we may at length realize the unity of the Spirit in
+the bonds of peace.</p>
+<p>The work of the Holy Spirit in the individual Christian is a
+constructive work; it has in view the growth of the child of God in
+holiness. He makes the soul of the baptised His dwelling-place and
+wishes to remain there as in His Temple, carrying on the work of
+its sanctification. The state of guiltlessness that follows
+absolution is not the equivalent of sanctity. Guiltlessness is a
+negative, sanctity is a positive state, and is acquired as the
+result of active correspondence with the will of God. In order that
+there may be this correspondence the will of God must be known, not
+merely as we know the things that we have learned by rote, but
+known in the sense of understood and appreciated. The will of God
+is knowable: that is, it has been revealed to man; but it needs to
+be effectively made known to the individual man. He must be
+convinced of the importance of divine truth to him. We know that
+just there is the supremely vital point in the teaching of the
+truth. Men assent to truth as true; but they are not thereby
+necessarily moved to act upon it: it may remain unassimilated. The
+vast majority of the people of this country, if they were
+questioned, would assert a belief in God; but a surprising number
+of them are unmoved by that belief, are led by it to no action. Or
+take the membership of any parish; they would all profess a belief
+in the efficacy of the sacraments: yet there is a surprisingly
+large number who do not frequent the sacraments. How many of you,
+for example, make your confessions and communions with the
+frequency and regularity that your theory about the sacraments
+implies?</p>
+<p>Now it is the work of the Holy Spirit to effect the passage in
+life from theory to practice, from profession to action. He
+illuminates the mind that we may understand; He stirs the will that
+we may act. He aids us to overcome the intellectual and physical
+sloth which is the arch-enemy of Christian practice. He intercedes
+for us, and He pleads with us that we may act as the children of
+God that we believe ourselves to be. But all He can do is to entice
+the will; if we remain unwilling, unmoved, He is ultimately grieved
+and leaves us. We may hope that that despair of the Holy Spirit of
+a soul rarely happens because it is a spiritual disaster awful to
+contemplate. In most men and women we can see enough impulse toward
+God, enough struggle with evil, to encourage us to think that the
+Holy Spirit has not utterly abandoned them. And it is never safe
+for us to judge definitely of another's spiritual case; but we do
+see lives that are so given over to malignancy that our hope for
+them is an optimism which has small basis on which to rest.</p>
+<p>In most we may be certain that there is going on a very active
+pleading of the Holy Spirit. He is interpreting the meaning of the
+truth we accept. He is present in a careful reading of the Bible,
+in meditation, in devotional study. He receives of Christ and shows
+it unto us. I am sure we ought to think more of this interpretative
+assistance of the Holy Spirit in the work of understanding the
+Christian Religion, especially in its application to the daily
+life. I am quite certain, and I have no doubt that the experience
+of some of you, at least, will bear me out, that it makes a vast
+difference in the results of our reading and study if we undertake
+it under the direct invocation of the Holy Spirit and with the
+conscious giving ourselves up to His guidance. We have to make a
+meditation, for example, and we begin with prayer to God the Holy
+Ghost for guidance and enlightenment. It is often well to let that
+prayer run on as long as it will. It may be in the end that instead
+of making the meditation we had planned we shall have spent the
+time in a prayer of union with the Holy Spirit and will find
+ourselves refreshed and enlightened as the result. There is need of
+that sort of yielding of self to the promptings of the Spirit. I
+think that it not infrequently happens that our rules get in the
+way of His action by destroying or checking in us a certain
+flexibility which is necessary if we are to respond quickly to the
+voice of the Spirit. As in the case just mentioned where the Spirit
+is leading us to communion with Him we are apt to think: "I must
+get on with my meditation or the time will be up and I shall not
+have made it," and we turn from the Spirit and stop the work that
+He was accomplishing.</p>
+<p>He has so much to do for us, so many things to show us, so many
+grounds to urge for our more earnest seeking of sanctity. The true
+point of our Bible reading is that it is the opportunity of the
+Holy Spirit to exhibit truth to us so that in us it will become
+energetic. We already are familiar with the incidents of our Lord's
+Passion. If it be a matter of knowledge there is no need to-night
+to take up the Gospel and read the chapters which tell of the
+Crucifixion. There is not much point in reading through a chapter
+as a matter of pious habit. It is extraordinary how many there are
+who speak with contempt of "medi&aelig;val prayers" such as the
+recitation of the Rosary, who yet "read a chapter" once a day in
+the shortest possible time and with the minimum of attention. We
+can think of all religious practices as opportunities that we offer
+to God the Holy Ghost. The few verses of Holy Scripture we read may
+well be the medium of His action upon us. He may give us new
+insight into their meaning, He may stir our wills to correspondence
+with their teaching, He may kindle our hearts by the evidence of
+the divine love that He presses home. Who does not remember moments
+when new meaning seemed to flash from the familiar pages, when we
+felt ourselves convicted of inadequate response to the knowledge we
+have, or when we felt our heart stir and send us to our knees in an
+act of thanksgiving and love?</p>
+<p>Our constant need is the clear knowledge of ourselves. We may,
+we often do, see clearly God's will, and then we deceive ourselves
+as to the nature of our response. We think we are seeking for God
+when in reality we are seeking our own ends. We make our own plans
+and then seek to impose them on the will of God. Self-seeking,
+which we mistake for something else, is at the root of much
+spiritual failure. We try to believe that God's will is our will,
+and we succeed in a measure. We need therefore to be constantly
+examining ourselves by the revealed standard of God's will, to let
+in the light of the Spirit on our judgments and acts. For the
+struggle of the Spirit for control is a struggle with a resisting
+and sluggish will. We see, but we do not move; we know, but we do
+not act. The horrible inertia of spiritual sloth paralyses us, and
+the call of the Spirit is heard in vain. Like the man in our Lord's
+parable we plead the lateness of the hour, and our unwillingness to
+disturb others as our excuse for not rising at the Spirit's
+summons. But the Spirit, like the Friend at midnight, still knocks
+at the door, and the sound of the summons penetrates the quietness
+of the house and breaks in upon our slumbers. Well is it for us if
+in the end we rise and open to Him.</p>
+<p>It is only as we thus become energetic by the yielding to God of
+our wills that He can go on to His desired work. The aim of God in
+dealing with our lives is creative. He wills that we bring forth
+fruit, and the fruit that He wills that we bring forth is the Fruit
+of the Spirit. The general notion of holiness analyses into these
+qualities which are the evidence of God's indwelling, of His actual
+possession of the soul. When the soul yields at last to the divine
+will and begins to follow the divinely indicated course of action,
+then it loses self and finds God, then the results begin to show in
+the growth of the character-qualities that we call fruits or
+virtues. The presence or the absence of these is infallible
+evidence of the Spirit's success or failure in His work in us. If
+we abide in Christ, then the natural results of such abiding must
+be forthcoming. "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that
+abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit:
+for without me ye can do nothing."</p>
+<p>A vine bears fruit because it assimilates the natural elements
+which are furnished it by the Providence of God through earth and
+air and water, and works them into the fruit which is the end, the
+meaning of its existence. Our Lord through the constant operation
+within us of the Holy Spirit gives us the spiritual power to work
+over the endowments of nature and the opportunities of life into
+the spiritual product which is holiness. We can just as well, and
+perhaps easier, work up the same natural elements into a quite
+different product. The result of our life's action may be that we
+can show the works of the flesh. But what is the will of the
+Spirit, S. Paul sets before us in these words: "For when ye were
+the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit
+had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end
+of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and
+become the servants of God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and
+the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the
+gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."</p>
+<p>Any adequate self-examination, therefore, bears not only on our
+sins, our failures, but on our accomplishment. A tree is known by
+its fruits; and fruits are things which are evident to all men. If
+indeed the work of the Spirit in us is love, joy, peace and the
+rest of the fruits, these qualities cannot be hid. Certainly they
+cannot be hid from ourselves. They are the evidence to us of
+precisely where we stand in the way of spiritual accomplishment.
+And we must remember that they are supernatural qualities, and not
+be deceived by the existence in us of a set of human counterfeits.
+Love is not good-natured tolerance; joy is not superficial gaiety,
+peace is not clever dodging of difficulties. The fruits of the
+Spirit are not of easy growth, but come only at the end of a long
+period of cultivation, of energetic striving. But like all the
+gifts of God they do come if we want them to come. "If ye abide in
+me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it
+shall be done unto you." But when we ask our Lord for gifts we must
+remember that the giving is not a mechanical giving. What our Lord
+gives is the Might of the Spirit to effect what we desire. If a man
+ask of God a good harvest the prayer is answered if there be given
+the conditions under which a good harvest can be produced; it will
+not be produced without the appropriate human labour. And when we
+ask of God the Fruits of the Spirit the prayer is granted if the
+conditions are given under which this Fruit may be brought forth.
+But neither here may we expect Fruit without appropriate action on
+our part. God gives, but He gives to those who want.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote><b>I</b></blockquote>
+In that, O Queen of queens, thy birth was free<br>
+From guilt, which others do of grace bereave,<br>
+When, in their mother's womb, they life receive,<br>
+God, as his sole-borne Daughter, loved thee:<br>
+To match thee like thy birth's nobility,<br>
+He thee his Spirit for thy Spouse did leave,<br>
+Of whom thou didst his only Son conceive;<br>
+And so was linked to all the Trinity.<br>
+Cease, then, O queens, who earthly crowns do wear,<br>
+To glory in the pomp of worldly, things:<br>
+If men such respect unto you bear<br>
+Which daughters, wives and mothers are of kings;<br>
+What honour should unto that Queen be done<br>
+Who had your God for Father, Spouse and Son?<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote><b>II</b></blockquote>
+Sovereign of Queens, if vain ambition move<br>
+My heart to seek an earthly prince's grace,<br>
+Show me thy Son in his imperial place,<br>
+Whose servants reign our kings and queens above:<br>
+And, if alluring passions I do prove<br>
+By pleasing sighs--show me thy lovely face,<br>
+Whose beams the angels' beauty do deface,<br>
+And even inflame the seraphins with love.<br>
+So by ambition I shall humble be,<br>
+When, in the presence of the highest King,<br>
+I serve all his, that he may honour me;<br>
+And love, my heart to chaste desires shall bring,<br>
+When fairest Queen looks on me from her throne,<br>
+And jealous, bids me love but her alone.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote><b>III</b></blockquote>
+Why should I any love, O Queen, but thee,<br>
+If favor past a thankful love should breed?<br>
+Thy womb did bear, thy breast my Saviour feed,<br>
+And thou didst never cease to succour me.<br>
+If love do follow worth and dignity,<br>
+Thou all in thy perfections dost exceed;<br>
+If love be led by hope of future meed,<br>
+What pleasure more than thee in heaven to see?<br>
+An earthly sight doth only please the eye,<br>
+And breeds desire, but doth not satisfy:<br>
+Thy sight gives us possession of all joy;<br>
+And with such full delights each sense shall fill,<br>
+As heart shall wish but for to see thee still,<br>
+And ever seeing, ever shall enjoy.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote><b>IV</b></blockquote>
+Sweet Queen, although thy beauty raise up me<br>
+From sight of baser beauties here below,<br>
+Yet, let me not rest there; but, higher go<br>
+To him, who took his shape from God and thee.<br>
+And if thy form in him more fair I see,<br>
+What pleasure from his deity shall flow,<br>
+By whose fair beams his beauty shineth so,<br>
+When I shall it behold eternally?<br>
+Then, shall my love of pleasure have his fill,<br>
+When beauty's self, in whom all pleasure is,<br>
+Shall my enamoured soul embrace and kiss,<br>
+And shall new loves and new delights distill,<br>
+Which from my soul shall gush into my heart,<br>
+And through my body flow to every part.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<blockquote>
+<blockquote>HENRY CONSTABLE: 1562-1613.</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+<h3>THE HOME OF S. JOHN</h3>
+<br>
+<center>And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own
+home.<br>
+<br>
+S. John XIX, 27.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>But now we unite to praise thee, O Pure and Immaculate
+One, blessed Virgin and sinless Mother of thy great Son and the God
+of all. O perfectly spotless and altogether holy, thou art the hope
+of despairing sinners. We bless thee as most full of grace, who
+didst give birth to Christ, God and Man. And we fall down before
+thee. We all invoke thee and implore thy help. Deliver us, O
+Virgin, holy and undefiled, from every pressing strait and from all
+temptations of the Evil One. Be thou our peacemaker in the hour of
+death and judgment. Do thou save us from the future unquenchable
+fire and from the outer darkness. Do thou render us worthy of the
+glory of thy Son, O Virgin and Mother, most sweet and
+clement.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">A PRAYER OF S. EPHREM THE SYRIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>here is no scene in the whole range of Scripture narrative which
+is more full of pathos than this scene of the Cross. Two agonies
+meet: the agony of the nailing, the lifting, the dying; and the
+agony that looks on in silent helplessness. But while our Lord's
+physical agony was in some sort swallowed up in the intensity of
+the love which was the motive for enduring it, overpassed in the
+vision of the need of those for whom He was dying, S. Mary's agony
+was the pain of a love concentrated upon the Sufferer Who hangs
+dying before her eyes. If there be anything that can lighten the
+pain of such love it is that it feels itself answered, that its
+object is conscious of it and is helped by it. And S. Mary had that
+consolation: the love poured to her from the Cross, and revealed
+itself when the suffering Son turned His eyes upon her agony and,
+understanding what her desolation would be, committed her to His
+beloved disciple: "Behold thy Mother; behold thy son." These two
+great loves which had been our Lord's human consolation were thus
+committed to one another. And when the darkness fell, and death
+relieved the agony, and the Sacred Body had been cared for, then
+the mother found refuge with S. John: "and from that hour that
+disciple took her unto his own home."</p>
+<p>From the day of Pentecost on, S. Mary is no more heard of in the
+history of the Church. As so often, the Scriptures are silent and
+decline to answer our interested questions. They go on with the
+essentails of their story, the founding of the Church of God, and
+leave other things aside. So we do not know any of the last years
+of the life of Blessed Mary. Where did she live? How long did she
+live? The traditions, in any case of quite an untrustworthy nature,
+are contradictory. Jerusalem and Ephesus contend for the honour of
+our Lady's residence. Jerusalem must have been the site of that
+"home" to which S. John took her after the crucifixion. Did she
+remain there, or did she follow S. John, and at length come to live
+with him in Ephesus? Ephesus puts forward the claim, and we feel
+that it would be well founded in the nature of the relation between
+these two, if S. Mary lived until the settlement of the last of the
+apostles in the Asian city. Our Lord's committal of His Mother to
+the beloved disciple implies their personal association as long as
+S. Mary lived: if till S. John was settled in Ephesus, then we may
+be sure that she was there. She would be with S. John as long as
+she lived, but can we think of her as living long? Would not a
+great love draw her to another world and the presence of her
+triumphant Son?</p>
+<p>Let us, however think, as one tradition bids us, of our Lady as
+living some time with S. John at Ephesus. We can understand the
+situation because it is so much like our own. These Asia Minor
+cities of the imperial period were curiously like the great centers
+of population in the Western world of to-day--London, Paris, New
+York, Chicago. There was the same over-crowding of population, the
+same intense commercial activity, the same almost insane thirst for
+amusement and excitement, the same degeneracy of moral fibre. The
+sins that sapped the life of Ephesus are the same that degrade
+contemporary life. In some ways Ephesus was, possibly, more frankly
+corrupt; but on the other hand it had no daily press to advertise
+and promote sin and social corruption. There is more of
+Christianity and of Christian influence in the modern city, but
+even here there is a curious resemblance between the two. The
+Christian Religion had but recently been introduced into Ephesus,
+but already it had precisely that touch of ineffectiveness that
+seems to us so modern. The message of the risen Lord to the angel
+of the Church in Ephesus is: "Nevertheless I have this against
+thee, that thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from
+whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else
+I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out
+of his place, except thou repent."</p>
+<p>The things that hearten us are sometimes strange; but I suppose
+that there is a feeling of encouragement in our present day
+distress and spiritual ineffectiveness in the thought that even
+under S. John the Church in Ephesus was not wholly ideal. The
+conditions which baffle us, baffled him. The converts who were so
+promising and enthusiastic declined in zeal and fell back under the
+spell of worldliness. Zeal is a quality which is maintained with
+great difficulty, and the pull of the world, whether social or
+business, is steadily exercised. Converts in Ephesus, like converts
+in New York, felt that their friends were right who declared that
+they were quite unnecessarily strict, and that in order to serve
+Christ it was not necessary to turn their backs absolutely on
+Diana.</p>
+<p>As one tries to reconstruct the situation in Ephesus, one feels
+that our Lady would have had no prominence in the Church in the way
+of an actively exercised influence. One thinks of her as living in
+retirement, as not even talking very much. If she lived long she
+would be an object of increasing interest and even of awe to the
+new converts, and an object of growing love to all those who were
+admitted to any sort of fellowship with her. But one cannot imagine
+a crowd about her, inquiring into her experiences and her memories
+of her divine Son. Once she told of her experience, for it was
+necessary that the Church should know of the circumstances of the
+coming of the Son of God into the world, but beyond that necessary
+communication of her experience we cannot think of her as speaking
+of her sacred memories. Silence and meditation, longing and
+waiting, would have filled the years till the hour of her
+release.</p>
+<p>But in the quiet hours spent with S. John it would be different.
+Between the Blessed Virgin and S. John there was perfect
+understanding and perfect sympathy, and we love to think of the
+hours that they would have spent together in deep spiritual
+intercourse. Those hours would not be hours of reminiscence merely;
+they would rather be hours in which these two would attempt with
+the aid of the Spirit Who ruled in them so fully to enter deeper
+and ever deeper into the meaning of Incarnate God. Jesus would be
+the continual object of their thought and their love, and
+meditation upon His words and acts would lead them to an ever
+increasing appreciation of their depth and meaning.</p>
+<p>We have all felt, in reading the pages of S. John, how vast is
+the difference both in attitude toward his subject and in his
+understanding of it from that of the other Evangelists. The earlier
+Evangelists seem deliberately to keep all feeling out of their
+story, to tell the life of our Lord in the most meagre outline,
+confining themselves to the essential facts. Anything like
+interpretation they decline. In S. John all this is changed. The
+Jesus whom he presents is the same Jesus, but seen through what
+different eyes! The same life is presented, but with what changes
+in selection of material! The Gospel of S. John seems almost a
+series of mediations upon selected facts of an already familiar
+life rather than an attempt to tell a life-story. And so indeed we
+think of it. When S. John wrote, the life of our Lord as a series
+of events was already before the Church. The Church had the
+synoptic Gospels, and it had a still living tradition to inform it.
+What it needed, and what the Holy Spirit led S. John to give it,
+was some glimpse of the inner meaning of the Incarnation, some
+unfolding of the spiritual depths of the teaching of Jesus.</p>
+<p>We know how it is that different people listening to the same
+words get different impressions and carry away with them quite
+different meanings. We hear what we are able to hear. And S. John
+was able to hear what the other disciples of our Lord seem not to
+have heard. What dwelt in his memory and was worked up in his
+meditations and was at length transmitted to us, was the meaning of
+such incidents as the interview with Nicodemus, and the talk with
+the woman of Samaria, the discourse on the Holy Eucharist and the
+great High-priestly prayer. Men have felt the contrast between S.
+John and the other Evangelists so intensely that they have said
+that this is another Christ who is presented by S. John, and the
+influences which have shaped the author of the Fourth Gospel are
+quite other than those which shaped the men of the inner circle of
+Jesus. But no: it is the instinctive, or rather the Spirit-guided,
+selection of the material afforded by those years of association
+with Jesus for the purpose of transmitting to the Church a
+spiritual depth and beauty, a spiritual significance in our Lord's
+teaching, that the earlier Gospel had hardly touched.</p>
+<p>Which perhaps they could not touch because when they wrote there
+was not yet in the Church the spiritual experience which could
+fully interpret our Lord. Through the life of union with the risen
+Jesus and all the spiritual experience, all the illumined
+intelligence that that life brought, S. John was enabled to
+understand and interpret as he did. Writing far on toward the end
+of the first century he was writing out of the personal experience
+of Christian living of many years, which brought with it year by
+year an increased power of spiritual vision opening to him the
+depth and wonder of the fact of God made man. It is to an
+experience of our Lord that he appeals as the basis of his
+teaching. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
+which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and
+our hands have handled, of the Word of life: (for the life was
+manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto
+you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was
+manifested unto us;) that which we have seen and heard declare we
+unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our
+fellowship is with the Father, and His Son Jesus Christ." And as we
+read on in S. John's Epistles we cannot fail to see how deeply the
+years of meditation have influenced his understanding of our Lord
+and His teaching, and how much his past experience of our Lord has
+been illumined by the experience of the risen Jesus which has
+followed. At no time, we are certain, has S. John been out of touch
+with his Master.</p>
+<p>And can we for a moment think that the years of intercourse with
+our Lady meant nothing in the spiritual development of S. John? On
+the contrary, may we not think that much of the spiritual richness
+which is the outstanding feature of his writings was the outcome of
+his association with the blessed Mother? No one has ever shown the
+sympathetic understanding of our Lord, has been so well able
+convincingly to interpret Him, as the beloved disciple. I myself
+have no doubt that much of his understanding came by way of S.
+Mary. Her interpretative insight would have been deeper than any
+one else's, not only because of her long association with Jesus,
+but because of her sinlessness. No two lives ever touched so
+closely; and there was not between them the bar that so blocks our
+spiritual understanding and clouds our spiritual vision, the bar of
+sin. I suppose it is almost impossible for us to appreciate the
+effect of sin in clouding vision and dulling sympathy. Our every
+day familiarity with venial sin, our easy tolerance of it, the
+adjustment of our lives to habits that involve it, have resulted in
+a lack of spiritual sensitiveness. Much of the meaning of our
+Lord's life and words passes over us just because of this dimness
+of vision, this insensitiveness to suggestion. And therefore we
+find it difficult to imagine what would be the understanding, the
+insight, the response to our Lord, of one between whom and Him
+there was no shadow of sin. And such an one was the blessed Mother.
+With unclouded vision she looked into the face of her Son. As His
+life expanded she followed with perfect sympathy; indeed,
+sometimes, as at Cana, her understanding of what He was made her
+precipitate in concluding as to His necessary action. When He
+became a public teacher and unfolded largely in parable His
+doctrine, it was her sinless soul which would see clearest and
+deepest, and with the most ready response. And therefore I am sure
+that we cannot go astray in thinking that S. John's relation to S.
+Mary was not simply that of a guardian of her from the pressure of
+the world, but was indeed that of a son who listened and learned
+from the experience of his Mother. No doubt S. John himself was of
+a very subtle spiritual understanding; notwithstanding that, and
+notwithstanding his exceptional opportunities of learning, we may
+still believe that there are many touches in his Gospel which are
+the result of his association with his Lord's Mother.</p>
+<p>Is it not possible for us to have our share in that pure insight
+of blessed Mary? When we try to think out the lines of our own
+spiritual development and the influences that have contributed to
+shape it, do we not find that the presence or absence of devotion
+to our Lady has been a factor of considerable importance? Devotion
+to her injected an element into our religion which is of vast
+moment, an element of sympathy, of gentleness, of purity. You can
+if you like, in condemnatory accents, call that element
+sentimentalism, although it is not that but the exercise of those
+gentler elements of our nature without whose exercise our nature
+functions one-sidedly. You may call it the feminine element, if you
+like; you will still be indicating the same order of activity.
+Surely, an all around spiritual development will bring out the
+feminine as well as the masculine qualities. And it seems to be
+historically true that those systems of religion which represent a
+revolt against the cultus of our Lady and carefully exclude all
+traces of it from their worship, show as a consequence of this
+exclusion a hardness and a barrenness which makes their human
+appeal quite one-sided. And when those same systems have realised
+their limitations and their lack of human appeal, and have tried to
+supply what is lacking, they have again failed, because instead of
+reverting to historical Christianity they have taken the road of
+humanitarianism, basing themselves on our Lord's human life and
+consequent brotherhood with us, rather than upon His supernatural
+Personality as operative through His mystical Body. Stress is laid
+upon charitable helpfulness rather than upon the power of grace.
+The modern man tries to reform life rather than to regenerate
+it.</p>
+<p>And, I repeat, I cannot help associating with a repudiation of
+the cultus of the saints, and especially of the Blessed Virgin
+Mary, a consequent failure to understand the Christian life as a
+supernatural creation. If one leaves out of account the greater
+part of the Kingdom of Heaven, all the multitudes of the redeemed,
+and their activities, and fastens one's attention exclusively upon
+that small part of the Kingdom which is the Church on earth, one
+can hardly fail to miss the significance of the earthly Church
+itself. Religion understood in this limited way may well drift more
+and more toward Deism and Humanitarianism, and further and further
+from any supernatural implications. This is no theory; it is what
+has happened. It was the course of Protestantism from the
+Reformation to the eighteenth century; and, after a partial revival
+of supernaturalism, is once more the rapid course of Protestantism
+to-day. Protestantism has lost or is fast losing any grip on the
+Trinity or the Incarnation: to it God is more and more a barren
+unity, and Jesus a good man. And this largely because all interest
+in the world of the Redeemed has been abandoned and all intercourse
+with the inhabitants of that world denied.</p>
+<p>It is therefore of the last importance that we, infected as we
+are with Protestantism, should stress the revival of the cultus of
+the saints, and should insist upon our right and privilege to pay
+due honour to the Mother of God and ask our share in her prayers.
+We must do all we can to make her known to our brethren. We need
+her sympathy, her aid, her example.</p>
+<p>Above all, the example of her spotless purity. It is notorious
+that one of the most marked features of our time is the virulent
+assault on purity. We had long emphasised a certain quality of
+conduct which we called modesty; it was, perhaps, largely a
+convention, but it was one of those protective conventions which
+are valuable as preservative of qualities we prize. It was
+protective of purity; and however artificial it was, in some
+respects, it existed because we felt that purity was a thing too
+precious to be exposed to unnecessary risk. Well, modesty is gone
+now, whether in conduct or convention. One hears discussed at
+dinner-tables and in the presence of young girls matters which our
+mothers would have blushed to mention at all. The quality of
+modesty is declared Puritanical and hypocritical. "Hypocritical
+virtue" is a phrase one frequently meets; and we seem fast going on
+to the time when all virtue will be regarded as hypocrisy.
+Customary standards are falling all about us, overthrown in the
+name of personal liberty.</p>
+<p>And by liberty, one gathers, is meant freedom to do as one
+pleases, and especially as one sexually pleases. The assault is
+pushed hardest just now against the sanctity of the sacrament of
+matrimony and the morals of that sacrament as they have been
+developed by the Christian Church. Protestantism long ago assented
+to the overthrow of Christian standards in the marriage relation
+and has aided the sexual anarchy with which we are faced to-day.
+To-day the chief attack is on the purity of marriage in the
+interests, ostensibly, of humanity. A vigorous campaign in favour
+of what is called birth-control is being carried on, and is being
+supported in quarters which are professedly Christian. There are
+many grounds for opposing the movement, social, humanitarian and
+other. We are here concerned with it only as it is an attack on
+purity. From the Christian point of view the marriage relation has
+for its end the procreation of children for the upbuilding of the
+Kingdom of God. If circumstances are such, through reasons of
+health or economy, that children seem undesirable, the remedy is
+plain, self control. The theory that human beings have no more
+control over their appetites than beasts, while it has much to
+support it in contemporary life, cannot be admitted from the point
+of view of religion. Self-control is always possible, and is
+constantly exercised by many men and women who choose to be guided
+by principle rather than by passion. And in any case the Christian
+Religion can become no partner, not even a silent one, in a
+conspiracy to murder, or in the sort of compromise that turns
+marriage into a licensed sodomy. If indeed the economic status of
+the modern world is such that the average couple cannot support a
+family, then the Christian Church may well aid in the bringing
+about of an economic revolution; but it can hardly aid in the
+destruction of its own ideals of purity.</p>
+<p>What is ultimately at stake in the modern world is the whole
+conception of purity as a quality that is desirable. This attitude
+has become possible among us for one reason because we have
+consented to the suppression of ideals of life which were
+calculated to sustain it. To sustain any moral or spiritual
+conception there must be maintained certain appropriate ideals
+which, while out of the reach of the average man, create and
+sustain in him an admiration and respect for the ideal standard. So
+the standard of purity presented in Mary and protected by the
+belief in her Immaculate Conception and her assumption, has the
+effect, not only of commending the life of chastity in the sense of
+the vows of religion, but also in the broad sense of the restraint
+and discipline of appetite whether within or without the marriage
+relation. It impresses upon us the truth that purity is not only a
+human quality but a divinely created virtue, the result of the
+infusion of sanctifying grace into the soul. Is it not largely
+because the young are taught (when they are taught anything at all
+in the premises) that purity is a matter of the <i>will</i>, that
+they so often fail? If they were taught the nature of the
+<i>virtue</i> and were led to rely more on the indwelling might of
+the Holy Spirit would they not have better success? And if there
+were held constantly before their eyes the example of the saints
+and especially of Blessed Mary ever-virgin, would not they have an
+increased sense of the value of purity?</p>
+<p>The life and example of S. Mary are an inestimable treasure of
+the Church of God, and her removal from the world has only enhanced
+that value. To-day her meaning is clearer to us than ever. The
+spirit-guided mind of the Church has through the centuries been
+meditating on the meaning of her office as Mother of God. The words
+in which she accepts her vocation, Behold the handmaid of the Lord,
+implying, as they do, an active co-operation with the divine
+purpose, a voluntary association of herself with it, imply, too,
+the perpetual continuance of that association, and contain in germ
+all Catholic teaching in regard to her office. She passed from this
+world silently, and to the world unknown; but to the Church of God
+she ever remains of all human beings the greatest spiritual force
+in the Kingdom of God.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Weep, living things, of life the Mother dies;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;The world doth lose the sum of all her bliss,<br>
+The Queen of earth, the Empress of the skies;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;By Mary's death mankind an orphan is.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Let Nature weep, yea, let all graces moan,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Their glory, grace and gifts die all in one.<br>
+<br>
+It was no death to her, but to her woe,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;By which her joys began, her griefs did end;<br>
+Death was to her a friend, to us a foe,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Life of whose lives did on her life depend:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Not prey of death, but praise to death she
+was.<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Whose ugly shape seemed glorious in her
+face.<br>
+<br>
+Her face a heaven; two planets were her eyes,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Whose gracious light did make our clearest day;<br>
+But one such heaven there was, and lo, it dies,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Death's dark eclipse hath dimmed every, ray:<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sun, hide thy light, thy beams untimely
+shine;<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; True light since we have lost, we crave not
+thine.<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Robert Southwell, 1560-1595</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+<h3>THE ASSUMPTION</h3>
+<br>
+<center>Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be
+with me where I am;<br>
+that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me.<br>
+<br>
+S. John XVII, 24.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Hail! Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail! Our life,
+our<br>
+sweetness, our hope, all hail. To thee we cry, poor exiled<br>
+children of Eve. To thee we send up our cries, weeping and<br>
+mourning in this vale of tears. Turn, then, Most gracious<br>
+Advocate, thy merciful eyes upon us, and now, after this<br>
+our exile, show unto us the blessed Fruit of thy womb,<br>
+Jesus. O gracious, O merciful, O sweet Virgin Mary.<br>
+Anthem from the breviary. Attributed to Hermann Contractus,
+1013-54.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>here is nothing more wonderful or beautiful, nothing that brings
+to us a more perfect revelation of our Lord's mind, than this
+prayer which is recorded for us by S. John. There is in it a
+complete unfolding of that sympathy and love which we feel to
+underlie and explain our Lord's mission. As we come to know what
+God is only when we see Him revealed in Jesus; when we enter into
+our Lord's saying, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father," so
+in the revelation of Jesus we understand God's attitude toward us.
+In Jesus the love of God shows itself, not as an abstract quality,
+a philosophical conception, but as a burning, passionate eagerness
+to rescue, an outgoing of God to individual souls. There is a deep
+personal affection displayed in this final scene in the Upper
+Chamber. This is our Lord's real parting from His disciples. He
+will see them again, but under conditions of strain and tragedy, or
+under such changed circumstances that they cannot well enter into
+the old intimacy. But here there is no bar to the expression of
+love. Here He gives them the final evidence of His utter union with
+them in the humility of the foot-washing. Here He marvellously
+imparts Himself in the Breaking of the Bread, wherein is
+consummated His personal union with them. This is the
+demonstration, if one were needed, that having loved His own, He
+loved them unto the uttermost.</p>
+<p>It is inconceivable that passionate love such as this should
+ever end. It is a personal relation which must endure while
+personality endures. It is really the demands of love which more
+than anything else outside revelation are the evidence of
+immortality. We are certain that the love of God which in its
+fulness has been made known in Christ cannot be annihilated by
+death. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with
+loving kindness have I drawn thee." Love such as that must draw
+men, not only in this world, but in all worlds. If it can draw men
+out of sin to God, it must create an enduring bond. If it can draw
+God to men, it must be the revelation of a permanent attitude of
+God to man. It is a love that goes out beyond the world, that love
+of which S. Paul says: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor
+life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
+present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
+creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which
+is in Christ Jesus our Lord."</p>
+<p>Our instinctive thought of the Judgment seems to be of it as
+condemnation, or, at best, as acquittal. But why not think of it as
+consummation? Why not think of it as setting the seal of God's
+approval upon our accomplishment of His will and purpose for us?
+The final Judgment is surely that,--the entrance of those who are
+saved into the full joy of their Lord. There once more will our
+humanity be complete because it is the whole man, not the soul
+only, but the soul clothed with the body of the resurrection, once
+more clothed upon with its "house from heaven," which is filled
+with the joy of the Beatific Vision. The thought of the particular
+judgment may fill us with dread; but if we are able to look beyond
+that to the general Judgment at the last day, we shall think only
+of our perfect bliss in the enjoyment of God.</p>
+<p>The belief in the Assumption of our Lady is a belief that in her
+case that which is the inheritance of all the saints, that they
+shall rise again with their bodies and be admitted to the Vision of
+God, has been anticipated. In her, that which we all look forward
+to and dream of for ourselves, has been attained. She to-day is in
+God's presence in her entire humanity, clothed with her body of
+glory.</p>
+<p>This teaching, one finds, still causes some searching of hearts
+among us, and is thought to raise many questions difficult to
+answer. And it may be admitted at the outset that it is not a truth
+taught in Holy Scripture but a truth arrived at by the mind of the
+Church after centuries of thought. Unless we can think of the
+Church as a divine organism with a continuous life from the day of
+Pentecost until now, as being the home of the Holy Spirit, and as
+being continuously guided by Him into all the truth; unless we can
+accept in their full sense our Lord's promises that He will be with
+the Church until the end of the world, we shall not find it
+possible to accept the assumption as a fact, but shall decline to
+believe that, and not only that but, if we are consistent, many
+another belief of the Christian Church. But if we have an adequate
+understanding of what is implied in the continuity of the Church as
+the organ of the present action of the Holy Spirit, we shall not
+find that the fact that a given doctrine is not explicitly
+contained in Holy Scripture is any bar to its acceptance. We shall
+have learned that the revelation of God in Christ, and our relation
+to God in Christ, are facts of such tremendous import and
+inexhaustible content that it would be absurd to suppose that all
+their meaning had been understood and explicitly stated in the
+first generation of the Christian Church.</p>
+<p>We shall not, then, find it any bar to the acceptance of belief
+in the assumption of our Lady that its formal statement came, as is
+said, "late." We simply want to know that when it came it came as
+the outcome of the mature thought of the Church, the Body of
+Christ, the Fulness of Him that filleth all in all.</p>
+<p>It is to be noted that the assumption is not a wholly isolated
+fact. There are several cases of assumption in the Old Testament
+though of a slightly different character in that they were
+assumptions directly from life without any interval of death. Such
+were the assumptions of Enoch and Elijah. Moses, too, it has been
+constantly believed, was assumed into heaven,--in his case after
+death and with his resurrection body. A case which is more
+strangely like what is believed to have taken place in the
+experience of blessed Mary is that closely connected with our
+Lord's resurrection and recorded by S. Matthew. "And the graves
+were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and
+came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the
+holy city, and appeared unto many." Although it is not asserted
+that these were assumed into heaven, it seems impossible to avoid
+the inference; and if "many saints which slept" were raised from
+the dead and assumed into the heavenly world, there can be no <i>a
+priori</i> difficulty in believing the same thing to have taken
+place in the Blessed Mother of God. Nay if such a thing as an
+assumption is at all possible for any human being one would
+naturally conclude from the very relation of S. Mary to our Lord
+that the possibility would be realised in her.</p>
+<p>And there were elements in her case which were lacking in all
+the other cases which suggest a certain fitness, if not
+inevitability, in her assumption. She was conceived without
+sin,--never had any breath of sin tainted her. Was it then possible
+that she should be holden by death? Surely, in any case, it was
+impossible that her holy body should see corruption: we cannot
+think of the dissolution of that body which had no part in sin. If
+ever an assumption were possible, here it was inevitable--so the
+thought of the Church shaped itself. The compelling motives of the
+belief were theological rather than historical. The germ out of
+consideration of which was evolved the belief in the assumption was
+the relation of Blessed Mary to her Son. That unique relation might
+be expected to carry with it unique consequences, and among these
+the consequence that the body which was bound by no sin should be
+reunited to the soul which had needed no purgation, but had passed
+at once to the presence of its God and its Redeemer who was
+likewise Son. It is well to stress the fact that the assumption is
+not only a fact but a doctrine. Fact, of course, it was or there
+could be no doctrine; but the truth of the fact is certified by the
+growing conviction in the mind of the Church of the inevitability
+of the doctrine.</p>
+<p>What is implied in the word assumption is that the body of the
+Mother of our Lord was after her death and burial raised to heaven
+by the power of God. It differed therefore essentially from the
+ascension of our Lord which was accomplished by His Own inherent
+power. When this assumption took place we have no means of knowing.
+We do not certainly know where S. Mary lived, nor where and when
+she died. Jerusalem and Ephesus contend in tradition for the
+privilege of having sheltered her last days and reverently carried
+her body to its burial. There is no way of deciding between these
+two claims, although the fact that our Lord confided His Mother to
+S. John throws some little weight into the scale of Ephesus. And
+yet S. Mary may have died before S. John settled in Ephesus. We can
+only say that history gives us no reliable information on the
+matter.</p>
+<p>In the silence of Scripture we naturally turn to the other
+writings of the early Church for light and guidance on the matter;
+but there, too, there is little help. There is, to be sure, a group
+of Apocryphal writings which have a good deal to say about the life
+of S. Mary, where the Scriptures and tradition are silent. Among
+other things these Apocryphal writings have a good deal to say, and
+some very beautiful stories to tell, of S. Mary's last days, of her
+burial and assumption. Are we to think of these stories as
+containing any grain of truth? If they do, it is now impossible to
+sift it from the chaff. These stories are generally rejected as a
+basis of knowledge. And there has been, and still is in some
+quarters, a conviction that the belief of the Church in the
+assumption rests on nothing better or more stable than these
+Apocryphal stories; that the authors of these Apocrypha were
+inventing their stories out of nothing, and that in an uncritical
+age their legends came to be taken as history. Thus was a belief in
+the assumption foisted upon the Church, having no slightest ground
+in fact. The human tendency to fill in the silences of Scripture
+has resulted in many legends, that of the assumption among
+them.</p>
+<p>There is a good deal to be said for this position, yet I do not
+feel that it is convincing. That the incidents of the life of the
+Blessed Virgin Mary as narrated in the Apocrypha are historical, of
+course cannot be maintained. But neither is it at all probable that
+such stories grew up out of nothing: indeed, their existence
+implies that there were certain facts widely accepted in the
+Christian community that served as their starting point. While the
+Apocryphal stories of the life of our Lady cannot be accepted as
+history, they do presuppose certain beliefs as universally, or at
+least widely, held. Thus one may reject all the details of the
+story of the death and burial and assumption of our Lady, and yet
+feel that the story is evidence of a belief in the assumption among
+those for whom the story was written. What was new to them was not
+the fact of the assumption but the detailed incidents with which
+the Apocrypha embroidered it. I feel no doubt that these Apocryphal
+stories are not the source of belief in the assumption, but are our
+earliest witness to the existence of the belief. They actually
+presuppose its existence in the Church as the necessary condition
+of their own existence.</p>
+<p>Another fact that tells in the same direction is the absence of
+any physical relics of our Lady. At a time when great stress was
+laid upon relics, and there was little scruple in inventing them,
+if the authentic ones were not forthcoming, there were no relics
+produced which were alleged to be the physical relics of S. Mary.
+Why was this? Surely, unless there were some inhibiting
+circumstances, relics, real or forged, would have been produced.
+The only probable explanation is that the inhibiting circumstance
+was the established belief in the assumption. If the assumption
+were a fact, there would be no physical relics; if it were an
+established belief, there would be no fraud possible. Add to this
+that various relics of our Lady were alleged to exist; but they
+were not relics of her body.</p>
+<p>Again: by the seventh century the celebration of the feast of
+the assumption had spread throughout the whole church. This
+universal establishment of the feast implies a preceding history of
+considerable length, going well back into the past. The feast was
+kept in many places, and under a variety of names which seem to
+imply, not mere copying, but independent development. It is
+alleged, to be sure, that the names by which the feast was called
+do not imply belief in the assumption. The feast is called "the
+Sleeping," "the Repose," "the Passage" of the Virgin, as well as by
+the Western title, the assumption. But a study of the liturgies and
+of the sermons preached in honour of the feast will convince any
+one that the underlying tradition was that of our Lady's
+assumption.</p>
+<p>These quite separate and yet converging lines of evidence seem
+to me to show convincingly what was the wide-spread belief of the
+early Christian community as to the destiny of Blessed Mary. They
+imply a tradition going well back into the past, so far back, that
+in view of the theological expression of the mind of the Church
+they may well be regarded as apostolic. Our personal belief in the
+assumption will still rest primarily upon its theological
+expression in the mind of the Church, but having attained certainty
+as to the doctrine, which is of course at the same time certainty
+as to the fact, we shall have no difficulty in finding in the above
+sketched lines of historical development the evidence of the
+primitive character of the belief.</p>
+<p>It may not be amiss to give a few characteristic quotations as
+indicating the mind of the Church in this matter.</p>
+<p>S. Modestus, patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 614), preaching on the
+Falling Asleep of the Mother of God, said:--</p>
+<p>"The Lord of heaven and earth has to-day consecrated the human
+tabernacle in which He Himself, according to the flesh, was
+received, that it may enjoy with Him forever the gift of
+incorruptibility. O blessed sleep of the glorious, ever-virgin
+Mother of God, who has not known the corruption of the grave; for
+Christ, our all-powerful Saviour, has kept intact that flesh which
+gave Him His flesh.... Hail, most holy Mother of God: Jesus has
+willed to have you in His Kingdom with your body clothed in
+incorruptibility.... The most glorious Mother of Christ our Lord
+and Saviour, Who gave life and immortality, is raised by her Son,
+and forever possesses incorruptibility with Him Who called her from
+the tomb."</p>
+<p>S. Andrew, Archbishop of Crete (d. 676), also preaching on the
+Falling Asleep of the Mother of God, says:--"It is a wholly new
+sight, and one that surpasses the reason, that of a woman purer
+than the heavens entering heaven with her body. As she was born
+without corruption, so after death her flesh is restored to
+life."</p>
+<p>In one of his sermons at the same feast, S. Germanus of
+Constantinople (d. 733), speaks thus:--"It was impossible that the
+tomb should hold the body which had been the living temple of the
+Son of God. How should your flesh be reduced to dust and ashes who,
+by the Son born of you, have delivered the human race from the
+corruption of death?"</p>
+<p>Preaching on the same festival, S. John Damascene (d. 760)
+said:--"Your flesh has known no corruption. Your immaculate body,
+which knew no stain, was not left in the tomb. You remained virgin
+in your child-bearing; and in your death your body was not reduced
+to dust but has been placed in a better and celestial state."</p>
+<p>There are one or two practical consequences of this doctrine
+concerning which, perhaps, it may be well to say a few words. The
+first is as the result of such devotions to our Lady as are implied
+in, or have in fact followed, a belief in her assumption. It is
+objected to them that even granting the truth of the fact of the
+assumption, still the stress laid on the fact and the devotions to
+our Lady which are held to be appropriate to it, are unhealthy in
+their nature, and do, in fact, tend to obscure the worship of our
+Lord: that where devotions to our Lady are fostered, there devotion
+to our Lord declines. That therefore instead of trying to advance
+the cultus of our Lady, we should do much better to hold to the
+sanity and reserve which has characterised the Anglican Church
+since the Reformation.</p>
+<p>These and the like arguments seem to me to hang in the air and
+to be quite divorced from facts. They imply a state of things which
+does not exist. The assertion that where devotion to our Lady
+prevails devotion to our Lord declines is as far as possible from
+being true. Where to-day is the Deity of our Lord defended most
+ardently and devotion to Him most wide spread? Is it in Churches
+where devotion to our Lady is suppressed? On the contrary, do you
+not know with absolute certainty, that in any church where you find
+devotion to our Lady encouraged, there will you find the Deity of
+our Lord maintained? Has the Anglican "sanity and reserve" in
+regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary saved the Anglican Church from
+the inroads of unitarianism and rationalism? Is it not precisely in
+those circles where the very virginity of our Lady is denied that
+the divinity of our Lord is denied also? No, devotion to Mary is
+far indeed from detracting from the honour due to Mary's Son.</p>
+<p>And we cannot insist too much or too often that the doctrines of
+the Christian Church form a closely woven system such that none,
+even the seemingly least important, can be denied without injuring
+the whole. No article of Christian belief expresses an independent
+truth, but always a truth depending upon other truths, and in its
+turn lending others its support. To deny any truth that the mind of
+the Church has expressed is equivalent to the removal of an organ
+from a living body.</p>
+<p>And to-day we feel more than ever the need of the doctrine of
+the assumption. One of the bitterest attacks on the Christian Faith
+which is being made to-day, emanating principally from within the
+Christian community, and even from within the Christian ministry,
+is that which is being made on the truth of the resurrection of the
+body, whether the resurrection of our Lord, or our own
+resurrection. In place of the Christian doctrine believed and
+preached from the beginning, we are asked to lapse back into
+heathenism and a doctrine of immortality. Not many seem to realise
+the vastness of the difference that is made in our outlook to the
+future by a belief in the resurrection of the body as distinguished
+from immortality. But the character of the religions resulting from
+these two contrary beliefs is absolutely different. It needs only
+to study them as they actually exist to be convinced of this
+fact.</p>
+<p>And it is precisely the doctrine of the assumption of our Lady
+which contributes strong support to the Christian doctrine of the
+resurrection of the body. It teaches us that in her case the vision
+and hope of mankind at large has been anticipated and accomplished.
+The resurrection of our Lord is found, in fact, to extend (if one
+may so express it) to the members of His mystical body; and the
+promise which is fulfilled in Blessed Mary, is that hope of a
+joyful resurrection which is thus confirmed to us all. In its
+stress upon the assumption the mind of the Christian Church has not
+been led astray, has not been betrayed into fostering
+superstitions, but has been led by the Spirit of Christ which He
+promised it to the development of a truth not only revealing the
+present place of His glorious Mother in the Kingdom of her Son, but
+encouraging and heartening us in our following of the heavenly
+way.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>Whoe is shee that assends so high<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Next the heavenlye Kinge,<br>
+Round about whome angells flie<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;And her prayses singe?<br>
+<br>
+Who is shee that adorned with light,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Makes the sunne her robe,<br>
+At whose feete the queene of night<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Layes her changing globe?<br>
+<br>
+To that crowne direct thine eye,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Which her heade attyres;<br>
+There thou mayst her name discrie<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Wrytt in starry fires.<br>
+<br>
+This is shee, in whose pure wombe<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Heaven's Prince remained;<br>
+Therefore, in noe earthly tombe<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Cann shee be contayned.<br>
+<br>
+Heaven shee was, which held that fire<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Whence the world tooke light,<br>
+And to heaven doth now aspire,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Fflames with fflames to unite.<br>
+<br>
+Shee that did so clearly shyne<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;When our day begunne,<br>
+See, howe bright her beames decline<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;Nowe shee sytts with the sunne.<br>
+<br>
+Sir John Beaumont, 1582-1628.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PART TWO</h2>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+<h3>THE CORONATION</h3>
+<center>And there appeared a great wonder in heaven;<br>
+a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under<br>
+her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.<br>
+<br>
+Rev. XII, I.</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>To-day the Angel Gabriel brought the palm and the crown
+to the triumphant Virgin. To-day he introduced to the Lord of all,
+her, who was the Temple of the Most High, and the dwelling of the
+Holy Spirit.</blockquote>
+<p class="loc">FOR THE ASSUMPTION. ARMENIAN.</p>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="22%" alt=
+""></p>
+<p>he heaven which S. John the Evangelist shows us is the
+continuation of the earthly Church. As we read his pages we feel
+that entrance there would be a real home-coming for the earnest
+Christian. We are familiar enough with presentations of heaven
+which seem to us to be so detached from Christian reality as to
+lack any human appeal. We think of philosophic presentations of the
+future with entire indifference. It is possible, we say, that they
+may be true; but they are utterly uninteresting. It is not so in
+the visions of S. John. Here we have a heaven which is humanly
+interesting because it is continous with the present life, and its
+interests are the interests that it has been the object of our
+religion to foster. The qualities of character which the Christian
+religion has urged upon our attention are presented as finding
+their clear field of development in the world to come. There, too,
+are unveiled the objects of our adoration, the ever-blessed Three
+who yet are but one. Love which has striven for development under
+the conditions and limitations of our earthly life, which has tried
+to see God and has gone out to seek Him in the dimness of
+revelation, now sees and is satisfied. Whom now we see in a mirror,
+enigmatically, we shall then see face to face.</p>
+<p>And it is a heaven thronged with saints, with men and women who
+have gone through the same experiences as those to which we are
+subjected, and have come forth purified and triumphant. We
+sometimes in discouragement think of life as continuous struggle.
+It is perhaps natural and inevitable that we should thus
+concentrate attention upon the present, but if we lift our eyes so
+as to clear them from the mists of the present we see that it is
+far from a hopeless struggle, but rather the necessary discipline
+from which we emerge triumphant. Those saints whom we see rejoicing
+about the throne of God, those who go out to follow the Lamb
+whithersoever He goeth, passed through the struggle of persecution
+to their triumphant attainment of the Vision. It is our eternal
+temptation to expect to triumph here; but it is only in a very
+limited sense that this can be true: our triumph is indeed here,
+but the enjoyment of it and all that is implied in it is elsewhere.
+Here even our most complete achievement is conditioned by the
+limitations of earth: there the limitations are done away and life
+expands in perfectness.</p>
+<p>So we look eagerly through the door that is opened in heaven as
+those who are looking into their future home. That is what we all
+are striving for--presumably. We are consciously selecting out of
+life precisely those elements, are centering on those interests,
+which have eternal significance and are imperishable values. As we
+travel along the Pilgrim Way it is with hearts uplifted and
+stimulated by the Vision of the end. We advance as seeing Him Who
+is invisible. We live by hope, knowing that we shall attain no
+enduring satisfaction until we pass through the gates into the
+City, and mingle with the throng of worshippers who sing the song
+of Moses and of the Lamb. Therefore our life is always
+forward-looking and optimistic: because we are sure of the end, we
+wait for it with patience and endurance, thankful for all the
+experience of the Way. As the years flow by we do not look back on
+them with regret as the unrenewable experiences of a vanished
+youth, but we think of them as the bearers of experiences by which
+we have profited, and of goods which we have safely garnered,
+waiting the time when their stored values can be fully
+realised.</p>
+<p>Over all the saints whom the Church has seen rejoicing in the
+heavenly life, rises the form of Mary, Mother of God. S. John's
+vision of the "great sign in heaven" in its primary meaning has, no
+doubt, reference to the Church itself; but the form of its
+symbolism would be impossible if there were not a secondary
+reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is the thought of her and
+of her office as Mother of the Redeemer that has determined the
+form of the vision. The details are too clear to permit of doubt,
+and such has been the constant mind of Catholic interpreters.</p>
+<p>And how else than as Queen of the heavenly host should we expect
+her to be represented? What does the Church teaching as to sanctity
+imply?</p>
+<p>It implies the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision. The normal
+Christian life begins in the sacramental act by which the
+regenerate child is made one with God, being made a partaker of the
+divine nature, and develops through sacramental experience and
+constant response to the will of God to that spiritual capacity
+which is the medium of the Beatific Vision and which we call
+sanctity or purity. "The pure in heart shall see God."</p>
+<p>But the teaching of the Church also implies that there is a
+marvellous diversity in the sanctity of the members of the Body of
+Christ. Each saint retains his personal characteristics, and his
+sanctity is not the refashioning of his character in a common mould
+but the perfecting of his character on its own lines. We sometimes
+hear it said that the Christian conception of heaven is monotonous,
+but that is very far from being the fact. It is only those
+conceptions of heaven which have excluded the communion of saints,
+and have thought of heaven as the solitary communion of the soul
+with God; which have in other words, excluded the notion of human
+society from heaven, which have appeared monotonous. As we read any
+series of the lives of the saints, and realise that it is these men
+and women and multitudes of others like them, that make up the
+society of heaven, we get rid of any other notion than that of
+endless diversity. And thus studying individual saints we come to
+understand that not only is the sanctity of them diverse in
+experience but different in degree. All men have not the same
+capacity for sanctity, we infer; all cannot develop to the same
+level of attainment. We may perhaps say that while all partake of
+God, all do not reflect God in the same way or in the same
+degree.</p>
+<p>But if there be a hierachy of saints it is impossible that we
+should think of any other at its head than Blessed Mary. Whatsoever
+diversity there may be in the attainments of the saints, there is
+one saint who is pre-eminent in all things, who,--because in her
+case there has never been any moment in which she was separate from
+God, when the bond of union was so much as strained,--is the
+completest embodiment of the grace of God. That is, I think,
+essentially what is meant by the Coronation of our Lady,--that her
+supremacy in sanctity makes her the head of the heirarchy of
+saints, that in her the possibilities of the life of union have
+been developed to the highest degree through her unstained purity
+and unfailing response to the divine will.</p>
+<p>It is of the last importance, if the Catholic conceptions are to
+be influential in our lives, that we should gain such a hold on the
+life of heaven, the life that the saints, with Saint Mary at their
+head, are leading to-day, as shall make it a present reality to us,
+not a picture in some sort of dreamland. Our lives are shaped by
+their ideals; and although we may never attain to our ideals here,
+yet we shall never attain them anywhere unless we shape them here.
+Heaven must be grasped as the issue of a certain sort of life, as
+the necessary consequence of the application of Christian
+principles to daily living. It is wholly bad to conceive it as a
+vague future into which we shall be ushered at death, if only we
+are "good"; it must be understood as a state we win to by the use
+of the means placed at our disposal for the purpose. Those attain
+to heaven in the future who are interested in heaven in the
+present.</p>
+<p>And a study of the means is wholly possible for us because we
+have at hand in great detail the lives of those whom the Church, by
+raising them to her altars, has guaranteed to us as having achieved
+sanctity and been admitted to the Beatific Vision. They achieved
+sanctity here--that is, in the past. They achieved it under an
+infinite variety of circumstanies,--that is the encouragement. They
+now enjoy the fruits of it in the world of heaven,--that is the
+promise.</p>
+<p>And nowhere can we better turn for the purpose of our study than
+to the life of Blessed Mary. There is the consummate flower of
+sainthood; and therefore it it best there that we can study its
+meaning. And for two principal reasons can we best study it there.
+In the first place because of its completeness: nowhere else are
+all the elements of sanctity so well developed. And in the second
+place because of the riches of the material for understanding
+Blessed Mary that is placed at our disposal by the labour of many
+generations of saints and doctors. All that devout meditation can
+do to understand the sanctity of Blessed Mary has been done.</p>
+<p>Our limit is necessarily reduced, our selection partial and our
+accomplishment fragmentary. We cannot however miss our way if we
+follow in the steps of Holy Revelation in making love the central
+quality. S. Mary's greatness is ultimately the greatness of her
+love. It began as a love of the will of God. She appears as utterly
+selfless, as having devoted herself to the will of God as He shall
+manifest that will. And therefore when the time comes she makes the
+great sacrifice that is asked of her without hesitation and without
+effort: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according
+to thy word." And all her life henceforth is loving response to
+what is unfolded as the content of the accepted revelation. That is
+a noteworthy thing that I fancy is often missed. It is not uncommon
+for one to accept a vocation as a whole, and then subsequently, as
+it unfolds, shrink from this or that detail of it. But in the case
+of S. Mary the acceptance of the vocation meant the acceptance of
+<i>God</i>, and there was no holding back from the result of
+that.</p>
+<p>That must be our guide in the pursuit of the heavenly life: we
+must understand that we are not called to accept this or that
+belief or practice, but are called to accept God--God speaking to
+us through the revelation He has entrusted to His Catholic Church.
+We do not, when we make our act of acceptance, know all or very
+much of what God is going to mean; but whatever God turns out to
+mean in experience, there can be no holding back. The note of a
+true acceptance of vocation is precisely this limitless surrender,
+a surrender without reservation. S. Mary could by no means
+understand what was to be asked of her: she only knew it was God
+Who asked it. She could not foresee the years of the ministry when
+her Son would not have where to lay His head, followed by the
+anxiety of Holy Week and the watch by the Cross on Good Friday; but
+as these things came she could understand them as involved in her
+vocation, in her acceptance of God.</p>
+<p>And cannot we get the same attitude toward life? In the
+acceptance of the Christian Religion what we have accepted is God.
+We have acknowledged the supremacy of a will outside ourselves. We
+say, "we are not our own, we are bought with a price," the price of
+the Precious Blood. But if our acceptance is a reality and not a
+theory it will turn out to involve much more than we imagined at
+the first. The frequent and pathetic failures of those who have
+made profession of Christianity is largely accounted for by
+this,--that the demands of the Christian Religion on life turn out
+to be more searching and far-reaching than was supposed would be
+the case. Religion turns out to be not one interest to be adjusted
+to the other interests of life, but to be a demand that all life
+and action shall be controlled by supernatural motive. Those who
+would willingly give a part, find it impossible to surrender the
+whole. The world is full of Young Rulers who are willing "to
+contribute liberally to the support of religion," but shrink from
+the demand that they "sell all." "I seek not yours, but you," S.
+Paul writes to the Corinthians; and that is also the seeking of
+God--"Not yours but you." And because the limit of our willingness
+is reached in contribution and does not extend to sacrifice, we
+fail.</p>
+<p>But Blessed Mary did not fail because there was no limit to her
+willingness to sacrifice. Her will to sacrifice had the same
+limitless quality as her love; and because of the limitless quality
+of her self-giving her growth in the life of union was unlimited,
+or limited only by the limitations of creaturehood. When therefore
+we think of her to-day as Queen of Saints we are not thinking of an
+arbitrarily conferred position; we are thinking of a position which
+comes to her because she is what she is. She through the unstinting
+sacrifice of her love came into more intimate relations with God
+than is possible for any other, and through that relation came to
+know more of the mind of God than any other. The power of her
+intercession is the power of her understanding, of her sympathy
+with the thoughts of God. When we come to her with our request for
+her intercession we feel that we are sure of her sympathy and her
+understanding. Her experience of human life, we think, was not very
+wide: can she whose life was passed under such narrow conditions
+understand the complex needs of the modern man or woman? It is true
+that her actual experience of human life was not very wide; but her
+experience of God is very wide indeed, and she is able to
+understand our experience better than we can understand it
+ourselves because of her understanding of God's mind and will. It
+is seeing life through God's eyes that reveals the truth about
+it.</p>
+<p>Hence the blunder and the tragedy of those who seek to know life
+by experience, when they mean experience gained by participation in
+life's evil as well as in its good. They succeed in soiling life
+rather than in understanding it; for participation in evil
+effectually prevents our understandings of good. It is on the face
+of things that the farther a man goes into sin, the less is
+righteousness intelligible to him. Our Lord's rule "He that doeth
+the will shall know of the doctrine" is not an arbitrary maxim, but
+embodies the deepest psychological truth. There is but one path to
+full understanding, and that is the path of sympathy. And therefore
+are we sure of our Lady's understanding and come to her
+unhesitatingly for the help of her intercession. She understands
+our case because she sees it revealed in the mind of her Son.</p>
+<p>It cannot be questioned that much of the weakness of religion
+to-day is due to the fact that Christian ideals make but faint
+appeal. By many they are frankly repudiated as impossible of
+attainment in a world such as this, and as weakening to human
+character so far as they are attained. Christians, of course, are
+unable to take this point of view, and, therefore, they treat the
+ideals with respect, but continue to govern their lives by motives
+which are not harmonious with them. It is tacitly assumed on all
+sides that a consistent pursuit of Christians ideals will assure
+failure in social or business life. This, of course, is tantamount
+to a confession that social and business life are unchristian, and
+raises the same sort of grave questions as to the duty of a
+Christian as were raised in the early days of the Church under the
+heathen empire. With that, however, we may not concern ourselves
+now. We are merely concerned to note and to emphasise the fact
+that, whatever may be true of society or business, our religion is
+lamentably ineffective because of its failure to emphasise the
+ideals of sanctity and to present those ideals as the ideals of
+<i>all</i> Christian life, not as the ideals of a select few. While
+religious teachers asquiesce in the present set of compromises as
+an adequate expression of Christian character, we may expect a
+decline in the Church as a spiritual force, whatever may be true of
+it as a social force.</p>
+<p>If Christian ideals are to resume their appeal to the membership
+of the Church as a whole it is requisite that they be studied by
+the clergy and intelligently presented. But little is to be hoped
+in this direction so long as our theological training ignores
+religion and concentrates its attention on something that it takes
+for scholarship. The raw material that is sent by our parishes to
+the seminaries to be educated for Holy Orders is commonly turned
+out of the seminary with less religion that it entered. The outlook
+for the presentation of Christian ideals is not hopeful. We seem
+destined to drift on indefinitely in our habitual compromises.</p>
+<p>All the more is it necessary that we should lift our eyes to the
+heavens where humility and meekness, where sacrifice and obdience,
+are, in the person of Blessed Mary, crowned as the most perfect
+expression of sanctity, as the qualities that raise man nearest
+God. And what consoles us in the present depressing circumstances
+of the Church is that we are permitted to look through S. John's
+eyes into the world of heaven, and there see "a great multitude,
+which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and
+peoples, and tongues, before the throne and before the Lamb,
+clothed with white robes, and with palms in their hands." Somehow,
+we feel, under whatever distressing and discouraging circumstances,
+the work of God in the regeneration of souls goes on. No doubt it
+is a work that is largely hidden from our eyes, from those eyes
+which are blinded to the reality of spiritual things. Humility and
+meekness are the qualities of a hidden life; they do not flaunt
+themselves before men's eyes. But in their silence and obscurity
+great souls are growing up, growing to the spiritual status of the
+saints of God. In our estimate of values we shall do well to lay to
+heart the utterances of WISDOM: "Then shall the righteous man stand
+in great boldness before the face of such as have afflicted him,
+and made no account of his labours. When they see it, they shall be
+troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the strangeness
+of his salvation, so far beyond all that they had looked for. And
+they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say among
+themselves, This is he, whom we had sometime in derision, and a
+proverb of reproach: we fools accounted his life madness, and his
+end without honour: how is he numbered among the children of God,
+and his lot is among the saints! Verily we went astray from the way
+of truth, and the light of righteousness shined not unto us, and
+the sun of righteousness rose not upon us."</p>
+<p>When we have attained to the point of view as to life's value
+which is expressed in the ideal of sanctity then we shall know how
+to estimate at their true worth the constant criticisms which are
+directed against those ideals and those who seek them. The saints,
+we are told, were no doubt estimable men and women, but they were
+weak, and for the purpose of the world's work, useless. But is this
+true, to keep to a specific example, of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
+What is there about her life that suggests weakness? And what can
+be the meaning of calling such a life useless to the world? Take
+but one aspect of it. It has for centuries furnished an ideal of
+womanhood. It is contended that the women who have taken Blessed
+Mary for their ideal have shown themselves weak and useless?--that
+those women are stronger in character and of more value to the
+world who have thrown over the ideals of sanctity and built their
+lives upon the social ideals prevalent at present? I no not care to
+attempt any characterisation of the feminine ideal which is
+commended to us at present; it is sufficient to say that it is
+difficult to understand how it can be considered socially valuable;
+still less how it can be considered an advance on the character
+qualities which distinguish the Christian ideal of sanctity.</p>
+<p>In the midst of the present confusion of values it is for us of
+vast significance that we have in this matter the mind of Christ.
+There need be no confusion in our minds. What Christ commended has
+proved to be practical of accomplishment, the evidence of which is
+the great multitude which no man can number who to-day sing about
+the throne of God and of the Lamb. What God approves is evidenced
+by the Coronation of the Blessed Mother over all the multitudes of
+the saints of God. Blessed Mary is the embodied thought of God for
+humanity, the realised ideal of a human life. He that is mighty
+hath magnified her, till she shines resplendent in spiritual
+qualities over all the hosts of the elect.</p>
+<p>But though so highly exalted she is not thereby removed to an
+inaccessible distance. She who is privileged to bear the incredible
+title, MOTHER OF GOD is our Mother as well. Upon the Cross our Lord
+said to us in the person of His beloved Disciple, "Behold thy
+Mother"; and it is a mother's love that we find flowing to us from
+the heart of Mary. Have we been cold to her, and inappreciative of
+her love? Have we felt that we have no need of her in the conduct
+of our lives? If so, what we have been doing is to isolate
+ourselves from the divinely provided fount of human sympathy which
+ever flows from our star-crowned Mother. Is life so rich in sources
+of help and sympathy and love that we can afford to over-pass the
+eagerness of God's saints to help us, the willingness of the very
+Mother of God to intercede? Is not the life that shuts out from
+itself the society of heaven pitifully impoverished?</p>
+<p>Too many of us are like the man who owned the field wherein was
+the buried treasure. Limitless aid is at our disposal, but on
+condition that we want it and will seek it. Let us try to
+understand what it is to have at our disposal the love and sympathy
+of the saints of God,--that they are not remote inhabitants of a
+distant sphere whose present interests have led to forgetfulness of
+what they once were, whose present joy is so intense as to make
+them self-centred, but that their very attainment of perfection
+implies the perfection of their love and the completeness of their
+sympathy. The perfection of God's saints and their attainment of
+the end of their course in the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision,
+has but made them more sensitive of our needs and more eager to
+help.</p>
+<p>The spiritual wisdom and power of the Mother of God is at our
+disposal to-day. To the feebleness of our prayers may be added the
+spiritual wisdom and strength of her intercession. He Whose will it
+is that we should pray for one another, wills too that the prayers
+of His Blessed Mother should be at the disposal of all who call
+upon her. Let us take the fact of the intercession of the Queen of
+Saints seriously as a source of power ever open to us.</p>
+<p>Thou who art God's Mother and also ours, thou who lookst
+constantly into the Face of the Son, thou who art the fullest
+manifestation of the love of the Blessed Trinity, thou Mary, our
+Mother, pray for us now and in the hour of our death.</p>
+<br>
+<blockquote>All hail, O Virgin crowned with stars<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;and moon under thy feet,<br>
+Obtain us pardon of our sins<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;of Christ, our Saviour sweet;<br>
+For though thou art Mother of any God,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;yet thy humility<br>
+Disdaineth not this simple wretch<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;that flies for help to thee.<br>
+Thou knowest thou art more dear to me<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;than any can express,<br>
+And that I do congratulate<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;With joy thy happiness.<br>
+Thou who art the Queen of Heaven and Earth<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;thy helping hand me lend,<br>
+That I may love and praise my God<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;and have a happy end.<br>
+And though my sins me terrify,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;yet hoping still in thee,<br>
+I find my soul refresh&egrave;d much<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;when to thee I do flee;<br>
+For thou most willingly to God<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;petitions dost present,<br>
+And dost obtain much grace for us<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;in this our banishment.<br>
+The honour and the glorious praise<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;by all be given to thee,<br>
+Which Jesus thy beloved Son,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;ordained eternally;<br>
+For thee whom he exalts in heaven<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;above the angels all,<br>
+And whom we find a Patroness<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;when unto thee we call.<br>
+O Mater Dei, memento mei. Amen.<br>
+<br>
+Dame Gertrude More, O.S.B.<br>
+Ob. 1633.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR LADY SAINT MARY***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Our Lady Saint Mary, by J. G. H. Barry
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Our Lady Saint Mary
+
+Author: J. G. H. Barry
+
+Release Date: June 15, 2004  [eBook #12624]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR LADY SAINT MARY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project
+Gutenbereg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+OUR LADY SAINT MARY
+
+BY
+
+J. G. H. BARRY, D.D.
+
+1922
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+     Would that it might happen to me that I should be called a
+     fool by the unbelieving, in that I have believed such
+     things as these.
+
+     --Origen.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE MEMBERS
+
+OF THE
+
+LEAGUE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN
+
+THIS VOLUME IS HOPEFULLY
+
+DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The two papers in Part I have been published in the American Church
+Magazine. Of Part II Chapter 1 has been published separately; Chapters
+2, 4, 7, 9 and 12 have been published in the Holy Cross Magazine. The
+rest of the volume is here published for the first time.
+
+I would emphasise the fact that the contents of Part II is a series of
+sermons which were prepared as such, and were preached in the Church of
+S. Mary the Virgin, New York City, for the most part in the Winter of
+1921-22. In preparing them for publication in this volume no attempt has
+been made to alter their sermon character. It is not a theological
+treatise on the Blessed Virgin that I have attempted, but a devotional
+presentation of her life.
+
+I have added to the text as originally prepared certain prayers and
+poems. The object of the selection of the prayers, almost exclusively
+from the Liturgies of the Catholic Church, is to illustrate the
+prevalence of the address of devotion to our Lady throughout
+Christendom. The poems are selected with much the same thought, and have
+been mostly gathered from mediaeval sources, and so far as possible,
+from British. I have no special knowledge of devotional poetry, but
+have selected such poems as I have from time to time copied into my note
+books. This fact has made it impossible for me to give credit for them
+to the extent that I should have liked. I trust that any one who is
+entitled to credit will accept this apology.
+
+Much of the difficulty felt by Anglicans at expressions commonly found
+in prayers and hymns addressed to our Lady is due to prevalent
+unfamiliarity with the devotional language of the Catholic Church
+throughout the ages. Those whose background of thought is the theology
+of the Catholic Church, not in any one period, but in the whole extent
+of its life, will have no difficulty in such language because the
+limitations which are implied in it will be clear to them. To others, I
+can only say that it is fair to assume that the great saints of the
+Church of God in all times and in all places did not habitually use
+language which was idolatrous, and our limitations are much more likely
+to be at fault than their meaning. It is not true in any degree that the
+teaching of Catholics as to the place of the Virgin intrudes on the
+prerogative of our Lord. It is, as matter of fact Catholics, and not
+those who oppose the Catholic Religion who are upholding that
+prerogative. This has been excellently expressed by a modern French
+theologian. "We are established in the friendship of God, in the divine
+adoption, in the heavenly inheritance, solely in virtue of the covenent
+by which our souls are bound to the Son of God, and by which the goods,
+the merits, and the rights of the Son of God are communicated to our
+souls, as in the natural order, the property of the husband becomes the
+property of the wife. Surely, one can say nothing more than we say here,
+and assuredly the sects opposed to the Church have never said more:
+indeed, they are far to-day from saying so much to maintain intact this
+truth, that Jesus Christ is our sole Redeemer, and to give that truth
+the entire extent that belongs to it."
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART I.
+
+CHAPTER I. OF LOYALTY. II. THE MEANING OF WORSHIP.
+
+PART II.
+
+I. MARY OF NAZARETH. II. THE ANNUNCIATION I. III. THE ANNUNCIATION II.
+IV. THE VISITATION I. V. THE VISITATION II. VI. S. JOSEPH. VII. THE
+NATIVITY. VIII. THE MAGI. IX. THE PRESENTATION. X. EGYPT. XI. NAZARETH.
+XII. THE TEMPLE. XIII. CANA I. XIV. CANA II. XV. WHO IS MY MOTHER? XVI.
+HOLY WEEK I. XVII. HOLY WEEK II. XVIII. THE CRUCIFIXION. XIX. THE
+DESCENT AND BURIAL. XX. THE RESURRECTION. XXI. THE FORTY DAYS. XXII. THE
+ASCENSION. XXIII. THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. XXIV. THE HOME OF S.
+JOHN. XXV. THE ASSUMPTION. XXVI. THE CORONATION.
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+OF LOYALTY
+
+O God, who causes us to rejoice in recalling the joys of the
+conception, the nativity, the annunciation, the visitation, the
+purification, and the assumption of the blessed and glorious virgin
+Mary; grant to us so worthily to devote ourselves to her praise and
+service, that we may be conscious of her presence and assistance in all
+our necessities and straits, and especially in the hour of death, and
+that after death we may be found worthy, through her and in her, to
+rejoice in heaven with thee. Through &c.
+
+SARUM MISSAL.
+
+The dream of the Middle Ages was of one Christian society of which the
+Church should be the embodiment of the spiritual, and the State of the
+temporal interests. As there is one humanity united to God in Incarnate
+God, all its interests should be capable of unification in institutions
+which should be based on that which is essential in humanity, and not on
+that which is accidental: men should be united because they are human
+and Christian, and not divided because of diversity of blood or color or
+language. The dream proved impossible of realization, and the struggle
+for human unity went to pieces on the rocks of the rapidly developing
+nationalism of the later Middle Ages.
+
+The Reformation was the triumph of nationalism and the defeat of
+Catholic idealism. It resulted in a shattered Christendom in which the
+interests of local and homogeneous groups became supreme over the purely
+human interests. In state and Church alike patriotism has tended more
+and more to become dominant over the interests that are supralocal and
+universal. The last few years have seen an intensification of localism.
+We have seen bitter scorn heaped on the few who have labored for
+internationalism in thought and feeling. We have seen the attempt of
+labor at internationalism utterly break down under the pressure of
+patriotic motive. We are finding that the same concentration on
+immediate and local interests is an insuperable bar to the realization
+of an ideal of internationalism which would effectively deal with
+questions arising between nations and put an end to war. The Church
+failed to establish a spiritual internationalism; the indications are
+that it will be long before humanitarian idealists will be able to
+effect a union among nations still infected with patriotic motive, such
+as shall bring about a subordination of local and immediate interests to
+the interests of humanity as such. That the general interests are also
+in the end the local interests is still far from the vision of
+the patriot.
+
+What the growth of nationalities with its consequent rise of
+international jealousies and hostilities has effected in civil society,
+has been brought about in matters spiritual by the divisions of
+Christendom. The various bodies into which Christendom has been split up
+are infected with the same sort of localism as infects the state. They
+dwell with pride upon their own peculiarities, and treat with suspicion
+if not with contempt the peculiarities of other bodies. The effort to
+induce the members of any body of Christians to appreciate what belongs
+to others, or to try to construe Christianity in terms of a true
+Catholicity, is almost hopeless. All attempts at the restoration of the
+visible unity of the Church have been wrecked, and seem destined for
+long to be wrecked, on the rocks of local pride and local interests. The
+motives which in secular affairs lead a man to put, not only his body
+and his goods, as he ought, at the disposal of his country; but also
+induce him to surrender his mind to the prevailing party and shout, "My
+country, right or wrong," in matters ecclesiastical lead him to cry, "My
+Church, right or wrong." It is only by transcending this localism that
+we can hope for progress in Church or State--can hope to conquer the
+wars and fightings among our members that make peace impossible.
+
+This infection of localism is not peculiar to any body of Christians.
+The Oriental Churches have been largely state-bound for centuries, and,
+in addition, have been mentally immobile. The Roman Church with its
+claims to exclusive ownership of the Christian Religion has lost the
+vision it once had and subordinated the Catholic interests of the Church
+to the local interests of the Papacy. The fragments of Protestantism are
+too small any longer to claim the universalism claimed by the East and
+West, and perforce acknowledge their partial character; but it is only
+to indulge in a more acute patriotism, and assertion of rights of
+division, and the supremacy of the local over the general. The Churches
+of the Anglican Rite are less bound, perhaps, than others. They are
+restless under the limitations of localism and are haunted by a vision
+of an unrealized Catholicity; but they are torn by internal divisions
+and find their attempts at movement in any direction thwarted by the
+pull of opposing parties.
+
+One result of the mental attitude generated by the conditions indicated
+above is that any attempt to deal with subjects other than those which
+are authorized because they are customary, or tolerated because they
+are familiar, is liable to be greeted with cries of reproach and
+accusations of disloyalty. Such and such teachings we are told, without
+much effort at proof, are contrary to the teachings of the Anglican
+Church, or are not in harmony with that teaching, or are illegitimate
+attempts to bring in doctrines or practices which were definitely
+rejected by our fathers at the Reformation. Those who are implicated in
+such attempts are told that they are disturbers of the peace of the
+Church and are invited to go elsewhere.
+
+As one who is not guiltless of such attempts, and as one who is becoming
+accustomed to be charged with novelty in teaching, and disloyalty in
+practice to that which is undoubtedly and historically Anglican, I have
+been compelled to ask myself, "What is loyalty to the Anglican Church?
+Is there, in fact, some peculiar and limited form of Christianity to
+which I owe allegiance?" I had got accustomed to think of myself as a
+Catholic Christian whose lot was cast in a certain province of the
+Catholic Church which was administratively separated from other parts of
+that Church. This I felt--this separation--to be unfortunate; but I was
+not responsible for it, and would be glad to do anything that I could to
+end it. I had not thought that this administrative separation from other
+provinces of the Catholic Church meant that I was pledged to a different
+religion; I had not thought of there being an Anglican Religion. I have
+all my life, in intention and as far as I know, accepted the whole
+Catholic Faith of which it is said in a Creed accepted by the Anglican
+Church that "except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved." I do
+not intend to believe any other Faith than that, and I intend to believe
+all of that; and I have not thought of myself as other than a loyal
+Anglican in so doing.
+
+But criticism has led me to go back over the whole question and ask
+whether there is any indication anywhere in the approved documents of
+the Anglican Communion of an intention at all to depart from the Faith
+of Christendom as it was held by the whole Catholic Church, East and
+West, at the time when an administrative separation from Rome was
+effected. Was a new faith at any time introduced? Has there at any time
+been any official action of the Anglican Church to limit my acceptance
+of the historic Faith? That many Anglican writers have denied many
+articles of the Catholic Faith I of course knew to be true. That some
+Anglican writer could be found who had denied every article of the
+Catholic Faith I thought quite possible. But I was not interested in the
+beliefs or practices of individuals. I am not at all interested in what
+opinions may or may not have been held by Cranmer at various stages of
+his career, or what opinions may be unearthed from the writings of Bale
+by experts in immoral literature; I am interested solely in the official
+utterances of the Anglican Communion.
+
+In following out this line of investigation I have spent many weeks in
+the reading of many dreary documents: but fortunately documents are not
+important in proportion to the element of excitement they contain. I
+have read the documents contained in the collection of Gee and Hardy
+entitled "Documents Illustrative of English Church History." I have read
+the "Formularies of Faith Put Forth by Authority during the Reign of
+Henry VIII." I have read Cardwell's "Synodalia." And I have also read
+"Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be read in Churches at the
+time of Queen Elizabeth of Famous Memory." I doubt whether any other
+extant human being has read them.
+
+And the upshot of the whole matter is that in none of these documents
+have I found any expressed intention to depart from the Faith of the
+Catholic Church of the past as that Faith had been set forth by
+authority. No doubt in the Homilies there are things said which cannot
+be reconciled with the Faith of Catholic Christendom. But the Homilies
+are of no binding authority, and I have included them in my
+investigation only because I wanted their point of view. That is
+harmonious with the rest of the authoritative documents--the intention
+is to hold the Faith: unfortunately the knowledge of some of the writers
+was not as pure as their intention.
+
+The point that I am concerned with is this: there is no intention
+anywhere shown in the authoritative documents of the Anglican Church to
+effect a change in religion, or to break with the religion which had
+been from the beginning taught and practised in England. The Reformation
+did not mean the introduction of a new religion, but was simply a
+declaration of governmental independence. I will quote somewhat at
+length from the documents for the purpose of showing that there is no
+indication of an intention to set up a new Church.
+
+One or two quotations from pre-reformation documents will make clear the
+customary phraseology in England during the Middle Ages. King John's
+Ecclesiastical Charter of 1214 uses the terms "Church of England" and
+"English Church." The Magna Charta of 1215 grants that the "Church of
+England shall be free and have her rights intact, and her liberties
+uninjured." The Articuli Cleri of 1316 speak of the "English Church."
+The Second Statute of Provisors of 1390 uses the title "The Holy Church
+of England." "The English Church" is the form used in the Act "De
+Haeretico Comburendo" of 1401, as it is also in "the Remonstrance against
+the Legatine Powers of Cardinal Beaufort" of 1428[1].
+
+[Footnote 1: Documents in Gee & Hardy.]
+
+These quotations will suffice to show the customary way of speaking of
+the Church in England. If this customary way of speaking went on during
+and after the Reformation the inference is that there had no change
+taken place in the way of men's thinking about the Church; that they
+were unconscious of having created a new or a different Church. We know
+that the Protestant bodies on the Continent and the later Protestant
+bodies in England did change their way of thinking about the Church from
+that of their fathers and consequently their way of speaking of it. But
+the formal documents of the Church of England show no change. "The
+Answer of the Ordinaries" of 1532 appeals as authoritative to the
+"determination of Scripture and Holy Church," and to the determination
+of "Christ's Catholic Church." The "Conditional Restraint of Annates" of
+1532 protests that the English "as well spiritual as temporal, be as
+obedient, devout, catholic, and humble children of God and Holy Church,
+as any people be within any realm christened." In the Act for "The
+Restraint of Appeals" of 1533, which is the act embodying the legal
+principle of the English Reformation, it is the "English Church" which
+acts. The statement in the "Act Forbidding Papal Dispensations and the
+Payment of Peter's Pence" of 1534 is entirely explicit as to the
+intention of the English authorities. It declares that nothing in this
+Act "shall be hereafter interpreted or expounded that your grace, your
+nobles and subjects intend, by the same, to decline or vary from the
+congregation of Christ's Church in any things concerning the very
+articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom[2]."
+
+[Footnote 2: Gee & Hardy.]
+
+These documents date from the reign of Henry VIII. In the same reign
+another series of authoritative documents was put forth which contains
+the same teaching as to the Church. "The Institution of a Christian Man"
+set forth in 1536, in the article on the Church has this: "I believe
+assuredly--that there is and hath been from the beginning of the world,
+and so shall endure and continue forever, one certain number, society,
+communion, or company of the elect and faithful people of God.... And I
+believe assuredly that this congregation ... is, in very deed the city
+of heavenly Jerusalem ... the holy catholic church, the temple or
+habitacle of God, the pure and undefiled espouse of Christ, the very
+mystical body of Christ," "The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any
+Christian Man" of 1543 in treating of the faith declares that "all those
+things which were taught by the apostles, and have been by an whole
+universal consent of the church of Christ ever sith that time taught
+continually, ought to be received, accepted, and kept, as a perfect
+doctrine apostolic." It is further taught in the same document in the
+eighth article, that on "The Holy Catholic Church," that the Church is
+"catholic, that is to say, not limited to any one place or region of the
+world, but is in every place universally through the world where it
+pleaseth God to call people to him in the profession of Christ's name
+and faith, be it in Europe, Africa, or Asia. And all these churches in
+divers countries severally called, although for the knowledge of the one
+from the other among them they have divers additions of names, and for
+their most necessary government, as they be distinct in places, so they
+have distinct ministers and divers heads in earth, governors and rulers,
+yet be all these holy churches but one holy church catholic, invited and
+called by one God the Father to enjoy the benefit of redemption wrought
+by our Lord and Saviour Jesu Christ, and governed by one Holy Spirit,
+which teacheth this foresaid one truth of God's holy word in one faith
+and baptism[3]."
+
+[Footnote 3: Formularies of Faith in the Reign of Henry VIII.]
+
+With the accession of Edward VI. the Protestant element in the
+Reformation gained increased influence. Our question is, Did it succeed
+in imprinting a new theory of the nature and authority of the Church on
+the formal and authoritative utterances of the Church in England? The
+first "Act of Uniformity" of 1549 contains the now familiar appeal to
+Scripture and to the primitive Church, and the Book set forth is called
+"The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and
+other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, after the Use of the Church of
+England." The "Second Act of Uniformity," 1552, uses the same language
+about the Church of England and the primitive Church. Passing on to the
+reign of Elizabeth, in the "Injunctions" of 1559 there is set forth "a
+form of bidding the prayers," which begins: "Ye shall pray for Christ's
+Holy Catholic Church, that is for the whole congregation of Christian
+people dispersed throughout the whole world, and especially for the
+Church of England and Ireland." In the "Act of Supremacy" of the same
+year it is provided that an opinion shall "be ordered, or adjudged to be
+heresy, by the authority of the canonical Scriptures, or by the first
+four general Councils, or any of them, or by any other general Council
+wherein the same was declared heresy by the express and plain words of
+the said canonical Scriptures." This test of doctrine is repeated in
+Canon VI of the Canons of 1571. "Preachers shall ... see to it that
+they teach nothing in the way of a sermon ... save what is agreeable to
+the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic fathers
+and ancient bishops have collected from this self-same doctrine[4]."
+
+[Footnote 4: Documents in Gee & Hardy.]
+
+It is hardly worth while to spend much time on the Homilies. I will
+simply note that they continue the appeal to the primitive Church which
+is asserted to have been holy, godly, pure and uncorrupt; and to the
+"old holy fathers and most ancient learned doctors" which are quoted as
+authoritative against later innovations. They still speak of the Church
+of England as continuous with the past. I do not find that they treat
+the contemporary reformers as of authority or quote them as against the
+traditional teaching of the Church.
+
+We will go on to one more stage, that is, to the Canons of 1604 which
+represent the mind of the Church of England at the time of the accession
+of James I. They declare that "whosoever shall hereafter affirm, That
+the Church of England, by law established under the King's majesty, is
+not a true and an apostolical church, teaching and maintaining the
+doctrine of the apostles; let him be excommunicated." (III) They appeal
+to the "Ancient fathers of the Church, led by the example of the
+apostles." (XXXI) In treating of the use of the sign of the Cross in
+baptism they assert that its use follows the "rules of Scripture and the
+practice of the primitive Church." And further, "This use of the sign of
+the Cross in baptism was held in the primitive Church, as well by the
+Greeks as the Latins, with one consent and great applause." And replying
+to the argument from abuse the canon goes on: "But the abuse of a thing
+doth not take away the lawful use of it. Nay, so far was it from the
+purpose of the Church of England to forsake and reject the Churches of
+Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any such like Churches, in all things
+that they held and practised, that, as the Apology of the Church of
+England confesseth, it doth with reverence retain those ceremonies,
+which do neither endanger the Church of God, nor offend the minds of
+sober men." (XXX)
+
+It appears clear from a study of the passages quoted and of many others
+of kindred nature that the Anglican Church did not start out upon its
+separate career with any intention of becoming a sect; it did not
+complain of the corruption of the existing religion and declare its
+purpose to show to the world what true and pure religion is. It did not
+put forward as the basis of its action the existing corruption of
+doctrine, but the corruption of administration. Its claim was a claim to
+manage its own local affairs, and was put into execution when the
+Convocation of Canterbury voted in the negative on the question
+submitted to it, viz., "Whether the Roman pontiff has any greater
+jurisdiction bestowed on him by God in Holy Scripture in this realm of
+England, than any other foreign bishop?"
+
+The attitude indicated is one that has been characteristic of the
+Anglican Church ever since. It has always been restless in the presence
+of a divided Christendom; the sin of the broken unity has always haunted
+it. It never has taken the smug attitude of sectarianism, a placid
+self-satisfaction with its own perfection. It has felt the constant pull
+of the Catholic ideal and has been inspired by it to make effort after
+effort for the union of Christendom. It has never lost the sense that it
+was in itself not complete but a part of a greater whole. It has never
+seen in the existing shattered state of the Christian Church anything
+but the evidences of sin. Its appeal has constantly been, not to its own
+sufficiency for the determination of all questions, but to the
+Scriptures as interpreted by the undivided Church. If it has at times
+been prone to overstress the authority of some ideal and undefined
+primitive Church, it was because it thought that there and there only
+could the Catholic Church be found speaking in its ideal unity.
+
+This the attitude of the Anglican Church of the past is its attitude
+to-day. The Lambeth Conference of 1920 gave voice to it:
+
+     "The Conference urges on every branch of the Anglican
+     Communion that it should prepare its members for taking their
+     part in the universal fellowship of the re-united Church, by
+     setting before them the loyalty which they owe to the
+     universal Church, and the charity and understanding which are
+     required of the members of so inclusive a society."
+
+Commenting upon this utterance of the Lambeth Conference the three
+bishops who are the joint authors of "Lambeth and Reunion" say:
+
+     The bishops at Lambeth "beg for loyalty to the universal
+     Church. The doctrinal standards of the undivided Church must
+     not be ignored. Nor must modern developments, consistent with
+     the past, be ruled out merely because they are modern. Men
+     must hold strongly what they have received; but they must
+     forsake the policy of denying one another's positive
+     presentment of truth. That only must be forbidden which the
+     universal fellowship cannot conceivably accept within any one
+     of its groups[5]."
+
+[Footnote 5: Lambeth and Rennion. By the bishops of Peterborough,
+Zanzibar and Hereford.]
+
+The bishops just quoted add: "We rejoice indeed at this new mind of the
+Lambeth Conference." Whether it is a new mind in Lambeth Conferences we
+need not consider; it is certainly no new mind in the Anglican Church,
+but is precisely its characteristic attitude of not claiming perfection
+or finality for itself, but of looking beyond itself to Catholic
+Christendom, and longing for the time when reunion of the churches which
+now make up its "broken unity" will enable it to speak with the same
+voice of authority with which it did in its primitive and
+undivided state.
+
+In attempting to decide what as a priest of the Anglican Communion one
+may or may not teach or practice, one is bound to have regard, not to
+what is asserted by anyone, even by any bishop, to be "disloyal" or
+"unanglican," but to the principles expressed or implied in the
+utterances of the Church itself. From those utterances as I have
+reviewed them, it appears to me that a number of general principles may
+be deduced for the guidance of conduct.
+
+I. The Churches of the Anglican Communion are bound by the entire body
+of Catholic dogma formulated and accepted universally in the
+pre-Reformation Church.
+
+The Anglican documents, to be sure, speak constantly of the "Primitive
+Church," but they do not anywhere define what they mean by that; and
+frequently, by their appeal to the "undivided Church," and to "general
+Councils," they seem to include in their undefined term much more than
+is commonly understood. In any case, the Church has no special authority
+because it is _primitive_: its authority results not from its being
+primitive but from its being _Church_. The only point of the Anglican
+appeal would be the universal acceptance of a given doctrine. Such
+universal acceptance must be taken as proof of its primitiveness, that
+is, of its being contained, explicitly or implicitly, in the original
+deposit of faith. The Anglican Church was content with the summing up of
+this Faith in the Three Creeds, and attempted to formulate no new Greed
+of her own--the XXXIX Articles are not strictly a Creed: they are not
+articles of Faith but of Religion. But the very history of the Creeds
+implies that they are not final, that is, complete, but that they are a
+summing up of the Catholic Religion to date. There are truths which the
+circumstances of the Church in the Conciliar period had not brought into
+prominence which later events compelled the Church to express its mind
+upon. Such a truth is that of the Real Presence of our Lord in the
+Sacrament of the Altar. This truth had attained explicit acceptance
+throughout the Church before the Reformation, sufficiently witnessed by
+the liturgies in use. It is also embodied in the Anglican liturgy. If
+anyone thinks the language of the Anglican Church doubtful on this
+point, the principles enunciated by the Church compel interpretation in
+accord with the mind of the universal Church. There are other truths
+which are binding on us on the same basis of universal consent, but I am
+not seeking to apply the principle in every case but only to
+illustrate it.
+
+II. There is another class of truths or doctrines widely held in
+Christendom, which yet cannot be classed as dogmas of the faith. Such a
+doctrine is that of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin
+Mary. This doctrine has been made of faith in the Roman communion, but
+has not yet ecumenical acceptance, and therefore may be doubted without
+sin by members of the Greek or Anglican Churches. What we need to avoid,
+as the Lambeth Conference has reminded us, is a purely insular and
+provincial attitude in relation to doctrines which have not been
+formally set forth by Anglican authority. The Anglican Church has tried
+its best to impress upon us that there is no such thing as an Anglican
+Religion; there is but one Religion--the Religion of God's Catholic
+Church. What we are to seek to know is not the mind "of the Anglican
+reformers," or the mind "of the Caroline divines," but the mind of the
+Catholic Church. Wherever we shall find that mind expressed, though in
+terms unfamiliar to us, we are bound to treat it with respect. We are to
+seek to know the truth that the truth may make us free--from all pride
+and prejudice, as well as from heresy and blasphemy. And we shall best
+come at this mind in its widest meaning by the study of the writings of
+the saints of all ages and of all parts of the Church. It may fairly be
+inferred that those who have attained great perfection in the Catholic
+life have achieved it by the application of Catholic truth to every
+day living.
+
+III. The members of the Anglican Church have the same freedom as other
+Catholics in the matter of theological speculation. What was done at the
+Reformation was not final in the sense that we are never to believe or
+to teach anything that is not found in Anglican formularies. The fact
+that a certain doctrine like that of the Invocation of Saints was
+omitted from the Anglican formularies is not fatal to its practice. The
+grounds of its omission in practice may or may not have been well
+judged. But the theory of it was never denied, it is indeed contained in
+the Creeds themselves, and change in circumstances may justify its
+revival in practice.
+
+Moreover, the theology of the Christian Church is not a body of static
+doctrine, but is the expression of the ceaseless meditation of the
+saints upon the truths revealed to us by God. To suppose that any age
+whatever has exhausted the meaning of the Revealed Truth would be
+absurd. It is inexhaustible. So long as the mind of the Church is
+pondering it, it brings out from it things old and new. Among ourselves
+it is perhaps at present more desirable that we should bring out the old
+things than seek to find the new. The historic circumstances of the
+Anglican Church have been such as to lead to the practical disuse of
+much that is of great spiritual value in the treasury of the Church. It
+is largely in the attempt to bring into use the riches that have been
+abandoned that some are to-day incurring the charge of disloyalty--a
+charge that they are not careful to answer, if they may be permitted to
+minister to a larger spiritual life in the Church they love.
+
+At the same time the development of doctrine is a real mode of
+enrichment of the theology of the Church. The devout mind pondering
+divine truth will ever penetrate deeper into its meaning. Thus it was
+that in the course of centuries the Church arrived at a complete
+statement of the doctrine of our Lord's person. And what it could
+rightly do in the supreme case, it surely can rightly do in cases of
+lesser moment. We need not be afraid of this movement of thought, for
+the mind of the united Church may be trusted not to sanction any error.
+Our Lord has promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail against
+the Church. We can trust Him to fulfil His promise. He has also promised
+us that the Holy Spirit shall lead us into all the truth. Can He trust
+us not to thwart the work of the Spirit by a provincial attitude as of
+those who already in the utterances of the Anglican formularies claim to
+possess all truth?
+
+IV. There is one other inference to be drawn from what I conceive to be
+the Anglican position, and that is one that relates, not primarily to
+doctrine but to practice. For many years now the Anglican Churches have
+been greatly disturbed by varieties of practice, though it is difficult
+to see why varieties of practice should be in themselves disturbing.
+But without going into that matter, which would carry us far afield, I
+would simply state that the principle already laid down in regard to
+doctrine seems to apply here in the matter of practice: that is, the
+Anglican has the right to use any practice which has not been explicitly
+forbidden by the authorities of the local Church. The Churches of the
+Anglican Communion have never set forth any competent guide for the
+conduct of worship, and by refraining from so doing have left the matter
+in the hands of those who have to conduct services and provide for the
+spiritual needs of those over whom they have been given cure of souls.
+There is nothing more absurd than to assume that nothing rightly can be
+done in these matters except what has been directed by authority; that
+no services can be held but such as have formal authorization; that no
+ceremonies can be introduced but such as the custom of the time since
+the Reformation has made familiar to many.
+
+In such matters authority naturally and necessarily goes along with the
+cure of souls; the priest of the parish must perforce provide for the
+spiritual needs of his parish. If he finds those needs satisfied with
+the rendering of Morning and Evening Prayer--well and good; but those
+who do not find the needs of their parish so satisfied must seek to
+satisfy them by the providing of other spiritual means. And in seeking
+thus to provide for the spiritual growth of souls committed to his care,
+the priest, on the principles of the Anglican formularies, is justified
+and entitled to make use of the means in use throughout Catholic
+Christendom. He is quite justified in calling his people together for a
+prayer meeting, if in his judgment that will be for their spiritual
+good; or if his judgment is different, he is equally justified in
+inviting them to join him in saying the rosary. He may incite to greater
+devotion by a shortened form of Evening Prayer or by popular Vespers. I
+do not think that there is anything in the Christian Religion or in the
+formularies of the Anglican Church that forbids him to have moving
+pictures or special musical services. Nor is there any reason why, if it
+be in his judgment promotive of holiness, he should not provide for his
+parish such services as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. There can
+be no legitimate criticism of a service on the ground of its
+_provenance_.
+
+It is a common reproach against the Anglican Communion that is "does not
+know its own mind." It would be much truer to say that there are many
+members of it who have been at no pains to ascertain whether it have a
+mind or what that mind is: who have been content to confound the mind of
+the Church with the mind of the party to which they are attached by the
+accident of birth or of preference. I do not for a moment contend that
+the party (to use an ugly but necessary word) to which I am attached
+stands, in all things, in perfect alignment with the Anglican
+Formularies. There are circumstances in which it appears to me to be
+necessary to appeal from Anglican action to the mind of that larger
+Body, the whole Church of Christ throughout the world, to which the
+Anglican Church points me as its own final authority. In so doing I do
+not feel that I am disloyal, but that I am actually doing what
+authority tells me to do. These are cases in point. I do not believe
+that a local Church can suppress and permanently disuse sacraments of
+the universal Church. The Anglican Church by its suppression of the
+sacraments of Unction and by its almost universal disuse for centuries
+of the sacrament of Penance, compelled those who would be loyal to the
+Catholic Church to which it appealed to act on their own initiative in
+the revival of the use of those sacraments. I do not believe that the
+local Church has the right or the power to forbid or permanently disuse
+customs which are of universal currency in the Catholic Church. I do not
+believe that it has the right to neglect and fail to enforce the
+Catholic custom of fasting, and especially of fasting before communion.
+I do not believe that any Christian who is informed on these things has
+the right to neglect them on the ground that the Anglican Church has not
+enforced them. On the basis of its own declarations the ecumenical
+overrides the local; and if it be said, "What is a priest, that he
+should undertake to set the practice of his Church right?" the answer is
+that he is a man having cure of souls for whose progress in holiness he
+is responsible before God, and if those who claim authority in such
+matters will not act, he must act, though it be at the risk of his
+immortal soul.
+
+These things seem to be true with the truth of self-evidence. And
+because they seem to be true, I have not hesitated to preach, and now to
+print, the sermons on the life and words of our Lady contained in this
+volume. I am told by many that such teaching is dangerous, but I am not
+told by any of any danger that is intelligible to me. That such
+devotions to our Lady as are here commended trench on the prerogative of
+God, and exalt our Lady above the place of a creature is sufficiently
+answered by the fact that the very act of asking the prayers of Blessed
+Mary is an assertion of her creaturehood--one does not ask the prayers
+of God. And when it is said that devotion to her takes away from
+devotion to her Son, one has only to ask in reply, who as a matter of
+fact have maintained and do maintain unflinchingly the divinity of our
+Lord? Certainly the denials of the divinity of our Lord are found where
+there is also a denial that any honor is due or may rightly be given to
+His Blessed Mother; and where that Mother receives the highest honor,
+there we never for a moment doubt that the full Godhead of Jesus will be
+unflinchingly and unhesitatingly maintained.
+
+     Wherefore in praise, the worthiest that I may,
+     Jesu! of thee, and the white Lily-flower
+     Which did thee bear, and is a Maid for aye,
+     To tell a story I will use my power;
+     Not that I may increase her honour's dower,
+     For she herself is honour, and the root
+     Of goodness, next her Son, our soul's best boot.
+
+     O Mother Maid! O Maid and Mother free!
+     O bush unburnt; burning in Moses' sight!
+     That down didst ravish from the Deity,
+     Through humbleness, the spirit that did alight
+     Upon thy heart, whence, through that glory's might,
+     Conceived was the Father's sapience,
+     Help me to tell it in thy reverence.
+
+     Lady! thy goodness, thy magnificance,
+     Thy virtue, and thy great humility,
+     Surpass all science and all utterance;
+     For sometimes, Lady, ere men pray to thee
+     Thou goest before in thy benignity,
+     The light to us vouchsafing of thy prayer,
+     To be our guide unto thy Son so dear.
+
+     My knowledge is so weak, O blissful Queen!
+     To tell abroad thy mighty worthiness,
+     That I the weight of it may not sustain;
+     But as a child of twelve months old or less,
+     Even so fare I; and therefore, I thee pray,
+     Guide thou my song which I of thee shall say.
+
+     Chaucer. The Prioress' Tale. Version by Wordsworth.
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MEANING OF WORSHIP
+
+O Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all holy thoughts do come; who hast
+taught thy servants to honour thy glorious mother; mercifully grant us
+so to celebrate her on earth with the solemn sacrifice of praise and
+with due devotion, that by her intercession we may be found worthy to
+reign in joy in heaven. Who livest &c.
+
+SARUM MISSAL.
+
+There are thoughts and actions which so enter the daily conduct of our
+lives that we take them for granted and never pause to analyse them. If
+perchance something occurs to make us ask what these thoughts and
+actions truly and deeply mean we are surprised to find that we have, in
+fact, no adequate understanding of them. We have a feeling about them
+and we are quite sure that this feeling is a good and right one. We have
+ends that we are seeking and we are satisfied that the ends are in all
+ways desirable. But suddenly confronted with the question why,
+unexpectedly asked to explain, to justify ourselves, we find ourselves
+dumb. We cannot find adequate exposition for what we nevertheless know
+that we are justified in. It is so with much that we admire; we have
+never tried to justify our admiration, have never thought that it needed
+an explanation; and then, unexpectedly, we find ourselves challenged, we
+find our taste criticised, and in our efforts at self-defence we blunder
+and stumble and hesitate about what we still feel that we are quite
+right in holding fast.
+
+It is common things that we thus take for granted; it is daily
+activities that we thus assume need no explanation. For us who
+habitually gather to the services of the Church there is no more
+taken-for-granted act than worship. Worship is a part of our daily
+experience. At certain times each day we offer to God stated and formal
+acts of worship. Many times a day most likely we pause and for a moment
+lift our thought to our blessed Lord for a brief communion with Him. It
+is a part of our settled experience thus to draw strength from the
+inexhaustible source which at all times is at our disposal. We know how
+the tasks of the day are lightened and our strength to meet them renewed
+by these momentary invasions of the supernatural. There are also special
+times in each week when we meet with other members of the One Body of
+Christ in the offering of the unbloody Sacrifice. We know that in that
+act heaven and earth join, and that not only our brethren who are
+kneeling beside us are uniting with us in the offering of the Sacrifice,
+not only are we one with all those other members of the Body who on this
+same morning are kneeling at the numberless altars of Christendom, but
+that all those who are in Christ are with us partakers of the same
+Sacrifice, and that in its offering we are joined with all the holy
+dead, and by our partaking of Christ are brought close to one another.
+We therefore lovingly take their names upon our lips, and enkindle their
+memory in our hearts; and find that death, which we had thought of as a
+separation, has but broken the barriers to the deepest and most blessed
+communion, and that we are now, as never before, united to those whom we
+find in Christ Jesus our Lord.
+
+And then comes the unexpected challenge: "what does all this mean: these
+repeated and diverse acts that you are accustomed to speak of and to
+think of as acts of worship? What, ultimately, do you mean by worship,
+and can there possibly be found any common feature in these so diverse
+acts which can justify you in regarding them as essentially one? This
+act which is in truth presenting yourself before the majesty of God in
+humble adoration, in the guise of a suppliant child depending upon the
+love of the Father for the supply of the daily needs; or this other act
+which is of such deepest mystery that we approach any attempted
+statement of it with awe, which is in fact the representation of the
+sacrifice of Calvary; and then these invocations by which we ask the
+loving co-operation of our fellow members of Christ that they may
+associate themselves with us in the work of prayer and mutual
+intercession--how can all these acts be brought together under a common
+rubric, how can they all be designated as worship? What in fact is it
+that you mean by worship?"
+
+So are we challenged. So are we thrown back, and in the end thrown back
+most beneficially, to the analysis of our acts. Worship, we tell
+ourselves, is _worth_-ship; it is the attribution of worth or honor to
+whom these are properly due. "Honour to whom honour is due," we hear the
+Apostle saying. Worship is therefore not an absolute value but a varying
+value, the content of any act of which will be determined by the nature
+of the object toward which it is directed. It is greatly like love in
+this respect; its nature is always the same, but its present value is
+determined by the object to which it is directed. We are to love the
+Lord our God, and we are also to love our neighbour; the nature of the
+love is in each case the same; and yet we are not to love our neighbour
+with the limitless self-surrender with which we love God. The love of
+God is the passionate giving of ourselves to Him with all our heart and
+with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength. The
+love of the neighbour is measured and restrained, having in view his
+good that we are seeking, the promotion of his salvation as our fellow
+member in the Body of Christ. In the same way worship will take its
+colour, its significance, its tone, its intensity, not from some
+abstract conception, but from the end it seeks. This is made plain, too,
+when we look at our Bibles and Prayer Books for the actual use of the
+word. There we find much of the worship of God: but we also find a
+limited use of the word. "Then shalt thou have worship in the presence
+of them that sit at meat with thee." (S. Luke, XIV, 10.) And in the
+marriage service of the English Prayer Book we read: "With this ring I
+thee wed, and with my body I thee worship." The same limited content of
+the word is found in the old title of respect--"Your Worship."
+
+But so thoroughly has the word worship become associated with our
+approach to God, that we still, many of us, no doubt, feel the shock of
+the unaccustomed when we hear the worship of the Blessed Virgin or of
+the saints spoken of. It does not help us much to fall back on the Latin
+word, _Cultus_, for we understand that the meaning is the same.
+
+We are helped, I think, if we substitute the parallel word honour for
+worship in the places of its use. We meet in the Church to honour God,
+and we offer the Blessed Sacrifice as the act of supreme honour which is
+due to Him alone; but in connection with the supreme honour offered to
+God we also honour the saints of God by the observance of their
+anniversaries with special services including the Holy Sacrifice. The
+word honour does not sound so ill to ears unaccustomed to a certain type
+of Catholic expression as the word worship: but the meaning is
+untouched.
+
+Let us go on then to the analysis of the notion of worship. In the
+writings of theologians we find an analysis of the notion of worship
+into three degrees. There is, first of all, that supreme degree of
+worship which is called _latria_ and which is the worship due to God
+alone. If we ask what essentially it is that differentiates _latria_
+from all other degrees of worship or honour we find that it is the
+element of sacrifice that it contains. Sacrifice is the supreme act of
+self-surrender to another, of utter self-immolation, and it can have no
+other legitimate object than God Himself. The central notion of
+sacrifice is the surrender of self. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant
+were of value because they were the representatives of the nation and of
+the individuals who offered them; because of the self-identification of
+nation or individual with the thing offered, which must therefore be in
+some sense the offerer's, must, so to say, _contain him_: must be that
+in which he merges himself. So the one Sacrifice of the New Covenant
+gets its essential value in that it is the surrender of the Son to the
+will of the Father. "I am come to do Thy will, O God." Christ's
+sacrifice is self-sacrifice: the voluntary surrender of the whole life
+to the divine purpose.
+
+And when we actually worship God, worship Him with the worship of
+_latria_, our act must be of the same essential nature; it must be an
+act of sacrifice, of self-giving; the offering of ourselves to the will
+of the Father. So it is in our participation in the offering of the
+Blessed Sacrifice. The full meaning of our joining in that act is that
+we are uniting ourselves with our Lord's offering of Himself, and as
+members of His Body share in the sacrifice of the Body which is the
+supreme act of worship. And our other acts of worship lay hold on and
+proceed from this which is the ground of their efficacy. All our
+subordinate acts of worship, so to call them, have their character and
+vitality as Christian acts of the worship of God because of the relation
+of the worshipper to God as a member of the Body of His Son. They are
+offered through the Son and derive their potency from their association
+with Him and His sacrifice. They reach God through the sacrifice of the
+One Mediator.
+
+Worship, then, in this complete sense, is due to God alone; and it is
+separated by a whole heaven from any worship, that is, honour, which can
+be offered to any creature, however exalted. No instructed person would
+for a moment imagine that the prayers which we address to the saints are
+in any degree such worship as is offered to God; but in as much as those
+who are unfamiliar with the forms of the Catholic Religion in its
+devotional expression may easily be led astray, it seems needful to
+stress this fact of the difference between simple petition and such
+acts and prayers as involve the highest degree of worship.
+
+One of the chief sources of confusion in this matter is the failure to
+distinguish between the nature of the act of worship, which is
+determined by the person to whom it is directed, and the mere adjuncts
+of the act. But an act of _latria_ is not constituted such by the fact
+that it is aided in its expression by such circumstances as banners,
+lights, incense and so on. These are quite appropriate to any act of
+honour, and have been customarily so used in relation to human beings.
+There was a certain hesitation in the Church for some time in the matter
+of incense which under the older Covenant had been especially
+appropriated to God, because in the experience of the early Church it
+was demanded, and necessarily refused, as an acknowledgment of the
+divinity of the Emperor. But with the passing of the pagan empire
+incense as the universal symbol of prayer came into use in all manner of
+services wherein intercession was a part.
+
+Such adjuncts therefore are not foreign to those subordinate acts of
+worship or honour which are technically known as _dulia. Dulia_--this
+word means service--is such honour as may be rightly rendered to
+creatures without at all encroaching upon the majesty of God. It is
+_that_ degree of worship that we have in mind when we speak of the
+worship of the saints. That _dulia_ of the saints is expressed when we
+ask for the intercession of this or that saint, and is not essentially
+different from the asking for the prayers of any other human beings. We
+commonly ask for one another's prayers and feel that in doing so we are
+exercising our brotherhood in the Body of Christ in calling into action
+its mutual love and sympathy. We should be beyond measure astonished if
+we were told that such requests for the prayers of our brethren were
+encroachments upon the honour of God and the sin of idolatry! But if in
+this case our surprise is justified, it is difficult to see how the case
+is at all altered by the fact that the fellow members of the Body whose
+prayers we are asking happen to be _dead_, that is, as we believe and
+imply in our request for their intercession, have passed into a new and
+closer relation to our Blessed Lord. Nor, again, does the case seem to
+be at all altered, if the brother whose prayers we ask has been dead a
+long time, and has, by the common consent of Catholic Christendom, been
+received into the number of the saints. The ways in which the human mind
+works under the influence of prejudice are always interesting. There are
+many devout persons who feel that it is a valuable element in their
+religion to have the privilege of following the Kalendar of the Church
+and to keep the saints' days therein indicated by attendance at divine
+service; who yet would be horrified if it were suggested that a prayer
+should be offered to the saint whose day is being observed, and that the
+saint should be made the object of an act of worship. But what
+essentially _is_ the keeping of a saint's day, with a celebration of the
+Holy Communion with special collect, epistle and gospel, but an act of
+worship _(dulia)_ of the saint? The nature of the act would be in no way
+changed if in addition to our accustomed collects there were added one
+which plainly asked for the prayers of the saint in whose honour we are
+keeping the feast.
+
+In the worship of the Church of God a place apart is assigned to the
+honour to be paid to the blessed Mother of our Lord. As the highest of
+all creatures, as highly favoured above all, as she whom God chose to be
+the Mother of His Son, the devout thought of generations of Christians
+has felt that their recognition of her relation to God in the
+Incarnation called for a special degree of honour rightly to express it.
+The thought of the faithful lingers about all that was in any degree
+associated with the coming of God in the flesh: so great was the
+deliverance thereby wrought for man that man's gratitude ever seeks new
+means of expression and ever finds the means inadequate to his love.
+Many of the expressions that are found in devotional writers associated
+with the cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary are an outcome of this
+attitude of mind. To those who are unused to them they seem exaggerated;
+in the vast mass of the devotional writings of Catholic Christendom
+there is no difficulty in finding expressions which _are_ exaggerated;
+but it is well to remember when thinking of this that the exaggeration
+is the exaggeration of love. The tendency of love _is_ to exaggerate the
+forms of its expression. It is, however, we feel on reflection, an error
+to judge by the exaggeration rather than by the love. It is perhaps well
+to ask ourselves whether we are saved from exaggeration by greater
+sanity or by lesser love.
+
+But exaggeration apart, this feeling of the unique position of the
+blessed Mother in relation to the Incarnate Son, as calling forth a
+special honour for her is embodied in the designation of the honour to
+be rendered her as _hyperdulia_--a specially devoted service. It is
+hardly necessary after what has been said to point out that even here in
+the highest honour rendered to any saint there is no passing of the
+infinite gulf which separates Creator from creature, any infringement
+upon the honour of God. No Catholic could dream that blessed Mary would
+be in any wise honoured by the attribution to her of what belongs to her
+Son. These are no doubt commonplaces, but it is better to be commonplace
+than to be misunderstood. The intercession that is asked of the blessed
+Mother is the intercession of one who by God's election is more closely
+associated with God than any other human being is or can be. Her power
+of prayer is felt to proceed from the depth of her sanctity; from, in
+other words, the perfection of her relation to her blessed Son Who is
+the only Mediator and the Saviour of us all.
+
+Let me say in conclusion that this giving of honour to our Lord, and to
+all His saints as united to Him, and the celebration of their days
+according to the Church's year, and the asking of the help of their
+intercession in all the needs of our lives, is not simply a thing to be
+tolerated in those who are inclined to it, is not simply a privilege
+which we are entitled to if we care for it, but is a duty which all
+Christians ought to fulfil because otherwise they are failing to make
+real to them a very important article of the Christian Creed. The
+Communion of Saints, like all other articles of the Creed, needs to be
+put into active use, and will be when we believe it as distinguished
+from assent to it. When we believe that all who live unto God in the
+Body of His dear Son are inspired with active love one toward another,
+we shall ourselves feel the impulse of that love, and be compelled both
+to seek an outlet for it toward all other members of the Body, and also
+will equally feel compelled to seek our own share in the action of that
+love by asking for the prayers of the saints for ourselves and for all
+in whom we are interested. Then will we find in the "worship of the
+saints" one great means whereby we can worship the God of the saints by
+the devout recognition of the greatness of His work in them, May God be
+praised and glorified in all His saints.
+
+     O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,
+       Lowly, and higher than all creatures raised,
+       Term by eternal council fixed upon,
+     Thou art she who didst ennoble man,
+       That even He who had created him
+       To be Himself His creature disdained not.
+     Within thy womb rekindled was the love,
+       By virtue of whose heat this flower thus
+       Is blossoming in the eternal peace.
+     Here thou art unto us a noon-day torch
+       Of charity, and among mortal men
+       Below, thou art a living fount of hope.
+     Lady, thou art so great and so prevailest,
+       That who seeks grace without recourse to thee,
+       Would have his wish fly upward without wings.
+     Thy loving-kindness succors not alone
+       Him who is seeking it, but many times
+       Freely anticipates the very prayer.
+     In thee is mercy, pity is in thee,
+       In thee magnificence, whatever good
+       Is in created being joins in thee.
+
+Dante, Par. XXXIII, 1-21. (Trans. H. Johnson.)
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MARY OF NAZARETH
+
+     Mary, of whom was born Jesus.
+
+     S. Matt. I. 16.
+
+My Maker and Redeemer, Christ the Lord, O Immaculate, coming forth from
+thy womb, having taken my nature upon him, hath delivered Adam from the
+primal curse; wherefore, to thee, Immaculate, the Mother of God and
+Virgin in very sooth, we cry aloud unceasingly the Ave of the Angel,
+"Hail, O Lady, protection and shelter and salvation of our souls!"
+
+BYZANTINE.
+
+The silences of the Holy Scriptures have always provoked speculation as
+to what is left untold. The devout imagination has played about the
+hints we receive and woven them into stories which far outrun any true
+implication of the facts. Thus has much legendary matter gathered about
+the childhood of our Lord, containing the stories, not always very
+edifying according to our taste, which are set down in the Apocryphal
+Gospels. The same eagerness to know more than we are told has produced
+the developed legend of the childhood of our Lady. We can of course
+place no reliance on most of the statements that are there made; perhaps
+the most that we can lay hold of is the fact that S. Mary's father was
+Joachim and her mother Anna. The rest may be left to silence.
+
+But if the facts of the external life of Mary of Nazareth cannot be
+hoped for, certain general truths evidently follow from God's plan for
+her and from her relation to our Blessed Lord. There are certain
+inferences from her vocation which are irresistible and which the
+theologians of the Church did not fail to make as they thought of her
+function in relation to the Incarnation. We know that the work of
+Redemption by which it was God's purpose to lead back a sinful world to
+Himself was a purpose that worked from the very beginning of man's fatal
+separation from the source of his life and happiness. The essential
+meaning of Holy Scripture is that it is a history of the origin of God's
+purpose and of His bringing it to a successful issue in the mission of
+our Lord. In the Scriptures we are permitted to see the unfolding of the
+divine purpose and the preparation of the instruments by which the
+purpose is to be effected. We see the divine will struggling with the
+human will, and in appearance baffled again and again by the selfishness
+and the stupidity of man. We see too that the divine will is in the long
+run successful in securing a point of action in humanity, in winning the
+allegiance of men of good will to co-operation with the purpose of God.
+We see spiritual ideals assimilated, and sympathy with the work of God
+generated, until we feel that that work has gained a firm and enduring
+ground in humanity from which it can act. God is able to consummate His
+purpose, and men begin to understand in some measure the nature of the
+future deliverance and to look forward to the coming of One Who should
+be the embodiment of the divine action and the Representative of God
+Himself with a completeness which no previous messenger of God had
+ever attained.
+
+It we would understand the Old Testament we must find that its intimate
+note is preparation, just as the intimate note of the New Testament is
+accomplishment. God is working to a foreseen end, and is working as fast
+as men will consent to co-operate and become the instruments of His
+purpose. The purpose is not one that can be achieved by the exercise of
+power; it is a purpose of love and can be effected only through
+co-operating love. And as we watch the final unfolding of that purpose
+in the Incarnation of God, we more and more become conscious of the
+preparation of all the instruments of the purpose which are working in
+harmony for the revelation of the meaning of God.
+
+Of all the instruments of this divine purpose, one figure has
+preeminently fascinated the devout imagination because of her unique
+beauty, and has been the object of profound speculation because of the
+intimacy of her relation to God,--Mary of Nazareth. The vocabulary of
+love and reverence has exhausted itself in the attempt to express our
+estimate of her. The literature of Mariology is immense. And no one who
+has at all entered into the meaning of the Incarnation, of what is
+involved in eternal God taking human flesh, can wonder at this. Here at
+the crisis of the divine redeeming action, when the crowning mystery
+which angels desire to look into is being accomplished, we find the
+figure of a village maiden of Israel as the surprising instrument of the
+advent of God. We wonder: and we instinctively feel, that as all the
+other steps and instruments in God's redemption of man had from the
+beginning been carefully prepared, so shall we find preparation here. We
+understand that as God could not come in the flesh at any time, but only
+when the "fulness of time" had come; so He could not come of any woman,
+but only of such an one as He had prepared to be the instrument of His
+Incarnation.
+
+It is involved in the very intimacy of the relation which exists
+between our Lord and His blessed Mother that she should be unique in the
+human race. We feel that we are right in saying that the Incarnation
+which waited for the preparation of the world socially and spiritually,
+must also be thought of as waiting for the coming of the woman who would
+so completely surrender herself to the divine will that in her obedience
+could be founded the antidote to the disobedience which was founded in
+Eve. The race waited for the coming of the new mother who should be the
+instrument in the abolishing of the evil of which the first mother was
+the instrument. And from the very beginning of the thought of the Church
+about blessed Mary there was no doubt that it was implied in her office
+in bearing the God-Man that she should be without sin--sinless in the
+sense of never having in any least degree consented to evil the thought
+of the Church has ever held her to be. It was held incredible that she
+who by God's election bore in the sanctuary of her womb during the
+months of her child-bearing Him who was Lord and Creator and was come to
+save the world from all the stain and penalty of sin should herself be a
+sinner. Without actual sin, therefore, was Mary held to be from the time
+that the thought of the Church was turned upon her relation to our
+Blessed Lord[6].
+
+[Footnote 6: It is true that a few writers among the Fathers see in
+blessed Mary traces of venial sin; who think of her intervention at Cana
+as presumptuous &c. But such notices are not of sufficient frequency or
+importance to break the general tradition.]
+
+For some time this seemed enough. It was not felt that any further
+thought about her sinlessness was needed. But as the uniqueness of Mary
+forced itself more and more upon the brooding thought of theologians and
+saints they were compelled to face the fact that her freedom from actual
+sin was not a full appreciation of her purity, was not an exhaustive
+treatment of her relation to our Lord. The doctrine of the nature of sin
+itself had been becoming clearer to the minds of Christian thinkers. All
+men are conceived and born in sin, it was seen. After S. Paul's
+teaching, the problem of _sin_ was not the problem of sins but the
+problem of sinfulness. The matter could not be left with the statement
+that all men do sin; the reason of their sinning must be traced out. And
+it was traced out, under S. Paul's guidance, to a ground of sin in
+nature itself, to a defect in man as he is born into the world. He does
+not become a sinner when he commits his first sin: he is born a sinner.
+In other words, the problem of man's sinfulness is the problem of
+original sin.
+
+What then do we mean by original sin? Briefly, we mean this. At his
+creation man was not only created innocent, but he was created in union
+with God, a union which conferred on him many supernatural gifts, gifts,
+that is, which were not a part of his nature, but were in the way of an
+addition to his nature. "By created nature man is endowed with moral
+sense, and is thus made responsible for righteousness; but he is unequal
+to its fulfilment. The all-righteous Creator could be trusted to
+complete His work. He endowed primitive man with superadded gifts of
+grace, especially the supernatural gift, _donum supernaturale_, of the
+Holy Spirit[7]."
+
+[Footnote 7: Hall, Dogmatic Theology, V, 263.]
+
+Our purpose does not require us further to particularize these gifts and
+our time does not permit it. We are concerned with this: the effect of
+man's sin was, what the effect of sin always is, to separate man from
+God. To sin, man has to put his will in opposition to the will of God.
+This our first parents did; and the result of their act was the
+destruction of their union with God and the loss of their supernatural
+endowments. They lapsed into a state of nature, only it was a state in
+which they had forfeited what had been conferred upon them at their
+creation. This state of man, with only his natural endowments, is the
+state into which all men, the descendants of Adam, have been born. This
+is the state of original sin. "Original sin means in Catholic theology a
+state inherited from our first human parents in which we are deprived of
+the supernatural grace and original righteousness with which they were
+endowed before they sinned, and are naturally prone to sin." (Hall,
+Dogmatic Theology, Vol. V, p. 281.) We can state the same fact
+otherwise, and more simply for our present purposes, by saying that by
+sin was forfeited the grace of union or sanctifying grace; and when we
+say that a child is born in sin we mean that it is born out of union
+with God, or without the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace. You
+will note here no implication of original sin as an active poison handed
+on from generation to generation. It will be important to remember this
+presently.
+
+When, therefore, the thought of the Church began to follow out what was
+involved in its belief in the actual sinlessness of blessed Mary, in its
+holding to the fact that her relation to God was of such a close and
+indeed unique character that her actual sinfulness would be
+incomprehensible; it was at length compelled to ask, What, in that case
+are we to think of original sin? If the first Eve was created in
+innocence and endowed with supernatural gifts, are we to think that she
+whom the Fathers of the Church from the earliest times have constantly
+called the second Eve, she whom God chose to be the Mother of His Son,
+should be less endowed? Is it a fact any more conceivable that the
+virgin Mother of God should be born in original sin than that she should
+be the victim of actual sin? If by the special grace of God she was kept
+from sin from the time that she was able to know good and evil, is it
+not probable that the freedom from sin goes further back than that, and
+is a freedom from original as well as from actual sin? What is the
+meaning of the Angelic Salutation, "Hail, thou that art _full of
+grace_," unless it refer to a superadded grace, to such _donum
+supernaturale_ as the first Eve received? There is indeed no precedent
+to guide in the case: the prophet Jeremiah and S. John Baptist had been
+preserved from sin from the womb, but this did not involve freedom from
+original sin. Still the fact that there was no precedent was not in
+anywise fatal; the point of the situation was just that there was no
+precedent for the relation to God into which Blessed Mary had been
+called. It was precisely this uniqueness of vocation which was leading
+theological thought to the conclusion of the uniqueness of her
+privilege: and this uniqueness of privilege seemed to call for nothing
+less than an exemption from sin in any and all forms. So a belief in the
+Immaculate Conception grew up despite a good deal of opposition while
+its implications were being thought out, but was found more and more
+congenial to the mind of the Church. She whose wonderful title for
+centuries had been Mother of God could never at any moment of her
+existence have been separate from God. She must, so it was felt, have
+been united to God from the very first moment of her existence.
+
+But what does this exemption from the common lot of men actually mean? I
+think that the simplest way of getting at it is to ask ourselves what it
+is that happens to a child at baptism. Every human child that is born
+into the world is born in original sin, that is, is born out of union
+with God, without sanctifying grace. It is then brought to the font and
+by baptism regenerated, born again, put in a relation to God that we
+describe as union, made a partaker of the divine nature. This varying
+description of the effect of baptism means that the soul of the child
+has become a partaker of sanctifying grace, the grace of union with God.
+Original sin, we say, is forgiven: that is, the soul is placed in the
+relation to God that it would have had had sin not come into existence,
+save that there remains a certain weakness of nature due to its sinful
+heredity. This that happens to children when they are baptised is what
+is held to have happened to Blessed Mary at her creation. Her soul
+instead of being restored to God by grace after her birth, was by God's
+special grace or favour created in union with Him, and in that union
+always continued. The uniqueness of S. Mary's privilege was that she
+never had to be restored to union with God because from the moment of
+her existence she had been one with Him. This would have been the common
+lot of all men if sin had not come into the world.
+
+In view of much criticism of this belief it is perhaps necessary to
+emphasize the fact that a belief in Mary's exemption from original sin
+does not imply a belief that she was exempt from the need of redemption.
+She is a creature of God, only the highest of His creatures: and like
+all human beings she needed to be redeemed by the Blood of Christ. The
+privileges which are our Lord's Mother's, are her's through the foreseen
+merits of her Son--she, as all others, is redeemed by the sacrifice and
+death of Christ. There is in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
+no shadow of encroachment on the doctrine of universal redemption in
+Christ; there is simply the belief that for the merits of the Son the
+Mother was spared any moment of separation from the Father.
+
+It will, of course, be said that this doctrine is but the relatively
+late and newly formulated doctrine of the Latin Church and is of no
+obligation elsewhere; that we are in no wise bound to receive it. In
+regard to which there are one or two things to be said. That we are not
+formally bound to believe a doctrine is not at all the same thing as to
+say that we are formally bound not to believe it. I am afraid that the
+latter is a not uncommon attitude. There is no obligation upon us to
+disbelieve the Immaculate Conception of blessed Mary; there is an
+obligation upon us to understand it and to appreciate its meaning and
+value. We must remember that a doctrine that is not embodied in our
+Creed may nevertheless have the authority of the Church back of it. The
+doctrine of the Real Presence is not stated in the Creed; yet it is and
+always has been the teaching of the Church everywhere in all its
+liturgies. Though any particular statement of the Real Presence is not
+binding, the fact itself is binding on all Christians, and may not
+be doubted.
+
+In much the same way it will be found that theological doctrines of
+relatively late creedal formulation yet have behind the formulation a
+long history of actual acceptance in the teaching of the Church. They
+are theologically certain long before they are embodied in authoritative
+formulae. What the individual Christian has to do is to try to
+assimilate the meaning of theological teaching and to find a place for
+it in his devotional practice and experience. His best attitude is not
+one of doubt and scepticism, but of meditation and experiment. It is
+through this latter attitude that each one is helping to form the mind
+of the Church, and aiding its progressive appreciation of
+revealed truth.
+
+I do not see how any one who has entered into the meaning of the
+Incarnation can feel otherwise than that the uniqueness of the event
+carries with it the uniqueness of the instrument. It can of course be
+said that truth is not a matter of feeling but of revelation. But is it
+not true that God reveals Himself in many ways, and that our feelings as
+well as our intellects are involved in our perception of the truth
+revealed? Do we not often feel that something must be true far in
+advance of our ability to prove it so? And in truths of a certain order
+is there not an intuitive perception, a perception growing out of a
+sense of fitness, of congruity, which outruns the slow advance of the
+intellect? Love and sympathy often far outrun intellectual process. This
+is not to say that feeling is all; that a sense of fitness and
+conformity is a sufficient basis of doctrine. There is always need of
+the verification of the conclusions of the affections by the intellect;
+and the intellect in the last resort will have to be the
+determining factor.
+
+And I think it can be said without hesitation that the intellectual work
+of theological students has quite justified the course that the
+affections of Christendom have taken in their spontaneous appreciation
+of Mary, the Ever-Virgin Mother of Our Lord. What the heart of
+Christendom has discovered, the mind of Christendom has justified. But
+here more than in any other doctrinal development it is love that has
+led the way, often with an eagerness, an _elan_, with which theology has
+found it difficult to keep up.
+
+And as we to-day try to appreciate the place of Blessed Mary in the life
+of the Church of God must we not feel it to be our misfortune that our
+past has been so wrapped in clouds of controversy that we have been
+unable to see her meaning at all clearly? Must we not feel deep sadness
+at the thought that the very mention of Mary's name, so often stirs, not
+love and gratitude, but the spirit of suspicion and dislike? We no doubt
+have passed beyond such feelings, but the traces of their evil work
+through the centuries still persist. They persist in certain feelings of
+reserve and hesitation when we find that our convictions are leading us
+to the adoption of the attitude toward her which is the common attitude
+of all Catholicity, both East and West. When we feel that the time has
+actually come to abandon the narrowness and barrenness of devotional
+practice which is a part of our tradition, we nevertheless feel as
+though we were launching out on strange seas and that our next sight of
+land might be of strange regions where we should not feel at home. If
+such be our instinctive attitude, it is well to remember that progress,
+spiritual as well as other, is conquest of the (to us) new; but that the
+acquisition of the new does not necessarily mean the abandonment of the
+old. We shall in fact lose nothing of our hold on the unique work of our
+Lord because we recognise that His Blessed Mother's association with it
+implies a certain preparation on her part, a certain uniqueness of
+privilege. There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the
+Man Christ Jesus; and all who come to God, come through Him. But they
+come also in the unity of the Body of many members and of many offices.
+And the office of her who in God's providence was called to be the
+Mother of the Incarnate is surely as unique as is her vocation. She
+surely is entitled to receive from us the deep affection of our hearts
+and the highest honour that may be given to any creature.
+
+
+     THE GARLAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARIE.
+
+     Here are five letters in this blessed name,
+     Which, changed, a five-fold mystery design,
+     The M the Myrtle, A the Almonds claim,
+     R Rose, I Ivy, E sweet Eglantine.
+
+     These form thy garland, when of Myrtle green
+     The gladdest ground to all the numbered five,
+     Is so implexed fine and laid in, between,
+     As love here studied to keep grace alive.
+
+     Thy second string is the sweet Almond bloom
+     Mounted high upon Selines' crest:
+     As it alone (and only it) had room,
+     To knit thy crown, and glorify the rest.
+
+     The third is from the garden culled, the Rose,
+     The eye of flowers, worthy for her scent,
+     To top the fairest lily now, that grows
+     With wonder on the thorny regiment.
+
+     The fourth is the humble Ivy intersert
+     But lowly laid, as on the earth asleep,
+     Preserved in her antique bed of vert,
+     No faiths more firm or flat, then, where't doth creep.
+
+     But that, which sums all, is the Eglantine,
+     Which of the field is cleped the sweetest briar,
+     Inflamed with ardour to that mystic shine,
+     In Moses' bush unwasted in the fire.
+
+     Thus love, and hope, and burning charity,
+     (Divinest graces) are so intermixt
+     With odorous sweets and soft humility,
+     As if they adored the head, whereon they are fixed.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE ANNUNCIATION I
+
+     And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art
+     highly favoured, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou
+     among women.
+
+                  S. Luke, I. 28
+
+Oh God, whose will it was that thy Word should take flesh, at the
+message of the Angel, in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, grant to
+us thy suppliants that, we who believe her to be truly the Mother of
+God, may be assisted by her intercession with thee. Through &c.
+
+ROMAN.
+
+When we attempt to reconstruct imaginatively any scene of Holy
+Scripture it is almost inevitable that we see it through the eyes of
+some great artist of the past. The Crucifixion comes to us as Duerer or
+Guido Reni saw it; the Presentation or the Visitation presents itself to
+us in terms of the imagination of Raphael; we see the Nativity as a
+composition of Corregio. So the Annunciation rises before us when we
+close our eyes and attempt to make "the composition of place" in a
+familiar grouping of the actors: a startled maiden who has arisen
+hurriedly from work or prayer, looking with wonder at the apparition of
+an angel who has all the eagerness of one who has come hastily upon an
+urgent mission. The surroundings differ, but artists of the Renaissance
+like to think of a sumptuous background as a worthy setting for so
+great an event.
+
+We keep close to the meaning of Scripture if we set the Annunciation in
+a room in a cottage of a Palestinian working man. And I like to think of
+S. Mary at her accustomed work when Gabriel appeared, not with a rush of
+wings, but as a silent and hardly felt presence standing before her whom
+the Lord has chosen to be the instrument of His coming. Wonder there
+would have been, the kind of awe-struck wonder with which the
+supernatural always fills men; and yet only for a moment, for how could
+she who was daily living so close to God fear the messenger of God? The
+thought of angels and divine messengers would be wholly familiar to her.
+They had been the frequent agents of God in many a crisis of her
+people's history, and appeared again and again in the story of her
+ancestors on whose details she had often meditated. Yet in her humility
+she could but think it strange that an angel should have any message to
+bear to her.
+
+It is a striking enough scene, as the artists have felt when they tried
+to put it before us. But no artist has ever been able to go below the
+surface and by any hint lead us to an appreciation of the vast
+implications of the moment. This moment of the Annunciation is in fact
+the central moment of the world's history. No moment before or since has
+equalled it in its unspeakable wonder, in its revelation of the meaning
+of God. Not the moment of the creation when all the Sons of God sang
+together at the vision of the unfolding purpose of God; not the morning
+of the Resurrection when the empty tomb told of the accomplished
+overthrow of death and hell. This is the moment toward which all
+preceding time had moved, and to which all succeeding ages will look
+back--the moment of the Incarnation of God.
+
+It is well to ask ourselves at this point what the Incarnation means,
+because our estimate of Blessed Mary as the chosen instrument of God's
+grace will be influenced by our estimate of that which she was chosen to
+do. One feels the failure to grasp her position in the work of our
+redemption often displays a weak hold upon that which is the very heart
+of God's work--the fact of God made man. The moment of the Annunciation
+is the moment of the Incarnation: God in His infinite love for mankind
+is sending forth His Son to be born of a woman in the likeness of our
+flesh. God the Son, the second Person of the ever adorable Trinity, is
+entering the womb of this maiden, there to wrap Himself in her flesh and
+to pass through the common course of a human child's development till He
+shall reach the hour of the Nativity. When we try to grasp the reach of
+the divine Love, its depth, its self-forgetfulness, we must stand in the
+cottage in Nazareth and hear the angelic salutation. And then surely our
+own hearts cannot fail to respond to the revelation of the divine love;
+and something of our love that goes out to our hidden Lord, goes out too
+to the maiden-mother who so willingly became God's instrument in His
+work for our redemption. In imagination I see S. Gabriel kneeling before
+her who has become a living Tabernacle of God Most High, and repeating
+his "Hail, thou that art highly favoured," with the deepest reverence.
+
+"Hail, thou that art full of grace." We linger over this Ave of S.
+Gabriel, and often it rises to our lips. Perhaps it is with S. Luke's
+narrative, almost naked in its simplicity, in our hands as we try once
+more to push our thought deep into the meaning of the scene, that we may
+understand a little better what has resulted in our experience from the
+Incarnation of God, and our thought turns to S. Mary whom God chose and
+brought so near to Himself. Perhaps it is when, with chaplet in hand,
+we try to imagine S. Mary's feelings at this first of the Joyful
+Mysteries when the meaning of her vocation comes clearly before her.
+Hail! thou that art full of grace, of the Living Grace, the very
+Presence of the divinity itself. The plummet of our thought fails always
+to reach the depth of that mystery of Mary's Child. It was indeed
+centuries before the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit
+thought out and fully stated the meaning of this Child; it was centuries
+before it fully grasped the meaning of Mary herself in her relation to
+her divine Son: and after all the centuries of Spirit-guided statement
+and saintly meditation it still remains that many fail to understand and
+to make energetic in life the fact of the Incarnation of God in the womb
+of the Virgin Mary.
+
+And what was S. Mary's own attitude toward the announcement of the
+Angel? Her first instinctive word--the word called out by her imperfect
+grasp of the meaning of the message of S. Gabriel, is: How can this be
+seeing I know not a man? Are we to infer from these words, as many have
+inferred, that in her secret thoughts S. Mary had resolved always to
+remain a virgin, that she had so offered herself to God in the virgin
+state? Possibly when we remember that such was God's will for her it is
+not going too far to assume that she had been prompted thus to meet and
+offer herself to the divine will. Be that as it may there is an obvious
+and instantaneous assumption that the child-bearing which is predicted
+to her lies outside the normal and accustomed way of marriage. She
+clearly does not think that the archangel's words look to her
+approaching union with S. Joseph, even if the nominal nature of that
+marriage were not agreed upon. It is clear that her instantaneous
+feeling is that as the message is supernatural in character, so will its
+fulfilment be, and the wondering _how_ arises to her lips.
+
+The answer to the how is that what is worked in her is by the power of
+the Holy Spirit: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of
+the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which
+shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
+
+As so often in the dealing of God with us, that which is put forward as
+an explanation actually deepens the mystery. It was no abatement of
+Mary's wonder, nor did it really put away her _how_ when she was told
+that the Holy Ghost should come upon her and that the child should be
+the Son of the Highest. And yet this was the only answer to such a
+question that was possible. Our questions may be met in two ways: either
+by a detailed explanation, or by the answer that the only explanation is
+God--that what we are concerned with is a direct working of God outside
+the accustomed order of nature and therefore outside the reach of our
+understanding. Such acts have no doubt their laws, but they are not the
+laws in terms of which we are wont to think.
+
+The question of S. Mary was not a question which implied doubt. It is
+therefore the proper question with which to approach all God's works.
+There is a stress with which such questions may be asked which implies
+on our part unbelief or at least hesitation in belief. It is a not
+uncommon accent to hear to-day in questions as to divine mysteries. Our
+recitation of the creed is not rarely invaded by restlessness, shadows
+of doubt, which perhaps we brush aside, or perhaps let linger in our
+minds with the feeling that it is safer for our religion not to follow
+these out. I am afraid that there are not a few who still adhere to the
+Church who do so with the feeling that it is better for them to go on
+repeating words that they have become used to rather than to raise
+questions as to their actual truth; who feel that the faith of the
+Church rests on foundations which in the course of the centuries have
+been badly shaken, but that it is safer not to disturb them lest they
+incontinently fall to pieces.
+
+In other words there is a wide-spread feeling that such stories as this
+of the Annunciation and of the Virgin birth of our Lord are fables. When
+we ask, why is there such a feeling? the only answer is that the modern
+man has become suspicious of the supernatural. Has there anything been
+found in the way of evidence, we ask, which reflects upon the truth of
+the story in S. Luke? No, we are told; the story stands where it always
+did, its evidence is what it always was. What has changed is not the
+story or the evidence for it but the human attitude toward that and all
+such stories. The modern mind does not attempt to disprove them, it just
+disapproves of them, and therefore declines to believe them. It sets
+them aside as belonging to an order of ideas with which it no longer
+has any sympathy.
+
+It is no doubt true that we reach many of our conclusions, especially
+those which govern our practical attitude towards life, from the ground
+of certain hardly recognised presuppositions, rather than from the basis
+of thought out principles. The thought of to-day is pervaded by the
+denial of the supernatural. It insists that all that we know or can know
+is the natural world about us. It rules out the possibility of any
+invasions of the natural order and declines to accept such on any
+evidence whatsoever. All that one has time to say now of such an
+attitude is that it makes all religion impossible, and sets aside as
+untrustworthy all the deepest experiences of the human soul. If I were
+going to argue against this attitude (as I am not able to now) I should
+simply oppose to it the past experience of the race as embodied in its
+best religious thought. I should stress the fact that what is noblest
+and best in the past of humanity is wholly meaningless unless humanity's
+supposition of a life beyond this life, and of the existence of
+spiritual powers and beings to whom we are related, holds good. No
+nation has ever conducted its life on the basis of pure materialism,
+save in those last stages of its decadence which preluded its downfall.
+
+But without going so far as to reject the supernatural and reject the
+truth of the immediate intervention of God in life, there are multitudes
+of men and women whose whole life never moves beyond the natural order.
+They have no materialistic theory; if you ask them, they think that
+they are, in some sense not very well defined, Christians. But they have
+no Christian interests, no spiritual activities of any sort. For all
+practical purposes God and the spiritual order do not exist for them.
+They are not for the most part what any one would call bad people;
+though there seems no intelligible meaning of the word in which they can
+be called _good_. The best that one can say of them is that they have a
+certain usefulness in the present social order though they are not
+missed when they fall out of it. They can be replaced in the social
+machine much as a lost or broken part can in an engine. And just as the
+part of an engine which has become useless where it is, can have no
+possible usefulness elsewhere, so we are unable to imagine them as
+capable of adaptation to any other place than that which they have
+filled here. Perhaps that is what we mean by hell--incapacity to adapt
+oneself to the life of the future.
+
+All this implies a temper of mind and soul that has rendered itself
+incapable of vision. For just as our ordinary vision of the beauty of
+this world depends not only on the existence of the world but on a
+certain capacity in us to see it, so that the beauty of the world does
+not at all exist for the man whose optic nerve is paralysed; so the
+meaning and beauty, nay, the very existence of the supernatural order
+depends for us upon a capacity in us which we may call the capacity of
+vision. The sceptic waves aside our stories of supernatural happenings
+with the brusque statement, "Nobody to-day sees angels. They only appear
+in an atmosphere of primitive or mediaeval superstition, not in the
+broad intellectual light of the twentieth century." But it may be that
+the fact (if it be a fact) that nobody sees angels in the twentieth
+century is due to some other cause than the non-existence of the angels.
+After all, in any century you see what you are prepared to see, what in
+other words, you are looking for. It is a common enough phenomenon that
+the man who lives in the country misses most of the beauty of it. In his
+search for the potato bug he misses the sunset, and disposes of the
+primrose on the river's brim as a common weed. It is true that in order
+to see we need something beside eyes, and to hear we need something
+beside ears. When on an occasion the Father spoke from heaven to the Son
+many heard the sound, and some said, "It thundered"; others got so far
+as to say, "An Angel spake to him."
+
+Let us then in the presence of narratives of supernatural happenings ask
+our _how_ with a good deal of reverence and a good deal of modesty, not
+as implying a sceptical doubt on our part, but as a wish that we may be
+admitted deeper into the meaning of the event. Scepticism simply closes
+the door through which we might pass to fuller knowledge. The
+questioning of faith holds the door open. To those who have not closed
+the door upon the supernatural it is evident that it is permeated with
+forces and influences which are not material in their origin or their
+effects; that God acts upon the world now as He has ever acted upon it.
+If we cannot believe this I do not see that we can believe in God at all
+in any intelligible sense. There is to me one attitude toward the
+supernatural that is even more hopeless than the attitude of
+materialistic scepticism which says, "Miracles do not happen"; and that
+is the attitude which says, "Miracles happened in Bible times, but have
+never happened since." As the one attitude seems to imply that God made
+the world, but after He had made it left it to go on by itself and no
+more expresses any interest in it; so the other implies that after God
+put the Christian religion in the world He left that to go on by itself
+and no longer pays any attention to it. Either to me is wholly
+unintelligible and inconceivable.
+
+And what is worse, is wholly out of touch with the revelation of God
+made in Holy Scripture. That displays God working in and through the
+material universe, and it displays God working in and through the spirit
+of man; and it in no place implies that either the material world or the
+human order is so perfect as to need no further divine action.
+Revelation implies the constant presence and action of God in nature and
+in the Church; it implies that both have a forward look and are not ends
+in themselves but are moving on toward some ultimate perfection. "The
+whole creation groaneth and travaileth ... waiting for the adoption,
+that is, the redemption of our body." We look for a new heaven and a new
+earth; and human society looks to a perfect consummation in the
+fellowship of the saints in light.
+
+Looking out on life from the spiritual point of vantage, we may
+hopefully ask our _how_, and there will be an answer. To blessed Mary S.
+Gabriel replied: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of
+the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which
+shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."--An answer that
+was full of light and of deepest mystery. The immediate question--the
+mode of her conception--was cleared up; it would be through the direct
+action of God the Holy Spirit: but the nature of the Child to be born is
+filled with mystery. We can imagine S. Mary in the days to come finding
+her child-bearing quite intelligible in comparison with the mystery that
+brooded over His nature.
+
+This is the common fact in our dealing with God. We express it when we
+say that we never get beyond the need of faith. We pray that one thing
+may be made clear, and the result of the clearing is the deepened sense
+of the mystery of the things beyond, just as any increase in the power
+of the telescope clears up certain questions which had been puzzling the
+astronomers only to carry their vision into vaster depths of space,
+opening new questions to tantalize the imagination. We find it so
+always. The solution of any question of our spiritual lives does not
+lead as perhaps we thought it would lead to there being no longer any
+questions to perplex us and to draw on our time and our energy; rather
+such solution puts us in the presence of new and, it may well be, deeper
+and more perplexing questions. "Are there no limits to the demands of
+God upon us," we sometimes despairingly ask? And the answer is, "No:
+there are no limits because the end of the road that we are travelling
+is in infinity." The limit that is set to our perfecting is the
+perfection of God, and if we grow through all the years of eternity we
+shall still have attained only a relative perfection.
+
+So the successful passing of one test cannot be expected to relieve us
+from all tests in the future. It is the dream of the child that manhood
+will set it free; and he reaches manhood only to find that it imposes
+obligations which are so pressing that he reverses his dream and speaks
+of his childhood as the time of his true freedom. The meeting of
+spiritual tests is but the proving of spiritual capacity to meet other
+tests. To our Lady it might well seem that the acceptance of the
+conditions of the Incarnation was the severest test that God could
+assign her; that in the light of the promise she could look on to joy.
+But the future concealed a sword which should pierce her very heart. The
+promise contained no doubt wonderful things--this wonder of God's
+blessing that she was now experiencing in the coming of the Holy Ghost,
+in the very embrace of God Himself: this is but the first of the Joyful
+Mysteries which were God's great gifts to her. But her life was not to
+be a succession of Joyful Mysteries, ultimately crowned with the
+Mysteries of Glory. There were the Sorrowful Mysteries as well. They
+were as true, and shall we not say, as necessary, as valuable, a part of
+her spiritual training as the others. She, our Mother, was now near God,
+with a nearness that was possible for no other human being, and it is
+one of the traditional sayings of our Lord: "He that is near Me is near
+fire." And fire burns as well as warms and lights. She is wonderful, the
+Virgin of Nazareth, in this moment when she becomes Mother of God: and
+we share in the rapture of the moment when in the fulness of her joy she
+hardly notices S. Gabriel's departure: but we feel, too, a great pity
+for her as we think of the coming days. So we kneel to her who is our
+Mother, as well as Mother of God, and say our _Ave_, and ask her
+priceless intercession.
+
+     Gabriel, that angel bright,
+     Brighter than the sun is light,
+     From heaven to earth he took his flight,
+       Letare.
+
+     In Nazareth, that great city,
+     Before a maiden he kneeled on knee,
+     And said, "Mary, God is with thee,
+       Letare."
+
+     "Hail Mary, full of grace,
+     God is with thee, and ever was;
+     He hath in thee chosen a place.
+       Letare."
+
+     Mary was afraid of that sight,
+     That came to her with so great light,
+     Then said the angel that was so bright,
+       "Letare."
+
+     "Be not aghast of least nor most,
+     In thee is conceived of the Holy Ghost,
+     To save the souls that were for-lost.
+       Letare."
+
+     Fifteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ANNUNCIATION II
+
+And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according
+to thy word.
+
+S. Luke I. 38
+
+O God, who through the fruitful virginity of blessed Mary didst bestow
+on mankind the rewards of eternal salvation: grant, we beseech thee,
+that we may experience her intercession for us through whom we were made
+worthy to receive the author of life, even Jesus Christ thy Son
+our Lord.
+
+Roman.
+
+S. Mary's momentary hesitation had been due to the surprise that she
+felt at the nature of the angelic message and the difficulty that there
+was in relating it to her state of life. That she, a virgin, should bear
+a son was vastly perplexing; but the answer of S. Gabriel speedily
+cleared away the difficulty: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and
+the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee."
+
+Blessed Mary had no difficulty about the supernatural; she was not
+afflicted with the modern disease that there are no things in heaven and
+earth save such as are contained in our philosophy. She was not of those
+who "cannot believe what they do not understand," It was enough for her
+that a message had come from God: and no matter how little she was able
+to understand the mode of God's proposed action within her, she was
+willing to offer herself to be the instrument of the will of God. No
+doubt that was an habitual attitude and not one taken up on the spur of
+the moment. It is indeed very rarely that what seem spontaneous actions
+are really such; and S. Mary's first word was nearer spontaneity than
+the second. Her exclamation in answer to the angelic _Ave_ was the
+natural expression of her surprise at so unexpected a message: its
+variance from all her thought about her life was the thing that struck
+her; and therefore her instinctive, "How can this be?"
+
+In this second word we have a quite different attitude. Here is
+revealed to us the profound and perfect humility of the Blessed Virgin.
+This answer comes from the experience of her whole life. It is of such
+utterances that we say that they are revealing. What we at any time say,
+does in fact reveal what we are--what we have come to be through the
+experience of our past life. And no doubt it is these instinctive
+utterances which are called out by some unexpected occurrence that
+reveal more of us than our weighed and guarded words. Back of every word
+we utter is a life we have lived. We have been spending years in
+preparing for that word. Perhaps when the time comes to speak it, it is
+not the word we thought we were going to speak, it was not the prelude
+to the action we thought that we were going to perform; it reveals a
+character other than the character that we thought we had. How often the
+Gospel brings that before us! We see the young Ruler come running with
+his brave and perfectly sincere words about inheriting eternal life; and
+then we see him going away when the testing of our Lord demonstrated
+that he only partly meant what he said. It was not S. Peter's brave
+words, "Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee," that
+revealed the truth about the Apostle; but the words that were called out
+by the accusation that he was of the company of Jesus: "Then began he to
+curse and swear, saying, I know not the man." We have no doubt that he
+knows himself better when he catches the eye of the Master turned upon
+him and goes and weeps bitterly. And it is true, is it not, that it is
+through words called out and thoughts stirred by the unexpected that we
+often get new insight into our real state. A sudden temptation reveals a
+hidden weakness, and we go away shamed and crushed, saying, "I did not
+suppose that I was capable of that."
+
+But, thank God, the revelation is sometimes the other way; the testing
+uncovers unexpected strength. Of many a man, after some strong trial, we
+say, "I did not know that he had so much courage, or so much patience."
+The quiet unassuming exterior was the mask of an heroic will of which
+very likely not even the possessor suspected the true quality. The
+annals of martyrdom are full of these revelations of unsuspected
+strength. Here in the case of Blessed Mary the quality revealed is that
+of humility so perfect that it dreams not of revolt from the most
+searching trial. It reveals the character of our Mother better than
+pages of description can do. What we see in response to the bewildering
+messages brought by S. Gabriel is the instinctive movement of the soul
+toward God. There is utter absence of any thought of self or of how she
+may be affected by the purpose of God; it is enough that that purpose is
+made plain.
+
+It seems well to insist on this instinctive movement of the soul in
+Blessed Mary because it is one item of the evidence that the Catholic
+Church has to offer for its belief in her sinlesssness. Any momentary
+rebellion, no matter how soon recovered from, or how sincerely
+regretted, against the will of God, would be evidence of the existence
+of sin. But where sin is not, where there is an unstained soul, there
+the knowledge of the will of God will send one running to its
+acceptance; there will be active acceptance and not just submission to
+God's will. Submission implies a certain effort to place ourselves in
+line with the will of God; it often seems to imply that we are accepting
+it because we cannot do anything else. But with Blessed Mary there is a
+glad going forth to meet God; the word "Behold" springs out to meet the
+will of God half-way. It is as though she had been holding herself
+ready, expectant, in the certainty of the coming of some message, and
+now she offers herself without the shadow of hesitation, as to a purpose
+which was a welcome vocation: "Behold the Handmaid of the Lord; be it
+unto me according to thy word." How wonderful is the humility of
+obedience!
+
+And humility--we must stress this--is not a virtue of youth; it is not
+one of the virtues which ripen quickly, but is of slow development and
+delayed maturity. Modesty we should expect in a maiden, and lack of
+self-assertion; and perhaps obedience of a sort. But those do not
+constitute the virtue of humility. We are humble when we have lost self;
+and Mary's wondering answer reveals the fact that she is not thinking of
+herself at all, but only of the nature of the divine purpose. That that
+purpose being known she should at all resist it would seem to her a
+thing incredible, for all her life she had had no other motive of
+action. Her will had never been separated from the will of God.
+
+This state of union which was hers by divine election and privilege, we
+achieve, if we achieve it at all, by virtue of great spiritual
+discipline. We are, to be sure, brought into union with God through the
+sacraments, but the union so achieved is, if one may so express it, an
+unstable union; it is union that we have to maintain by daily spiritual
+action and which suffers many a weakening through our infidelity, even
+if it escape the disaster of mortal sin. We sway to and fro in our
+struggle to attain the equilibrium of perfection which belonged to
+Blessed Mary by virtue of the first embrace of God which had freed her
+from sin. Our tragedy is that we have almost universally lost the first
+engagements of the Spiritual Combat before we have at all understood
+that there is any combat. The circumstances of life of child and youth
+are such that we become familiar with sin before we have the
+intelligence to understand the need of resisting, even if we are
+fortunate enough to have such an education as to awaken a sense of sin
+as opposition to God. There is nothing more appalling than the tragedy
+of life thus defiled and broken and put at a disadvantage before it even
+understands the ideals that should govern its course. When the vision of
+perfection comes and we face life as the field where we are to acquire
+eternal values, we face it with a poisoned imagination and a depleted
+strength. Our battle is not only to maintain what we have, but to win
+back what we have lost.
+
+Under such conditions there is much consolation in learning that we do
+not fight alone but have the constant help and sympathy of those who are
+endued with the strength of perfect purity. Their likeness to us in
+that they have lived the life of the flesh assures us of their
+understanding, and it assures us too of their active co-operation. We
+cannot understand the saints standing outside human life and from the
+vantage point of their achievement looking on as indolent spectators.
+The spectacle offorded by the Church Militant must call out the active
+intercession of all the saints; but especially do we look for helpful
+sympathy from her who is our all-pure Mother, whose very purity gives
+her intercession unmeasured power. She is not removed from us through
+her spotlessness, but by virtue of her clearer understanding of the
+meaning of sin and of separation from God that it brings her, she is
+ready to fly to the help of all sinners by her ceaseless intercession.
+
+The difficulty of our spiritual lives rises chiefly out of the clash of
+wills. A disordered nature, a tainted inheritance, a corrupt environment
+conspire to make the life of grace tremendously difficult. It is only in
+a very limited sense that we can be said to be free, and there is no
+possibility at all of overcoming the handicap of sin, except firm and
+careful reliance on the grace of God. That grace, no doubt, is always at
+our disposal as far as we will use it. Grace moves us, but it does not
+compel us; and we are free always to reject the offer of God. We have
+only to open our eyes upon the world about us to see how rarely is the
+grace of God accepted in any effective way. Even in convinced Christians
+the attempt to live the divided life is the commonest thing possible. It
+sometimes seems as though the prevalent conception of the Christian
+life were that it is sufficient to offer God a certain limited
+allegiance and that the remainder of the life will be thereby ransomed
+and placed at our disposal to use as we will. We find the theory well
+worked out in the current attitude of Christians toward the observance
+of the Lord's Day. It appears to be held that an attendance at Mass or
+Matins is a sufficient recognition of the interests of religion and that
+the rest of the day may be regarded, not as the Lord's Day, but as
+man's--as a day of unlimited amusement and self-indulgence. The notion
+of consecration is abandoned. The only possible outcome of such theories
+of life is what we already experience, spiritual lawlessness and moral
+degradation. I suppose that it will only be through social disaster that
+society will come (as usual, too late) to any comprehension that the
+will of God is what it is because it is only by following the road that
+it indicates that human life can reach a successful development. God's
+laws are not arbitrary inflictions; they are the expression of the
+highest wisdom in the guidance of human life.
+
+Our elementary duty therefore as sane persons is to find what is the
+will of God in any given circumstances; there should be no action until
+there has been an effort to ascertain that will. It were as sensible to
+set about building a house without ascertaining what strength of
+foundation would be needful, or without knowing the sort of material we
+were going to use. One has heard of a house being built in which it
+turned out that there was a room with no doorway, or floor to which no
+stair led up; but we do not commend such exploits as the last word in
+architecture, nor would we commend a farmer who planted his crops
+without attention to the nature of the soil. There are certain
+elementary principles of common sense which we pretty uniformly hold to
+in every matter with the exception of religion; that seems to be held to
+be a separate department of human activity with laws of its own, and in
+which the principles which govern life elsewhere do not hold. We do not
+profess this theory, of course, but we commonly act upon it, while we
+still profess to respect the will of God. It is strange too that after
+having habitually neglected that will, we are greatly disappointed, not
+to say indignant, when after a life of disobedience and scorn of God's
+thought for us we do not find ourselves in possession of the fruits of
+righteousness. If it were not so tragic it would be amusing to hear men
+declaim against the justice of a God whose existence they have
+habitually disregarded.
+
+But, it is often said, it is not by any means easy to find out God's
+will. You talk about it as though it were as easy to know God's will as
+it is to know the multiplication table. Well, at least it can be said
+that one does not get to know the multiplication table without effort!
+What objections as to the obscurity of the will of God will seem to mean
+is that it does take effort to ascertain it. I do not know of any reason
+for regarding that as unjust. If the will of God is what religion
+maintains that it is, of primary importance to our lives, we might well
+be glad that it is ascertainable at all, at the expense of
+whatever effort.
+
+An Almighty God has implanted within every human heart the knowledge
+that His will exists and is important; that is, He has endowed every man
+with a conscience which is the certainty of the difference between right
+and wrong, and the conviction that we are responsible for our conduct to
+some power outside ourselves; that we are not at liberty to conduct life
+on any lines we will. Having so much certainty, it surely becomes us to
+set about ascertaining the nature of the power and the details of the
+will. The very nature of conscience, as a sense of obligation, rather
+than a source of information, should create a desire for a knowledge of
+what God's will is in detail, that is, what is the content of the notion
+of right and wrong.
+
+And while it is true that such content can only be ascertained by work,
+it is not true that the work is a specially difficult one. The
+Revelation of God's mind made through Holy Scripture and through the
+life of His Incarnate Son is an open book that any one can study; and to
+any objection that such study has led chiefly to difference of opinion
+and darkness rather than light, the answer is that such disaster follows
+for the most part only when the guidance of the Catholic Church is
+repudiated; when, that is, we pursue a course in this study which we
+should not pursue in relation to any other. If we were studying geology
+we should not regard it as the best course to scorn all that preceding
+students have done, and betake our unprepared selves to field work! But
+that is the "Bible and the Bible only" theory of spiritual knowledge. If
+we want to know the meaning of the Biblical teaching, we must make use
+of the helps which the experience of the Church has richly provided.
+
+But the nature of the divine will and the particulars of our obligation
+are not merely, perhaps one ought to say, not chiefly, to be assimilated
+through our brains. The best preparation for the doing of the will of
+God and the progressive entering into His mind, is an obedient life.
+Purity of character will carry us farther on this path than cleverness
+of brains. Our Lord's own rule is: _He that doeth the will shall know of
+the doctrine._ In other words, we understand the mind of God and attain
+to the illumination of the conscience, through sympathetic response to
+the will so far as we have seen it. And each new response, in its turn,
+carries us to a deeper and clearer understanding of the will. That is to
+say, our conscience, by habitual response to God's will, so far as it
+knows it, is so illumined as to be able to make trustworthy judgments on
+new material submitted to it.
+
+This is, of course, to be otherwise described as the working of God the
+Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit that dwelleth in us and directs us to
+right judgments if we will listen. Our danger is that self-will
+constantly crops up and complicates the case by representing that the
+line suggested by the Holy Spirit is not in reality in accord with our
+interests. This opposition between the seeming interests suggested by
+self-will, which indeed often contribute to our immediate gratification,
+and our true interests as indicated by the monitions of the Holy
+Spirit, constitutes the real struggle of the life during the period of
+probation. The will of God in every circumstance is usually plain
+enough; but it is silenced by the clamour of the passions and desires
+demanding immediate gratification: and we are all more or less children
+in our insistence on the immediate and our incapacity to wait. But I
+must insist again that it is not knowledge that is wanting but sympathy
+with the course that knowledge directs. We pursuade ourselves that we do
+not know, when the real trouble is that we know only too well. One feels
+that much that is put forward as inability to understand religion is at
+bottom merely disinclination to obey it.
+
+Not that there is not room for genuine perplexity. Often it happens that
+we are not at all certain in this or that detail of conduct. In that
+case it is well to consider whether it is necessary to act before we can
+attain certainty through study or advice. But if act we must, we can at
+least act with honesty, not making our will the accomplice of our
+passions or interests.
+
+I do not believe that there are many cases in which we shall go wrong if
+we make use of all the means at our disposal. A diligent doing of the
+will of God does undoubtedly bring light on unknown problems and
+unexpected situations in which we from time to time find ourselves. If
+our constant attitude has been one of free and glad obedience we need
+not fear to go astray. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord," Blessed Mary
+said; and such an attitude has never failed to meet the divine approval
+and call out the help of God. Just to put ourselves utterly at God's
+disposal is the clearing of all life. "Into Thy hands," is the solution
+of all difficulties.
+
+     I sing a maiden
+       That is matchless;
+     King of all kings
+       To her Son she ches.
+
+     He came all so still
+       To His Mother's bower,
+     As dew in April
+       That falleth on the flower.
+
+     Mother and maiden
+       Was never none but she;
+     Well might such a lady
+       God's Mother be.
+              English, Fifteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+     THE VISITATION I
+
+     And Mary arose in those days, and went into
+     the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah;
+     and entered into the house of Zacharias, and
+     saluted Elizabeth.
+
+                          S. Luke I. 39, 40.
+
+     Grant, we beseech thee, O Lord God, to us thy servants, that
+     we may evermore enjoy health of mind and body, and by the
+     glorious intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be
+     delivered from present sorrows and enjoy everlasting
+     gladness. Through.
+
+     ROMAN.
+
+Those who were faithful in Israel and were looking forward to the
+fulfilment of God's promises would be drawn together by close bonds of
+sympathy. It oftentimes proves that the bonds of a common ideal are
+stronger than the bonds of blood. It was to prove so many times in the
+history of Christianity when in accordance with our Lord's words the
+closest blood relation would be broken through fidelity to Him, and a
+man's foes be found to be those of his own household. But also it is
+true that the possession of common ideals becomes the basis of relations
+which are stronger than race or family. We may be sure that the members
+of that little group of which we catch glimpses now and then in the
+progress of the Gospel story found in their expectation of the Lord's
+deliverance of Israel such a bond. We feel that S. Mary and S. Joseph
+must have been members of this group and that they were filled with the
+hope of God's manifestation. Another family which shared the same hope
+was that of the priest Zacharias whose wife Elizabeth was the cousin of
+Mary of Nazareth. It is to their house in the hill country of Judah we
+now turn our thoughts.
+
+It was a part of the angelic message to S. Mary that her cousin
+Elizabeth had "conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth
+month with her who was called barren." Overwhelmed as S. Mary was by the
+vocation which had come to her, perplexed as to what should be her next
+step, she may well have seized upon the words of the angel as a hint as
+to her present course. She must confide in some one, and that some one,
+we instantly feel, must be a woman. In her own great joy she would need
+some one with whom to share it. In her unprecedented case she would need
+a counselor, and who better could afford aid than her cousin whose case
+was in so many respects like her own, who was already cherishing a child
+whose conception was due to the intervention of God? We understand
+therefore, why it is that without waiting for the further development of
+events, Mary arises, and goes "with haste" to the home of her cousin.
+
+It is just now a house full of joy. For many years there had been
+happiness there, but a happiness over which a cloud rested. The
+affliction of barrenness was their sorrow. To the Hebrew there was no
+true family until the love of the father and the mother was incarnated
+in the child; and through many weary days Zacharias and Elizabeth had
+waited until hope quite failed as they found themselves beyond the
+possibility of bearing a child to cheer them and to hand on their name.
+We may be sure that they were reconciled to the will of God, for it is
+written of them that they were righteous, and the central feature of
+righteousness is the acceptance of the divine will. But though one
+cheerfully accepts the divine will there may still remain a
+consciousness of a vacancy in life; and therefore we can understand the
+joy that came to Zacharias when the angel appeared to him in the temple
+when he was exercising the priest's office and offering the incense of
+the daily sacrifice with the message that he should have a son. It was a
+joy that would be unclouded by the God-sent dumbness which was at once a
+punishment for his lack of immediate faith and a sign of the
+faithfulness of God. It was a joy that would hasten his steps homeward
+with the glad tidings, a joy that would fill the heart of Elizabeth when
+she heard the message of God. Soon the consciousness of the babe in her
+womb would be a growing wonder and a growing happiness. There would be a
+new brightness in the house where the aged mother waits through the
+months and the dumb father with his writing tablet at his side meditates
+upon the meaning of the providence of God and upon the prophecies of the
+angel as to his child's future. But what that future would be he could
+hardly expect to witness; he was too old to live to the day of his
+child's showing unto Israel.
+
+It is to this house that we see S. Mary hastening, sure of finding there
+a heart in which she can confide. She "entered into the house of
+Zacharias and saluted Elizabeth." We are not told what the words of her
+salutation were, but no doubt it was the customary Jewish salutation of
+peace. There could have been no more appropriate salutation exchanged
+between these two in whose souls was abiding the peace of a perfect
+possession of God. The will of God to which they had been accustomed to
+offer themselves all their lives was being accomplished through them in
+unexpected ways; but it found them as ready of acceptance as they had
+been in any of the ordinary duties of life wherein they had been
+accustomed to wait upon God. We may seem sometimes to go beyond Holy
+Scripture in our interpretations of feelings and thoughts which we are
+sure must have been those of the actors in the drama of salvation
+unfolded to us in the Scriptures; but are we not entitled to infer from
+God's actions a good deal of the nature of the instruments He uses? Are
+we not quite safe in the case of S. Mary in the deduction from the
+nature of her vocation of the spiritual perfection to attribute to her?
+Does not God's use of a person imply qualities in the person used? It is
+on this ground that I feel that we are quite safe in inferring the
+spiritual attitude of S. Mary and of S. Elizabeth from the choice God
+made of them to be the instruments of His purpose of redemption.
+
+But we are not inferring, we have the record with us, when we think of
+the joy of the mothers transcended in the joy of the children. The
+unborn Forerunner becomes conscious of the approach of Him of whom he is
+to say later: "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the
+world"; and there is an instantaneous movement that can only be that of
+recognition and worship. The movement of the child is at once understood
+and translated by S. Elizabeth: "And she spake out with a loud voice,
+and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy
+womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come
+to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine
+ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy."
+
+In the presence of such joy and such sanctity we feel that our proper
+attitude is the attitude of adoring wonder that S. Elizabeth expresses.
+We worship our hidden Lord as the unborn prophet worships Him. We have
+no question to ask, nor curiosity at the mode of God's action. We are
+quite content to accept His action as it is revealed to us in Scripture;
+a revelation of the divine presense in humanity which has been
+abundantly verified in all the history of the Church. That verification
+in experience--a verification that we ourselves can repeat--is worth
+infinitely more than all the argument that the centuries have seen.
+
+"Blessed art thou among women," S. Elizabeth cries; and in doing so she
+is but repeating the words of the angel of the Annunciation. This word,
+too, we presently hear S. Mary taking up, and under the inspiration of
+the Holy Ghost saying: "From henceforth all generations shall call
+me blessed."
+
+And so they have. All generations, that is, that have been faithful to
+the Gospel teaching and have assimilated in any degree the consequences
+of S. Mary's nearness to God. When we speak of "Blessed" Mary we are but
+doing what angels and holy women have done, and it is great pity if in
+doing so we have to make a conscious effort, if the words do not spring
+spontaneously from our lips. Surely, we have not gone far toward the
+mastery of God's coming in the Incarnation if we have not felt the
+purity of the instrument through whom God enters our nature. The outward
+and visible sign of our understanding is found in our ability to
+complete the _Ave_ as the Holy Spirit has taught the Church to complete
+it: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour
+of our death."
+
+This reiterated attribution of blessedness to Mary our Mother calls us
+to pause and ask just what blessedness means. It is of course the
+characteristic Scripture locution for those who in some way enjoy the
+special favour of God. Blessedness is the state of those who have
+received special divine gifts of favour. A characteristic scriptural
+description of the blessedness of the righteous in contrast with the
+disaster of the unrighteous may be studied in the first Psalm. In the
+New Testament we naturally turn to the Sermon on the Mount where the
+Beatitudes give us our Lord's thought about blessedness. I think that we
+can describe the notion of blessedness there presented as being the
+state of those who have taken God at His word and chosen Him, and by
+that act of choice, while they have forfeited the world and the world's
+favour, have attained to the spiritual riches of the Kingdom of God.
+They are those to whom God is the Supreme Good, in whose possession they
+gladly count all things but loss. These are they who here in the pilgrim
+state have already attained to the enjoyment of God because they want
+nothing other or beside Him.
+
+Supremely blessed, therefore, is Mary our Mother, who never for a moment
+even in thought was separate from God. From the earliest moment of her
+existence she could say, "My beloved is mine and I am His." We try to
+think out what such a fact may mean when translated into terms of
+spiritual energy, and it seems to mean more than anything else boundless
+power of intercession such as the Church has attributed to S. Mary from
+the earliest times. We see no other way of estimating spiritual power
+save as the power of prayer. It is through prayer that we approach
+God--for we remember that sacrifice is but the highest form of prayer.
+The blessedness of S. Mary, that peculiar degree of blessedness which
+seems signalized by the reiterated attribution of the quality to her,
+must for our purposes to be understood as "power with God," power of
+intercession. It means that our Lord has chosen her to be a special
+medium of approval to Him, and that through her prayers He wills to
+bestow upon men many of His choicest gifts. Naturally, her prayers, like
+our prayers, are mediated by the merits of her divine Son; nevertheless
+they have a peculiar power which is related to her peculiar blessedness
+in that she is the mother of Incarnate God, and by special privilege is
+herself without sin. Of all those to whom we are privileged to turn in
+the joys and tragedies of our lives for the sympathy which helps through
+enlightened, loving prayer, we most naturally resort to her who is all
+love and all sympathy, Mary, the Mother of Jesus, blessed among
+women forever.
+
+Although we are told nothing of these days that S. Mary spent with her
+cousin Elizabeth, we do gather that she remained with her until her
+child was born and that she saw S. John in his mother's arms, and was a
+partaker in the joy of the aged parents. She was present when Zacharias,
+his speech restored, uttered the _Benedictus_ in thanksgiving for the
+birth of his son. It was then, having seen her own Son's Forerunner that
+S. Mary went back to Nazareth filled more than ever with the sense that
+God's hand was in the events that were taking place, and of the approach
+of some crisis in her nation's history. It must have been that she
+talked intimately with Zacharias and Elizabeth and with them tried to
+imagine what was the future in which these two children were so closely
+concerned. When we consider the _Magnificat_ and the _Benedictus_ not as
+the "Gospel Canticles" to be sung in Church but as the utterances of
+pious Israelites under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, we feel how
+very vivid must have been their expectation of God's action in the
+immediate future, and with what intense love and interest they thought
+of the parts to be taken by their children in the deliverance God was
+preparing. How often they must have pondered the God-inspired saying:
+"He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the
+Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he
+shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there
+shall be no end." "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the
+Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his
+ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of
+their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the Dayspring
+from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness
+and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way
+of peace."
+
+We think too of a more intimate sympathy that there would have been
+between these two women, drawn now so close together, not only by the
+blood bond, but by the bond of a common experience. What wonderful
+hours of communing during these three months! The peace of the hills of
+Judah is all about them and the peace of God is in their souls. What
+ecstatic joy, what ineffable love was theirs in these moments as they
+thought of the children who were God's precious gift to them. I fancy
+that there were many hours when they ceased to think of the mystery that
+hung over these children's destiny, and became just mothers lost in love
+of the coming sons.
+
+As we try to think out their relation to each other it presents itself
+to us as a relation of sympathy. Sympathy is community of feeling; it is
+maimed and thwarted when there is feeling only on one side. We speak of
+our sympathy in their affliction for others whom we do not know and who
+do not know us, but that is a very imperfect rendering of the perfect
+thing. No more than love does sympathy reach its perfection in solitude.
+But here in this village of Judah we know that we have the perfect
+thing--sympathy in its most exquisite form.
+
+This capacity for sympathy is one of the greatest of human endowments,
+and, one is glad to think, not like many human endowments, rare in its
+manifestation. In its ordinary manifestation it is instinctive, is
+roused by the spectacle of need calling us to its aid. There come to our
+knowledge from time to time instances of what seem to us very grievous
+failures in sympathy, but investigation shows that ignorance is very
+commonly at the bottom of them. When human beings are convinced of a
+need they are quite ready to respond. Indeed this readiness to respond
+makes them the easy victims of all sorts of impostures, of baseless
+appeals which play upon sentiment rather than convince the
+understanding. And just there lies the weakness of sympathy in that it
+is so easily turned to sentimentality. But the sentimentalist who gushes
+over ills, real or imaginary, can commonly be brought to book easily
+enough. For one thing the sentimentalist is devoted to publicity. He
+loves to conduct campaigns and drives, to "get up" a demonstration or an
+entertainment. I do not mean that he is a hypocrite but only that he
+loves the lime-light. When any tragedy befalls man his impulse is to
+organise a dance in aid of it. It is extraordinary how many people there
+are who will aid a charity by dancing to whom one would feel it quite
+hopeless to appeal for the amount of the dance tickets. And yet they are
+not wholly selfish people; there does lie back of the dance a certain
+sympathetic impulse. We easily deceive ourselves about ourselves, and it
+is well to be sure that we have true sympathy and not just sentiment. It
+is not so difficult to find out. We can test ourselves quickly enough by
+examining our giving. Do we give only when we are asked? Do we yield to
+spectacular appeals or only to those that we have examined and found
+good? Do we put the spiritual interests of humanity first? Is there any
+appreciable amount of quiet spontaneous giving which is known to no one?
+Do we prefer to be anonymous? Such tests soon reveal what we are like.
+One who never gives spontaneously, without being asked, we may be sure
+is lacking in sympathy.
+
+But of course one does not mean that sympathy is so closely related to
+what we call charity as what I have just said, if left by itself, would
+seem to imply. That is indeed the common form assumed by sympathy which
+has to be called out. But the best type of sympathy is the expression of
+our knowledge of one another; it is based on our knowledge of human
+nature and our interest in human beings. Because it is based on
+knowledge it is not subject to be swept away by the sweet breezes of
+sentimentalism. To its perfect exercise it is needful to know
+individuals not merely to know about them. The ordinary limitations of
+sympathy come from this, that we do not want to take time and pains to
+know one another. That, for example, is where the Church falls short in
+its mission to constitute a real brotherhood among its members--they
+have no time nor inclination really to know one another, or they find
+the artificial walls that society has erected impassable. It is, in
+fact, not very easy to know one another, and it is impossible to develop
+the complete type of sympathy with a crowd. For one must insist that
+this highest type of sympathy requires, what the word actually does
+mean, mutual sharing in life, the participation in the lives of our
+fellows and their partaking in our lives.
+
+So we understand why perfect sympathy is conditioned on spirituality.
+Unless we are spiritually developed and spiritually at one we cannot
+share in one another's lives fully. Where there are lives separated by a
+gulf of spiritual differences the completest sympathy is impossible. And
+we understand why Incarnate seems so much nearer to us than God
+unincarnate. It is true that "the Father Himself loveth you"; it is
+true that it is the love of the Blessed Trinity that is expressed in the
+Incarnation. The Incarnation did not create God's love and sympathy, it
+only reveals it. Yet it is precisely the Incarnation that enables us to
+lay hold on God's sympathy with a certainty and sureness of grasp that
+we would not otherwise have. The sight of "God in Christ reconciling the
+world unto Himself" is more to us in the way of proof than any amount of
+declaration can be. To be told of the sympathy of God is one thing, to
+see how it works is another.
+
+Our personal need in this matter is to find the sympathy that will help
+us in something outside ourselves, outside the limitations of human
+nature. Much as we value human sympathy, precious as we find its
+expression, yet we do find that it has for the higher purposes of life
+serious limitations. It has very little power to execute what it finds
+needs to be done. A man may understand another's weakness and may
+utterly sympathise with it; he may advise and console, but in the end he
+finds that he cannot adequately help. The case is hopeless unless he can
+point the sufferer to some source outside himself on which he can draw,
+unless he can lead him to the sympathy of God. God can offer not only
+consolation, not only the spectacle of another life which has triumphed
+under analogous circumstances, but He can give the power to this present
+weak and discouraged life to triumph in the place where it is. He can
+"make a way of escape."
+
+But there is another form of sympathy which we crave and need which is
+just the communion of soul with soul. We are not asking anything more or
+other than to show ourselves. We are overwhelmed with the loneliness of
+life. It comes upon us in the most crowded places, this sense of
+separation from all about us. Oh, that I might flee away and be at rest,
+is our feeling. It is here that we specially need our Lord. Blessed are
+we if we have learned to find in Him the rest we need for our souls, if
+we have learned to open the door that leads always to Him; or, perhaps
+to knock appealingly at that door which He will never fail to open. It
+is then that we find the joy of the invitation "Come unto me all ye that
+are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."
+
+But Christ, the perfect Sympathiser, has associated others with Himself.
+If we can go to him, so can others; the Way is open to all. And those
+who go and are associated with Him are gathered into a family. Here
+among those who have followed the interests which are ours, and have
+pursued the ends that we are pursuing, and cultivated the qualities
+which we value, we feel sure of that sympathetic understanding of life
+which we seek. And especially among those members of the Body who have
+gone on to the end in fidelity to the ideals of the life which is hid
+with Christ in God shall we look for understanding and help. It is from
+this point of view that the Communion of Saints will mean so much to us.
+We value the strength of mutual support which inevitably grows out of
+associated life. We cannot think of the saints of God as having passed
+beyond us into some place of rest where they are content to forget the
+problems of earth: rather we are compelled to think of them as still
+actively sharing in those interests which are still the interests of
+their divine Head. Until, Jesus Himself cease to think of us who are
+still in the Pilgrim Way, and cease to offer Himself on our behalf, we
+cannot think of any who are in Him as other than intensely interested in
+us of the earthly Church, or as doing other than helping by prayer for
+us that we with them may attain our end. And especially shall we feel
+sure that at any moment of our lives we may turn to the Mother in
+confident expectancy of finding most helpful sympathy and most ready
+aid. Her life to-day is a life of intercession, of intercession which
+has all the power of perfect understanding and perfect sympathy. Let us
+learn to go to her; let us learn that as God is praised and honoured in
+His saints, as our Lord choses to work through those who are united to
+Him, so it is His will that great power of prayer shall be hers of whom
+He assumed our nature, that nature through which He still distributes
+the riches of His grace.
+
+     As I lay upon a night,
+     My thought was on a Lady bright
+     That men callen Mary of might,
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     To her came Gabriel so bright
+     And said, "Hail, Mary, full of might,
+     To be called thou art adight;"
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     Right as the sun shineth in glass,
+     So Jesus in His Mother was,
+     And thereby wit men that she was
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     Now is born that Babe of bliss,
+     And Queen of Heaven His Mother is,
+     And therefore think me that she is
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     After to heaven He took His flight,
+     And there He sits with His Father of might,
+     With Him is crowned that Lady bright,
+     Redemptoris Mater.
+
+     English, Fifteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE VISITATION II
+
+And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath
+rejoiced in God my Saviour.
+
+S. Luke I. 46, 47.
+
+Forasmuch as we have no excuse, because of the multitude of our sins,
+we plead through thee, O Virgin Mother of God, with Him whom thou
+didst bear.
+
+Lo, great is thine intercession, strong and acceptable with our Saviour.
+
+O Stainless Mother, reject not us sinners in thine intercession with Him
+Whom thou didst bear.
+
+COPTIC.
+
+Wonderful was this day in the little town of Judah where these two
+women, each in her way an instrument of God in the upbuilding of His
+Kingdom, met and rejoiced together. There is revealed to us something of
+the possibilities of our religion when we try to follow the thought of
+these two women. They are so utterly devoted to God that God can speak
+to them. I think that it is well for us to dwell on this fact for a
+moment. We are apt to look upon inspiration, what is described as being
+filled with the Holy Ghost, as somewhat of a mechanical mode of God's
+operation. Our mistaken view is that God takes control of the faculties
+of a human being and uses them for His own purposes.
+
+But that is quite to misunderstand God's method. God uses the faculties
+of a man in proportion as the man yields himself to Him; and one who is
+living a sincere religion becomes in a degree the medium of God's
+self-expression. This possibility of expressing God increases as we
+increase in sanctity. Those who have completely yielded themselves to
+God in a life of sanctity become in a deep sense the representatives of
+God: they have, in S. Paul's phraseology, His mind. To be capable of so
+becoming the divine instrument it is necessary, not only to offer no
+opposition to God's purposes, but to make ourselves the active
+executants of them. Our Christian vocation is thus to be the instrument
+of God, to be the visible demonstrations of His power and presence.
+There is a true inspiration, a true speaking for God to-day, no doubt,
+as true as at any time in the Church's history, wherever there is
+sanctity. What is lacking to present day utterances of sanctity is not
+the action of the Holy Spirit, but authentication by the Church: that is
+given only under certain special circumstances and for special purposes.
+But there is no need to limit the inspiring action of the Holy Spirit to
+such utterances as for special reasons have received official
+recognition.
+
+What we need to feel is the constant action of the Holy Spirit--that He
+wants to speak through every man. And it helps to clear our minds if we
+go to our Bibles with the expectation of finding here, not exceptions to
+all rules which obtain in common life, but types of the divine action.
+The isolation of Bible history has done much to create a feeling of its
+unreality. What has happened only in the Bible can, we are apt to feel,
+safely be disregarded in daily life in the twentieth century. But if
+what we find there is customary modes of divine action in life,
+exceptional in detail rather than in principle, the attitude we shall
+take will be wholly different. We shall then study them with the feeling
+expressed in S. Paul's saying, "These things are written for our
+learning," and we shall expect to find in us and about us the same order
+of divine action, we shall learn to look on our lives as having their
+chief meaning in the fact that they are possible instruments of God; we
+shall learn to regard failure as failure to show forth God to the world.
+
+In a way we can read our facts backward: the fact that "Elizabeth was
+filled with the Holy Ghost," and the fact that Mary under the same
+divine impulse gave utterance to the words of the Magnificat, is a
+revelation of the character of these two women which would satisfy us of
+their sanctity had we no other evidence of it. The choice of them by God
+to be His instruments is evidence of the divine approval; and that
+approval can never be false to the facts; what God treats as holy
+must be holy.
+
+So we come to holy Mary's Song with the feeling that in studying it we
+shall find in it a revelation of S. Mary herself. She is not an
+instrument on which the Holy Spirit plays, but an intelligent being
+through whom He acts. She, like S. Elizabeth, is filled with the Holy
+Spirit--she had never been in the slightest degree out of union with
+God--but still the Magnificat is her utterance; it represents her
+thought; it is the measure, if one may so put it, in modern terminology,
+of her degree of spiritual culture. Much that we say about S. Mary, her
+simplicity, her social place, and so on, seems to carry with it the
+implication of the ignorance and spiritual dullness that we associate
+with the type of poverty we are accustomed to to-day. But the poor folk
+whom we meet in association with our Lord are neither ignorant nor
+spiritually dull; and it would be a vast mistake to think of Blessed
+Mary as other than of great intelligence and spiritual receptivity, or
+as deficient in understanding of the details of her ancestral religion.
+We have no reason to be surprised that she should sing Magnificat, or to
+think that the Holy Spirit was speaking through her thoughts which were
+quite beyond her comprehension. Inspired she was, but inspired, no
+doubt, to utter thoughts that had many times filled her mind.
+
+Her spiritual attitude as revealed in the Magnificat is but the attitude
+which must have been hers habitually--the attitude that exalts God and
+not self. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in
+God my Saviour." That is the starting-place of all holy souls--the
+adoration of God. True humility is never self-conscious because self is
+lost in the vision of God. S. Mary was bearing in her pure body the very
+Son of God. Admit, if you will, that as yet she did not understand the
+full reach of her vocation; but she did know that she had been chosen by
+God in a most signal manner to be the instrument of His purpose. That
+which S. Elizabeth spoke under divine impulse,--"Whence is this that the
+mother of my Lord should come to me?"--must have had clear meaning for
+her. But the wonder of all that God is accomplishing through her only
+brings her to God's feet. That "He that is mighty hath done me great
+things," is but the evidence of His sanctity, not of her greatness.
+
+One never gets through wondering at the beauty of humility; and it is
+one of the marks of how far we are from spiritual apprehension when we
+find this splendid virtue unattractive. It does indeed cut across many
+of the instinctive impulses of our nature; it can hardly be said to have
+dawned on humanity as a virtue until the Incarnation of God. Therein it
+has revealed to us God's attitude in His work and, by consequence, the
+natural attitude of all such as would associate themselves with God. It
+is not so much a self-denying as a self-forgetting virtue. It is ruined
+by the very consciousness of it. Such phrases as "practicing humility"
+seem self-contradictory--when one begins to practice humility it becomes
+something else. We do not conceive of our Lady as setting out to be
+humble, of thinking of what a humble person would do under such and such
+circumstances. She does not, as I was saying, think of herself at all,
+but thinks of God. The "great things" she has are His gift. That He has
+looked upon her low estate, and that in consequence of His visitation
+"all generations shall call her blessed," is a manifestation of the
+divine glory and goodness, not an occasion of pride to the recipient of
+God's gifts.
+
+We who are so self-seeking, who are so greedy of praise, who are
+constantly wanting what we feel is our due, who hunger to be
+"appreciated," who are full of proud boasting about our accomplishment,
+will do well to meditate upon this point of view. We acknowledge the
+supremacy of God with our lips, but in our acts we are quite prone to
+assume that we are independent actors in the universe where whatever we
+have is due to our own creative powers. We claim a certain lordship over
+life, a certain independent use of it. We resent the pressure of
+religious principle as setting up a sort of counter-claim to control
+that which it is ours to dispose of as we will. Most of our difficulties
+come from this godless attitude which claims independence of life. It
+results in a religion which is willing to pay God tribute, but is not
+willing to belong to God. But the humble person has nothing of his own
+and moreover wants nothing; he wants simply that God shall use him, that
+he shall be found a ready instrument in God's hands.
+
+It is this readiness that we find in Blessed Mary when she answered the
+astonishing announcement of the angel with her, "Behold the Handmaid of
+the Lord." It is that quality which we find in her here when she
+construes God's purpose in terms which go out far beyond her individual
+life and sees in her experience but one item in God's dealing with
+humanity in His age-long work of "bringing His wanderers home." We
+should have far less difficulty and find our lives far more significant
+if we could get rid of our wretched egotism and find it possible to lose
+ourselves in the work of God. We should then find the work important
+because it is God's work and not because we are associated with it. We
+should also find it less easy to be discouraged because we should not
+understand our failure to be the failure of God. Discouragement is but
+one of the aspects of egotism, and not the most attractive.
+
+We cannot rise to anything like a passion of holiness unless we have
+found God to be all in all. Only so can we lose ourselves in God. And I
+must, at whatever risk of over-dwelling, stress the fact that we can
+only attain this point of view by dwelling on God and not on self. Let
+God be the foreground of our thought. Let our souls magnify the Lord.
+Let us dwell upon the "great things" God has done for us. In every life
+there is such a wonderful manifestation of the divine goodness--only we
+do not take time to look for it. It is well to take the time: to write
+out, if need be, our spiritual history. We shall then find abundant
+evidence of the goodness of God. It may be that it is a goodness that is
+seen chiefly in offers, in opportunities to be something which we have
+declined or have only imperfectly realized. Be that as it may, there is
+no life, I am quite convinced, that has not a spiritual history which is
+a marvellous history of what God at least wanted to do for it. It is
+also a history of what He actually has done: a history of graces, of
+rich gifts, of deliverances. It matters not that we have been so
+heedless as to miss most of what God has done. The facts stand and are
+discoverable whenever we care to pay enough attention to them to
+ascertain their true meaning. When we do that, then surely we shall be
+compelled to do, what blessed Mary never needed to do, fall at God's
+feet in an act of penitence, seeing ourselves, perhaps for the first
+time, in the light of God's mind.
+
+The Magnificat, if we consider it as a personal expression, is a
+wonderful expression of selfless devotion, where the perception of the
+glory and majesty of God excludes all other thoughts. It is, too, a
+thanksgiving for the personal gift which is her vocation to be the
+Mother of the Saviour. Out of her lowliness she has been exalted--how
+highly she herself cannot at the time have dreamed. We can see what was
+necessarily involved in God's choice of her, and to-day we think of her
+as in her perfect purity exalted in heaven far above all other
+creatures. Mother of God most holy we call her, and in the words of her
+canticle ever repeat her thanksgiving as our thanksgiving, too, for the
+vocation that God sent her and for the gift which through her has
+come to us.
+
+But there is a more universal aspect of the Magnificat. Essentially it
+is the presentation of the constant antithesis which runs through all
+revelation between the flesh and the spirit, between the Kingdom of God
+and the Kingdom of this world. It embodies the conception of God
+striving to save a world which has revolted from Him, and now at last
+entering upon that stage of His work which is the beginning of a triumph
+over all the powers of the adversary. In Mary's song the contrasted
+powers are still presented under the Old Testament terminology which was
+the natural form of her thought. The adversaries of God are the proud,
+the mighty, the rich; while those who are on God's side are the humble,
+the god-fearers, the hungry. The form of the thought and its essential
+meaning remain the same through the centuries, though our terminology
+changes somewhat. Presently in the pages of the New Testament we shall
+get the presentation as the contrast between the children of this world
+and the sons of God. We shall find the briefest expression of the latter
+to be the saints.
+
+We no longer feel that rich and poor express a spiritual contrast. Nor
+do we, who are quite accustomed to the action of labour leaders, regard
+social position as being the exclusive seat of arrogancy. But we know
+that the spiritual values which are expressed in the varying terminology
+are constant; we know that the warfare between God and not-God is still
+the most important phenomenon in the universe. And it happens as we look
+out on the battlefield where the forces of good and evil contend, where
+before our eyes they seem to sway back and forth on the field of human
+life with every varying fortunes, that we not seldom feel that the
+battle is not obviously falling to the side of righteousness. There come
+moments when we are oppressed by what seems to us the lack of power in
+the ideals of righteousness. The appeal of the proud and of the rich is
+so dazzling; the splendour of the visible kingdom of the world is so
+intoxicating, the contagion of the crowd which follows the uplifted
+banner of Satan is so penetrating, that we hardly wonder to see the new
+generations carried away in the sweep of popular enthusiasm. Here is
+excitement, exhilarating enjoyment, the throb and sting of the flesh,
+the breathless whirl of gaiety, the physical quiet of satisfied desires.
+What is there to appeal on the other side? As the crowds troop past to
+the sound of music and dancing they for a moment raise their eyes, and
+above them rises a hill whereon is a Cross and on the Cross an emaciated
+Victim is nailed, and at the foot of the Cross a small group of
+discouraged folk--S. John, The blessed Mother, the other Mary--stunned
+by the grief born of the death of Son and Friend.
+
+These two utterances stand in eternal contrast: "All these things will
+I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me": and, "I, if I be
+lifted up, will draw all men unto me." As yet the appeal made from an
+"exceeding high mountain" visibly seems to prevail against that made
+from "the place which is called Calvary."
+
+And what have we to counteract the depression which is the natural
+reaction from the spectacle of the world-rejection of Christ? We have
+the truth which is embodied in Mary's Magnificat, we have the fact of
+Mary's vocation to be the Mother of God. The revelation of God's meaning
+and purpose is a basis of optimism which no promise of Satan can
+overthrow. When all is said, the view from the exceeding high mountain
+is a view of the Kingdom of this world only; from the place called
+Calvary you can see the Kingdom of God as well. From this point of
+vantage alone the permanent values of life are visible; and to the taunt
+flung at us, the taunt so terrifying to the young, "You are losing
+life," the enigmatic reply from the Cross is that you have to lose life
+to gain it; that permanent and eternal values are acquired by those who
+have the self-restraint and the foresight not to sacrifice the substance
+to the shadow, nor to mistake the toys of childhood for the riches of
+manhood. "In the meantime life is passing and the shadows draw in and
+you have not attained" so they say. True: we count not ourselves to have
+yet attained; but we press on toward the mark of our high calling in
+Christ Jesus our Lord. We are not in a hurry, because the crown we are
+seeking is amaranthine, unfading. We are not compelled to compress our
+enjoyment within a given time; we do not awake each morning with the
+thought that we may not outlast the daylight; we are not hurried and
+fevered with the sense of our fragility. The kingdoms of the world and
+the glory of them must be seized now: Satan cannot afford to wait
+because his kingdom has an end. But God can afford to wait because of
+His Kingdom there is no end.
+
+We are content then with _promises_ and with such partial fulfilment as
+we find on our pilgrim-way. We are content because we see the end in the
+beginning. To those who in the first days of the Church objected that
+though the promises were wonderful and abundant the fulfilment was
+small; to those who said we do not yet see the perfection of the
+kingdom; the answer of inspiration was: True, we do not yet see the
+accomplishment of all of God's promises, but we do see Jesus. And there
+is where we stand to-day. The work that God has to do in the
+spiritualising of the human race is tremendous; but we actually see its
+beginning in Jesus, and we are content to wait with God for the perfect
+accomplishment.
+
+And we must remember when we think of the work of God in terms of time,
+that the length of time that is required to accomplish the
+spiritualisation of the human race is not to be estimated in terms of
+the divine will but in terms of the human will. It is not divine power
+but human resistance which is the determining factor, for God will not
+compel us to obey Him, nor would compelled obedience have any spiritual
+value. And we can estimate something of the human resistance that has to
+be overcome by concentrating attention upon one unit of that resistance.
+That is, we can learn from the study of our own life what is the
+resistance of one human being to the triumph of the will of God; and,
+taking oneself as a fair sample of the race can multiply our resistance
+to God's will by the numbers of the race. We are perfectly certain of
+the will of God: God wills that all men shall come to the knowledge of
+the truth and be saved. "This is the will of God, even your
+sanctification." So far as we are thwarting that will we are playing
+into the hands of the power of evil. But that power is of limited
+existence; it draws to its end. Its death knell was struck when the
+noon-day darkness lifted from Calvary.
+
+Therefore the rejoicing of blessed Mary, whose Song reads the necessary
+end in the beginning, is well considered; and we rejoice with her and in
+her. It is our privilege--and it is a vast privilege--to rejoice in
+blessed Mary as the instrument of God in bringing the triumph of His
+Kingdom one stage nearer its accomplishment. And in especial we rejoice
+because we see in her one more, and the most marked, illustration of the
+divine method. "He hath regarded the low estate of His Handmaiden." "He
+hath exalted them of low degree." "He hath filled the hungry." The
+method of God is to work to His results through those who are
+spiritually receptive. The less of self there is in us the more room
+there is for God. "The Kingdom of God is within you," that is, the
+starting-point of God's work in the building of the Kingdom is within
+the soul of man. He must master the inner man, must win the allegiance
+of our souls, before His work can make any progress at all. The Kingdom
+of God cometh not "with observation," that is, from the outside in an
+exhibition of power; it must of necessity come from the inside in
+demonstration of the Spirit. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God,
+they are the sons of God."
+
+In blessed Mary we see the new starting-point in this last stage of the
+work of God. For the foreseen merits of her Son she is brought into
+union with God and spared the taint of sin, and becomes the second Eve,
+the Mother of the new race. Acting upon her pure humanity, the Holy
+Spirit produces that humanity which joined to the divinity in the Second
+Person of the Blessed Trinity becomes the Christ, the Son of the Living
+God. In Mary's rejoicing in this so great fact, the bringing of human
+redemption, we rightly share. It is with a right understanding of her
+Song that the Church throughout the ages has embodied it in its worship
+and through it constantly rejoices in God its Saviour. The actual
+detailed accomplishment of God's work in man's redemption is going on
+under our eyes. It is regrettable that human stupidity seems to prefer
+dwelling upon what seem God's failures, and are actually our own, rather
+than upon the constant triumphs of grace. But God reigns; and we can
+always find grounds of optimism if we can find that He is day by day
+reigning more perfectly in us. When we pray "Thy Kingdom Come," the
+field to examine for the fulfilment of our prayers is the field of our
+own souls.
+
+     Our Lady took the road
+     To Zachary's abode;
+     O'er mountain, vale and lea,
+     Full many a league sped she
+     Toward Hebron's holy hill,
+     By God's command and will.
+
+     Full light did Mary, make
+     Of trouble for his sake.
+     God's Very Son of yore
+     Within her breast she bore;
+     And angels bright and fair,
+     Unseen, her fellows were.
+
+     She, ere she took her way,
+     An orison would say,
+     That God her steps might tend
+     Safe to their journey's end;
+     And there, in manner meet,
+     Her cousin she 'gan greet.
+
+     Elizabeth full fain
+     Eft bowed her head again;
+     She wist 'twas God's own Bride,
+     As, worshipful she cried:
+     'O Lady, Full of Grace,
+     Whence do I see thy face?'
+
+     O House and Home of bliss,
+     O earthly Paradis--
+     Nay, Heaven itself on ground
+     Wherein the Lord is found,
+     The Lord of Glory bright,
+     In goodness great and might--
+
+     Clean Maiden thou that art,
+     Come, visit this my heart;
+     And bring me chief my Good,
+     God's Son in Flesh and Blood;
+     Bless body, soul; and bide
+     For ever by my side.
+
+     From the Koeln Gesang-Buch. XVI Cent.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+S. JOSEPH
+
+     Joseph, her husband, being a just man--
+
+     S. Matt. I. 19.
+
+     O God, our refuge and our strength, look down in mercy upon
+     thy people who cry to thee; and by the intercession of the
+     glorious and immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God, of St.
+     Joseph her spouse, and of thy blessed apostles Peter and
+     Paul, and of all saints, in mercy and goodness hear our
+     prayers for the conversion of sinners, and for the liberty
+     and exaltation of our holy mother the church. Through.
+
+     ROMAN.
+
+When we read the Gospels, not simply as a record of events but as
+revelation of the method of God, we are constantly impressed with what
+we cannot otherwise describe than as the care of God for detail. There
+is a curious type of mind which finds it possible to think of God as
+Creator and Ruler of the universe, but impossible to conceive Him as
+interested in or concerning Himself with the minutiae of human life; who
+can conceive God as caring for a solar system or a planet, but not as
+caring for a baby. Surely it is a strange notion of God that thinks of
+Him as estimating values in terms of weight and measure: surely much
+more intelligible is the Gospel presentation of Him as concerned with
+spritual values and exercising that minute care over human life which is
+best expressed by the word _Father_. It is very significant that as the
+volume of revelation unrolls, the earlier notions of God as Ruler,
+Governor, King, give way to the notion of Father, until in our Lord's
+presentation of the character of God it is His Fatherhood which stands
+in the forefront. What our Lord emphasises in the character of God are
+precisely the qualities of love and care and sympathy which the word
+Father connotes.
+
+And nowhere do we see this loving care of God which we call His
+Providence better set out for our study than in the detailed preparation
+which preceded and attended the birth of His Son into this world. There
+was that preparation of the Mother who was to be the source of the
+humanity of the Child Jesus which we have been dwelling upon; there was
+also the preparation for the proper guardianship of both Mother and
+Child during the years of Jesus' immaturity. There are certain things
+which are self-evident when once we turn our minds to them; and it is
+thus self-evident that the care of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother
+would require the preparation of the man to whom they should be
+committed. In the state of society into which our Lord was born, He and
+His Mother would need active guardianship of a peculiar nature. The man
+who should provide for our Lord's infancy must be a man, in the nature
+of the case, who was receptive of spiritual monitions and devoted to the
+will of God. It was a delicate matter to live before the world as the
+husband of Mary of Nazareth, and to live before God as the guardian of
+her virginity and as the foster-father of her divine Son. Only a very
+choice nature could respond to the demands thus made upon it, a nature
+which had been habitually responsive to the will of God and long
+nurtured by the richness of His grace.
+
+We know very little of St. Joseph; but God's choice of him for the
+office he was to fulfil near the blessed Virgin Mary and her Son reveals
+the nature of the man. He is described to us as "a just man," one whose
+judgment would not be swayed by prejudices, but who would be open to the
+consideration of any case upon its merits: a man who would not view
+events in the light of their effect upon himself and his plans, but who
+can calmly consider what in given circumstances is due to others. Such
+men are rare at any time for their production is a matter of slow
+discipline.
+
+We gather that both S. Joseph and S. Mary were of the same lineage, were
+descended from the same ancestor, David. We gather also that S. Joseph
+was much older than his bethrothed wife, for he had been already married
+and had a family. All the notices of these brothers and sisters of the
+Lord imply that they were considerably older than the Child of Mary, and
+that they felt that they had the sort of authority over Him which
+commonly belongs to the elder children of a family; the sort of doubt
+and criticism of His course which would be the instinctive attitudes of
+elders toward the unprecedented course of a younger. We have, I think, a
+right to infer from the terms of the narrative, that S. Joseph would
+have been well acquainted with S. Mary and was not taking a wife who was
+a stranger to him. Indeed, considering the actual development of the
+situation, I myself feel quite certain that those are right who maintain
+that the proposed marriage was intended to be merely a nominal union,
+the ultimate design of which was the protection of the virginity of
+Mary. I find it impossible to think of that virginity as other than of
+deliberate purpose from the beginning, and prompted by the Spirit of God
+for the purposes of God for which it served. There is, to be sure, no
+revelation of this in Holy Scripture, but there are facts which suggest
+themselves to the devout meditations of saints which we feel that we may
+safely take on the authority of their spiritual intuitions. Such a fact
+is this of Mary's purposed virginity which I am content to accept on the
+basis of its congruity with S. Mary's life and vocation. Of the fact of
+her perpetual virginity there can be no dispute among Catholic
+Christians.
+
+To S. Joseph thus preparing himself to be the guardian of the blessed
+Virgin it could only come as a tremendous shock that she should be found
+with a child. Our character comes out at such times of trial as when
+something that we had taken quite for granted fails us, and we are left
+breathless and bewildered in in the face of what would have seemed
+impossible even had we thought of it. What was S. Joseph's attitude? The
+beauty and sanity of his character at once shows itself. Grieved and
+disheartened as he must have been, disappointed as he could not but be,
+he yet thinks at once of his bethrothed, not of himself. How far could
+he save her?--that was his first thought. He would at least avoid
+publicity. "Being a just man, and not willing to make her a public
+example, he was minded to put her away privily." It is the quality that
+we express by the word benevolence--the quality of mature and deliberate
+wisdom. We feel that such a man could be trusted under any
+circumstances of life.
+
+We feel, too, that God would not leave S. Joseph in doubt as to the
+course he was to pursue, or as to the character of Mary herself. There
+could no shade of suspicion be permitted to rest upon her. Hence "while
+he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto
+him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take
+unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the
+Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his
+name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins."
+
+It is not difficult to imagine the joy of S. Joseph at this angelic
+message. We all know the sense of relief which comes when, after facing
+a most trying situation, and being forced to make up our minds to act
+when action either way is almost equally painful, we find that we are
+delivered from the necessity of acting at all, that the whole state of
+things has been utterly misunderstood. It was so with S. Joseph; and in
+his case there was the added joy which springs from the nature of the
+coming Child as the angel explains it to him. He who had accepted the
+charge of Mary was now to add to that charge the charge of her Child:
+and the Child is the very Saviour whom his soul and the souls of all
+pious Israelites had longed for. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he
+shall save his people from their sins." We cannot expect that S. Joseph
+would have taken in the full meaning of this message, but he would have
+understood that he was called to a wondrous co-operation with God in the
+work of the redemption of Israel.
+
+As we think of S. Joseph it is this co-operation which is the
+significant thing in his life. As we study human life in the only way in
+which it is much worth while to study it, in the light of revelation, it
+becomes clear to us that there is purpose in all human life. Often we
+observe a purpose that we are not able to grasp, but in the light of
+what we know from revelation we do not doubt of its presence. Even lives
+that seem obscure and insignificant we feel sure must have a divine
+meaning; and the pathetic thing about most human life is that it never
+dreams of its own significance. We are consumed with the notion that
+God's instruments must be great, while it is on the face of revelation
+that they are commonly humble and of seeming insignificance. It is the
+work that is important, and the instrument becomes important through its
+relation to the work. We all at least have the common vocation of the
+Christian, and it would be difficult to exaggerate the spiritual
+significance of that. S. Joseph seems to us at once set apart by his
+vocation to be the guardian of the divine Child, to protect and to
+nurture the years of His human immaturity. This is no doubt a unique
+vocation, but is it quite so far separated from ordinary Christian
+experience as we assume? You and I are also constituted guardians of the
+divine Presence. This very morning, it may be, we have received within
+the Tabernacle of our breast the same Presence that S. Joseph
+guarded--the Presence of Incarnate God. In that Presence of His humanity
+our Lord abode with us but a few minutes and then the Presence withdrew:
+but He left behind Him a real gift, the gift of an increase in
+sacramental grace.
+
+Was that a light thing: Was it indeed so much less than the vocation of
+S. Joseph? And how have we guarded this Presence? Those few moments
+after the reception of our Incarnate Lord at the altar--how do we
+habitually spend them? Do we spend them in guarding the Presence? There
+is much to be learned about the meaning and the value of guarding the
+Eucharistic Gift. Our thanksgiving after Communion is fully as important
+as our preparation for receiving it. I am more and more inclined to
+think that much of the fruitlessness of communions which is so sad a
+side of the life of the Church is due to careless reception and
+inadequate thanksgiving. It is the adoration of our Lord within the
+Tabernacle of our body and thanksgiving to Him for having come to us
+that is the _appropriation_ of the Gift of the Sacrament. He comes to us
+and offers Himself to us with all the benefits of His life and death;
+and then having offered Himself "He makes as though he would go
+farther," and he does actually go, unless we are awake to our spiritual
+opportunity, and constrain Him, saying, "abide with us, for it is toward
+evening and the day is far spent."
+
+We think of S. Joseph then, as with a relieved and rejoicing heart he
+enters upon his new realised vocation as the head of the Holy Family.
+The marriage which he had been upon the point of abandoning he now
+enters that he may give S. Mary and her coming Child his full
+protection.
+
+So S. Joseph "took unto him his wife; and knew her not till she had
+brought forth her first-born Son." These words have been so
+misunderstood as to imply that the marriage of S. Joseph and S. Mary was
+consummated after the birth of our Lord. Grammatically they convey no
+such implication; the mode of expression is perfectly simple and well
+known by which a fact is affirmed to exist up to a certain time without
+any implication as to what happens after. And the meaning of the passage
+which is not at all necessitated by its grammatical construction is
+utterly intolerable in Catholic teaching. The constant teaching of the
+Church is the perpetual virginity of Mary--that she was a virgin "before
+and in and after her child-bearing." There was to be sure an heretic
+named Helvidius who taught otherwise, but he was promptly repudiated by
+all Catholic teachers and but served to emphasize the depth and
+clearness of the Catholic tradition. Upon this point there has never
+been any wavering in the mind of the Church, and to hold otherwise shows
+a lamentable lack of a Catholic perception of values and but a
+superficial grasp upon what is involved in the Incarnation.
+
+The impression we get of S. Joseph is that of a man of great simplicity
+and gentleness of character--that childlikeness which was later praised
+by his foster Son. Such qualities do not produce much impression on the
+superficial observer, but they are of great spiritual value. They are
+the concomitants of a special type of open-mindedness. Open-mindedness
+is a quality much praised and little practiced. But the open-mindedness
+which is commonly praised is not the open-mindedness which is
+praiseworthy. What is at present meant by open-mindedness is in reality
+failure to have any mind at all upon a given subject. It is the attitude
+of doubt which never proceeds so far as to arrive at a solution. To have
+an open mind means to the contemporary man to hold all conclusions
+loosely, to consider all things open to question, to be ready to
+abandon what now appears to be true in favour of something which
+to-morrow may appear to be more true. In other words, we are invited to
+base life on pure scepticism.
+
+Now no life can be so conducted. We live by a faith of some sort,
+whether it be a faith in God or no. The most sceptical mind has to
+believe something to act at all. It cannot even doubt without affirming
+a belief in its own intellectual processes. The open mind that never
+reaches any certainty to fill it is a very poor possession indeed. And
+it is not at all what we mean when we say of S. Joseph that he was
+open-minded. We mean that he was receptive of new spiritual impressions
+and capable of further spiritual development. There are minds, and they
+are not unusual among people of a certain degree of spiritual
+development, which we can best describe as having reached a given stage
+of growth and then shut up. Or, to vary the figure, they impress one as
+having a certain capacity, and when that has been reached, being able to
+contain nothing further. They come to a stop. From that point they try
+to maintain the position they have acquired. But that is impossible:
+they inevitably fall away unless they are going forward. When the power
+of spiritual assimilation is dead, we are spiritually in a dying
+condition.
+
+What we mean by having an open and childlike mind, then, is that one has
+this power of spiritual assimilation and, consequently, a power of
+growth. The sceptic is afflicted with spiritual indigestion; he is an
+invalid who is quite certain that any food that is offered him is
+indigestible. His soul withers away through its incapacity to believe.
+The open-minded saint has a healthy spiritual digestion. This does not
+mean that, in vulgar parlance, he can, "swallow anything"; it does mean
+a power of discrimination between food offered him,--that he assimilates
+what is wholesome and rejects the rest. The sceptic is pessimistic as to
+the existence of any wholesome food at all; he starves his soul for fear
+that he should believe something that is not true. The saint, with the
+test of faith, sorts the food proposed to him, and grows in grace, and
+consequently in the knowledge and the love of God.
+
+Open-mindedness is sensitiveness to spiritual impressions, readiness for
+spiritual advance, even when such impressions cut across much that has
+seemed to us well settled, and such advance involves the upset of his
+established ways of thought. What distinguishes the evolution in the
+thought of the sceptic from that in the thought of the saint is that in
+the one case the result is destructive and in the other constructive.
+The sceptic is like a man who starts to build a house, and then
+periodically tears down what he has so far built and begins again on a
+new plan; the saint is like the house builder who broadens his plan in
+the course of construction, and who finds that within the limits of his
+general scheme there is room for indefinite improvement. The one never
+gets any building at all; the other gets a palace of which the last
+stages are of a more highly decorated school of architecture than he
+had conceived, or indeed, could conceive, when he began his work.
+
+In S. Joseph's case nothing could be more revolutionary in appearance
+than the truth he was asked to accept. He was asked to believe in the
+virgin-motherhood of his bethrothed, and in the fact that the Child soon
+to be born was He Who was to save Israel from his sins. He was asked to
+accept these incredible statements and to act upon them by taking Mary
+to wife as he had proposed. And he did not hesitate to accept the
+evidence of a dream and act in accordance with it. How could he do this?
+Because the required action which seemed so revolutionary of all his
+previous notions was, in fact, quite in accordance with his knowledge of
+God and of the promises of God. Though a simple man, perhaps because he
+was a simple man, he would know something of the teaching of the
+prophets. That teaching would have given him thoughts about God which
+would have, unconsciously, prepared him for these new acts of God.
+Though we cannot see before how a prophecy is to be fulfiled, after the
+event we can see that this is what is intended by it. We were actually
+being prepared by the prophecy for what was to take place. And thus, no
+doubt, S. Joseph's mind, being filled with the teaching of the
+Scriptures which he had heard read in the Synagogue every Sabbath day,
+would find that this new act of God on which he was asked to rely was,
+in fact, but a new step in the unfolding of that Providence which had
+for centuries been shaping the history of his nation.
+
+It is a quality to cultivate, this simple open-mindedness which is
+ready to respond to new spiritual impulses. It is precisely what
+prevents that deadly attitude of soul which proceeds as though religion
+were for us exhausted: as though we had reached the limit of expectancy.
+But to expect nothing is to receive nothing, because it is only
+expectancy that perceives what is offered. We move in a world which is
+thronged with spirtual impulses and energetic with spiritual powers. God
+is trying to lead us on to new spiritual experiences by which we may
+attain to a better understanding of Him. There is no assignable limit to
+our possible growth. But we fix a limit when we close our souls to
+further experiences by the practical denial that they exist. If we are
+childlike, we are always expecting new things of our Father; if we are
+open-minded we are alive to the activities of the spiritual world. We
+are conscious of possessing a growing religion, a religion truly
+evolutionary, constantly bringing to our knowledge unsuspected riches
+stored in the very principles whose meaning we had assumed that we had
+exhausted.
+
+Perhaps one of the treasures of our religion of which we have not
+achieved full consciousness is God's choice of us to be the guardians of
+His revelation. It is our charge "to keep the faith." I suppose that
+this responsibility is commonly regarded as belonging to some vaguely
+imagined Church which hands it on from generation to generation, to us
+among others, but without imposing on us an obligation of any active
+sort. But we are the Church--members in particular of the Body of
+Christ. And in the dissemination of the faith the last appeal is to us,
+not to some outside tribunal. When the Church wishes to discover its
+faith and make it articulate, its place of search is in the minds and
+hearts of the faithful. Our responsibility is to testify to the Catholic
+Faith, not so much by positively asserting it as by making it active and
+vivid in our lives so that its presence and power can by no means be
+mistaken. You, for instance, in common with the rest of the faithful,
+are the custodians of this truth of the perpetual virginity of the
+Blessed Virgin Mary. It may seem a small matter, but it is not. That it
+is not is readily seen from this fact, that when the perpetual virginity
+of our Blessed Mother is denied then also the Incarnation of her Son is
+denied or is held only in a half-hearted way. The Church stresses such
+facts, not only because they are facts, but because by their character
+they form a hedge about the truth of the Incarnation of our Lord. And we
+who are Catholic Christians must feel an obligation to hold fast this
+fact. We ought actively to show our firm adherence to it. How? Chiefly
+by our attitude towards Blessed Mary herself, by the devotion that we
+show her. If we are quite indifferent to devotion to Blessed Mary, if we
+show her no honour, if we likewise fail in honour to her guardian, S.
+Joseph, is it not to be expected that our grasp upon the truths which
+are enshrined in such devotion will be feeble, and that we shall hold
+them as of small moment? The whole system of Catholic thought is so
+nicely articulated, so consistently held together, that failure to hold
+even the smallest constituent indicates a faulty conception of the
+whole. Catholics are constantly accused of over-stressing devotion to
+blessed Mary and the saints and thereby encroaching upon the honour due
+to our Lord. The answer to the reproach is to be found in the question:
+Who to-day are defending to the very death the truth of our Lord's
+Incarnation and the truths that hang upon it? Are they those who deny
+the legitimacy of invocation, or those in whose religious practise it
+holds an important and vital place?
+
+
+     A PANEGYRICK ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.
+
+     I do not tremble, when I write
+     A Mistress' praise, but with delight
+     Can dive for pearls into the flood,
+     Fly through every garden, wood,
+     Stealing the choice of flow'rs and wind,
+     To dress her body or her mind;
+     Nay the Saints and Angels are
+     Nor safe in Heaven, till she be fair,
+     And rich as they; nor will this do,
+     Until she be my idol too.
+     With this sacrilege I dispense,
+     No fright is in my conscience,
+     My hand starts not, nor do I then
+     Find any quakings in my pen;
+     Whose every drop of ink within
+     Dwells, as in me my parent's sin,
+     And praises on the paper wrot
+     Have but conspired to make a blot:
+     Why should such fears invade me now
+     That writes on her? to whom do bow
+     The souls of all the just, whose place
+     Is next to God's, and in his face
+     All creatures and delights doth see
+     As darling of the Trinity;
+     To whom the Hierarchy doth throng,
+     And for whom Heaven is all one song.
+     Joys should possess my spirit here,
+     But pious joys are mixed with fear:
+     Put off thy shoe, 'tis holy ground,
+     For here the flaming Bush is found,
+     The mystic rose, the Ivory Tower,
+     The morning Star and David's bower,
+     The rod of Moses and of Jesse,
+     The fountain sealed, Gideon's fleece,
+     A woman clothed with the Sun,
+     The beauteous throne of Salomon,
+     The garden shut, the living spring,
+     The Tabernacle of the King,
+     The Altar breathing sacred fume,
+     The Heaven distilling honeycomb,
+     The untouched lily, full of dew,
+     A Mother, yet a Virgin too,
+     Before and after she brought forth
+     (Our ransom of eternal worth)
+     Both God and man. What voice can sing
+     This mystery, or Cherub's wing
+     Lend from his golden stock a pen
+     To write, how Heaven came down to men?
+     Here fear and wonder so advance
+     My soul, it must obey a trance.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE NATIVITY
+
+     She brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in
+     swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there
+     was no room for them in the inn.
+
+     S. Luke II. 7.
+
+     It is very meet to bless thee who bore the Christ, O ever
+     Blessed and Immaculate Mother of God. More wondrous than the
+     Cherubim and of greater glory than the Seraphim art thou who
+     remaining Virgin didst give birth to God the Word. Verily, do
+     we magnify thee, O Mother of God. In thee, O full of grace,
+     all creation exults, the hierarchy of angels and the race of
+     men. In thee sanctified temple, spiritual paradise, glory of
+     virgins, of whom God took flesh, through whom our God Who was
+     before the world became a Child. Of thy womb He made a
+     throne, and its dominion is more extensive than the heavens.
+     In thee, O full of grace, all creation exults: glory to thee.
+
+     RUSSIAN.
+
+We see a man and a woman on the road to Bethlehem where they are going
+to be taxed according to the decree of Augustus. Bethlehem would be
+known to them as the home of their ancestors, for they were both of the
+lineage of David. It was a painful journey for them for Mary was near
+the time of her delivery. We follow them along the road and into the
+village, as the twilight fades, and see them seeking shelter for the
+night. Bethlehem is a small place and the inn is crowded with those who
+have come on the errand with them, and the only place where they can
+find refuge for the night is a stable. But they are not used to luxury,
+and the stable serves their purpose.
+
+It also serves God's purpose. One understands as one reads this
+narrative of the Nativity what is meant by the Providential government
+of the world. We see how various lines of action, each free and
+independent, yet converge to the production of a given event. The
+different characters in the drama are all pursuing their own courses and
+yet the result is a true drama, not an unrelated series of events.
+Caesar's action, Joseph's lineage, our Lord's conception, all working
+together, bring about the fulfilment of prophecy by the birth of the
+Messiah in Bethlehem. There is in the universe an over-ruling will which
+works to its ends by co-operating with human freedom, and not
+destroying it. We are not the sport of chance, not the slaves of fate,
+but free men; and yet through our freedom, through our blunders and
+rebellions and sins as well as through our obedience, the work of God is
+moving to its conclusion. Man did all that he could to defeat the ends
+of God and to thwart God's purpose of redemption. Yet on a certain night
+in Bethlehem of Judea the light of God overcame the human darkness, and
+the voices of God's angels pierced the human tumult, and Jesus Christ
+was born. "God of the substance of his Father begotten before all
+worlds, man of the substance of his mother, born in the world; perfect
+God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."
+
+The manifestation came to certain shepherds watching their flocks in the
+fields about Bethlehem; simple men, quite unable to take in the meaning
+of what they see and hear. One cannot help thinking of what it would
+have meant in the way of an intellectual revolution if to some Greek or
+Roman philosopher, speculating on the destiny of humanity, the truth
+could have come that the future of the world was not in the court of
+Augustus, that it was not dependent on the Roman armies or Greek
+learning, but that it was bound up in the career and teaching of a Baby
+that night born in a stable in an obscure village in Judea. As we
+imagine such a case we see in the concrete the meaning of the revolution
+set in motion by this single event; and we are led to adore the ways of
+God in that He has chosen for the final approach to man for the purpose
+of redemption, this way of simplicity and humbleness. Man would not
+have thought of this as the best path for God to follow in this purpose
+of rescue, but we can be wise after the event and see that this Child
+born in poverty and obscurity would have fewer entanglements to break
+through, fewer obstacles to overcome.
+
+But these thoughts are far away from the night in Bethlehem. In the
+stable there where a Baby is lying in Mary's arms and Joseph stands
+looking on, there is no speculation about the world-consequences of the
+event. There is rather the splendour of love: the love of the mother in
+the new found mystery of this her Child; the love of God who has given
+her the Child. And all is a part of the great mystery of love, of the
+love wherewith God loves the world. "God so loved the world that He gave
+His only begotten Son." Here is the Son, lying in Mary's arms, wrapped
+in swaddling clothes, and Mary looks into His face as any human mother
+looks into the face of her child. But through the eyes that smile up
+into Mary's face, God is looking out on a world of sorrow and pain and
+sin that He has come to redeem, and for which, in redeeming it, to die.
+Presently, the shepherds come in and complete the group, the
+representatives of universal humanity at the birth of their King, We
+have the whole world-problem in small, but here there is no
+consciousness of it. No echo of world-politics or of movements of
+thought break in here. But we know that here is the beginning of that
+which will set at naught world-politics and revolutionise movements of
+thought, that here is the centre about which humanity will move in the
+coming time. Here is that which is fundamental and abiding because here
+is the one invincible power of the universe--love. All else will fail:
+prophecies, systems of philosophy, religions, political and social
+structures; each in the time of its flourishing, proclaiming itself the
+last word of human wisdom,--these in bewildering succession have arisen
+and passed away. But love has survived them all. Love never faileth;
+through the slow succession of the centuries it is winning the world
+to God.
+
+It were well if we could learn to look on the happenings of this world
+as the miracles of divine love. We think of the power, the justice, the
+judgment of God as visible in this world's history; but these are but
+the instruments of love, and all that He does has its foundation in love
+and receives its impulse from love. This Nativity is the divine love
+coming into the world on its last adventure, determined to win man, all
+other means failing, by the extremity of sacrifice. The final word about
+this Child will be that having loved his own He loved them unto the
+uttermost, he loved them without stinting, with the uttermost capacity
+of love. Understanding this meaning of the love of God, we are prepared
+for the further fact that God uses all sorts of instruments as the
+instruments of His love. He shares Himself. He pours Himself into human
+life. He takes men into partnership in the work of redemption. Whenever
+a soul is mastered by love, it becomes a tool in God's hands. The
+progress of the Church--of God's Kingdom--might be described as the
+accumulation of these tools wherewith God works--souls who are so
+devoted to Him as to be the medium of bringing His power, the power of
+love, to bear on the souls of their brethren.
+
+To be the highest, the most perfect, of all the instruments of
+redemption God chose Mary of Nazareth to be the Mother of His Son. She
+is the most complete human embodiment of God's love. She, in her perfect
+purity, can transmit that love as power with the least loss of energy in
+the process of transmission. When we think of the saints as the means of
+God's action, we think of blessed Mary as the highest of the saints and
+the means most perfectly adapted to God's ends. Here at Bethlehem she
+holds God in her arms and looks into the human face that He has taken
+for this present work and all her being is absorbed in love. Oblivious,
+we think her, of her mean surroundings, of the animals that share with
+her their stable, of the shepherds who come in and look on in wonder, of
+S. Joseph standing by in sympathy. Love is all. Love is a passion
+consuming her being--what can the attendant circumstances matter? And
+to-day, after all these centuries: to-day the Child is the Ascended and
+Enthroned Redeemer, His risen and glorified humanity, transmitting
+something of the divine glory, seated at the right hand of the Majesty
+of God. And Mary, the Mother? Can we have any other thought than that
+she who on the first Christmas morning looks into the face of her Baby,
+still, to-day, looks up into the face of her divine Son, and the look is
+the same look of love? And can we think of the look that comes back to
+her from eyes that are human, taken from her body, though they be in
+very truth the eyes of God--can we think, I say, of the eyes of her
+Child and her God bringing anything else than the message of love? Can
+we think that when in answer to our invocation she presents our prayers
+in union with her own, that love will fail?
+
+But let us come back to earth--to Bethlehem--on that first Christmas eve
+and listen to the songs of the angels as they sing over the star-lit
+fields. How near heaven seems! How real is God! How joyful is this
+season of peace to men of good will! The message is of peace, but that
+peace will need to have its nature explained in the coming years if
+men's hearts are not to fail them and their faith wither away. It is not
+a general peace to the world that is being proclaimed. Later on our Lord
+will say: "My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I
+unto you." It is such a gift as can be enjoyed only by men of good will;
+converted men, that is to say, men whose will is close set with the will
+of God. For how should there be peace in any world on any other terms?
+How can there be peace for those who are in rebellion against God? Our
+Lord can promise peace, and can fulfil His promise because He is
+bringing a new potency into human life. He is a new way of approach to
+God, a new way into the Holiest of all. Through His humanity God is
+united to man, and through it man, any man, can be united to God. And
+one of the results of that union is this gift of peace, and the fact
+that it arises from the union explains its new character, why our Lord
+calls it His peace.
+
+This peace is the Christmas gift of the divine child to us. This is the
+method of God's work, from the inside out; from the spiritual fact to
+its external result. We do not begin by finding peace with this world:
+"in the world ye shall have tribulation." And most of the failure to
+attain peace, and much of men's loss of faith is due to repudiation of
+the divine method. We live in a disordered and pain-stricken world where
+human life is uniformly a life of trial and struggle, and our easy
+yielding to temptation is an attempt at some sort of an adjustment with
+the world such as we think will produce peace and quiet. We constantly
+demand of religion that it should effect this for us. So far as one can
+see much of the revolt against religion to-day has its ground in the
+failure of religion to meet the demands made upon it for a better world.
+Men look out on a world seething with unrest and filled with injustice,
+and they turn upon the Church and ask, "Why have you not changed all
+this? Are you not, in fact, neglecting your duty in not changing it? Or
+if you are not neglecting your duty, you must at least confess to your
+impotence. Your self-confessed business is to make a better world."
+
+True; but only on the conditions which love imposes. Religion does not
+propose to improve the world by a more skilful application of the
+principles of worldliness. It does not propose to turn stones into bread
+at the demand of any devils whatsoever. It does not say, "If you will
+support me and give me a certain superficial honour, I will bless your
+efforts and increase the success of your undertakings." Religion
+proposes to improve the world on the condition that the principles of
+religion shall be accepted as the working principles of life; on
+condition, that is, that love shall be made the ground of human
+association. Religion can make a better world, it can make the kingdoms
+of God and of His Christ; but it can only do so on the condition that it
+is whole-heartedly accepted and thoroughly applied. The proof that it
+can do this is in the fact that it can and does make better individuals.
+Wherever men and women have lived by the principles of the Gospel they
+have brought forth the fruits of the Gospel. It has done this, not under
+some specially favourable circumstances, but it has done it under all
+circumstances of life and in all nations of men. What has been done in
+unnumbered individual cases, can be done in whole communities when the
+communities want it done. It is quite pointless in times of great social
+distress to ask passionately, "why does not God make a better world?"
+The only question which is at all to the point is, "why has God not made
+_me_ better?" The problem of God's dealing with the world is, in
+essence, the problem of God's dealing with me. If He has not reformed
+me, if I do not, in my self-examination, find that I am responding to
+the ideals of God, as far as I know them, there is small point in
+declamations about the state of society. Society that is godless, is
+just a mass of godless individuals; and I can understand why God does
+not reform the world perfectly well from the study of my own case. What
+in me prevents the full control of God is the same that prevents that
+control over the whole of society: and I know that that is not lack of
+knowledge, but lack of love. Men ignore the primary obligation of life:
+"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... and thy neighbour as thyself." As
+long as they ignore that, there can be no reformed world, no world
+reflecting the divine purpose, no society,--whatever may be its widely
+multiplied legislation,--securing to men conditions of life which are
+sane and satisfactory.
+
+Therefore the Child who is born of Mary in Bethlehem while the angels
+are singing their carols over the fields where the shepherds watch, the
+Child Who brings peace to men of good will, still, after nearly two
+thousand years, finds His gift ignored and His longing to lift men to
+God unsatisfied. "He came unto His own and His own received Him
+not"--and the conditions are not vitally changed to-day. When we think
+of a world of fifteen hundred million human beings, the number of those
+who profess and call themselves Christians is comparatively small; the
+number of actually practicing Christians, of men and women who do live
+by the Gospel, without reserve and without compromise, is vastly
+smaller. The resistance of the principles of the Gospel is to-day
+intense; the demand for compromise is insistent. We are asked to throw
+over a system which has obviously failed, and to accept as the
+equivalent and to permit to pass under the same name a system which is
+fundamentally different; a system whose end is man and not God, whose
+means are natural and not supernatural, which seek to produce an
+adjustment with this world that means comfort, rather than an adjustment
+with the spiritual world which means sanctity.
+
+The ideal achievement of peace is here in Bethlehem where the mother
+holds the Holy Child to her breast, while her spirit is utterly in union
+with Him Who is both man and God. There is never any break in the pure
+peace of S. Mary because there is never any moment when her will is
+separated from the will of God, when her union with Him fails. This
+peace of perfect union has, through the merits of her Son, been hers
+always; she has never known the wrench of the will that separates itself
+from God. She has always been poor; she has been perplexed with life;
+she has suffered and will suffer intensely, suffer most where she loves
+most; but peace she has never lost, because her will has never wavered
+in its allegiance. What visibly she is doing in these moments of her
+great joy, holding God to her breast in a passion of love, she in fact
+is doing always--always is she one with God.
+
+That undisturbed peace of a never broken union is never possible for us.
+We have known what it is to reject the will of God and go our own way
+and indulge the appetites of our nature in violation of our recognised
+standards of life. If we are to come to peace it must be along the rough
+road of repentance. And it is wholly just that it should be so; that we
+should win back to God at the expense of shame and suffering; that we
+should retrace the road that we have travelled, with weary feet and
+bleeding heart. This after all does not much matter: what does matter
+immensely is that there is a road back to God and that we find it. What
+matters is that we discover that repentance and reformation are the only
+road to peace. We are offered many other roads alleged to lead to the
+same place; but not even a child should be deceived by the modern
+substitutes for repentance, by the shallow teaching whereby it is
+attempted to persuade men of the innocence of sin. They are never worth
+discussing, these modern substitutes for repentance. Men accept them,
+not because they are rational or convincing, but because they offer a
+justification for going the way that they have already made up their
+minds to go. But it is plain that whatever else they do they do not
+afford a basis for peace. They are no rock foundation for eternity.
+Other foundation for peace can no man lay or has laid than the
+acceptance of the salvation offered in Jesus Christ. He is our peace;
+and when we discover that, He makes peace in us by the application to
+our souls of the Blood of His Cross. This is the peace He came to bring.
+This the peace that the angels announced as they sang over Bethlehem.
+This is the peace which is ceaselessly proclaimed from the altars of the
+Christian Church, the peace of God which passeth understanding, the
+peace which is offered to all men of good will.
+
+How shall we attain it? By being men of good will, plainly. But what
+constitutes good will in a man? That which I have already discussed,
+perhaps abundantly, simplicity and childlike obedience of character. S.
+Joseph, the guardian of Mary and her Child here in Bethlehem, is the
+best example we can have of a man of good will, a man who under the most
+difficult circumstances responded with perfect readiness and complete
+obedience to the heavenly message that came to him. This is to be his
+course through the few years that he will live, to give himself to the
+will of God in the care of Jesus. We are men of good will if we do
+whatsoever our Lord says to us, if we are seeking first of all the
+Kingdom of God and its righteousness, if our estimate of values
+corresponds to our Lord's.
+
+There is our trouble--that old trouble of feebly trying to live the life
+of the Kingdom when what we actually want is the offer of this world.
+There is, there can be, no peace in a divided life. There is a certain
+spiritual sloth which has the exterior look of peace, as a corpse looks
+peaceful, but it has no relation to the peace which God gives. It is in
+fact the wages of sin, wages easily earned and long enjoyed. But so long
+as we are spiritually alive, so long we cannot enjoy whole-heartedly
+even the most fascinating of sins because there is lurking in the
+background the sense of the transitoriness of our sin and of the
+imminence of death and judgment. There is the skeleton in every man's
+closet until he finally makes choice on one side or the other. For we
+are not ignorant of the spiritual obligations of life. We always know
+more than we have achieved. When we talk about our ignorance and
+perplexity, we are not meaning ignorance and perplexity about the
+obligation to live in a certain way, and to perform certain duties, on
+this particular day: rather we are making this alleged ignorance of the
+future an excuse for not taking action in the present, action which we
+know to be obligatory.
+
+And peace is so wonderful a gift! To feel oneself in harmony with God,
+to know that one is carefully seeking His will and making it one's first
+and highest duty to perform it. To have found the peace of the forgiven
+soul as the result of absolution, at the expense of much shame and
+repugnance, it may be, but with what marvellous compensations when we go
+away with a sense of restored purity and the friendship of God--life
+looks so different when we look at it through purified eyes! The old
+life has held us so tightly, the old sins have clung so close; and then
+there was a day when we gave up self and turned to God and the Gift of
+God in Jesus Christ; and then we saw how miserable and vile and naked we
+had been all through the time of our boasted freedom; and we came as
+children to Mary's Child and offered ourselves to Him for cleansing. We
+kneel and offer to Him our wills and ask that they may be made good, and
+kept good in union with His most holy will. Then we find how true this
+word is: "In Me ye shall have peace: in the world ye shall have
+tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." It is
+true, is it not? not only as we commonly interpret, that the disciples
+of Christ shall have tribulation in this world; but that much that we,
+giving ourselves to the world, counted joy, was in reality tribulation,
+and we are glad to be rid of it.
+
+     A babe is born to bliss us bring.
+     I heard a maid lulley and sing.
+     She said: "Dear Son, leave Thy weeping:
+     Thy, Father is the King of bliss."
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Lulley," she said and sung also,
+     "My own dear Son, why are Thou wo?
+     Have I not done as I should do?
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Nay, dear mother, for thee weep I nought,
+     But for the woe that shall be wrought
+     To Me ere I mankind have bought.
+     Was never sorrow like it i-wis."
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Peace, dear Son! Thou grievest me sore:
+     Thou art my child, I have no more.
+     Should I see men mine own Son slay?
+     Alas, my dear Son, what means all this?"
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "My hands, Mother, that ye now see,
+     Shall be nailed to a tree;
+     My feet also fast shall be,
+     Men shall weep that shall see this."
+        Now sing we with Angelis:
+        Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Ah, dear Son, hard is my happe
+     To see my child that lay in my lap,--
+     His hands, His feet that I did wrappe,--
+     Be so nailed; they never did amisse."
+       Now sing we with Angelis:
+       Gloria in excelsis.
+
+     "Ah, dear Mother, yet shall a spear
+     My heart asunder all but tear:
+     No wonder if I care-ful were
+     And wept full sore to think on this."
+       Now sing we with Angelis:
+       Gloria in excelsis.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE MAGI
+
+Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the
+king, Behold, there came Magi from the East to Jerusalem, Saying, Where
+is he that is born king of the Jews?
+
+S. Matt. II, i.
+
+Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, which hath borne for us God the
+Word. We give thee salutation with the Angel Gabriel, saying, Hail, thou
+that art full of grace; the Lord is with thee.
+
+Hail to thee, O Virgin, the very and true Queen; hail, glory of our
+race. Thou hast borne for us Emmanuel.
+
+We pray thee, remember us, O thou our faithful advocate with our Lord
+Jesus Christ, that He may forgive us our sins.
+
+COPTIC.
+
+Out of the East, over the desert, we see coming to Bethlehem the train
+of the star-led Magi. The devout imagination of the Church, dwelling
+upon the _significance_ rather than the bare historical statements of
+the Gospel, have seen them as the representatives of the whole Gentile
+world. We often think of the treatment of the sacred story by the
+teachers and preachers of the Church as embroidering the original
+narratives with legendary material. We can look at it in that way; and
+by so doing, I think, miss the meaning of the facts. What we call
+ecclesiastical legend will often turn out on examination to be but the
+unfolding of the meaning of an event in terms of the creative
+imagination. The object is to present vividly what the event actually
+means when the meaning is of such widely reaching significance as far to
+overpass the simple facts. It is thus, I take it, that we must
+understand the story of the Magi as it takes shape in pious story. That
+the Magi were kings, and that they were three in number, emphasises the
+felt importance of their coming to the cradle of our Lord. Actually,
+they were understood to represent the Gentile world offering its
+allegiance to our blessed Lord, and therefore they would naturally
+represent the three branches of the Gentile world as it was understood
+at the time. The importance of their mission was reflected in the
+presentation of them as kings--no less persons were required to fill
+the dignity of the part. There was, too, a whole mass of prophecy to be
+reckoned with and interpreted in its relation to the event, the most
+obvious of which was that of Isaiah: "And the Gentiles shall come to thy
+light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising."
+
+The Church story is essentially true, is but a dramatic rendering of the
+Gospel story. We may however content ourselves with the more simple
+rendering. We can hardly think of the stable as the setting of the
+reception of the Eastern Sages. Just when they came we cannot tell; but
+we seem compelled to put the Epiphany where the Church puts it in her
+year, somewhere between the Nativity and the Presentation, and the scene
+of it will still be, the Gospel implies, Bethlehem. "Now when Jesus was
+born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Behold, there
+came Magi from the East to Jerusalem." And at the direction of Herod,
+and guided by the Star they came to Bethlehem and offered their gifts
+and their worship. "They saw the young child with Mary his mother, and
+fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures,
+they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh."
+
+We try to get before us what would have been the mind of S. Mary through
+all these happenings which attended the birth of her Child. What is
+written of her here is no doubt characteristic: "Mary kept all these and
+pondered them in her heart." Wonder at the ways of God had been hers for
+so many months now--wonder, with devout meditation upon their meaning.
+Where there is no resistance to God's will but only the desire to know
+it more fully there is always the gradual assimilation of the truth. S.
+Mary moves in a realm of mystery from the moment of the Annunciation to
+the very end of her life. It is so difficult to understand what is the
+meaning of God in this unspeakable gift of a Son conceived by the power
+of the Holy Spirit, and in the constant accompaniment of pain and
+disaster and disappointment which is the unfolding experience of her
+life in relation to Him. But we feel in her no speculation, no
+rebellion, no insistence on knowing more; but we feel that there must
+have been a growing appreciation of the work of God, unhesitating
+acceptance of His will. Just to keep things in one's heart is so often
+the best way of arriving at an understanding of them; is the best way,
+at least, of arriving at the conviction that what we in fact need to
+understand is not so much what God does as that it is God Who does it.
+Our true aim in life is to understand God, and through that
+understanding we shall sufficiently understand life. Failure in human
+life is commonly due to an attempt to understand life without any
+attempt to understand it in relation to God. It is like an attempt to
+understand a work of art without an attempt to understand the artist, to
+estimate in terms of mechanical effort, rather than in terms of mind. A
+work of art means what the artist means when he creates it: life means
+what God means in His creation and government of it, and it is hopeless
+to expect to understand it without reference to the mind of God.
+
+Therefore Mary's way is the right way--the way of acceptance and
+meditation. So she sought to follow the mind of God. We are told little
+of her, but we are told quite enough to understand this. We know well
+her method, that she kept things in her heart. And we have one splendid
+example of the result of the method in the Magnificat. There the results
+of her communion with God break forth in that Canticle which ever since
+has been one of the priceless treasures of the Church. The Gospels never
+tell us very much; but if we will follow Mary's method they tell us
+enough to let us see the very hand of God in the working out of our
+salvation; they give us sample events from which we easily infer God's
+meaning otherwhere.
+
+And we may be sure that the months that followed the Annunciation would
+have been months of ever-deepening spiritual communion, resulting in a
+rapidly advancing spiritual maturity. One necessary result would have
+been to prepare the blessed Mother to receive new manifestations of
+God's Providence, and to fit them into the whole body of her experience.
+She would not at any time be lost in helpless surprise before a new
+development of the purpose of God. Surprised as she must have been when
+the Eastern Sages came to kneel before the Child she carried at her
+breast, and hail Him as born King of the Jews, she would have set to
+work to fit this new experience into what her acquired knowledge of the
+divine meaning had become. And one can have no doubt that these visitors
+from afar would have told her enough of the grounds of their action to
+illumine for her the prophecies concerning her Son.
+
+The special incidents that the Gospel select for record leave us always
+conscious that they _are_ a selection and therefore must have special
+significance. That we are told that the Magi offered certain gifts,
+rather than told the words of homage wherewith they presented them turns
+our attention to the nature of the gifts as presumably having a
+significance in themselves rather than because of any actual value. In
+the gifts of these Gentiles come from afar to kneel before Him Whom they
+recognise as King of the Jews, we are compelled to see a certain
+attitude of humanity toward Him Who is revealed to be not only the King
+of the Jews, but Lord of Heaven and earth; they give what humanity needs
+must always give--the gold of a perfect oblation, the incense of
+perpetual intercession, the myrrh of a humble self-abandonment.
+
+These which are offered as the ideal tribute of humanity by the star-led
+Magi are found in their highest human perfection exemplified in the
+Mother of the Child to Whom the tribute is made. Perfect are they in our
+Lord; and she who is nearest Him in nature is nearest Him in the
+perfection of nature. We turn from God's ideal as set out in our blessed
+Lord to see it reflected as in a glass in the life of her whose
+perfection is the perfect rendering of His grace. Mary is so perfect
+because, by God's election, she is "full of grace."
+
+We, alas! limp after the ideal at a long distance. One pictures the
+life of sanctity under the familiar symbol of the race course, where
+many start in the race, and many, one by one, fall out by the wayside.
+Those who go on the race's end, go on because of certain qualities of
+endurance that we discover in them. In those who run the spiritual race
+for the amaranthine crown these qualities of endurance are not natural,
+but supernatural: they come not of birth but of rebirth. They are
+qualities which we draw from God. "It is not of him that willeth, nor of
+him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." The hand that sets the
+race confers the gifts that enable one to win it. "So run that ye
+may obtain."
+
+And perhaps the chiefest of all those gifts is that which makes us, the
+children of God, capable of the adoration of our Father. Worship is no
+other than the utter giving of ourselves, giving as Christ gave, "Who
+being originally in the form of God, thought it not a thing to be
+grasped at to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, and took upon Him
+the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men"; giving as
+the blessed Virgin gave when she gave, as she must have thought and have
+been willing to give, her whole reputation among men in response to the
+call of God; giving complete, in which there is no withholding. That is
+worship, sacrifice, the pure gold of self-oblation.
+
+But it is possible to think of the power of worship from another point
+of view. God never takes but He gives. What He appears to take He gives
+back with His blessing, and we find the restored gift multiplied
+manifold. So in the very act of our worship God confers on us power.
+
+For it is true, is it not, that in the very act of worship we
+experience, not exhaustion but exhilaration. In the very act of giving
+ourselves to God, God gives Himself to us, and in overflowing abundance.
+That is what we find to be true in our highest act of worship, the
+blessed Eucharist. Here God and man meet in a perfect communion. Here we
+offer ourselves in sacrifice--ourselves, our souls and bodies--in union
+with the sacrifice of our Lord; and here our Lord, Who is the sacrifice
+itself, not only offers Himself, but also He imparts Himself to those
+who are united with Him. And out of this sacrifice, thus issuing in an
+act of union, there flows the perpetual renewing of the vitality of the
+spiritual life. We are sustained from day to day by this sacrificial
+feeding; our strength which is continually being drawn upon by the
+demands of life, by the temptations we have to resist, by the exertion
+that is called for in all spiritual exercise, is renewed by our
+participation in the Body and Blood of our Lord. I am sure that all
+those who are accustomed to frequent communion feel the drain upon their
+strength when at any time they are deprived of their great privilege. I
+am also sure that many who feel that their spiritual life is but
+languid, or those other many who seem only dimly to feel that there are
+spiritual problems to be met, and spiritual strength needed for the
+meeting of them, would find themselves immensely helped, would find
+their minds illumined and their strength sustained in more frequent
+participation in the sacrificial worship and feasting of the Church.
+The attitude of vast numbers of those who are regarded as quite sincere
+Christians is wholly incomprehensible. The life of God is day by day
+poured out at the altars of the Church, and they go their way in seeming
+unconsciousness of its presence, of its appeal, of its virtue, or of
+their own sore need of it. The Magi come from a far distance on a
+hazardous journey into an unknown country that they may offer the gold
+of their adoration to an infant King; and the Christian feebly considers
+whether he is not too tired to get up of a morning and go a short
+distance to receive the Body and Blood of the Redeemer of his soul!
+
+The Magi came also bringing the incense of their intercession. Their
+privilege was that they were admitted to the very Presence Chamber of
+the great King. That the Infant in Mary's arms did not show any sign of
+kingship, the humble room where they were received bore no resemblance
+to the presence chamber of such kings as they were accustomed to wait
+upon, was to them of no consequence. They were endowed with the gift of
+faith, and believed the supernatural guiding rather than the outward
+seeming. The faith that had followed the star from so great a distance
+was not likely to be quenched by the antithesis of what must have been
+their imagination of the reality, of all the pictures that had been
+filling their minds as they pushed on across the desert. It was no more
+incredible that the King Whom they were seeking should be found in
+humble guise in a peasant's cottage than that they should have been
+guided to Him by a heavenly star. The gift of God to them was that they
+should be permitted to enter the presence of the King.
+
+This right of admission to the divine Presence is the precious gift of
+God to us. Since the heavens received the ascending Lord the Kingdom of
+heaven has been open to all believers. Prayer is a very simple and
+common thing in our experience; and yet when we try to think out its
+implications we are overwhelmed with the wonder of it. It implies a God
+Who waits upon our pleasure: it reveals to us a Father Who is ever ready
+to listen to the voice of His children. No broken hearted sinner,
+overwhelmed with the conviction of his vileness, cries out in the agony
+of his repentance but God is ready to hear. "He is more ready to hear
+than we to pray." No man pours out his thanksgivings for the abundant
+blessings he discovers in his life but the heart of God is glad in his
+gladness. No child kneels at night to repeat his simple prayer but God
+bends over him and blesses him. The wonder of it is summed up in our
+Lord's words: "The Father Himself loveth you," which are as an open door
+into the inner sanctuary, an invitation to enter to those who are
+hesitating on the threshold of the Holy of Holies.
+
+And there is no danger of tiring God: we come ceaselessly, endlessly.
+The cries of earth go up to Him, pitiful, ignorant, foolish cries; but
+they find God ready to hear and answer, fortunately not according to our
+ignorance but according to His great mercy. We think of the clouds of
+prayer in all ages, from all nations, in all tongues, and the very
+vastness of them gives us an index of the divine love.
+
+And it is not simply for ourselves that we pray, nor do we pray by
+ourselves; it is of God's love that in the work of prayer we are
+associated with one another. There is nothing further from the divine
+plan of life than our present individualism. Our temptation is to be
+egotistic and self-centred; to want to approach God alone with our
+private needs and wishes. We incline to travel the spiritual way by
+ourselves; we want no company; we want no one between our souls and God.
+But that precisely is not the divine method. We come to God through
+Christ; we come in association with the members of the Body. Our
+standing as Christians before Him is dependent upon our corporate
+relation to one another in His Son.
+
+Important issues are involved. We attain through this associated life of
+the Christian the power of mutual intercession. We find that it is our
+privilege to share our prayers with others, and to be interested in one
+another's lives. We have common interests and we work them out in
+common. Therefore when we try to put before us an ideal picture of the
+power of prayer, it will not be the solitary individual offering his
+personal supplications to the Father, but it will be the community of
+the faithful assembled for the offering of the divine Sacrifice. It is
+the praying Body that best satisfies our ideal of prayer, where we are
+conscious of helping one another in the work of intercession. We
+remember, too, when we think of prayer as prayer of the Body of Christ,
+that it is not just the visible congregation that is participating in
+it, but that all the Body share in the intercessions, wherever they may
+individually be. Our thoughts go up from the little assembly in the
+humble church and lose themselves in the splendour of the heavenly
+intercession where we are associated with prophets and apostles and
+martyrs, and with Mary the Mother of God.
+
+There was a third gift that the Magi brought to Him Whom they hailed
+King, a gift that is more perplexing as a gift to royalty than the other
+two. That gold and incense should be offered a King is clearly His royal
+right; but what has he to do with the bitterness of myrrh? But to this
+King myrrh is a peculiarly appropriate gift, for it is the symbol of
+complete self-abandonment. He who came to do not His own will but the
+will of Him that sent Him; Who laid aside the robes of His glory,
+issuing from the uncreated light that He might clothe Himself with the
+humility of the flesh, is properly honoured with the gift of myrrh.
+
+And as it was the symbol of His humility, so is it the symbol of our
+humanity in relation to Him. It suggests to us that uttermost of
+Christian virtues, the virtue of entire abandonment to the will of God.
+This is a most difficult virtue to acquire. We cling to self. We are
+devoted to our own wills. We rely on our own judgment and wisdom. We are
+impatient of all that gets in the way of our self-determination. We have
+in these last days made a veritable religion out of devotion to self, a
+cult of the ego.
+
+But he who will enter into the sanctuary of the divine life, he who
+will seek union with God, he who will be one with the Father in the Son,
+must abandon self. He must lose his life in order to save it. He must
+let go the world to cling to the Lord of life. This will of the man
+which is so insistent, so persistent, so assertive, so tenacious, must
+be laid aside and the Will of Another adopted in its place. Often this
+is bitter. Very true of us it is that when we were young we girded
+ourselves and walked whither we would; but it must be in the end, if we
+make life a spiritual success, that when we are old another shall gird
+us and carry us whither we would not.
+
+The secret of life is found when the bitterness of myrrh is turned to
+sweetness in the discovery that the outcome of the sacrificial life is
+not that it be narrowed but enlarged; and that for the life which we
+have entrusted to Him God will do more than we ask or think. When our
+will becomes one with the will of God we are surprised to find that we
+have ceased to think of what we once called our sacrifices, because life
+in Christ reveals itself to us as of infinite joy and richness, so that
+we forget the things that are behind and gladly press on.
+
+     Queen of heaven, blessed may thou be
+     For Godes Son born He was of thee,
+     For to make us free.
+          Gloria Tibi, Domine.
+
+     Jesu, Godes Son, born He was
+     In a crib with hay and grass,
+     And died for us upon the cross.
+           Gloria Tibi, Dominie.
+
+     To our Lady make we our moan,
+     That she may pray to her dear Son,
+     That we may to His bliss come.
+          Gloria Tibi, Dominie.
+
+     Sixteenth Century.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PRESENTATION
+
+And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were
+accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.
+
+S. Luke II. 22.
+
+O come let us worship the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the
+Holy Ghost,--we the Christian nations, for He is our true God.
+
+And we hope in Holy Mary, that God will have mercy upon us through her
+prayers.
+
+Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, who hath borne for us God the Word.
+
+     COPTIC
+
+The reading of a story in the Gospels is often like looking through a
+window down some long arcade; there is in the foreground the group of
+actors in whom we are presently interested, and beyond them is the whole
+background of contemporary life to which they belong, of which they are
+a part. If we have time to think out the meaning of this surrounding
+life we gain added insight into the meaning of our principal characters.
+It is so now as we watch this group of humble peasant folk coming up to
+the temple to fulfil the demands of the law of Moses. In the precincts
+of the temple they are merged in a larger group whose interests are
+clearly identical with their own, and whom we easily see to be the local
+representatives of a party--the name, no doubt, suggests an organisation
+which they had not--scattered throughout Judea. Their interest was the
+redemption of Israel. They were the true heirs of the prophets, and
+among them the prophecies which concerned the Lord's Christ were the
+subject of constant study and meditation. Amid the movements and
+intrigues of political and religious parties, they abode quietly in the
+temple, as Simeon and Anna, or in their homes, as Zacharias and
+Elizabeth, _waiting_. Their power was the silent power of sanctity, the
+power that flows from lives steeped in meditation and prayer. They
+constitute that remnant which is the depository of the hopes of Israel
+and the saving salt which prevents the utter putrefaction of the body of
+the nation.
+
+We cannot for a moment doubt that Mary and Joseph were of this remnant,
+and that they were in complete sympathy with those whom they found here
+in the temple when the Child Jesus was brought in "to do for him after
+the custom of the law." The actual ceremony of the purification was soon
+over, the demands of the law satisfied. Neither Jesus nor Mary had any
+inner need of these observances; their value in their case was that by
+submission to them they associated themselves closely with their
+brethren, our Lord thus continuing that divine self-emptying which he
+had begun at the Incarnation. We are impressed with the completeness of
+this stooping of God when we see the offering that Mary brings, "A pair
+of turtle doves," the offering of the very poor. Our Lord has accepted
+life on its lowest economic terms in order that nothing in His mission
+shall flow from adventitious aids. He must owe all in the accomplishment
+of His work to the Father Who gave it Him to do. It will be the essence
+of the temptation that He must soon undergo that He shall consent to
+call to His aid earthly and material supports and base His hopes of
+success on something other than God.
+
+Accidentally, there is this further demonstration contained in the
+poverty of the Holy Family, that, namely, the completest spiritual
+privilege, the fullest spiritual development, is independent of
+"possessions." It is no doubt true that "great possessions" do not of
+necessity create a bar in all cases to spiritual accomplishment; but to
+many of us it is a consolation to know that the completest sanctity
+humanity has known has been wrought out in utter poverty of life. We
+shall have occasion to speak more of this later; we now only note the
+fact that those whom we meet in the pages of the New Testament as
+waiting hopefully for the redemption of Israel are waiting in poverty
+and hard work.
+
+What we find in S. Mary as she passes through the ceremony of her
+purification from a child-bearing which had in no circumstance of it
+anything impure, is the spirit of sacrifice which submission to the law
+implies. She has caught the spirit of her Son, the spirit of selfless
+offering to the will of God. It is the central accomplishment of the
+life of sanctity. The life of sanctity must be wrought out from the
+centre, from our contact with God. No one becomes holy by works,
+whatever may be the nature of the works. Works, the external life, are
+the expression of what we are, they are the externalization of our
+character. If they be not the expression of a life hid with Christ in
+God they can have no spiritual value, whatever may be their social
+value. The kind of works which "are done to be seen of men" "have their
+reward," that is, the sort of reward they seek, human approval; they
+have no value in the realm of the spirit.
+
+But the life that is lived as sacrifice, as a thing perfectly offered to
+God, is a life growing up in God day by day. It is our Lord's life,
+summed up from this point of view in the "I come to do thy will, O
+God." Its most perfect reflection is caught by blessed Mary with her
+acceptance of God's will: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord." But it is
+the life expression of all sanctity; for the saint is such chiefly by
+virtue of his sacrificial attitude. It is the completest account of the
+life of sanctity that it "leaves all" to follow a divine call. It is the
+response of the Apostles who, as James and John, leave their father
+Zebedee and the boats and the nets and the hired servants, to follow
+Jesus. It is the answer of Matthew who rises from the receipt of custom
+at the Master's word. It is the answer of all saints in all times.
+Sanctity means the abandonment of all for Christ: it means the embracing
+of the poverty of Jesus and Mary.
+
+Is sanctity then, or the possibility of it, shut within the narrow
+limits of a poor life? Well, even if it were, the limits would not be so
+very narrow. By far the greater part of the human race at any time has
+been poor, as poor as the Holy Family. Unfortunately, Christianity is
+forgetting its vocation of poverty and becoming a matter of
+well-to-do-ness. But we need not forget that the poor are the majority.
+However, the fact is not that economical poverty is automatically
+productive of spirituality, but that accepted and offered poverty is the
+road to the heart of God. It is not denied that the rich man may
+consecrate and offer his goods to God and make them instruments of God's
+service; but in the process he runs great risk of deceiving himself and
+of attempting to deceive God--the risk of quietly substituting for the
+spirit of sacrifice the spirit of commercial bargaining, and attempting
+to buy the favour of God, and of ransoming his great possessions by a
+well-calculated tribute. It is not so much our possessions as the way we
+hold them that is in question; it is a question whether the inner motive
+of our life is the will to sacrifice or the will to be rich. "They that
+desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many
+foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition,"
+
+These dangers S. Paul noted as the besetting dangers of riches are
+counteracted by the possession of the spirit of sacrifice which holds
+all things at the disposal of God, and views life as opportunity for the
+service of God. And in so estimating life, we must remember that money
+is not the only thing that human beings possess. As I pointed out the
+vast majority of the human race have no money: it by no means follows
+that they have no capacity or field for the exercise of the spirit of
+sacrifice. There is, for instance, an abundant opportunity for the
+exercise of that spirit in the glad acceptance of the narrow lot that
+may be ours. Probably many, indeed most, poor are only economically
+poor; they fall under S. Paul's criticism in that "they desire to be
+rich," and are therefore devoid of the spirit of sacrifice that would
+transform their actual poverty into a spiritual value. But all the
+powers and energies of life do in fact constitute life's capital. A poor
+boy has great possessions in the gifts of nature that God has granted
+him. He may use this capital as he will. He may be governed by "the
+desire to be rich," or by the desire to consecrate himself to the will
+and service of God--and the working out of life will be accordingly. He
+may become very rich economically, or he may devote his life to the
+service of his fellows as physician, teacher, missionary, or in
+numberless other paths. Once more, the meaning of life is in its
+voluntary direction, and whatever may be his economic state, he may, if
+he will, be "rich toward God."
+
+If what we are seeking is to follow the Gospel-life, if we are seeking
+to express toward man the spirit of the Master, we find abundant field
+for the exercise of this spirit of sacrifice in our daily relations with
+others. S. Paul's rule of life: "Look not every man to his own things,
+but every man also to the things of others," is the practical rule of
+the sacrificed will. It seeks to fulfil the service of the Master by
+taking the spirit of the Master--His helpfulness, His consideration, His
+sympathy--with one into the detail of the day's work. It is one of the
+peculiarities of human nature that it finds it quite possible to work
+itself up to an occasional accomplishment, especially in a spectacular
+setting, of spiritual works, which it finds itself quite impotent to do
+under the commonplace routine of life. The race experience is accurately
+enough summed up in the cynical proverb: "No man is a hero to his
+valet." It expresses the fact that in ordinary circumstances, and under
+commonplace temptations, we do not succeed in holding life to the
+accomplishment which is ours when we are, as it were, on dress parade.
+In other words, we respond to the opinions we desire to create in
+others; and the spirit of sanctity is a response not to public opinion,
+but to the mind and thought of God. When we seek the mind of Christ, and
+seek to reproduce that mind in our own lives, seek to be possessed by
+it, then we shall gladly render back to God all life's riches which we
+have received from Him, and acknowledge in the true spirit of poverty
+that "all things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we
+given Thee."
+
+The world has got into a very ill way of thinking of God as _force_.
+Force seems in the popular mind to be the synonym of _power_. The only
+power that we understand is the power that _compels_, that secures the
+execution of its will by physical or moral constraint. With this
+conception of power in mind men are continually asking: "Why does not
+God do this or that? If he be God and wills goodness, why does He not
+execute goodness, use power to accomplish it?"
+
+It ought to be unnecessary to point out that such a conception of power
+is quite foreign to the Christian conception of God. Goodness that is
+compulsory is not goodness. Human legislation, in its enforcement of
+law, looks not to the production of goodness but to the production of
+order, a quite different thing. But God's heart is set upon the
+sanctification of His children and is satisfied with nothing less than
+that. "This is the will of God, even your sanctification." But
+sanctification cannot be compelled. The divine method is, that "when the
+fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born
+under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might
+receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth
+the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Through
+this method we "were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." The
+result is not that we are compelled to obey, but that "the love of
+Christ constraineth us." The account of the apostolic authority is not
+that it is a commission to rule the universal Church, but "now then we
+are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray
+you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."
+
+The study of this divine method should put us on the right track in the
+attempt to estimate the nature of sanctity and the results we may expect
+from it. We shall expect nothing of spiritual value from force. We shall
+be quite prepared to turn away from the governing parties in Jerusalem
+as from those who have repudiated the divine method and are therefore
+useless for the divine ends. We shall turn rather to those who gather
+about the temple and there, in a life of prayer and meditation, wait for
+the redemption. It is to these, who are the real temple of the Lord,
+that the Lord "shall come suddenly," that the manifestation of God will
+be made. And their hearts will overflow with joy as they behold the
+fulfilment of the promises of God.
+
+The power of God is the power of love; and it is that love, and that
+love alone, that has won the victories of God. It is a very slow method,
+men say. No doubt. But it is the only method that has any success. The
+method of force seems effective; but its triumphs are illusory. Force
+cannot make men love, it can only make them hate. The world is being won
+to God by the love of God manifested in Christ Jesus our Lord. And it is
+as well to remember, when we are tempted to complain of the slowness of
+the process, that the slowness is ours, not God's. The process is slow
+because men will not consent to become the instruments of God's love for
+the world, will not transmit the crucified love of God's Son to their
+fellows. They continually, in their impatience, revert to force of some
+sort, for the attainment of spiritual ends. They become the tools of all
+sorts of secular ambitions which promise support in return for their
+co-operation. And the result may be read by any one not blinded by
+prejudice in the futility and incompetence of modern religions of all
+sorts. It is seen perhaps most of all in the pride of opinion which
+keeps the Christian world in a fragmentary condition, and which
+approaches the undoing of the sin of a divided Christendom with the
+preliminary announcement that no separated body must be required to
+admit that it has been in the wrong. Human disregard of the divine
+method of love and humility can hardly go farther; and the only
+practical result that can be expected to follow is such as followed from
+the negotiations of Herod and Pontius Pilate--a new Crucifixion of the
+Ever-sacrificed Christ.
+
+We have risen to the divine method when we have learned to rely for
+spiritual results upon God alone. Then is revealed to us the power of
+sanctity. We turn over the pages of the lives of the saints, of those
+who have been great in the Kingdom of God, and we are struck by the
+growing influence of these men and women. They are simple men and women
+whose life's energy is concentrated on some special work; they are
+confessors or directors; they work among the very poor; they lead lives
+of retirement in Religious Houses; they are preachers of the Gospel;
+they are missionaries. The one thing that they appear to have in common
+is utter consecration to the work in hand. And we see, it may be with
+some wonder, that as they become more and more absorbed in their special
+work, they become more and more centres of influence. Without at all
+willing it they draw people about them, become centres of influences,
+arouse interest, become widely known. In short, they are, without
+willing it, centres of energy. Of what energy? Obviously, of the energy
+of love: the love of God manifested in them draws men to God. The man at
+whose disposal is unlimited force compels men to do his will; but he
+draws no one to him except the hypocrite and the sycophant who expect to
+gain something by their servility. The saint draws men, not to himself,
+but to God; for obviously it is not his power but God's power that is
+being manifested through him.
+
+Unless we are very unfortunate we all know people whose attractiveness
+is the attractiveness of simple goodness. They are not learned nor
+influential nor witty nor clever, but we like to be with them. When we
+are asked why, we can only explain it by the attractiveness of their
+Christlikeness. What we gain from intercourse with them is spiritual
+insight and power. Their influence might be described as sacramental:
+they are means our Blessed Lord uses to impart Himself. They are so
+filled with the mind of Christ that they easily show Him to the world;
+and withal, quite unconsciously. For great love is possible only where
+there is great humility.
+
+And this power of sanctity which is the outcome of union with God is a
+permanent acquisition to the Kingdom of God. God's Kingdom is ultimately
+a Kingdom of saints. The sphere of God's self-manifestation in human
+life increases ever as the saints increase; and the power of sanctity
+necessarily remains while the saint remains, that is, forever. The saint
+remains a permanent organ of the Body of Christ, a perdurable instrument
+of the divine love. To speak humanly, the more saints there are, the
+more the love of God can manifest itself; the wider its influence on
+humanity. And the greater the Saint, that is, the nearer the Saint
+approaches the perfection of God, to which he is called--Be ye therefore
+perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect--the more influential he
+must be; that is the more perfectly he will show the divine likeness and
+transmit the divine influence. When we think of the power of the saints
+as intercessors that is what actually we are thinking of,--the
+perfection of their understanding of the mind of Christ.
+
+But to return to this world and to the gathering in the temple on the
+day of the Purification. These are they in whom the hope of Israel
+rests. Israel is not a failure because it has brought forth these. God's
+work through the centuries has not come to naught because in these
+there is the possibility of a new beginning. The consummate flower of
+Israel's life is the Blessed Mother through whom God becomes man; and
+these who meet her in the temple are the representatives of those hidden
+ones in Israel who will be the field wherein the seed of the Word can be
+sown and where it will bring forth fruit an hundredfold. Jesus, this
+Child, is God made man; and these around Him to-day, Mary and Joseph,
+Simeon and Anna, are those who will receive His love and will show its
+power in the universe forever.
+
+And so it will remain always; the good ground wherein the seed may be
+sown and bring forth unto eternal life is the spiritual nature of man,
+made ready by humility and love,--"In quietness and confidence shall be
+your strength." In the quietness that waits for God to act, the
+confidence that knows that He will act when the time comes. It is well
+if our aspiration is to be of the number of those who live lives hid
+with Christ in God; who are seeking nothing but that the love of God may
+be shed abroad in their hearts; who are "constrained" by nothing but the
+love of Jesus. It is true that this simplicity of motive and aim will
+bring it about that our lives will be hidden lives, lives of which the
+world will take no note. We may be quite sure that none of the rulers of
+Israel thought much about old Simeon who passed his time praying in the
+temple. And if we want to be known of rulers it is doubtless a mistake
+to take the road that Simeon followed. But the reward of that way was
+that he saw "the Lord's Christ," that it was permitted him to take in
+his arms Incarnate God, and then, in his rapture, to sing _Nunc
+Dimittis_. We cannot travel two roads at once. When the Holy Family goes
+out from the temple it can go, if it will, to the palace of Herod, or it
+can go back to Bethlehem. It cannot go both ways and we know the way
+that it took. And we in our self-examination to-night can see two roads
+stretching out before us. We can go the way of the world, the way that
+seeks (whether it finds or no) popularity and prominence, or we can join
+the Holy Family and in company with Jesus and Mary and Joseph go back to
+the quietness and hiddenness of the House of Bread where the saints
+dwell. With them, sheltered by the Sacrifice of Jesus and the prayers of
+Mary and Joseph we can wait for the Redemption in the full manifestation
+of the life of God in us, and for the time when the love of God shall be
+fully "shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given us."
+
+     O Sion, ope thy temple-gates;
+     See, Christ, the Priest and Victim, waits--
+        Let lifeless shadows flee:
+     No more to heaven shall vainly rise
+     The ancient rites--a sacrifice
+        All pure and perfect, see.
+
+     Behold, the Maiden knowing well
+     The hidden Godhead that doth dwell
+        In him her infant Son:
+     And with her Infant, see her bring
+     The doves, the humble offering
+        For Christ, the Holy One.
+
+     Here, all who for his coming sighed
+     Behold him, and are satisfied--
+        Their faith the prize hath won:
+     While Mary, in her breast conceals
+     The holy joys her Lord reveals,
+        And ponders them alone.
+
+     Come, let us tune our hearts to sing
+     The glory of our God and King,
+        The blessed One and Three:
+     Be everlasting praise and love
+     To him who reigns in heaven above,
+        Through all eternity.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+EGYPT
+
+The angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and
+take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt.
+
+S. Matt. II, 13.
+
+Deliver us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, from all evils past, present, and
+to come: and at the intercession for us of Blessed Mary who brought
+forth God and our Lord, Jesus Christ; and of the holy apostles Peter,
+and Paul, and Andrew; and of blessed Ambrose Thy confessor, and bishop,
+together with all Thy saints, favorably give peace in our days, that,
+assisted by the help of Thy mercy, we may ever be both delivered from
+sin, and safe from all turmoil. Fulfil this, by Him, with Whom Thou
+livest blessed, and reignest God, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for
+ever and ever.
+
+AMBROSIAN.
+
+Those who live in intimate union with God, the peace of whose lives is
+untroubled by the constant irruption of sin, are peculiarly sensitive to
+that mode of the divine action that we call supernatural. I suppose that
+it is not that God wishes to reveal Himself to souls only at crises of
+their experience or under exceptional conditions, but that only souls of
+an exceptional spiritual sensitivity are capable of this sort of
+approach. Communications of the divine will through dream or vision of
+inner voice are the accompaniment of sanctity; one may almost say that
+they are the normal means in the case of advanced sanctity. Most of us
+are too much immersed in the world, are too much the slaves of material
+things, to be open to this still, small voice of revelation. Our eyes
+are dimned by the garish light of the world, and our ears dulled by its
+clamour, so that our powers of spiritual perception are of the
+slightest. This is quite intelligible; and we ought not to fall into the
+mistake of assuming that our undeveloped spirituality is normal, and
+that what does not happen to us is inconceivable as having happened at
+all. If we want to know the truth about spiritual phenomena we shall put
+ourselves to school to those whose spiritual natures have attained the
+highest development and in whose experience spiritual phenomena are of
+almost daily happening.
+
+To the man "whose talk is of oxen," whose whole life is absorbed in the
+study of material things, a purely spiritual manifestation comes as a
+surprise. His instinctive impulse is to deny its reality as a thing
+obviously impertinent to his understanding of life. But one whose life
+is based on spiritual postulates, who is, however feebly, attempting to
+shape life in accordance with spiritual principles, though he may never
+have attained anything that can be interpreted as a distinct revelation
+from God by vision or voice or otherwise, yet must he by the very basic
+assumptions of his life be ready to regard such manifestations of God as
+intelligible, and indeed to be expected. So far from regarding divine
+interventions in life as impossible, we shall regard the Christian life
+which has no experience of them as abnormal, as not having realised its
+inheritance. The degree and kind of such intervention in life will vary;
+but it is the fact of the intervention that is important: the mode in a
+special case will be determined by the needs of that case. As we think
+along these lines we reach the conclusion that what we call the
+supernatural is not the unnatural or the abnormal, but is a higher mode
+of the natural.
+
+We are not surprised therefore to find that those whose spiritual
+development was such as to make it possible for God to choose them to
+fulfil special offices in relation to the Incarnation; who could be
+chosen to be, in the one case, the Mother of God-incarnate, and in the
+other, to be the guardian of the divine Child and His Blessed Mother,
+have the divine will in regard to the details of the trust committed to
+them, imparted to them in vision and in dream. So far from such vision
+and dream suggesting to us "a mythical element" in the Gospel
+narratives, they rather confirm our faith in that they harmonize with
+our instinctive conclusions as to what would be natural under the
+circumstances. We are prepared to be told that at this crisis in the
+Holy Child's life "the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream,
+saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into
+Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will seek
+the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child
+and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt."
+
+Thus early in our Lord's life is the element of tragedy introduced. The
+Incarnation of God stirs the diabolic powers, the rulers of "this
+darkness" to excited activity. The companion picture of the Nativity, of
+the Holy Child lying in Mary's arms, of the wondering shepherds, of the
+Magi from a far country,--the shadow of all this idyllic beauty is the
+massacre of the Innocents, the wailing of Rachel for her children. It
+is, as it were, the opening of a new stage in the world-old conflict
+where the powers of evil appear to have the advantage and can show the
+bodies of murdered infants as the trophies of their victory.
+
+But are we to think of the death of a child as a disaster? Has any
+actual victory redounded to the Prince of Power of the Air? One
+understands of course the grief and sense of loss that attends the death
+of any child, the breaking of the dreams which had gathered about its
+future. What the father and the mother dreamed over the cradle and
+planned for the future does not come to pass--all that is true. But in a
+consideration of the broader interests involved, does not the death of a
+baby have a meaning far deeper than a disappointment of hopes and
+dreams? It is true, is it not? that the coming of the child brought
+enrichment into the life of its parents? There was a new love born for
+this one child which is not the common property of all the children of
+the family, but is the peculiar possession of this child and its
+parents. Life--the life of the parents--is better and nobler by virtue
+of this love. They understand this, because when they stand by the side
+of the child's coffin they never feel that it had been better that this
+child had not come into existence. And more than that: as they commit
+this fragile body to the grave they know that there is no real sense in
+which they can say that they have lost this child. Rather, the child is
+a perpetual treasure, for the moment contemplated through tears, but
+presently to be thought of with unclouded joy. It is so wonderful a
+thing to think of this pure soul caught back to God; to think of it
+growing to spiritual maturity in God's very presence; to think of it
+following the Lamb withersoever He goeth. Yes: to think of it also as
+our child still, with our love in its heart, knowing that it has a
+father and a mother on earth, and, that, just because of its early
+death, it can be to them, what otherwise they would have been to it--the
+guard and helper of their Jives. In God's presence are the souls of
+children as perpetual intercessors for those whom they have left on
+earth; and they may well rejoice before God in that what appeared the
+tragedy of their death was in fact a recall from the field of battle
+before the testing of their life was made. We wept as over an
+irreparable loss,
+
+     While into nothingness crept back a host
+     Of shadows unexplored, of sins unsinned.
+
+The artists have imagined the souls of those who first died for Jesus
+attending Him on the way to Egypt as a celestial guard. In any case we
+are certain that the angels who watched about Him so closely all His
+life were with the Holy Family as they set out upon the way of exile. It
+would have been a wearisome march but that Jesus was there. His presence
+lightened all the toils of the desert way. Egypt, their place of refuge,
+would not have seemed to them what it seems to us, a land of wonder, of
+marvellous creations of human skill and intelligence, but a place of
+banishment from all that was dear, from the ties of home and religion.
+The religion which lay wrapped in the Holy Child was to break down
+barriers and hindrances to the worship of God; but the time was not yet.
+For them still the Holy Land, Jerusalem, the Temple, were the place of
+God's manifestation, and all else the dwelling place of idols. They must
+have shuddered in abhorrence at those strange forms of gods which rose
+about them on every hand. We cannot ourselves fail to draw the contrast
+between the statues which filled the Egyptian sanctuaries and before
+which all Egypt, rich and poor, mighty and humble, prostrated
+themselves, and this Child sleeping on Mary's breast. The imagination of
+the Christian community later caught this contrast and embodied it in
+the legend that when Jesus crossed the border of Egypt, all the idols of
+the land of Egypt fell down.
+
+We cannot follow the thought of the Blessed Mother through these strange
+scenes and the experiences of these days. No doubt in the Jewish
+communities already flourishing in Egypt there would be welcome and the
+means of livelihood. But there would be perplexing questions to one
+whose habit it was to keep all things which concerned her strange Child
+hidden in her heart, the subject of constant meditation. Why, after the
+divine action which had been so constant from His conception to His
+birth, and in the circumstances which attended His birth, this reversal,
+this defeat and flight? Why after Bethlehem, Egypt? Why after
+Gabriel, Herod?
+
+It brings us back again to the primary fact that the Incarnation is
+essentially a stage in a battle, and that the nature of God's battles is
+such that He constantly appears to lose them. He "goes forth as a giant
+to run His course"; but the eyes of man cannot see the giant--they see
+only a Babe laid in a manger. We are tricked by our notion of what
+is powerful.
+
+     "They all were looking for a king
+     To slay their foes and lift them high;
+     Thou cam'st, a little baby thing
+     That made a woman cry."
+
+The battle presents itself to us as a demand that we choose, that we
+take sides. The demand of Christ is that we associate ourselves with
+Him, or that we define our position as on the other side. "The
+friendship of the world is enmity with God" is a saying that is true
+when reversed: The friendship of God is enmity with the world. An open
+disclosure of the friendship of God sets all the powers of the world
+against us. This may be uncomfortable; but there does not appear to be
+any way of avoiding the opposition.
+
+Our Lord, in His Incarnation, not only stripped Himself of His glory,
+took the servant form, and in doing so deliberately deprived Himself of
+certain means which would have been vastly influential in dealing with
+men, but He also declined, in assuming human nature, to assume it under
+conditions which would have conferred upon Him any adventitious
+advantage in the prosecution of His work. He would display to men
+neither divine nor human glory: He would have no aid from power or
+position, from wealth or learning. He undertook His work in the strength
+of a pure humanity united with God. He declined all else. And He found
+that almost the first event of His life was to be driven into exile.
+
+And they who are associated with Him necessarily share His fortunes.
+Unless they will abandon the Child, Mary and Joseph must set out on the
+desert way. They had no doubt much to learn; but what is important is
+not the size or amount of what we learn, but the learning of it. When we
+are called, as they were, to leave all for Christ, it often turns out
+as hard, oftentimes harder, to leave property as riches; and the reason
+is that what we ultimately are leaving is neither poverty nor riches,
+but self: and self to us is always a "great possession."
+
+Therein, I suppose, lies the solution of the problem of the relation of
+property and Christianity in the common life. Idleness is sin; every one
+is bound to some useful labour, no matter what his material resources
+may be. And if we work for our living, if our labour is to be such as
+will support us, then there at once arises the problem of possessions.
+Useful, steady labour will ordinarily produce more than "food and
+raiment." Under present social arrangments accumulated property is
+handed on to heirs. A man naturally wants to make some provision for his
+family. Or he finds himself in possession of considerable wealth and the
+impulse is to spend in luxuries of one sort or another,--modern
+invention has put endless means of ministering to physical or aesthetic
+comfort within his reach. He can have a motor car, a country house, an
+expensive library; he can have beautiful works of art. And then he is
+confronted with the picture of the Holy Family which can never have
+lived much beyond the poverty line. He realises the nature of our Lord's
+life of poverty and ministry. And though the plain man may not feel that
+he can go very far in imitating this life, he does feel that there is a
+splendour of achievement in those who take our Lord at His word and sell
+all to follow Him.
+
+But the literal abandonment of life to the ideal of poverty is clearly
+not what our Lord contemplated for the universal practice of His
+followers. He nowhere indicates that all gainful labour is to be
+abandoned, or that having gained enough for food and raiment we are to
+idle thereafter, or even give ourselves to some ungainful work. The
+Kingdom of heaven does not appear to be society organised on the lines
+of socialism or otherwise. Our Lord contemplated life going on as it is,
+only governed by a new set of motives. It has as the result of the
+acceptance of the Gospel a new Orientation; and as a result of that it
+will view "possessions" in a new way. The acceptance of the Gospel means
+the self surrendered utterly to the will of God, and all that self
+possesses held at the disposal of that will. We may expect that God's
+will for us will be manifested in the events of life and its
+opportunities, and we shall hold ourselves alert and ready to embrace
+that will. It may be that the call will come to sell all, and we need to
+beware lest the thoroughness of the demand terrify us into the
+repudiation of our Lord's service; lest the thought of the sacrificed
+possessions send us away sorrowing. Ordinarily the call is less
+searching than that; or perhaps the mercy of God spares us from demands
+that would be beyond our strength. In any case, the truly consecrated
+self will regard luxury as a dangerous thing, replete with entanglements
+of all kinds, that it were well to avoid at the expense of any
+sacrifice. One does well to hold "possessions" in a very loose grip,
+lest the hold be reversed, and we become their servants rather than
+they ours. And it is well to emphasise again that the mere size of
+possessions is of small importance. There is a not very rational
+tendency to think of this as being a matter of millions, for the man of
+moderate income to think that there is no problem for him. The problem
+is as pressing for him as for any man. His minimum of comfort may be as
+tightly grasped as the other man's maximum. The only solution of the
+problem will be found in the converted self. Those who have really given
+themselves to God hold all things at His disposal. They are not thinking
+how they can indulge self but how they can glorify God.
+
+Egypt to many will stand for another sort of abandonment which much
+perplexes the immature Christian: that is, the sort of isolation in
+which the new Christian is quite likely to find himself when first he
+attempts to put Christian principles into practice. We imagine one
+brought up in the ordinary mixed circles of society, where there are
+unbelievers and lax Christians mingled together, and where there are no
+principles firmly enough held to interfere with any sort of enjoyment of
+life which offers. Such an one--a young woman, let us suppose--in the
+Providence of God becomes converted to our Lord, and comes to see that
+the lax and indifferent Christian life she had been leading was a mere
+mockery of Christian living. Speedily does she find when she attempts to
+put into action the principles of living which she now understands to be
+the meaning of the Gospel that a breach of sympathy has been opened
+between her and her accustomed companions; that many things which she
+was accustomed to do in their society and which made for their common
+fund of amusement are no longer possible to her. The careless talk, the
+shameless dress, the gambling, the drinking, the Sunday amusements--such
+things as these she has thrown over; and she finds that with them she
+has thrown over the basis of intimacy with her usual companions. It is
+not that they are antagonistic but simply that their points of contact
+have ceased to exist. Her own inhibitions exclude her automatically from
+most of the activities of her social circle. She finds herself much
+alone. Her friends are sorry for her and think her foolish and try to
+win her back, but it is clear to her that she can only go back by going
+back from Christ.
+
+This is the common case of the young whether boy or girl to-day, and the
+practical question is, Can they endure the isolation? It is easy to say:
+Let them make Christian friends; but that is not always practical,
+especially in the present state of the Church when there is no cohesion
+among its members, no true sense of constituting a Brotherhood, of being
+members of the same Body. We have to admit that the attempt to hold a
+high standard usually ends in failure, at least the practical failure of
+a weak compromise. But there are characters that are strong enough to
+face the isolation and to readjust life on the basis of the new
+principles and to mould it in accord with the new ideals. The period of
+this readjustment is one of severe testing of one's grasp on principles
+and one's strength of purpose. But the battle once fought out we attain
+a new kind of freedom and expansion of life. We look back with some
+amusement at the old life and the things that fascinated us in the days
+of our spiritual unconsciousness much as we look back at the games that
+amused us in our childish hours. The desert of Egypt that we entered
+with trepidation and fearful hearts turns out not to be so dreadful as
+we imagined, and indeed the flowers spring up under our feet as we
+resolutely tread the desert way.
+
+These trials must be the daily experience of those who attempt to put
+their religion into practice, and these perplexities must assail them so
+long as the Christian community continues to show its present social
+incompetence; so long, that is, as we attempt to make the basis of our
+social action something other than the principles of the spiritual life.
+A Christian society, one would naturally think, would spring out of the
+possession of Christian ideals; and doubtless it would if these ideals
+were really dominant in life, and not a sort of ornament applied to it.
+Any social circle contains men and women of various degrees of
+intellectual development and of varying degrees of experience of life;
+what holds them together is the pursuit of common objects, the objects
+that we sum up as amusement. Now the Christians in a community certainly
+have a common object, the cultivation of the spiritual life through the
+supernatural means offered by the Church of God. One would think that
+this object would have a more constraining power than the attractions of
+motoring or golf; but in fact we know that this is not so save in
+individual cases. There is not, that is to say, anywhere visible a
+Christian community which is wrought into a unity by the solidifying
+forces of its professed ideals. Those very people whose paths converge
+week by week until they meet at this altar, as they leave the altar,
+follow diverging paths and live in isolation for the rest of their time.
+
+One of the constant problems of the Church is that of the loss of those
+who have for a time been associated with it--of those who have for a
+time seemed to recognise their duty to God, and their privileges as
+members of His Son. They drift away into the world. We pray and meditate
+and worry over this and try to invent some machinery which will overcome
+it. But it cannot be overcome by machinery, especially by the sort of
+machinery which consists in transferring the amusements that people find
+in the world bodily into the Church itself. It cannot and will not be
+overcome until a Christian society has been created which is bound
+together by the interests of the Kingdom of God, and in which those
+interests are so predominant as to throw into the shade and practically
+annihilate other interests. And especially must such spiritual interests
+be strong enough to break down all social barriers so that the cultured
+and refined can find a common ground with the uneducated and socially
+untrained in the spiritual privileges that they share in common. When
+the banker can talk with his chauffeur of their common experience in
+prayer, and the banker's wife and her cook can confer on their mutual
+difficulties in making a meditation, then we shall have got within
+sight of a Christian society; but at present, while these have no
+spiritual contact, it is not within sight. The primitive Christian
+community in Jerusalem made the attempt at having all things in common.
+Their mistake seems to have been that they, like other and more modern
+people, by "all things" understood money. You cannot build any society
+which is worth the name on money, a Church least of all. It is
+unimportant whether a man is rich or poor; what is important is his
+spiritual accomplishment: and it is common spiritual aims and
+accomplishments which should make up the "all things" which possessed in
+common will form the basis of an enduring unity. But not until
+accomplishment becomes the supreme interest of life can we expect to get
+out of the impasse in which we at present find ourselves; in which, that
+is, the person can be converted to Christianity and enter into union
+with God in Christ and become a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, and
+wake to find himself isolated from his old circle by his profession of
+new principles; but not, by his new principles, truly united to his
+fellow citizens in the Kingdom of God! One is tempted to write, What a
+comedy; but before one can do so, realises that it is in fact a tragedy!
+
+     Mother of God--oh, rare prerogative;
+     Oh, glorious title--what more special grace
+     Could unto thee thy dear Son, dread God, give
+     To show how far thou dost all creatures pass?
+     That mighty power within the narrow fold
+     Did of thy ne'er polluted womb remain,
+     Whom, whiles he doth th' all-ruling Sceptre hold,
+     Not earth, nor yet the heavens can contain;
+     Thou in the springtide of thy age brought'st forth
+     Him who before all matter, time and place,
+     Begotten of th' Eternal Father was.
+     Oh, be thou then, while we admire thy worth
+     A means unto that Son not to proceed
+     In rigour with us for each sinful deed.
+
+     John Brereley, Priest (Vere Lawrence Anderton, S.J.) 1575-1643
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+NAZARETH
+
+     And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was
+     subject unto them.
+
+     S. Luke II, 51.
+
+     The Holy Church acknowledges and confesses the pure Virgin
+     Mary as Mother of God through whom has been given unto us the
+     bread of immortality and the wine of consolation. Give
+     blessings then in spiritual song.
+
+     ARMENIAN.
+
+After the rapid succession of fascinating pictures which are etched for
+us in the opening chapters of the Gospel there follows a space of about
+twelve years of which we are told nothing. The fables which fill the
+pages of the Apocryphal Gospels serve chiefly to emphasise the
+difference between an inspired and an uninspired narrative. The human
+imagination trying to develop the situation suggested by the Gospel and
+to fill in the unwritten chapters of our Lord's life betrays its
+incompetence to create a story of God Incarnate which shall have the
+slightest convincing power. These Apocryphal stories are immensely
+valuable to us as, by contrast, creating confidence in the story of
+Jesus as told by the Evangelists, but for nothing more.
+
+We are left to use our own imagination in filling in these years of
+silence in our Lord's training; and we shall best use it, not by trying
+to imagine what may have occurred, but by trying to understand what is
+necessarily involved in the facts as we know them. We know that the home
+in Nazareth whither Mary and Joseph brought Jesus after the death of
+Herod permitted them to return from Egypt was the simple home of a
+carpenter. It would appear to have been shared by the children of
+Joseph, and our Lady would have been the house-mother, busy with many
+cares. We know, too, that under this commonplace exterior of a poor
+household there was a life of the spirit of far reaching significance.
+Mary was ceaselessly pondering many things--the significance of all
+those happenings which, as the years flowed on without any further
+supernatural intervention, must at times have seemed as though they were
+quite purposeless. Of course this could not have been a settled feeling,
+for the insight of her pure soul would have held her to the certainty
+that such actions of God as she had experienced would some day reveal
+the meaning which as yet lay hidden.
+
+In the meantime other things did not matter much, seeing she had Jesus,
+the object of endless love. Every mother dreams over the baby she cares
+for and looks out into the future with trembling hope; so S. Mary's
+thoughts would go out following the hints of prophecy and angelic
+utterances, unable to understand how the light and shadow which were
+mingled there could find fulfilment in her Child. But like any other
+mother the thought would come back to her present possession, the
+satisfaction of her heart that she had in Jesus. With the growth of
+Jesus there would come the unfolding of the answering love, which was
+but another mode in which the love of God she had experienced all her
+life was manifesting itself. Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and we are
+able to enter a little into the over-flowing love of Mary as she watched
+the advance, this unfolding from day to day. The wonder that was hers in
+guiding this mind and will, in teaching our Lord His first prayers, in
+telling Him the story of the people of whom He had assumed our nature!
+There was here no self-will, no resistance to guidance, no perversity to
+wound a mother's heart. In the training of an ordinary child there are
+from time to time hints of characteristics or tendencies which may
+develop later into spiritual or moral disaster. There are growls of the
+sleeping beast which make us tremble for the future: there are hours of
+agony when we think of the inevitable temptations which must be met, and
+suggestions of weakness which colour our imagination of the meeting of
+them with the lurid light of defeat. But as Mary watched the unfolding
+character of Jesus she saw nothing there that carried with it the least
+suggestion of evil growth in the future, no outcropping of hereditary
+sin or disordered appetite. A constantly unfolding intelligence, and
+growing interest in the things that most interested her, an eagerness to
+hear and to know of the will and love of the eternal Father, these are
+her joy. That would have been the centre--would it not?--of the
+unfolding consciousness of Jesus: the knowledge of the Father.
+
+Training by love, so we might describe the life in the Home at Nazareth.
+And we must not forget the grave ageing figure who is the head of the
+household. _The Holy Family_--that was the perfect unity that their love
+created. There is a wonderful picture of these three by Sassaferato
+which catches, as no other Holy Family that I know of does, the meaning
+of their association. S. Mary whom the artistic imagination is so apt,
+after the Nativity, to transform into a stately matron, here still
+retains the note of virginity which in fact she never lost. It is the
+maiden-mother who stands by the side of the grave, elderly S. Joseph,
+the ideal workman, who is also the ideal guardian of his maiden-wife.
+And Jesus binds these two together and with them makes a unity,
+interpreting to us the perfection of family life.
+
+Family life is a tremendous test, it brings out the best and the worst
+of those who are associated in it. The ordinary restraints of social
+intercourse are of less force in the intimacy of family life: there is
+less need felt to watch conduct, or to mask what we know are our
+disagreeable traits. It is quite easy for character to deteriorate in
+the freedom of such intercourse. It is pretty sure to do so unless there
+is the constant pressure of principle in the other direction. The great
+safeguard is the sort of love that is based on mutual respect,--respect
+both for ourselves and for others. We talk a good deal as though love
+were always alike; as though the fact that a man and a woman love each
+other were always the same sort of fact. It does not require much
+knowledge of human nature or much reflection to convince us that that is
+not the case. Love is not a purely physical fact; and outside its
+physical implications there are many factors which may enter, whose
+existence constitute the _differentia_ from case to case. It is upon
+these varying elements that the happiness of the family life depends.
+One of the most important is that character on either side shall be such
+as to inspire respect. Many a marriage goes to pieces on this rock; it
+is found that the person who exercised a certain kind of fascination
+shows in the intimacy of married life a character and qualities which
+are repulsive; a shallowness which inspires contempt, an egotism which
+is intolerable, a laxity in the treatment of obligations which destroys
+any sense of the stability of life. A marriage which does not grow into
+a relation of mutual honour and respect must always be in a state of
+unstable equilibrium, constantly subject to storms of passion, to
+suspicion and distrust.
+
+And therefore such a marriage will afford no safe basis on which to
+build a family life. But without a stable family life a stable social
+and religious life is impossible. It is therefore no surprise to those
+who believe that the powers of evil are active in the world to find that
+the family is the very centre of their attack at the present time. The
+crass egotism lying back of so much modern teaching is nowhere more
+clearly visible than in the assertion of the right of self-determination
+so blatantly made in popular writings. By self-determination is
+ultimately meant the right of the individual to seek his own happiness
+in his own way, and to make pleasure the rule of his life. "The right to
+happiness" is claimed in utter disregard of the fact that the claim
+often involves the unhappiness of others. "The supremacy of love,"
+meaning the supremacy of animalism, is the excuse for undermining the
+very foundations of family life. No obligation, it appears, can have a
+binding force longer than the parties to it find gratification in it.
+Personal inclination and gratification is held sufficient ground for
+action whose consequences are far from being personal, which, in fact,
+affect the sane and healthy state of society as a whole.
+
+The decline of a civilisation has always shown itself more markedly in
+the decline of the family life than elsewhere. The family, not the
+individual, is the basis of the social state, and no amount of
+theorising can make the fact different. Whatever assails the integrity
+of the family assails the life of the state, and no single family can be
+destroyed without society as a whole feeling the effect. "What," it is
+asked, "is to be done? If two people find that they have blundered, are
+they to go on indefinitely suffering from the result of their blunder?
+If an immature boy or girl in a moment of passion make a mistake as to
+their suitability to live together, are they to be compelled to do so at
+the expense of constant unhappiness?"
+
+It would seem obvious to say that justice requires that those who make
+blunders should take the consequences of them; that those who create a
+situation involving suffering should do the suffering themselves and not
+attempt to pass it on to others. It is not as though the consequences of
+the act can be avoided; they cannot. What happens is that the incidence
+of them is shifted. It is a part of the brutal egotism of divorce that
+it is quite willing to shift the incidence of the suffering that it has
+created on to the lives of wholly innocent people; in many cases upon
+children, in all cases upon society at large. For it is necessary to
+emphasize the fact that society is a closely compact body: so interwoven
+is life with life that if one member suffer the other members suffer
+with it. Breaches of moral order are not individual matters but social.
+This truth is implied in society's constantly asserted right to regulate
+family relations in the general interest even after it has ceased to
+think of such relations as having any spiritual significance. We need
+to-day a more vivid sense of the _community_ lest we shall see all sense
+of a common life engulfed in the rising tide of individual anarchism. We
+need the assertion in energetic form of the right of the community as
+supreme over the right of the individual. We must deny the right of the
+individual to pursue his own way and his own pleasure at the expense of
+the rights of others. And to his insolent question, "Why should I suffer
+in an intolerable situation?" we must plainly answer: "Because you are
+responsible for the situation, and it is intolerable that you should be
+permitted to throw off the results of your wickedness or your stupidity
+upon other and innocent people."
+
+And it is quite clear that should society assert its pre-eminent right
+in unmistakable form and make it evident that it does not propose to
+tolerate the results of the egotistic nonsense of self-determination and
+the right of every one to live his own life, the evils of divorce and of
+shattered families would presently shrink to relatively small
+proportions. The present facility of divorce encourages thoughtless and
+unsuitable marriages in the first place; and in the second place,
+encourages the resort to divorce in circumstances of family disturbance
+which would speedily right themselves in the present as they have done
+in the past if those concerned knew that their happiness and comfort
+for years compelled an adjustment of life. When as at present any one
+who loses his temper can rush off to a court and get a marriage
+dissolved for some quite trivial reason, there is small encouragement to
+practice self-control. If a man and woman know that the consequences of
+conduct must be faced by them, and cannot be avoided by thrusting them
+upon others, they will no doubt in the course of time learn to exercise
+a little self-control.
+
+The family is the foundation of the state because, among other things,
+it is the natural training place of citizens: no public training in
+schools and camps can for a moment safely be looked to as a substitute
+or an equivalent of wholesome family influence. If the family does not
+make good citizens we cannot have good citizens. The family too is at
+the basis of organised religious life; if the family does not make good
+Christians we shall not have good Christians. The Sunday School and the
+Church societies are poor substitutes for the religious influence of the
+family, as the school and the camp are for its social interests.
+
+One is inclined to stress the obvious failure of the family to fulfil
+its alloted functions in the teaching of religion as the root difficulty
+that the Christian religion has to encounter and the most comprehensive
+cause of its relative failure in modern life. The responsibility for the
+religious and moral training of children rests squarely upon those who
+have assumed the responsibility of bringing them into the world, and it
+cannot be rightly pushed off on to some one else. To the protest of
+parents that they are incompetent to conduct such training, the only
+possible reply is a blunt, "Whose fault is that?" If you have been so
+careless of the fundamental responsibilities of life, you are
+incompetent to assume a relation which of necessity carries such
+responsibility with it. It is no light matter to have committed to you
+the care of an immortal soul whose eternal future may quite well be
+conditioned on the way in which you fulfil your trust. It would be well
+as a preliminary to marriage to take a little of the time ordinarily
+given to its frivolous accompaniments and seriously meditate upon the
+words of our Lord which seem wholly appropriate to the circumstance:
+"Whoso shall cause to stumble one of these little ones which believe in
+me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
+and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea." It is the careless
+and incompetent training of children which in fact "causes them to
+stumble" when the presence of word and example would have held them
+straight. It has been (to speak personally) the greatest trial of my
+priesthood that out of the thousands of children I have dealt with, in
+only rare cases have I had the entire support of the family; and I have
+always considered that I was fortunate when I met with no interference
+and was given an indifferent tolerance. It is heart-breaking to see
+years of careful work brought to naught (so far as the human eye can
+see: the divine eye can see deeper) by the brutal materialism of a
+father and the silly worldliness of a mother.
+
+The interplay of lives in a family should be consciously directed by
+those who control them to the cultivation, to the bringing out of the
+best that is in them. Education means the drawing out of the innate
+powers of the personality and the training of them for the highest
+purposes. It is the deliberate direction of personal powers to the
+highest ends, the discipline of them for the performance of those ends.
+The life of a child should be shaped with reference to its final destiny
+from the moment of its birth. It should be surrounded with an atmosphere
+of prayer and charity which would be the natural atmosphere in which it
+would expand as it grows, and in terms of which it would learn to
+express itself as soon as it reaches sufficient maturity to express
+itself at all. It should become familiar with spiritual language and
+modes of action, and meet nothing that is inharmonious with these. But
+we know that the education of the Christian child is commonly the
+opposite of all this. It learns little that is spiritual. When it comes
+to learn religion it is obviously a matter of small importance in the
+family life; if there is any expression of it at all, it is one that is
+crowded into corners and constantly swamped by other interests which are
+obviously felt to be of more importance. Too often the spiritual state
+of the family may be summed up in the words of the small boy who
+condensed his observation of life into the axiom: "Men and dogs do not
+go to Church." In such an atmosphere the child finds religion and morals
+reduced to a system of repression. God becomes a man with a club
+constantly saying, Don't! He grows to think that he is a fairly virtuous
+person so long as he skilfully avoids the system of taboos wherewith he
+feels that life is surrounded, and fulfils the one positive family law
+of a religious nature, that he shall go to Sunday School until he is
+judged sufficiently mature to join the vast company of men and dogs.
+
+Nothing very much can come of negatives. Religion calls for positive
+expression; and it is not enough that the child shall find positive
+expression once a week in the church; he must find it every day in the
+week in the intimacy of the family. He must find that the principles of
+life which are inculcated in the church are practiced by his father and
+his mother, his brother and his sister, or he will not take them
+seriously. If he is conscious of virtue and religious practice as
+repression, a sort of tyranny practiced on a child by his elders, his
+notion of the liberty of adult life will quite naturally be freedom to
+break away from what is now forced upon him into the life of
+self-determination and indifference to things spiritual that
+characterises the adult circle with which he is familiar.
+
+But consider, by contrast, those rare families where the opposite of all
+this is true; where there is the peace of a recollected life of which
+the foundations are laid in constant devotion to our Lord. There you
+will find the nearest possible reproduction of the life of the Holy
+Family in Nazareth. Because the life of the family is a life of prayer,
+there will you find Jesus in the midst of it. There you will find Mary
+and Joseph associated with its life of intercession. In such a family
+the expression of a religious thought will never be felt as a discord.
+The talk may quite naturally at any moment turn on spiritual things.
+There are families in which one feels that one must make a careful
+preparation for the introduction of a spiritual allusion: one does it
+with a sense of danger, much as one might sail through a channel strewn
+with mines. There are other families in which one has no hesitation in
+speaking of prayer, of sacraments, of spiritual actions, as things with
+which all are familiar in practice, and are as natural as food and
+drink. In this atmosphere it produces no smile to say, "I am going to
+slip into the Church and make my meditation"; or, "I shall be a little
+late to-night as I am making my confession on my way home." Religion in
+such a circle has not incurred contempt through familiarity: it still
+remains a great adventure, the very greatest of all indeed; but it is an
+adventure in the open, full of joy and gladness.
+
+The Holy Family was a family that worked hard. It is no doubt true that
+our Lord learned his foster-father's trade, so that those who knew him
+later on, or heard His preaching, asked, "Is not this the carpenter?"
+But the Holy Family was a radiant centre of joy and peace because Jesus
+was in the midst of it. Where Jesus dwells there is the effect of his
+indwelling in the spiritual gladness that results. Mary was never too
+busy for her religious duties nor Joseph too tired with his week's work
+to get up on the Sabbath for whatever services in honour of God the
+Synagogue offered. They were perhaps conscious as the Child "increased
+in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" of a spiritual
+influence that flowed from Him, and sweetened and lightened the life of
+the home. They were not conscious that in His Person God was in the
+midst of them; but that is what we can (if we will) be conscious of. We
+are heirs of the Incarnation, and God is in the midst of us; and
+especially does Jesus wish to dwell, as He dwelt in Nazareth, in the
+midst of the family. He wishes to make every household a Holy Family. He
+is in the midst of it in uninterrupted communion with the soul of the
+baptised child; and the father and mother, understanding that their
+highest duty and greatest privilege is to watch and foster the spiritual
+unfolding of the child's life in such wise that Jesus may never depart
+from union with it, become as Joseph and Mary in their ministry to it.
+There is nothing more heavenly than such a charge; there is nothing more
+beautiful than such a family life.
+
+There is often a pause in God's work between times of great activity--a
+time of retreat, as it seems, which is a rest from what has preceded and
+a preparation for what is to come. Such a pause were these years at
+Nazareth in the life of Blessed Mary. The time from the Annunciation to
+the return from Egypt was a time of deep emotion, of spirit-shaking
+events. Later on there were the trials of the years of the ministry,
+culminating in Calvary. But these years while Jesus was growing to
+manhood in the quietness of the home were years of unspeakable privilege
+and peace. The daily association with the perfect Child, the privilege
+of watching and guarding and ministering to Him, these days of deepening
+spiritual union with Him, although much that was happening to the mother
+was happening unconsciously,--were strengthening her grasp on ultimate
+reality, so that she issued with perfect strength to meet the supreme
+tragedy of her life. How wonderful God must have seemed to her in those
+thirty years of peace! To all of us God is thus wonderful in quiet
+hours; and the quiet hours are much the more numerous in most of our
+lives. But have we all learned to use these hours so that we may be
+ready to meet the hours of testing which shall surely come? No matter
+how quiet the valley of our life, some day the pleasant path will lift,
+and we must climb the hilltop where rises the Cross. It will not be
+intolerable, if the quiet years have been spent in Nazareth with Jesus
+and Mary and Joseph.
+
+     Most holy, and pure Virgin, Blessed Mayd,
+       Sweet Tree of Life, King David's Strength and Tower,
+       The House of Gold, the Gate of Heaven's power,
+     The Morning-Star whose light our fall hath stay'd.
+
+     Great Queen of Queens, most mild, most meek, most wise,
+       Most venerable, Cause of all our joy,
+       Whose cheerful look our sadnesse doth destroy,
+     And art the spotlesse Mirror to man's eyes.
+
+     The Seat of Sapience, the most lovely Mother,
+       And most to be admired of thy sexe,
+       Who mad'st us happy all, in thy reflexe,
+     By bringing forth God's Onely Son, no other.
+
+     Thou Throne of Glory, beauteous as the moone,
+       The rosie morning, or the rising sun,
+       Who like a giant hastes his course to run,
+     Till he hath reached his two-fold point of noone.
+
+     How are thy gifts and graces blazed abro'd,
+       Through all the lines of this circumference,
+       T'imprint in all purged hearts this Virgin sence
+     Of being Daughter, Mother, Spouse of God?
+
+     Ben Jonson, 1573-1637.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE TEMPLE
+
+     And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Know ye
+     not that I must be in my Father's house?
+
+     S. Luke II, 49.
+
+     We give thanks unto thee, O Lord, who lovest mankind, Thou
+     benefactor of our souls and bodies, for that Thou hast this
+     day vouchsafed to feed us with Thy Heavenly Mysteries; guide
+     our path aright, establish us all in Thy fear, guard our
+     lives, make sure our steps through the prayers and
+     supplications of the glorious Mother of God and Ever Virgin
+     Mary and of all Thy saints.
+
+     RUSSIAN.
+
+The time was come when by the law of His people the Boy Jesus must
+assume the duties of an adult in the exercise of His religion. Therefore
+His parents took Him with them to Jerusalem that He might participate in
+the celebration of the Passover. It would be a wonderful moment in the
+life of any intelligent Hebrew boy when for the first time he came in
+contact with the places and scenes which were so familiar to him in the
+story of his nation's past; and we can imagine what would have been the
+special interest of the Child Jesus who would have been so thoroughly
+taught in the Old Testament Scriptures, and who would have felt an added
+interest in the places He was now seeing because of their association
+with His great ancestor, David. Still His chief interest was in the
+religion of His people, and it was the temple where the sacrificial
+worship of God was centred that would have for Him the greatest
+attraction. This was His "Father's House," and here He Himself felt
+utterly at home. We are not surprised to be told that He lingered in
+these courts.
+
+"And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus
+tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and His mother knew it not."
+They had perfect confidence in Jesus; and yet it seems strange that they
+should have assumed that He was somewhere about and would appear at the
+proper time. When the night drew on and the camp was set up there was no
+Child to be found. Then we imagine the distress, the trouble of heart,
+with which Mary and Joseph hurry back to Jerusalem and spend the ensuing
+days in seeking through its streets. We share something of our Lord's
+surprise when we learn that the temple was the last place that they
+thought of in their search. Did they think that Jesus would be caught by
+the life of the Passover crowds that filled the streets of Jerusalem?
+Did they think that it would be a child's curiosity which would hold him
+fascinated with the glittering toys of the bazaars? Did they think that
+He had mistaken the caravan and been carried off in some other direction
+and was lost to them forever? We only know that it was not till three
+days had passed that they thought of the temple and there found Him.
+"And when they saw Him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto Him,
+Son, why has thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have
+sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought
+me? Know ye not that I must be in my Father's house?"
+
+S. Mary and S. Joseph were proceeding on certain assumptions as to what
+Jesus would do which turned out to be untenable. It is one of the
+dangers of our religion--our personal religion--that we are apt to
+assume too much which in the testing turns out to be unfounded. We reach
+a certain stage of religious attainment, and then we assume that all is
+going well with us. When one asks a child how he is getting on he
+invariably answers: "I am all right." And the adult often has the same
+childish confidence in an untested and unverified state of soul. We are
+"all right"; which practically means that we do not care to be bothered
+with looking into our spiritual state at all. We have been going on for
+years now following the rules that we laid down when we first realised
+that the being a Christian was a more or less serious matter. Nothing
+has happened in these years to break the placidity of our routine. There
+has never been any relapse into grievous sin; we have never felt any
+real temptation to abandon the practice oL our religion. We run along as
+easily and smoothly as a car on well-laid rails. We are "all right."
+
+But in fact we are all wrong. We have lapsed into a state of which the
+ideal is purely static: an ideal of spiritual comfort as the goal of our
+spiritual experience here on earth. We have acquired what appears to be
+a state of equilibrium into which we wish nothing to intrude that would
+endanger the balance. We are, no doubt, quite unconsciously, excluding
+from life every emotion, every ambition, as well as every temptation,
+which appears to involve spiritual disturbance. But we need to be
+disturbed.
+
+For the spiritual life is dynamic and not static; its ideal is motion
+and not rest. Rest is the quality of dead things, and particularly of
+dead souls. The weariness of the way, which is so obvious a phenomenon
+in the Christian life, is the infallible sign of lukewarmness. What we
+need therefore is to break with the assumption that we know all that it
+is necessary to know, and that we have done or are doing all that it is
+necessary to do. It is indeed the mark of an ineffective religion that
+the notion of necessity is adopted as its stimulus, rather than the
+notion of aspiration. The question, "Must I do this?" is a revelation of
+spiritual poverty and ineptitude. "I press on," is the motto of a
+living religion.
+
+Personal religion, therefore, needs constantly to be submitted to new
+tests, lest it lapse into an attitude of finality. Fortunately for us,
+God does not leave the matter wholly in our hands, but Himself, through
+His Providence, applies a wide variety of tests to us. It is often a
+bitter and disturbing experience to have our comfortable routine broken
+up and to find that we have quite miserably failed under very simple
+temptations. And the sort of failure I am thinking of is not so much the
+failure of sin as the failure of ideal. It is the case of those who
+think that they have satisfactorily worked out the problems of the
+spiritual life, and have reached a satisfactory adjustment of duty and
+practice, and then find that if the adjustment changes their practice
+falls off. The outer circumstances of life change and the change is
+followed by a readjustment of the inner life on a distinctly lower
+plane. It is revealed to us that the outer circumstances were
+controlling the spiritual practice, and not the practice dominating the
+circumstances. The ruling ideal was that of comfort, and under the new
+circumstances the spiritual ideal is lowered until it fits in with a new
+possibility of comfort in the altered circumstances. It is well to
+examine ourselves on these matters and to find what is the actual
+ruling motive in our religious practice.
+
+We may have assumed that we have Jesus, when all the assumption meant
+was that we thought that He was somewhere about. After all, it will not
+aid us very much if He is "in the company," if we go on our day's
+journey without Him. It is a poor assumption to build life upon, that
+Jesus exists, or that He is in the Church, or that He is the Saviour. It
+is nothing to us unless He is _our_ Saviour, unless He is personally
+present in us and with us. And it is not wise or safe to let this be a
+matter of assumption, even though the assumption rest on a perfectly
+valid experience in the past; we cannot live on history, not even on our
+own history. That Jesus is with us must be verified day by day, and we
+ought to go no day's journey without the certainty of His presence. We
+can best do that, when the circumstances of life permit, by a daily
+communion. There at the altar we meet Jesus and know that He is with us.
+When the circumstances of life do not permit, (and often they do, when
+we lazily think they do not) there are other modes of arriving at
+spiritual certainty.
+
+It is quite easy to lose Jesus. He does not force His companionship upon
+us, but rather when we meet Him. "He makes as though he would go
+farther." He offers Himself to us; He never compels us to receive Him as
+a guest. And when we have in fact received Him, and asked Him to abide
+with us, He does not stay any longer than we want Him. We have to
+constrain Him. In other words, we lose Jesus, we lose the vitality of
+our spiritual life (though we may retain the routine practice of our
+religion), if we are not from day to day making it the most vital issue
+of our lives. That does not necessarily mean that we are spending more
+time on it than on anything else, but that we are putting it first in
+the order of importance in our lives and are sacrificing, if occasion
+arise, other things to it, rather than it to them. That a man loves his
+wife and child does not necessarily mean that he actually spends more
+time on them than he does on his business, but it does mean that they
+are more important in his life than his business, and if need arise it
+will be the business that is sacrificed to them and not they to the
+business. Spirituality is much less a matter of time than of energy. A
+wise director can guide a man to sanctity who will probably consecrate
+his Sunday, and give the director one half hour on week days to
+dispose of.
+
+To lose Jesus does not require the commission of great sin, as we count
+sin. The quite easiest way to lose Him is to forget Him and go about our
+business as though He did not exist. That is a frequent happening. For
+vast numbers Jesus does not exist except for an hour or so on Sunday.
+They give Him the formal homage of attendance at church on Sunday
+morning and then they go out and forget Him, not only for the rest of
+the week but for the rest of the day. The religion which thus reduces
+itself to a minimum of attendance at Mass on Sunday morning is surely
+not a religion from which much can be expected in the way of spiritual
+accomplishment. If it be true that there is a minimum of religious
+requirement which will ensure that we "go to heaven," then that sort of
+religion may be useful; but I do not know that anywhere such a minimum
+_is_ required. The statement that I find is "Thou shalt love the Lord
+thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
+mind, and with all thy strength." The outstanding characteristic of love
+is surely not niggardliness, but passionate self-giving. All things are
+forgiven, not to those who are careful to keep within the limits
+required, but to those who "love much."
+
+The study of many cases, the experience of over thirty years in the
+confessional, convinces me that the chief cause of spiritual failure
+among Christians is not the irresistible impact of temptation but the
+lack of spiritual vision. The average man or woman is not consciously
+going anywhere; but they are just keeping a rule which is the arbitrary
+exactment of God. It might just as well be some other rule. That is, in
+their minds, the practice of the spiritual life has no immediate ends;
+it is not productive of spiritual expansion; it is not a ladder set up
+on earth to reach heaven on which they are climbing ever nearer God, and
+on the way are catching ever broader visions of spiritual reality as
+they ascend. The knowledge and the love of God are to them phrases, not
+practical goals, invitations to paths of spiritual adventure. Hence,
+having no immediate ends to accomplish, they find the whole spiritual
+routine dull and unattractive and naturally tend to reduce it to a
+minimum. It is not at all surprising that in the end they drop religion
+altogether, as why should one keep on travelling a road that leads
+nowhere? How can one love and serve a Jesus whom one has lost?
+
+The problem of personal religion is the problem of finding Jesus, of
+bringing life into a right relation to Him. The plain path is to follow
+the example of His parents who sought Him "sorrowing." Sorrow for having
+lost Jesus is the true repentance. Repentance which springs from fear of
+consequences, or from disgust with our own incompetence and stupidity
+when we realise that we have made a spiritual failure of life, is an
+imperfect thing. True repentance has its origin in love and is therefore
+directed toward a person. It is the conviction that we have violated the
+love of our Father, our Saviour, our Sanctifier. Sorrow springing from
+love is sorrow "after a godly sort." It is easy for us to drift into
+ways of carelessness and indifference which seem not to involve sin, to
+be no more than a decline from some preceding standard of practice which
+we conclude to have been unnecessarily strict; but the result is an
+increasing disregard of spiritual values, a growing obscuration of the
+divine presence in life. Then the day comes when some quite marked and
+positive spiritual failure, a failure of which we cannot imagine
+ourselves to have been guilty, when we were living in constant communion
+with our Lord, arouses us to the fact that for months our spiritual
+vitality has been declining and that we have ended in losing Jesus. It
+is a tremendous shock to find how fast and how far we have been
+travelling when we thought that we were only slightly relaxing an
+unnecessarily strict routine: that when we thought that we were but
+acting "in a common sense way," we were in reality effecting a
+compromise with the world. Well is it then if the surprise of our
+disaster shocks us back to the recovery of what we have lost, if it send
+us into the streets of the city, sorrowing and seeking for Jesus.
+
+Mere spiritual laziness is at the bottom of much failure in religion.
+There is no success anywhere in life save through the constant pressure
+of the will driving a reluctant and protesting set of nerves and muscles
+to their daily tasks. The day labourer comes home from his work with his
+muscular strength exhausted, but he has to go back to the same
+monotonous task on the morrow: his family has to be fed and clothed and
+he cannot permit himself to say, "I am tired and will stay away from
+work to-day." The business or professional man comes back from his
+office with a wearied brain that makes any thought an effort, but he
+must take up the routine to-morrow; the pressure of competitive business
+does not permit him to work when and as much as he chooses. But the
+Christian who is engaged in the most important work that is carried on
+in this world, the work of preparing an immortal soul for an unending
+future, is constantly under the temptation "to take a day off"--to let
+down the standard of accomplishment till it ceases to interfere with the
+business or the pleasure of life; is constantly too tired or too busy to
+do this or that. In short, religion is apt to be treated in a manner
+that would ensure the bankruptcy of any material occupation in life. Why
+then should it not ensure spiritual bankruptcy?
+
+Surely, to retain Jesus with us, to live in the intimacy of God, is the
+most pressingly important of our duties; it is worth any sort of
+expenditure of energy to accomplish it. And it cannot be accomplished
+without expenditure of energy. The view of religion which conceives it
+as a facile assent to certain propositions, the occasional and formal
+participation in certain actions, the more or less strict observance of
+certain rules of conduct, is so far from the fact that it is not worth
+discussing. Religion is the realised friendship of God; it is a personal
+relation of the deepest and purest sort; and, like all personal
+relations, is kept alive by the mutual activities of those concerned.
+The action of one party will not suffice to keep the relation in healthy
+state. The love of God itself will not suffice to maintain a being in
+holiness and carry him on to happiness who is himself quite indifferent
+to the entire spiritual transaction--whose attitude is that of one
+willing to be saved if he be not asked to take much trouble about it.
+That lackadaisical attitude can never produce any result in the
+spiritual order; it can only ensure the spiritual decline and death of
+one who has not thought it worth while to make an effort to live.
+
+Jesus can be found; but the finding depends upon the method of the
+seeking. There are many men who claim, and quite honestly, to be in
+pursuit of truth: to find the truth is the end of all their efforts. Yet
+they do not succeed in finding it. Why is this? I think that the
+principal reason is that they are constituting themselves the judges of
+the truth; they first of all lay down certain rules which God must obey
+if He wishes them to believe in Him! They insist on having, before they
+will believe, a kind of evidence that is impossible of attainment. They
+assert that this or that is impossible, and the other thing incredible.
+They partially ascertain the laws that govern the material universe, and
+they deny to the Maker of the universe the power to act otherwise than
+in accord with so much of the order of nature as they have discovered!
+They deny to God the sort of personal action in this world that they
+themselves constantly exercise.
+
+The method is not a method that can be hopeful of success. And it is
+worth noting that it is not a method that these same men followed in
+their investigations of the natural world. They have not accumulated
+information about natural law by first laying down rules as to how
+natural law must act, and refusing to listen to any evidence which does
+not fall in with these rules: rather, they have set themselves to
+observe how nature does act, and then deduced rules from their
+observation. Why not pursue the same method in religion? Why not in an
+humble spirit observe how God does act? Why start by saying, "Miracles
+do not happen?" Why reject as incredible the Virgin Birth and the
+Resurrection? Why not get a bigger notion of God than that of a
+mechanician running a machine, and think of Him as a Person dealing with
+persons? The relation of persons cannot be mechanical or predetermined;
+they are and must be free and spontaneous: they have their origin, not
+in the pressure of invariable law but in the impulse of love.
+
+Nor is the search for Jesus that is inspired by mere curiosity likely
+to be a success. There are many people who are curious about religion,
+and they want to know why we believe thus and so; and particularly why
+we act as we do. Why do you keep this day? What do you mean by this
+ceremony? Do you think that it is wrong to do this or that? Such people
+wander about observing; but their observation we understand is the
+observation of an idler who does not expect to be influenced by what he
+observes, but only to be amused. These are they who run after the latest
+thing in heresy, the newest thing in thought. What is observable about
+them is that they never seriously contemplate doing anything themselves.
+They are like those multitudes who followed our Lord about for awhile
+but were dispersed by the test of hard sayings.
+
+But Jesus can be found. He is found of all those who seek Him humbly and
+sincerely, putting away self and desiring simply to be led: who do not
+challenge Him with Pilate's scornful, "What is truth?" but rather say,
+"Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief." He is easily found of those
+who know where to look for Him. There is no mystery about that,--He will
+certainly be in His Father's House. The surprise of Joseph and Mary that
+He had thus dealt with them is answered by Jesus' surprise that they did
+not certainly know where He would be: "Wist ye not that I must be in My
+Father's House?"
+
+In the House of God, the Church of God, is the ready approach to Jesus.
+It is in the last degree foolish to waive aside the Church in which are
+stored the treasures of more than nineteen centuries of Christian
+experience as though it did and could have nothing to say in the matter.
+A seeker after information as to the meaning of the constitution of the
+United States would be considered a madman if he impatiently turned from
+those of whom he made enquiry when they suggested the decrees of the
+Supreme Court as the proper place to seek information. Surely, from any
+point of view, the Church will know more about Jesus than any one else:
+if in all the centuries it has not discovered the meaning of Him Whom it
+ceaselessly worships there is small likelihood that that meaning will be
+discovered by an unbeliever studying an ancient book! If the Church
+cannot lead us to Jesus, and if it cannot interpret to us His will,
+there is small likelihood that any one else will be able to do so. And
+if during all these centuries His will has been unknown it can hardly be
+of much importance to discover it now. If His Church has failed, then
+His Mission is discredited.
+
+For us who have accepted His revelation as made to the Church and by it
+unfailingly preserved, who have learned to find Him there where He has
+promised to be until the end of time, there is another sense in which we
+think of His words as words of encouragement and consolation. There are
+hours in life which press hard upon us; there are other hours when the
+sense of God's love and goodness fills us with thankfulness and joy. In
+such hours we crave the intimacy of personal communion: we want to tell
+our grief or our joy. And then we take our way to the temple, and know
+that we shall find Him there in His Incarnate Presence in His Father's
+House. We go in and kneel before the Tabernacle and know that Jesus is
+here. Here in the silence He waits for us. Here in the long hours He
+watches; here is the ever-open door leading to the Father where any man
+at any time may enter. He who humbled Himself to the hidden life of
+Nazareth now humbles Himself to the hidden life of the Tabernacle: and
+we who believe His Word, have no need to envy Joseph and Mary the
+intimacy of their life with Jesus, because here for us, if we will, is a
+greater intimacy--the intimacy of those of whom it can be said: They
+evermore dwell in Him and He in them.
+
+     Lady of Heaven, Regent of the Earth,
+      Empress of all the infernal marshes fell,
+     Receive me, thy poor Christian, 'spite my, dearth,
+      In the fair midst of thine elect to dwell:
+      Albeit my lack of grace I know full well;
+     For that thy grace, my Lady and my Queen,
+     Aboundeth more than all my misdemean,
+      Withouten which no soul of all that sigh
+     May merit heaven. 'Tis sooth I say, for e'en
+      In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+     Say to thy Son, I am his--that by his birth
+      And death my sins be all redeemable--
+     As Mary of Egypt's dole he changed to mirth,
+      And eke Theophilus', to whom befell
+      Quittance of thee, albeit (so men tell)
+     To the foul fiend he had contracted been.
+     Assoilzie me, that I may have no teen,
+      Maid, that without breach of virginity
+     Didst bear our Lord that in the Host is seen:
+      In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+     A poor old wife I am, and little worth:
+      Nothing I know, nor letter aye could spell:
+     Where in the church to worship I fare forth,
+      I see heaven limned with harps and lutes, and hell
+      Where damned folk seethe in fire unquenchable:
+     One doth me fear, the other joy serene;
+     Grant I may have the joy, O Virgin clean,
+      To whom all sinners lift their hands on high,
+     Made whole in faith through thee, their go-between:
+      In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+
+
+
+     ENVOY
+
+
+     Thou didst conceive, Princess most bright of sheen,
+     Jesus the Lord, that hath no end nor mean,
+     Almighty that, departing heaven's demesne
+       To succour us, put on our frailty,
+     Offering to death his sweet of youth and green:
+     Such as he is, our Lord he is, I ween:
+       In this belief I will to live and die.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+CANA I
+
+     And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee;
+     and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus was called,
+     and his disciples, to the marriage.
+
+     S. John II, 1.
+
+     Grant, O Lord, we beseech thee, that we thy servants may
+     enjoy constant health of body and mind, and by the glorious
+     intercession of blessed Mary, ever a virgin, be delivered
+     from all temporal afflictions, and come to those joys that
+     are eternal. Through.
+
+     Having received, O Lord, what is to advance our salvation;
+     grant we may always be protected by the patronage of blessed
+     Mary, ever a virgin, in whose honor we have offered this
+     sacrifice to thy majesty. Through.
+
+     Old Catholic.
+
+"There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was
+there." To S. John Blessed Mary is ever the "mother of Jesus." He never
+calls her by her name in any mention of her. Jesus who loved him and
+whom he loved and loves always with consuming passion, held the
+foreground of his consciousness; all other persons are known through
+their relation to Him. As he is writing his Gospel-story toward the end
+of his life, the Blessed Virgin has long been gone to join her Son in
+the place of perfect love. We cannot conceive of her living long on
+earth after His Ascension. Her "conversation" would in a special way be
+"in heaven." Whatever the time she remained here awaiting the will of
+God for her, we may be sure that the days she spent under the protection
+of S. John were wonderful days for him, wherein their communing would
+have been the continual lifting of their hearts and souls to Him, Child
+and Friend, who is also God enthroned at the Right Hand of the Father.
+It is not unlikely that the marvellous spiritual maturity of which we
+are conscious in the writings of S. John was aided in its unfolding by
+the intimacy of his relations with S. Mary. But always she remained to
+him what she was because of what Jesus was; she remained to the end "the
+mother of Jesus."
+
+Here at the marriage of Cana the way in which she is mentioned suggests
+that she was staying in the house where the marriage was celebrated: she
+was simply there; Jesus and the disciples were called, invited, to the
+wedding. Some relationship, it has been suggested, between S. Mary and
+the bride or groom led to her presence in the house. That however is
+mere conjecture. The marriage in any case was a wonderful one, for both
+Jesus and Mary were there. It was therefore the ideal of all weddings
+which seem to lack the true note of the new matrimony which springs from
+the Incarnation if they take place without such guests. As in
+imagination we follow Mary as she goes quietly about the house, which
+like her own was a home of the poor, helping in the arrangements of the
+wedding, one cannot help recalling many weddings with which one has had
+something to do, and in the arrangements of which we cannot think of
+Mary as having any part. They were the arrangements of the weddings of
+Christians, and the weddings took place in a Christian church; but
+neither is Mary there nor Jesus called. We are unable to think of Mary
+as present amid the tumult of worldiness and frivolity, the endless
+chatter over dress and decoration, which so commonly precedes the
+celebration of a sacrament which is the symbol of "the mystical union
+that there is betwixt Christ and His Church." That deep piety which puts
+God and God's will before all else would strike a jarring note here,
+where the dominant note is still the pagan note of the decking of the
+slave for her new master. It is perhaps not without significance of the
+direction of the movement of the modern mind that the protests of the
+emancipated woman are against the Christian, not the pagan elements in
+matrimony: she tends to regard marriage as a state of temporary luxury
+rather than the perfect union of two souls in Christ. Clearly in
+marriages which are regarded as purely temporary engagements, dependent
+on the will of the parties for their continuance, there is no place for
+the mother of Jesus. The purity that emanates from her will be a silent
+but keenly felt criticism on the whole conception underlying a vast
+number of modern marriages. Even as I write I read that in a certain
+great city in the United States the number of divorces granted was one
+fourth of the number of the marriages celebrated.
+
+Clearly at marriages which are surrounded with this atmosphere of
+paganism, be they celebrated where they may, there is no place for the
+Blessed Mother; and neither is Jesus called. His priest, unfortunately,
+is often called, and dares celebrate a sacrament which in the
+circumstances he can hardly help feeling is a sacrilege. There are many
+cases in which what purports to be Christian marriage is between those
+who are not Christians, or of whom only one is a Christian in any
+complete sense. One hears frequently of the sacrament of matrimony being
+celebrated when only one of the parties is baptised. It is of course
+possible for any priest to act on the authority conferred upon him by
+the state and in his capacity as a state official perform marriages
+between those whom the state authorises to be married: but why do it
+under the character of a priest? or why throw about the ceremony the
+suggestions of a sacrament?
+
+If Jesus is really to be called to a marriage, it means that the
+preparations for the marriage will be largely spiritual. The parties to
+the marriage will approach the marriage through other sacraments. They
+will both be members of the Church of God by baptism; and they will be,
+or look forward to becoming, communicants. They will prepare for the
+sacrament of matrimony by receiving the sacrament of penance, and
+receiving the communion. What better preparation for starting a new
+life, for setting out to create a new family in the Kingdom of God, a
+family in which the ideals of the life at Nazareth are to be the ruling
+ideals, than that cleansing of soul that fits them for the beginning of
+a new life? A priest has great joy when he knows that those who are
+kneeling before him to receive the nuptial blessing are souls pure in
+God's sight, dwellings ready and adorned for the coming of Christ.
+
+For it is the normal and fitting crown of the ceremonies of marriage
+that Jesus be there, that the Holy Mass be celebrated and that those who
+have just been indissolubly united may as their first act partake of the
+Bread of Heaven which giveth life to the world. I myself would rather
+not be asked to celebrate a wedding unless it is to be approached with
+the purity of Mary, and sealed by the partaking of Jesus. It is so great
+and wonderful a thing, this sacrament of matrimony. Here are two human
+beings setting out to fulfil the vocation of man to build up the Kingdom
+of God, to set up a new hearth where the love of God may be manifest and
+where children may be trained in the knowledge and love of God; where
+the life of Christ may find contact with human life and through it
+manifest God to the world--how wonderful and beautiful and holy all
+that is! And then to remember what commonly takes place is to be
+overcome with a sense of what must be the pain of God's heart.
+
+We go back to look into the home where Mary seems to be directing the
+arrangements of the wedding feast. It was a poor home and not much could
+be provided; the wine, so essential to the feast, failed. What was to be
+done? To whom would Mary look? She could have no money to buy wine. One
+feels that after Joseph's death she had come more and more to look to
+Jesus for help of all sorts. The deepening of their mutual love, the
+completeness of their understanding, would make this the natural thing.
+S. Mary feels that if there is any help in these embarrassing
+circumstances, any way of sparing the feelings of the bridegroom, Jesus
+will know it and help. There is no doubt in her mind; but the certainty
+that He can help. So she turns to Him with her "they have no wine." The
+words as we read them contain at once an appeal and a suggestion: an
+appeal for help, advice, guidance, with the hint that Jesus can
+effectually help if He will. It is not as some have rather crudely
+thought a suggestion that He perform a miracle, but the appeal of one
+who has learned to have unlimited trust in Him.
+
+The reply of our Lord cannot fail to shock the English reader; and the
+very nature of the shock ought to indicate that there is something wrong
+with the translation. The words sound brusque and ill-mannered; and our
+Lord was never that nor could be, least of all to His blessed Mother.
+The dictionaries all tell us that the word translated woman is quite as
+well translated lady, in the sense of mistress or house mother. There is
+really a shade of meaning that we have no word for. Perhaps we best
+understand what it is that is missed if we recall the fact that when our
+Lord addressed S. Mary from the Cross He used the same word: "Woman,
+behold thy son." In such circumstances we understand that the word on
+our Lord's lips is a word of infinite tenderness. I do not believe that
+we could do better than to translate it mother. We might paraphrase our
+Lord's saying thus: "Mother, we are both concerned with the trouble of
+these friends; but do not be anxious; I will act when the time comes."
+His words are perfectly simple and courteous, though they do, no doubt,
+suggest that her anxiety is unnecessary and that He will act in due
+time. If we are to understand that our Lady was suggesting that He
+perform a miracle, then He certainly yielded to her intercession.
+
+Indeed, this short aside in the rejoicing of the marriage celebration is
+suggestive of wide reaches of thought. It suggests, which concerns us
+most here, something of the mode of prayer. Prayer is not a force
+exercised upon God, it is an aspiration that He answers or not as He
+sees fit, according as He sees our needs to be: and if He answers, He
+answers in His own way and at His own time--when His hour is come. The
+intercession of the saints, and of the highest saint of all, the holy
+Mother, must thus be conceived as aspiration not as force. We hardly
+need to remind ourselves that Blessed Mary though the highest of
+creatures is still a creature and infinitely removed from the uncreated
+God. When we think of her prayers or the prayers of the saints as having
+"influence" or "power" with God, we must remember the limitations of
+human language. It is quite possible through inaccurate use of language
+to create the impression that we believe the prayers of the saints to be
+prevailing with God because of some peculiar spiritual energy that
+belongs to them, or, still worse, because we regard them as a sort of
+court favourites who have special influence and can get things done that
+ordinary people cannot. We need only to state the supposition to see
+that we do not mean it. When we think what we mean by the influence of
+the prayers of the saints, of their prevailingness with God, we know
+that we mean that the superior value of the prayers of the saints is due
+to the superior nature of their spiritual insight, to their better
+understanding of the mind and purpose of God. Blessed Mary is our most
+powerful intercessor because by her perfect sanctity she understands God
+better than any one else. No educated Christian believes that she can
+persuade God to change His mind or alter His judgment, or that she or
+any saint would for a moment want to do so. Nor do we who cry for aid in
+the end want any other aid than aid to see God's will and power to do
+it: we have no wish or hope to impose our will on God. Prayer is
+aspiration, the seeking for understanding, the submitting our desires to
+the love of God; and the prayer of the saints helps us because they are
+our brothers and sisters, of the same household, and join with us in the
+offering of ourselves to God that we may know and do His holy will. And
+we can see here in this incident at Cana the whole mode of prayer. There
+is the just implied suggestion of the need, the hint of her own thought
+about the matter, in the way in which S. Mary presents the case to
+Jesus. There is the divine method which approves the end sought but
+reserves the time and method of fulfilling it to the "hour" which the
+divine wisdom approves. There is the ideal Christian attitude which
+accepts the divine will perfectly, and says to the servants: "Whatsoever
+he saith unto you, do it."
+
+"They have no wine": S. Mary's word expresses the present weakness of
+humanity, Man is born in sin, that is, out of union with God. That hoary
+statement of dogmatic theology seems to stir the wrath of the modern
+mind more than any other dogma of the Christian Faith, except it be the
+dogma of eternal punishment. It is rather an amusing phenomenon that
+those who have no visible basis for pride are likely to be the most
+consumed with it. The pride of Diogenes was visible through the holes in
+his carpet; the pride of liberalism is visible in its irritability
+whenever the subject of sin, especially original sin, is mentioned. Yet
+the very complacency of liberalism about the perfection of man, is but
+another evidence (if we needed another) of his inherent sinfulness, his
+weakness in the face of moral ideals. If we confess our sins we are on
+the way to forgiveness; but if we say that we have no sin the truth is
+not in us.
+
+This boasting of capacity to be pure and strong without God,
+theologically the Pelagian heresy, is sufficiently answered by a
+cursory view of what humanity has done and does do. Even where the
+Christian religion has been accepted the accomplishment is hardly ground
+for boasting. The plain fact is (and you may account for it how you
+like, it remains in any case a fact) that human beings are terribly weak
+in the face of moral and spiritual ideals. They are not sufficiently
+drawn by them to overcome the tendency of their nature toward a quite
+opposite set of ideals. We do run easily and spontaneously after ideals
+which the calm and enlightened judgment of the race, whether Christian
+or non-Christian, has continuously disapproved. We know that Buddha and
+Mahomet and Confucius would repudiate Paris and Berlin and New York and
+London with the same certainty if not with the same energy as Christ. We
+live in a time when a decisive public opinion gets its way; and
+therefore we are quite safe in saying that the misery and sin which go
+unchecked in the very centres of modern civilisation exist and continue
+because there is no decided public opinion against them.
+
+All attempts at reform which are merely attempts to reform machinery are
+futile, they can produce only passing and superficial results. There is
+only one medicine for the disease of the world, and that medicine is the
+Blood of Christ. Ultimately, one believes, that will be applied; but
+evidently it will not be applied in any broad way as a social treatment
+till all the quack remedies have demonstrated their uselessness. The
+last two centuries have been the flowering time of quacks. The mere
+history of their theories fills volumes. Our own time shows no decline
+in productiveness, nor decline in hopefulness in the efficacy of the
+last remedy to bid for support. But the time of disillusionment must
+some time come.
+
+When that time comes all men will lift their eyes, as individual men
+have always lifted them, up to the hills whence cometh their help.
+Except they had kept their eyes so resolutely fastened on the earth at
+their feet they would have seen, what has always been visible to those
+who lift up their eyes, a crucified Figure on the one supreme hill of
+earth,--the hill called Calvary. There "one Figure stands, with
+outstretched hands" saying, with inextinguishable optimism, the
+indestructible optimism of God, "and I, if I be lifted up, will draw all
+men unto me."
+
+What in the end will prevail with them, what will make them turn to the
+Tree which is for the healing of the nations, is the perception that in
+it is the remedy for the weakness that they have either sought to heal
+by other means, or have resolutely denied to exist at all. There are men
+whose wills are so strong that even in the grip of some serious disease
+they will long go on about their business asserting that there is
+nothing the matter with them and overcoming bodily pain and weakness by
+sheer will power; but the end comes finally with a collapse that is
+perhaps beyond remedy. We live in a society which has the same
+characteristics, but it may be that it will see its state and turn to
+healing. For God cannot heal except with our co-operation. Christ pleads
+from the Cross, but he can do no more. He will not submit to our tests;
+He will not come down that we may believe in Him. We must come to Him,
+laying aside all our pride and self-will, and kneel by the Cross to
+ask His help.
+
+We know, do we not? that that is the law for the individual; that we
+found the meaning of Christ, and what He can do in life, when we laid
+aside pride and self-will and humbly asked help and pardon. It may be
+that we resisted a long while, struggling against the pull of the divine
+magnet; but if we have attained to spiritual peace it is because the
+Cross won, because we found ourselves kneeling at the feet of Jesus.
+Perhaps we have not got there yet, but are only on the way. Perhaps our
+religion as yet is a formality and not a devotion. Perhaps our pride
+still struggles against the Catholic practice of religion. Then why not
+give way now, to-night? Let Mary take you and lead you to Jesus. She
+will bring you to him with her half-suggestion, half-prayer: "He has no
+wine." He has got to the end of his strength, and he has found the
+weariness of self, he is ready for healing. O my divine Son, is not this
+your opportunity, your "hour"?
+
+Jesus loves to have us bring one another to Him. It is so obviously the
+response to His Spirit, that carrying out of His teaching, so to love
+the brother that we may bring him to the healing of the Cross. To care
+for the spiritual needs of the brother is a real ministry: it is an
+extension of Christ in us that clothes us with the power to aid other
+souls in work or prayer. What a beautiful picture of this work there is
+in the Gospel of St. John. "And there were certain Greeks among them
+that came up to worship at the feast: the same came therefore to Philip,
+which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we
+would see Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again Andrew and
+Philip tell Jesus." And this work of presenting souls to Jesus which is
+so clearly one of our chief privileges, how should not that be also the
+privilege of all the saints, and especially of the Holy Mother? Blessed
+Mary, we may be sure, delights in leading souls who so hesitatingly come
+to her, to the presence of her Son,--just presenting them in their need
+and with her prayer, which is all the plea that is needed to attract the
+love and mercy of Jesus. "Why not," ask certain people who have not
+thought out the meaning of Catholic dogma, "why not go at once to our
+Lord; why go in this roundabout way?" Why not? Because of our human
+qualities. Because we need company and sympathy. For the same reason
+precisely that makes us ask one another's prayers here. "The Father
+Himself loveth you." Why in this roundabout way ask me to pray? You do
+not come to me because you lack faith in God or in God's love; you come
+to me because you feel, if only implicitly, that in the Body of Christ
+association in love and sympathy and work is a high privilege, and that
+it is God's will that we should work together and "bear one another's
+burdens." And the frontiers of the Kingdom of God are not the frontiers
+of the Church Militant, and its citizens are not only the citizens of
+the Church here below, but--we believe in the Communion of saints.
+
+The hour of God strikes for any soul when that soul yields to
+prevenient grace and places itself utterly at the disposal of God,
+confiding wholly in His divine wisdom. When our Lord had answered His
+Blessed Mother she turned away satisfied. She did not have to concern
+herself any further; it was now in Jesus' hands to provide as He would.
+It remained but to see that His will should be carried out when He
+made it known.
+
+Submission is a difficult attitude to acquire; but it is such a happy
+attitude when once one has acquired it. The critics of it wholly mistake
+it and confound it with fatalism. It is not fatalism, or passive
+acquiescence in another's will--a will that we have no part in forming
+and cannot reject. Submission is the acceptance of God's will as the
+expression of the highest wisdom for us. It is not true that we have no
+part in forming it; it is at any time an expression of God's will for us
+which is determined by the way in which we hitherto have corresponded to
+that will. Submission means that we have put ourselves in a position of
+active co-operation with that will, that we have made it ours: because
+it is the expression of a divine wisdom and love we make it wholly ours.
+And we have found in the acceptance of it not bondage but liberty. It is
+wonderful how our preconceived notion of God and religion vanishes
+before the first gleams of experience. To the unregenerate the service
+of God is utter bondage; to the regenerate it is perfect freedom. And
+the difference seems to be accounted for by the reversal of ideals, by a
+new direction of affections. "I will run the way of thy commandments,
+when thou hast set my heart at liberty,"
+
+A true conversion is, perhaps, signified, more than in any other way, by
+the liberty of the heart,--by this change in the object of our love.
+That has been the constant exhortation to us, to love that which is
+worthy of love. "Set your affection on things above." "Love not the
+world, neither the things that are in the world." And we, loving the
+world and the things that are in the world, listen impatiently. But
+there is no possibility of a sincere conversion without a change of
+love. "A change of heart" conversion is often called, and so inevitably
+it is. And as we go through our self-examination one of the most
+profitable questions we can ask is, "What do I love?" That will commonly
+tell the whole story of the life, for "where a man's treasure is, there
+will his heart be also."
+
+Richard Rolle said: "Truly he who is stirred with busy love, and is
+continually with Jesu in thought, full soon perceives his own faults,
+the which correcting, henceforward he is ware of them; and so he brings
+righteousness busily to birth, until he is led to God and may sit with
+heavenly citizens in everlasting seats. Therefore he stands clear in
+conscience and is steadfast in all good ways the which is never noyed
+with worldly heaviness nor gladdened with vainglory."
+
+
+     CANA I
+
+
+     O Glorious Lady, throned in light,
+     Sublime above the starry height,
+     Whose arms thine own creator pressed,
+     A Suckling at thy sacred breast.
+     Through the dear Blossom of thy womb,
+     Thou changest hapless Eva's doom;
+     Through thee to contrite souls is given
+     An opening to their home in heaven.
+     Thou art the great King's Portal bright,
+     The shining Gate of living light;
+     Come then, ye ransomed nations, sing
+     The Life Divine 'twas hers to bring.
+     Mother of Love and Mercy mild,
+     Mother of graces undefiled.
+     Drive back the foe, and to thy Son
+     Lead thou our souls when life is done.
+     All glory be to thee, O Lord,
+     A Virgin's Son, by all adored,
+     With Sire and Spirit, Three in One,
+     While everlasting ages run.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+CANA II
+
+     And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus saith unto him,
+     They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I
+     to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.
+
+     S. John II, 3, 4.
+
+     We, the faithful, bless thee, O Virgin Mother of God, and
+     glorify thee as is thy due, the city unshaken, the wall
+     unbroken, the unbreakable defence and refuge of our souls.
+
+     BYZANTINE.
+
+"Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it." These words have often been
+called the Gospel according to S. Mary. They certainly sum up her whole
+attitude in life. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me
+according to thy word," she had said in reply to the message S. Gabriel
+brought her: and that is the meaning of her whole life-story, that she
+is at all times ready to accept the will of God, to give herself to the
+fulfilment of the divine purpose. There is no more perfect attitude, for
+it is the attitude of her divine Son whose meat it was to do the will of
+the Father and to finish His work, whose whole life's attitude was
+compressed into the words of His self-oblation in Gethsemane, "Not my
+will, but thine be done."
+
+And this is the virtue that Jesus Christ inculcates upon us. "When ye
+pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven ... thy will be done." There
+is no true religion possible without that attitude. And therefore one is
+deeply concerned about the immediate future inasmuch as the spirit of
+obedience, the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of Mary, is so rare. As one
+looks into the social development of the Christian era, one feels that
+the life and example of S. Mary has been of immense influence in the
+development of the ideal of womanhood. The rise of woman from a wholly
+subordinate and inferior condition to a condition of complete equality
+with man has owed more to S. Mary than to any other factor. I am not
+concerned with political equality; that under our present conditions of
+social development women should have that equality if they want it seems
+to me just, but I am by no means satisfied that in the long run it will
+prove a boon either to them or to society at large. But I am at present
+thinking of their spiritual equality, which after all is the basis of
+their other claims; and this comes to them through the Gospel, and was
+shown to the mind of the Church largely through S. Mary. In the earliest
+records of the Church woman stands on the same level of privilege as
+man, and the same sort of spiritual accomplishment is expected of her.
+
+There are many members of the Body of Christ and there is a certain
+spiritual equality among them; but "all members have not the same
+office." In the Holy Spirit's distribution of functions within the Body
+there is a difference. Some functions, by the allotment of God, women
+are not called to exercise: these are sacramental and ruling functions.
+Others, as prophecy (the daughters of S. Philip), and ministry (the
+deaconess), are given them. For centuries she recognised this allotment
+and gave her best energies to her appointed works. She showed herself a
+true daughter of Mary in her loyal acceptance of the divine will and her
+zeal in its accomplishment. And what was the result? The Calendar of
+Saints, filled with the names of women, is the answer. There are no more
+wonderful works of God than the women whose names are commemorated at
+the altars of the Church and whose intercession is constantly asked
+throughout Catholic Christendom. There can be no thought of narrowness
+of opportunity or limitations in life as we study that wonderful series
+of women who have illumined the history of the Church from the day of S.
+Gabriel's message to this very moment when there are many many women who
+are faithfully following their vocation and doing God's will, and who
+will one day be our intercessors about the throne of God and of the
+Lamb, as they are our intercessors in the Church on earth to-day. Why
+any woman should complain of lack of opportunity and of the narrowness
+of the Church--the Church that has nourished S. Mary and S. Monica, S.
+Catherine of Genoa and S. Theresa; the foundresses of so many and so
+varied Religious Orders, so many who have devoted their lives to
+teaching, nursing, conducting works of charity, I am at a loss to
+understand. To-day we are witnessing all over the world a revolt of
+women against the Church; we hear not infrequent threats of what is to
+be done to the Church by those revolted members. I am afraid that woman
+is on the edge of another tragedy. She is once more looking fascinated
+at the fruit which "is good for food, and pleasant to the eyes and to be
+desired to make one wise," and listening to a voice that whispers: "Thou
+shalt be as God."
+
+The question which is becoming more urgent everywhere is, What are the
+women of the future to be,--the daughters of Eve, or the daughters of
+Mary? It is not a question for declamation, but a question that calls
+for immediate action: and the action must be the action of women. If
+women clamour for work in the Church of God, here it is, and here it is
+abundantly; and to accomplish it there is no need that they "seek the
+priesthood also." The work in the Church of God is in the first place a
+work that God has given mothers to do; it is the primary duty of a
+mother to bring up her children, and especially her daughters, in fear
+of the Lord. That she can always succeed I do not for a moment claim;
+there are many adverse factors in the situation that she has to deal
+with. But she is inexcusable if she does not give her effort to the work
+as the most important work of her life. She is utterly inexcusable and
+must answer to God for the result if she turn her children over to the
+care of maids and teachers while she occupies herself with society or
+any exterior work.
+
+In the second place the work of the Church of God is a work that ought
+to appeal to all women and a work that any woman can help in. All women
+can help the spiritual progress of the Church by meditating upon the
+life of Blessed Mary and fashioning their lives upon her example. We are
+all tremendously affected by example, and that is especially true of
+young girls. Their supreme terror seems to be that they should be caught
+doing or saying something different from what all other girls say or do
+or wear. Their opinions are as imitative as their clothes. Hence the
+need of the pressure of a strong Christian example, which would result
+most readily in the union of Christian women in a single ideal. Our
+present difficulty is that so many of our women who are devout members
+of the Church in their private capacity, so far succumb to the
+group-mind in their social relations that they are possessed by the same
+terror as the young girl in the face of the possibility of being
+different. Therefore are they careful to hide their real feeling for
+religion and their devotion to spiritual things under the mask of
+worldly conformity which evacuates their example of much of the power
+that it might have. I am quite convinced that fear of the world is about
+as strong an impulse toward evil as love of the world.
+
+We need that women should clear their ideals and realise their public
+responsibility for the presentation of them. We need terribly at this
+moment insistence on the purity and simplicity of the Holy Mother of
+God. One is stunned at the abandonment of the ideal of reserve and
+modesty that the last few years have seen. Women seem to take it quite
+gaily: men, one notes, take it much more seriously. I have been
+consulted by more than one father during the past year as to the
+possibility of sending a boy to a school where he would be kept out of
+the society of half-naked girls. Have mothers no longer any sense of the
+value of purity? Or have they simply abandoned all responsibility that
+normally goes with being a mother? One recognises how helpless a man is
+under the circumstances, that his intervention in such matters simply
+casts him for the part of family tyrant; but why should a mother abandon
+her duty simply because her daughter says: "You don't understand. Girls
+are not as they were when you were young. All the girls do this. No
+other mother takes the line that you do. You are not modern."
+
+One knows, of course, that the whole matter of decline in manners and
+morals is but a part of the world-wide revolt against the morality of
+Jesus Christ that we are witnessing everywhere. Social and religious
+teachers, students of history and social movements have seen the
+approach of this revolt for a long time, have been watching its rise and
+growth. When they have pointed out the end of the path that we have been
+travelling, they have been disposed of by calling them pessimists. These
+"pessimists" pointed out long ago that the denial of the obligation to
+believe would be followed by an abandonment of all moral standards. They
+pointed out to the devotees of "liberal religion" that they are in
+reality the leaders of a moral revolt, that if it does not make any
+difference what you believe it will soon come to make no difference what
+you do. It is a rather silly performance to blow up the dam which holds
+back the mass of water of an irrigation system and imagine that no more
+water will flow out than you want to flow out. When the Protestant
+revolt blew up the restraining dams of the Catholic Religion they had no
+right to expect that only so much denial of Catholic truth as it suited
+them to dispense with would be the result. Through the broken dams the
+whole religion of Christ has been flowing out and it is mere empty
+pretence to claim that all that is of any value is left. It is
+impossible to maintain anything of the sort now that all the moral
+content of the Christian system is openly thrown overboard by vast
+numbers of the population of the world, in every country that claims to
+be civilised. It is useless to say that there has always been evil in
+the world and that the maintenance of the Catholic religion has never
+anywhere abolished sin. That is true, but it is not to the present
+point. The social situation is one where there are definite religious
+and moral ideals strongly maintained and universally recognised, though
+there are many men and women who violate them; it is quite another
+situation when the ideals themselves are repudiated and set aside as
+superstitions. That is our case to-day. The Christian theory is
+confronted with a theory of naturalism in morals, and those who follow
+that theory do not do so with a feeling that they are violating accepted
+ideals, but with the assumption that they are missionaries setting forth
+a new faith. Those who have revolted from the Kingdom of God have now
+set up another kingdom and proclaimed openly, "We will not have this Man
+to reign over us." The revolt which began with a breach in the dogmatic
+system of the Church and denial of the authority of the Catholic Church
+in favour of the right of private judgment, has ended, as it could not
+help but end, in open abandonment of the life-ideal of the Gospels. We
+now have the application of the right of private judgment in the theory
+that one's morals are one's own concern. Such things have happened
+before. "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every one did
+what was right in his own eyes." The social state depicted in the Book
+of Judges reflects this revolt. The result of the same repudiation of
+authority is seen in modern society where what is right in one's own
+eyes is the whole Law and Gospel. Are we to remain quiescent, or are we
+to make the attempt to generate moral force?
+
+But how can Christendom generate any more moral force? The teaching of
+the Gospel which it proclaims is perfectly plain. True, but is the
+adherence of the Church to its statements perfectly plain? Is there no
+falling away, no compromise, there?
+
+When one speaks thus of the Church one is conscious of a confusion of
+thought in the use of the word. The teaching of the formal documents of
+the Church is not here in question; what we necessarily mean is the
+effect that the existing membership of the Church is having upon
+contemporary life. What we have especially in mind is the attitude of
+the clergy and the action of the congregation in the way of moral force.
+What sort of a front is the church presenting to the world, what sort of
+moral influence is it exercising?
+
+It seems to me perfectly evident that all along the line the conventions
+of contemporary society have been accepted in the place of the
+life-ideals of the Gospel of Jesus. We have accepted plain departures
+from or compromises with Christian teaching as the recognised law of
+action. This is due largely to the natural sloth of the human being and
+his disinclination to struggle for superior standards. He feels safe and
+comfortable if he can succeed in losing himself in a crowd: thus he
+escapes both trouble and criticism. A violation of law may become so
+common that there is no public spirit to oppose it. The same thing may
+happen in morals,--violations of the Christian standard, if sufficiently
+widespread, command almost universal acquiesence. What is actually
+uncovered in the process is the fact that the plain man has no morals of
+his own, but imitates the prevailing morality; and if fashion sets
+against some particular ruling of the Christian Religion he feels quite
+secure in following the fashion. The _vox dei_ in Holy Scripture and in
+Holy Church affect him not at all if he be conscious that he is on the
+side of the _vox populi_.
+
+It is easy to illustrate this. The non-Catholic Christian world has the
+Bible, and boasts of its adherence to it as the sole guide of life; but
+in the matter of divorced persons it utterly disregards its teachings.
+By this acceptance of an unchristian attitude it has vastly weakened the
+fight for purity in the family relation which the Catholic Church, at
+least in the West, has always waged. It deliberately divides the
+Christian forces of the community and to a large extent thereby
+nullifies their action. The divisions of Christendom are terrible from
+every point of view; but there are certain questions on which a united
+mind might well be presented, and in relation to which an united mind
+would go far to control the attitude of society. An united Christian
+sentiment against divorce would go far to reduce the evil.
+
+On the other hand the progress of the movement to abolish the evils
+growing out of the use of alcohol has had its strength in the Protestant
+bodies. On the whole (there were no doubt individual exceptions) the
+Churches of the Catholic tradition have been lukewarm in the matter. It
+is quite evident that the reform could never have been carried through
+if left to them, and especially if left to the bishops and clergy of the
+Roman and Anglican Communions. It is a plain case of failure to support
+a vast moral reform because of the pressure of opinion in the social
+circles in which they move, combined with a purely individualistic
+attitude toward a grave social question.
+
+Another instance is ready at hand in the practical abandonment of the
+religious observance of Sunday. To Christians Sunday is the Lord's day,
+and is to be observed as such. It is not true that an hour in the
+morning is the Lord's day, and is to be given to worship, and that the
+rest of the day is given to us to do what we will with. But in our own
+Communion do we get any strong protest in favour of the sanctity of the
+day? Or are not the clergy compromising in the hope that if they
+surrender the greater part of the day to the world they will be able to
+save an hour or two for God? But is anything actually saved by this sort
+of compromise? Do we not know that the encroachments of worldliness that
+have narrowed down Sunday observance to an hour a day will ultimately
+demand that hour, that is, will deny any obligation other than the
+obligation of inclination? Are we not bound to stand by the Lord's day?
+Are we to be made lax by silly talk about puritanism? Those who talk
+about the "Puritan Sunday" would do well to read a little of the
+Medieval legislation of the Church. Are we to keep silent in the pulpit
+because wealthy and influential members of the congregation want to
+play golf and tennis on Sunday afternoons, or children want to play ball
+or go to the movies? Are we to be taken in by talk of hard work during
+the week and consequent need of rest? It is no doubt well that a man
+should arrange his work with a view to an adequate amount of rest; but
+it is also well that he should rest in his own time and not in God's.
+The Lord's day is not a day of rest. It ought to be, and is intended to
+be, a very strenuous day indeed.
+
+One could easily spend hours in pointing out where and how the Gospel
+standard of life has been abandoned or compromised, and the life of the
+Christian in consequence conformed to the world. The result would only
+strengthen the position that has been already sufficiently indicated
+that a wholly different standard of living has been quietly substituted
+throughout the Western world for the standard that is contained in Holy
+Scripture. Now we are either bound to be Christians or we are not; and
+we are not Christians solely by virtue of certain beliefs more or less
+loosely held. Our Lord's word is: "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever
+I command you." And the Gospel view of life is a perfectly plain one,
+and is as far removed from the common life of Christians to-day as it
+possibly can be. The Gospel conception of the Christian life is
+contained first of all in our Lord's life. That is the perfect human
+life; and the New Testament optimism is well illustrated by its
+conviction that that life in its essential features can, with the grace
+of God, be imitated by man. And by those who have approached it in this
+spirit of optimism it has been found imitable. Innumerable men and women
+have lived the Christian life in the past and are living it in the
+present. To-day the possibility of living the Christian life, of
+bringing life approximately to the standard of the Gospel, is declared
+to be an impracticable piece of optimism, and our Lord's teaching
+hopelessly out of touch with reality. When people talk of the difficulty
+of living the Christ-life under modern conditions, the plain answer is
+that there is in fact only one difficulty in the matter, and that is the
+difficulty of wanting to do it. It is a confession of utter spiritual
+incompetence to say that we cannot follow the Gospel standards under
+modern conditions because of the isolation in which we at once find
+ourselves if we attempt it. If the attempt to be a Christian isolates
+us, it tells a pretty plain tale about our chosen companionship. It is
+asserting that it is hard for us to be Christians because we are devoted
+to the society of those who are not Christians, of those who ignore it
+and habitually insult the teachings of our Saviour. That is surely an
+extraordinary confession for a Christian to make! Can we imagine a
+Christian of the first period of the Church excusing himself for
+offering incense to the divinity of Augustus on the ground that if he
+did not do so certain court festivities would be closed to him, and that
+his friends would think him odd!
+
+"Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you," "The friendship
+of this world is enmity with God." We have to choose. It is not that we
+may choose. It is not that it is possible to have a little of both. As
+Christians it is quite impossible in any real sense to have the
+friendship of the world, though many Christians think that they can.
+What really is open to us is the enmity of the world if we are sincere
+and strict in our profession, and the contempt of the world if we are
+not. You have not to read very deep in contemporary literature to learn
+what the world thinks about the Christian who ignores or compromises his
+standards. The world knows perfectly well what constitutes a Christian
+life, and it shows a well merited scorn of those who, not having the
+courage openly to abandon it, yet show by their lives that they do not
+value it. We may not show the same sort of contempt for the "weak
+brother" as S. Paul calls him, but we ought to make it plain that we
+have no sort of approval of the brother who pleads weakness as an excuse
+for laxity.
+
+There is one law of life and only one; and that is summed up in our
+Lady's direction to the servants at Cana in Galilee: "Whatsoever he
+saith unto you, do it." There is no ground for pleading that our Lord's
+will is an obscure will, or that circumstances have so changed that much
+that He set forth in word and example has no application to-day in the
+America of the twentieth century. Perhaps if any one feels that there is
+some truth in the last statement, he would do well to examine the case
+and to find out just what and how much of the Gospel teaching is
+obsolete, and how much has contemporary application, and to ask himself
+whether he is constantly putting in action that part which he thinks
+still holds good. It will, I think, on examination be found that none of
+our Lord's teaching is obsolete, though in some cases changed
+circumstances may have changed its mode of application. Certainly there
+is nothing obsolete in His teaching in the matter of purity. The virtues
+that He dwells upon--humility, meekness and the rest--are universal
+qualities on which time and social change have no effect.
+
+What Christian conduct needs on our part is interest. We have to make
+clear to ourselves that a certain kind of life is like the life of God,
+and therefore is the medium for understanding God, and ultimately for
+enjoying God. The Christian life is not an arbitrary thing; it is the
+highest expression of humanity. Any other life is a distortion of the
+human ideal. People talk as though they thought that by the arbitrary
+will of God they were obliged to be good--a thing wholly contrary to our
+nature and to our present interests. But goodness is the natural
+unfolding of our nature as God made it: we find our true expression in
+the likeness of God. Perfection is what nature aspires to. Religion is
+not a curb on nature; religion is a help to enable nature to express
+itself. Nature reaches its perfect expression when by the grace of God
+it becomes godlike.
+
+And the words of Christ are our guide to the perfect expression of our
+best. Therefore the earnest Christian is willing to give time to the
+careful study of them, and of the whole ideal of life that is contained
+in them. He is not concerned with what they will cut him off from; he is
+concerned with that to which they will admit him. He is concerned to
+find the meaning of Christ's teaching. This that S. Paul says is
+fundamental is his rule of life: "Be not conformed to this world: but be
+ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is
+that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."
+
+     Of one that is so fayr and bright
+       _Velut maris stella_,
+     Brighter than the day is light,
+       _Parens et puella_;
+     I crie to thee, thou see to me,
+     Levedy, preye thi Sone for me,
+       _Tam pia_,
+     That I mote come to thee
+       _Maria_.
+
+     Al this world was for-lore
+       _Eva peccatrice_,
+     Tyl our Lord was y-bore
+       _De te genetrice_.
+     With _Ave_ it went away
+     Thuster nyth and comz the day
+       _Salutis_;
+     The welle springeth ut of the,
+       _Virtutis_.
+
+     Levedy, flour of alle thing,
+       _Rosa sine spina_,
+     Thu here Jhesu, hevene king,
+       _Gratia divina_;
+     Of alle thu ber'st the pris,
+     Levedy, quene of paradys
+       _Electa_:
+     Mayde milde, moder _es
+       Effecta_.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+WHO IS MY MOTHER?
+
+Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is
+my brother, and sister, and mother,
+
+S. Matt. XII, 50.
+
+Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we may keep with an
+immaculate heart the sacrament which we have received in honour of the
+blessed virgin mother Mary; so that we who celebrate her feast now, may
+be found worthy when we have left this life to pass into her company.
+Through &c.
+
+SARUM MISSAL.
+
+Our Blessed Lord had begun his ministry of preaching. The mark of the
+early days of that preaching was success. Crowds came about Him wherever
+He taught. The fact that there were frequent miracles of healing no
+doubt added to the popularity that He achieved. It was largely the
+popularity of a new and strange movement, of a preaching cutting across
+the normal roads of instruction to which the Jewish people were
+accustomed. There was a fascination about its form, its picturesque way
+of conveying its meaning, its use of the parable drawn from the everyday
+circumstances of life. There was nothing of hesitation in the words of
+the new Preacher, but the ring of a dogmatic certainty. "He taught as
+one having authority, and not as the scribes." He pushed aside the
+rulings of the traditional teaching with His, "Ye have heard it said ...
+but I say." "Verily, verily, I say unto you." And yet there are people
+who tell us that there was nothing dogmatic about our Lord and His
+teaching! One would infer from much that is written upon the subject of
+our Lord's teaching that He was a very mild giver of good advice but
+evidently the Scribes and Pharisees did not think so. They saw in Him a
+man who was setting himself to undermine their whole authority.
+
+This popularity was at a high point when an interesting event happened
+of which we have an account in the first of the Gospels. "His mother
+and His brethren stood without, desiring to speak with Him." One gathers
+from the whole tone of the narrative that they were anxious about Him,
+that they looked with doubt upon this career of popular teacher that He
+was launched upon and felt that He was going too far. He needed advice
+and restraint, perhaps; it may be that there were already reports of
+possible interference by the national authorities. The fact that His
+"brethren" were present suggests the well meant interference of the
+older members of the family, who must always have thought Jesus rather
+strange. That they had induced His mother to come with them makes us
+think that they were counting on the influence naturally hers, an
+influence which must always have been apparent in their family
+relations. So we reconstruct the incident.
+
+No doubt S. Mary herself was anxious. She must always have been anxious
+as to what would be the next step in the development of her mysterious
+Child. And while there was one side of her relation to Jesus which would
+always have run out into mystery, the mystery of the as yet unrevealed
+will of God; on the other side she was no doubt a very real normal human
+mother, with all a mother's anxiety and need of constant intervention in
+the life of her Child. I do not suppose that S. Mary, any more than any
+other mother, ever understood that her Son had grown up and could be
+trusted to conduct the ordinary affairs of the day without her help. She
+was no doubt as much concerned as any mother with the fact that His feet
+might be wet, or that He might not have had any lunch, or that he might
+have got run over by a passing chariot, or have been taken mysteriously
+ill. It was, we may think, this mother-attitude which brought her along
+with the brethren to give some advice as to how to carry on the
+preaching mission and avoid getting into trouble with the religious
+authorities. "One said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren
+stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said
+unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And
+he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my
+mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father
+which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and
+my brother."
+
+Our Lord had a way of turning the passing incidents of the moment to
+account in His preaching, making them the texts of moral and spiritual
+teaching. One gathers that more than one of the parables and parabolic
+sayings was suggested by something that was before the eyes of His
+hearers. He was quick to seize any spoken word, any question, any
+exclamation, and to turn it to immediate account. It was so now. The
+report that His mother and His brethren were seeking Him, He made the
+occasion of a statement of vast import. When we try to think it out, it
+was not in the least, as it has been perversely understood, an impatient
+rebuff of an untimely interference, an indication that He did not care
+for their intervention in a work that they did not understand. There is
+really nothing of all that, but a seizing of a passing incident as the
+medium of an universal truth. It is the skill of one who knows that the
+human attention is caught by a matter, however trifling, which is
+vividly present. The scene is sharply defined for us: our Lord
+interrupted in His talk; the report of the mother and the brethren
+seeking Him; the obvious interest of the people as to how He will take
+their intervention; and then the rapid seizing of this interest to make
+His declaration: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in
+heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother."
+
+And what are we to understand Him to mean? Surely He is declaring that
+through the revelation of God that He is, there is a new stage in God's
+work for man being entered upon, and that this new stage will be
+characterised by the emergence of a new set of relations, relations so
+important that they throw into the background the ordinary relations of
+life. He is proclaiming to them the advent of the Kingdom of God; and in
+that Kingdom, the service of God will be put first, before all human
+relations. It will not be antagonistic to human relations; indeed, it
+will hallow them and raise them to a higher level; but in case they, as
+not infrequently they will, decline to adjust themselves to the work of
+the Kingdom, or set themselves in opposition to it, then will they be
+brushed aside, no matter what they be. If we can consecrate our human
+relations and bring them into God, then will they be ours still with a
+vast enrichment and a rare spiritual beauty; but if they remain selfish,
+insist on absorbing all attention and energy, then they must be broken.
+The love of father and mother and children is an holy thing wherever we
+find it, but it is capable of becoming a selfish and perverse thing,
+insistent upon its own ends and declining wider responsibilities. In
+that case it must be regarded from the standpoint of a higher good: if
+it stand in the path of the Kingdom it must be swept aside. So our Lord
+declared in one of the most searching of His utterances; one of the
+utterances which we feel could come only from the lips of God: "Think
+not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but
+a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and
+the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her
+mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be those of his own household. He
+that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he
+that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
+
+That is the teaching of the incident before us. Our Lord's primary
+mission is to declare the will of God, and to make known the mind of the
+Father to all who will heed. Their acceptance of this will of the Father
+will bring them into a new relation to Him more important than, and
+transcending, all relations of flesh and blood. But--and this is
+important to mark--it does not exclude relations of flesh and blood; but
+it demands that they shall be put on a new basis and be assimilated to
+the higher relation. In our Lord's case they were in fact so
+assimilated. The blessed Mother and the brethren did not resist God's
+will when they came to understand it. They were, we know, glad of the
+higher relation, the new privilege. There is no ground at all for the
+suggestion of any breach between them. They are of the inner circle
+always in the Kingdom of the regenerate.
+
+This fundamental truth of Christ's teaching, that through Him a new and
+closer relation to the Father becomes possible, and that the Kingdom is
+its embodiment, is one of the truths which have received constant
+lip-service, but have never been really assimilated in the working life
+of the Church. That the Church is the Body of Christ and we His members,
+and that by virtue of this membership in Him we are also members one of
+another; that we are, at our entrance into the Kingdom, made, as the
+Catechism puts it, members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the
+kingdom of Heaven are truths of most marvellous reach and of splendid
+social implications. But can we say that they have very wide or real
+acknowledgment?
+
+In face of a divided Christendom it seems almost farcical to talk of a
+Christian Brotherhood. The baptismal membership of the Church of God has
+fallen into group organisations whose mutual antagonism is of the
+bitterest kind. The so-called "religious press" is perhaps the saddest
+picture of modern Christian life. One could name a half dozen journals
+off hand, organs of this or that group, every one a sufficient
+refutation of the claim of the Christian Religion to be a Brotherhood of
+the Redeemed. There is no possible excuse for the tone of such
+publications.
+
+No doubt it is an inevitable result of the state of a divided
+Christendom that there should be disputes and controversies. We shall
+never reach any expression of the Brotherhood that is the Church by
+saying, Peace, Peace, where there is no Peace. The unity we look to must
+be reached through painful sacrifice and through conflict; and we know
+that the wisdom that is from above is "first pure, and then peaceable,"
+But it is quite possible while holding with all firmness to the truth,
+to hold it in the fear and love of God.
+
+So long as Christendom is thus divided into hostile camps the ideal of
+brotherhood is impossible of realisation. I do not want however to
+discuss this matter from the point of view of Church unity. I want to
+point out that within the groups themselves there is small vision of the
+meaning of the oneness of Christ. For brotherhood is the expression of a
+spiritual reality. It looked for a moment in the early days of the
+Church as though the ideal would be realised. The description of the
+Church was that "all that believed were together, and had all things in
+common: and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all
+men, as every man had need." That was, no doubt, a passing phase of the
+life of the Church in Jerusalem, but we have evidence that elsewhere all
+distinctions based upon social considerations were for the moment swept
+away. There is "neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
+there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
+Our glimpses of the congregations of the early Church are of men and
+women of all classes held together by the bond of a common membership in
+Christ, so strongly felt as to enable them to forget all worldly
+distinctions. Their sense of redemption was strong. They thrilled with
+the joy of deliverance from the old life "after the flesh." They knew
+that they were regenerate, new creations, and that this was the
+distinction of the brother who knelt beside them at their communions. It
+mattered not at all what he was in the world, whether he were Greek or
+Barbarian, whether he were patrician or freedman, whether he were of the
+slaves of Rome or of Caesar's household. The man who knelt to receive
+his communion might be a great nobleman, the priest who communicated him
+might be a slave: that did not matter; the significant thing was that
+they were both one in Jesus Christ.
+
+That did not last. I suppose that it could not be expected to last in an
+unconverted or half converted world. It could only last on condition of
+the fairly complete isolation of the Christian group from the rest of
+society, pending the conversion of society as a whole. But it proved
+impossible to secure the isolation. The only real isolation was in
+monastic groups which naturally could contain only such men and women as
+God called to a special sort of life: the whole of society could not be
+so organised. As the Church grew and took in the various social
+constituents included in the Empire, it took them in differentiated as
+they were. There seems to have been no real effort to break down race
+distinctions or class distinctions. There were no doubt protests, but
+the protests were as ineffective then as now. "You cannot change human
+nature," men say; but that in fact is precisely what Christianity
+claims to do. Unless it can change human nature it is a failure.
+
+The ideal of Christianity is not the abolition of inequality (only a
+certain sort of social theorists are insane enough to expect that). All
+men are born unequal in a variety of ways, physical, intellectual,
+moral; and under any form of society that so far has been invented they
+are born in social classes which remain very hard realities in spite of
+our theories. What Christianity aims at accomplishing is to transcend
+these inequalities, natural and artificial, by raising men to a state of
+spiritual equality, a state which ensures true and full enjoyment of all
+the privileges of the child of God. In this state there is open to all
+the gift of sanctifying grace which is the possession of God now, and in
+the future will unfold into the capacity of the complete participation
+of the life of heaven. This belongs to, is within the grasp of, any
+child, any ignorant peasant, any toiler, as much as it is within the
+grasp of bishop or priest or Religious. And this much--and how much it
+is!--the Church has succeeded in accomplishing. It may be slow in
+offering the riches of the Gospel to the unconverted world, but where it
+has presented the Gospel, it presents it to all men as a Gospel of
+salvation and sanctification. When tempted to discouragement let us
+remember that whatever the shortcoming of the Church, it is yet true
+that every man, woman and child in these United States of America can
+through its instrumentality, become a saint whenever he desires. But,
+naturally, to become a saint, effort is necessary.
+
+Where the Church has failed is not in the offer of salvation and
+sanctity, but in removing some of of the obvious obstacles to its
+attainment by many to whom it appeals, to whom its divine mission is. It
+has not succeeded in convincing us that we are members one of another,
+that is, it has not succeeded in persuading us to act upon what we
+profess in any broad way. The Church is not a fellowship in any
+comprehensive sense. The divisions which run through secular society and
+divide group from group run through it also. The parish which should be
+the exemplification of the Christian brotherhood in action is not so.
+Too often a parish is known as the parish of a certain social group.
+There are parishes to which people go to get "into society." Very likely
+they do not succeed, but that is the sort of impression that the parish
+membership has made upon them. Then there are parishes to which people
+"in society" would not be transferred. There are churches in which no
+poor person would set foot, not that they would be unwelcome, but that
+they would feel out of place. So long as such things are true, our
+practice of brotherhood has not much to commend of it.
+
+And when we go about setting things right I am not sure that we do not
+mostly make them worse. I do not believe that it is the business of the
+Church to set about the abolition of inequalities and the getting rid of
+the distinctions between man and man. Apart from the waste of time due
+to attempting the impossible, what would be gained? Pending the arrival
+of the social millenium we need to do something; and that something, it
+seems to me a mistake to assume must be social. "We must bring people
+together": but what is gained by bringing people together when they do
+not want to be together, and will not actually get together when you
+force them into proximity. There is nothing more expressive of the
+failure of well-meant activity than a church gathering where people at
+once group themselves along the familiar lines and decline to mix,
+notwithstanding the utmost endeavours of clergy and zealous ladies to
+bring them together. The thing is an object lesson of wrong method.
+
+Is there a right method? There must be, though no one seems to have
+found it yet. There is in any case a right point of departure in our
+common membership in Jesus Christ. Suppose we drop the supposition that
+we make, I presume because we think it pious, that if they are both
+Christians a dock labourer ought to be quite at home at a millionaire's
+dinner party, or a scrub-woman in a box at the Metropolitan opera house.
+Suppose we drop the attempt to force people together on lines which will
+be impossible till after the social revolution has buried us all in a
+common grave, and fasten attention on the one fact that, from our
+present point of view, counts, the fact that we are Christians. Suppose
+one learns to meet all men and all women simply on the basis of their
+religion; when that forms the bond that unites us when we come together,
+we have at once common grounds of interest in the life and activities of
+the Body of Christ. Suppose the millionaire going down town in his motor
+sees his clerk walking and stops and picks him up, and instead of
+talking constrainedly about the weather or about business, he begins
+naturally to talk to him about spiritual matters. Why could they not
+talk about the Mission that has just been held, or the Quiet Day that is
+in prospect? One great trouble, is it not? is that we fight shy of
+talking to our fellow-Christians of the interests that we really have in
+common and try to put intercourse on some other ground where we have
+little or nothing in common. The things that should, and probably do,
+vitally interest us, we decline to talk about at all. We are so stiff
+and formal and restrained in all matter of personal religious experience
+that we are unable to express the fact of Christian Brotherhood. The
+fact that you smile at the presentment of the case, that you cannot even
+imagine yourself talking about your spiritual experience with your clerk
+or your employer, shows how far you are from a truly Christian
+conception of Brotherhood.
+
+Our Lord's words that we are making our subject indicate the paramount
+importance that He laid upon the acceptance of God's will as the
+ultimate rule of life. "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which
+is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother." "Ye
+are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." That is the common
+ground on which we are all invited to stand, the ground of a common
+loyalty to God, of intense zeal for the cause of God. Our Lord gave His
+whole life to that cause. As His disciples watched Him on an occasion,
+they remembered that it was written: "The zeal of thine house hath
+eaten me up." Zeal is not a very popular quality because it is always
+disturbing the equanimity and self-complacency of lukewarm people. And
+then, we dislike to be thought fanatics. But I fancy that there will
+always be a touch of the fanatic about any very zealous Christian, and
+it is not worth while to suppress our zeal for fear of the world's
+judgment upon it. What we have to avoid is the misdirection of zeal.
+There is, no doubt, a zeal which is "not according to knowledge." We
+need to be sure, in other words, that our zeal is a zeal for God, and
+not a zeal for party or person or cause. It is no doubt quite easy to
+imagine that we are seeking to do God's will when we are merely seeking
+to impose on our own will. Self-seeking is quite destructive of the
+friendship and service of God. The Kingdom whose interests we are
+attempting to forward may turn out to be a Kingdom in which we expect to
+sit on the right hand or the left of the throne because of the
+brilliance of the service rendered.
+
+Life is simplified very much when the will of God thus becomes its
+guiding principle, and all other relations of life are subordinated to
+our relation to our heavenly Father. Then have we brought life to that
+complete simplicity which is near akin to peace. When we have learned in
+deciding any line of action not to think what our neighbours and friends
+will feel, or what the world will think, but only what God will think,
+we have little difficulty in making up our minds. Suppose that a boy has
+to make up his mind whether he will study for the priesthood, the vital
+thing on which to concentrate his thought and prayer is whether God is
+calling him to that life, and if he is convinced that he is being called
+the whole question should be settled. In fact in most cases it is far
+from being settled because this simplicity has not been attained. There
+is a whole social circle to be dealt with, who urge the hardness of the
+life, the scant reward, the greater advantages of a business career, and
+so on; all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the question to
+be decided. It is so all through life. In most questions of life's
+decisions, no doubt, there is no sense of any vocation at all, of a
+determining will of God; but is not that because we assume that God has
+no will in such matters, and leaves us free to follow our own devices?
+Such an assumption is hardly justified in the case of One to Whom the
+fall of a sparrow is a matter of interest. It is our weakness, or the
+sign of our spiritual incompetence, that we have unconsciously removed
+the greater part of life from the jurisdiction of the divine will. We do
+not habitually think of God as interested in the facts of daily
+experience; we do not take Him with us into offices and factories.
+Perhaps we think that they are hardly fit places for God, and I have no
+doubt that He has many things to suffer there. But He is there, and will
+suffer, until we recognise His right there, and insist upon His there
+being supreme.
+
+Let us go back for a moment to Our Lady standing outside the place where
+Jesus was preaching, perplexed and worried at the course He was taking.
+I suppose that it is always easier to surrender ourselves unreservedly
+into God's hands than it is to so surrender some one we love. I suppose
+that S. Mary so trusted in God that she never thought with anxiety of
+what His providence was preparing for her; but she would not quite take
+that attitude about her Son; or rather, while she did intellectually, no
+doubt, take that attitude, her feelings never went the whole distance
+that her mind went. But surrender to the will of God means complete
+surrender of ourself and ours. It means absolute confidence in God, it
+means lying quiet in his arms, as the child lies still in the arms of
+his mother. It means that we trust God.
+
+      Rose-Mary, Sum of virtue virginal,
+      Fresh Flower on whom the dew of heaven downfell;
+     O Gem, conjoined in joy angelical,
+      In whom rejoiced the Saviour was to dwell:
+      Of refuge Ark, of mercy Spring and Well,
+     Of Ladies first, as is of letters A,
+      Empress of heaven, of paradise and hell--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.
+
+     O Star, that blindest Phoebus' beams so bright,
+      With course above the empyrean crystalline;
+     Above the sphere of Saturn's highest height,
+      Surmounting all the angelic orders nine;
+      O Lamp, that shin'st before the throne divine,
+     Where sounds hosanna in cherubic lay,
+      With drum and organ, harp and cymbeline--
+     Mother, of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     O Cloister chaste of pure virginity,
+      That Christ hath closed 'gainst crime for evermo';
+     Triumphant Temple of the Trinity,
+      That didst the eternal Tartarus o'erthrow;
+      Princess of peace, imperial Palm, I trow,
+     From thee our Samson sprang invict in fray;
+      Who, with one buffet, Belial hath laid low--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     Thy blessed sides the mighty Champion bore,
+      Who hath, with many a bleeding wound in fight,
+     Victoriously o'erthrown the dragon hoar
+      That ready was his flock to slay and smite;
+      Nor all the gates of hell him succour might,
+     Since he that robber's rampart brake away,
+      While all the demons trembled at the sight--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     O Maiden meek, chief Mediatrix for man,
+     And Mother mild, full of humility,
+     Pray to thy Son, with wounds that sanguine ran,
+       Whereby for all our trespass slain was he.
+       And since he bled his blood upon a tree,
+     'Gainst Lucifer, our foe, to be our stay,
+       That we in heaven may sing upon our knee--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
+
+     Hail, Pearl made pure; hail, Port of paradise;
+       Hail, Ruby, redolent of rays to us;
+     Hail, Crystal clear, Empress and Queen, hail thrice;
+       Mother of God, hail, Maid exalted thus;
+       O Gratia plena, tecum Dominus;
+     With Gabriel that we may sing and say,
+       Benedicta tu in mulieribus--
+     Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.
+
+     William Dunbar,
+
+     XV-XVI. Cents.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+HOLY WEEK I
+
+Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.
+
+S. Matt. XXVI, 56.
+
+Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God, accept, O Lord, our
+prayers and save us.
+
+May the Holy Mother of God and all the saints be our intercessors with
+the Heavenly Father, that He may deign to be merciful to us, and in pity
+save His creatures. Lord God all-powerful! save us and have mercy
+upon us.
+
+Through the intercession of the Holy Mother of God, the Immaculate
+Mother of Thine only Son, and through the prayers of all the saints,
+receive, O Lord, our supplications; hear us, O Lord, and have mercy upon
+us; pardon us, bear with us, and blot out our sins, and make us worthy
+to glorify Thee, together with Thy Son and the Holy Ghost, now and ever,
+world without end. Amen.
+
+Armenian.
+
+We try to see our Lord's passion through the eyes of His Blessed
+Mother. We feel that all through Holy Week she must have been in direct
+touch with the experiences of our Lord. Her outlook would have been that
+of the Apostolic circle the record of which we get in the Gospels. Our
+Lord's ministry had showed a period of popularity during which it must
+have seemed to those closest to Him that they were moving rapidly to
+success; and then, after the day at Caeserea Phillipi, when His
+Messianic claims had been acknowledged, they would have been filled with
+enthusiasm for the mission the meaning of which was now defined. Then
+came a period of disappointment. Our Lord declined to become a popular
+leader, and by the nature of His preaching, the demands that He made
+upon those who were inclined to support Him lost popularity till it was
+a question to be considered whether the very Apostles would not desert
+Him. Then came the flash of renewed enthusiasm which is evidenced by the
+Palm Sunday entry, bringing, no doubt, renewed hopes to those nearest
+our Lord who seem to have been utterly unable to accept the view of His
+failure and death that He kept before them. But the hope vanished as
+quickly as it was roused. In less than a week the rejoicing group of
+Sunday followed Him from the Upper Chamber to the shades of Gethsemane.
+The betrayal, the trial, the end, come quickly on.
+
+This to S. Mary was the piercing of the sword through the very heart.
+These were the days when the meaning of close association with Incarnate
+God, with God Who was pursuing a mission of rescue, came out. The
+mission of the Son for the Redemption of man meant submitting to the
+extremity of insult and torture, and it meant that those who were
+closest associated with Him should be caught into the circle of His
+pain. As our Lord was displaying the best of which humanity is capable,
+so was He calling out the worst of which it is capable. These last days
+of the life of Jesus show where man can be led when he surrenders
+himself to the dominion of the Power of Evil and becomes the servant of
+sin. The triumph of demoniac malice through its instruments, the Roman
+governor, the Jewish authorities, of necessity swept over all who were
+related to our Lord. The storm scattered the Apostolic group and left
+the Christ to face His trial alone. Yet not alone: He himself tells us
+the truth. "Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be
+scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am
+not alone, because the Father is with me." It was what the Prophet had
+foreseen: "All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is
+written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered."
+
+We do not know where S. Mary was during these days, but we are sure that
+she was as near our Lord as it was possible for her to be. We know that
+her own thought would be of the possibility of ministering to Him. We
+know that she would not have fled with the Apostles in their momentary
+panic. She was at the Cross, and she was at the grave, and she would
+have been as near Him in the agony and the trial as it was possible for
+her to be. And she too was in agony. Every pang of our Lord found echo
+in her. Every blow that fell upon His bleeding back, she too felt. Every
+insult that the soldiers inflicted, hurt her. Our Lord in the
+consciousness of His mission is constantly sustained by the thought that
+His Passion and Death is an offering to the will of the Father,--an
+offering even for these miserable men who are brutally treating a man
+whom they know to be innocent. Her sorrow is the utter desolation of
+seeing the One Whom she loves above all else suffer, while she can bear
+Him no alleviation in His suffering, cannot so much as wipe the blood
+from off His wounded brow, cannot even touch His hand, and look her love
+into His eyes. She follows from place to place while our Lord is being
+hustled from Caiaphas to Pilate and from Pilate to Herod and back again;
+from time to time hearing from some one who has succeeded in getting
+nearer, how the trial is going on, what the accusation is, how Jesus is
+bearing Himself, what answers He has made, what the authorities have
+said. Once and again, it may be, catching a distant glimpse of Him as He
+is led about by the guards, seeing Him always more worn and weary,
+always nearer the point of collapse. Herself, too, nearer collapse; yet
+going on still with that strength that love gives to mothers, determined
+at the cost of any suffering to be near Him, as near as she can be, till
+the very end. So we see her on that day in the streets of Jerusalem,
+and think of the distance travelled since the morning when Gabriel said
+to her, wondering: "Hail thou that art highly favoured.... Blessed art
+thou among women."
+
+We, too, follow. We have so often followed, with the Gospel in our
+hands, and wondered at the method of God. We have tried hour after hour
+to penetrate the meaning of the Passion, to find what personal message
+it brings, to discover what light it throws on our own lives. We have
+gone out into Gethsemane and placed ourselves with the three chosen
+Apostles while our Lord went on to pray by Himself; and we have
+discovered in ourselves the same weariness, the same tendency to sleep,
+in the presence of what we tell ourselves is the most important of all
+interests. We call up the scene under the olives, and find that we
+wander and are inattentive and idle when we most want to be attentive
+and alert. We place ourselves in the group that surrounds our Lord when
+the soldiers, led by Judas, come, and ask ourselves shall I too run
+away? And our memory flashes the answer: You have run away again and
+again: you have in the face, not of grave dangers, but of insignificant
+trifles--how insignificant they look now--for fear of criticism, for
+fear of being thought odd, for fear of the opinion of worldly
+companions, for fear of being pitied or laughed at, over and over again
+you have run away. The things that seemed important when they were
+present seem pitifully insignificant in the retrospect.
+
+We follow out of the garden to the meeting-place of the Sanhedrin, to
+the Judgment seat of Pilate, to the palace of Herod. Any impulse to
+criticise S. Peter is speedily suppressed: we have denied so often under
+such trifling provocation. S. Peter was frightened from participation in
+the act of our Lord's sacrifice through mortal fear of his life. We have
+stayed away from the offering of the Holy Sacrifice, how often! from
+mere sloth, from disinclination to effort, from the fact that our
+participation would prevent us from joining in some act of worldly
+amusement. S. Peter, following to the high Priest's palace to see the
+end, looks heroic beside our frivolity. We follow through the details of
+the trial, we go to Herod's palace and see the brutal treatment of our
+Lord, and we remember of these men that their conduct was founded in
+ignorance. We do not for a moment believe that they would have spit upon
+our Lord and buffeted Him, and crowned Him with a crown of thorns, if
+they had believed that He was God. But we believe that He is God. Our
+desertion of Him when we sin, our contempt of His expressed ideals when
+we compromise with the world, our departure from His example when we
+excuse ourselves on the ground of very minor inconveniences from keeping
+some holy day or fasting day, are not founded in ignorance at all. They
+can hardly be said to be founded in weakness, so slight is the
+temptation that we do not resist. As we meditate on the Passion, as we
+keep Good Friday, very pitiful all our idleness and subterfuges appear
+to us. But we so easily shake off the effect! We emerge from our
+meditation almost convinced that the stinging sense of the truth of our
+conduct which we are experiencing is the equivalent of having reformed
+it. We go out with a glow of virtue and by night realise that we have
+sinned again!
+
+It is no doubt well that we should not be permanently depressed about
+our spiritual state, but only because we have taken all the pains we can
+to heal the wounds of sin. There is no need that any one should abide in
+a state of sin because there has been in the Precious Blood a fountain
+opened for sin and for uncleanness, and by washing therein, though our
+souls were as scarlet, they shall become white as snow. We have the
+right to a certain optimism about ourselves if it be founded on actual
+spiritual activity which ceaselessly tries to reproduce the
+Christ-experience in us, even the experience of the Passion by the
+voluntary self-discipline to which we subject ourselves. A brilliant
+writer has spoken of those whose view of their lives is drawn from "that
+fountain of all optimism--sloth." That is a true saying: our optimism is
+often no more than an idle refusal to face facts; a quaint and
+good-natured assumption that nothing very much matters and that
+everything will be all right in the end!
+
+This easy going optimism is commonly as far as possible from
+representing any spiritual fact. If we are seeking any serious and
+fruitful relation to the Passion of our Lord, we must seek it along the
+Way of the Cross. To follow His example means to follow His experience,
+to treat life as He treated it. The content of our lives is quite
+different, but the treatment of the given fact must be essentially the
+same. We need the same repulse of temptation, the same quiet disregard
+of the appeals of the world, whether it offer the alleviation of
+difficulty or the bestowal of pleasure as the reward of our allegiance.
+And we, sinners in so manifold ways, need what our Lord did not need,
+repulsion from our sins as the necessary preliminary to forgiveness.
+
+My experience makes me feel very strongly that we are apt to be
+deficient in the first step in repentance--contrition. As we follow the
+Way of Sorrows we know that our Lord is suffering _for us_; and we feel
+that the starting point of our repentance must lie in our success in
+making that a personal matter. In our self examination, in our approach
+to the sacrament of penance, we are compelled to ask ourselves, Am I in
+fact sorry for my sins? It surely is not enough that we fear the results
+of sin, or that we are ashamed at our failure. This really is not
+repentance but a sort of pride. There must, I feel, be sorrow after a
+godly sort. That is, true contrition, true sorrow for sin, is the sort
+of sorrow which is born of the Vision of God; it has its origin in love.
+I have found in our Lord love giving itself to me, and I must find in
+myself love giving itself to Him. To my forgiveness it is not enough
+that God loves me. I know that He loves me and will love me to the end,
+whether I repent or not; but the possibility of forgiveness lies in my
+love of Him, whether it takes such hold on me as actually to stimulate
+me to forsake sin. I shall never really forsake sin through shame or
+fear; one gets used to those emotions after a little and disregards
+them. But one does not get used to love; it grows to be an increasing
+force in life, and so masters us as to draw us away from sin.
+
+Contrition then will be the offspring of love. It will be born when we
+follow Christ Jesus out on the Sorrowful Way and understand that He is
+going out for us. Then we want to get as near Him as possible: we want
+to take His Hand and go by His side. We want to stand by Him in His
+trial and share His condemnation. We want constantly to tell Him how
+sorry we are that we have brought Him here. We shall not be content that
+He feel all the pain. We are convinced that we ought to share in the
+pain as we share in the results of the Passion. When we have achieved
+this point of view we shall feel that our approach to Him to ask His
+forgiveness needs, it may be, much more care than we have hitherto
+bestowed upon it. We have thought of penance as forgiveness; now we
+begin to see how much the attitude which precedes our entrance to the
+confessional counts, and that we must value the gift of God enough to
+have made sure that we are ready to receive it. We kneel down,
+therefore, and look at our crucifix, and say: "This hast Thou done for
+me," and make our act of love in which we join ourselves to the Cross of
+Jesus. We tell ourselves that love is the beginning and end of our
+relation to Him.
+
+It is to be urged that every Christian should be utterly familiar with
+the life of our Lord, and should spend time regularly in meditation upon
+His life, and especially upon His Passion. Love is the constant
+counteractive of familiarity; and it is kept fresh in our souls by the
+contemplation of what our Lord has actually done for us. A general
+recalling of what He has done has not the same stimulating force as the
+vivid placing before us of the actual details of His work. To most of us
+visible aids to the realisation of our Lord's action for us are most
+helpful. A crucifix on the wall of one's room before which one can say
+one's prayers, and before which also we stop for a moment time and again
+in the course of the day, just to say a few words, to make an act of
+love, of contrition, or of union, keeps the thought of the Passion
+fresh. We gain in freshness and variety of prayer by the use of such
+devotions as the litany of the Passion or the Way of the Cross. A set of
+cards of the Stations help us to say them in our homes. It is much to be
+desired that we accustom ourselves to devotional helps of all sorts. We
+are quite too much inclined to think that there is something of
+spiritual superiority in the attempt to conduct our devotional life
+without any of the helps which centuries of Christian experience have
+provided. It is the same sort of feeling that makes other Christians
+assume that there is a superiority in spiritual attainment evidenced by
+their dispensing with "forms," especially with printed prayers. It is
+just as well to remember that we did not originate the Christian
+Religion, but inherited it; and that the practices of devotion that have
+been found helpful by generations of saints, and after full trial have
+retained the approval of the greater part of Christendom, can hardly be
+treated as valueless, much less as superstitious. The fact that saints
+have found them valuable and one has not, may possibly not be a
+criticism of the saints.
+
+The meditation upon the Way of the Cross, the vision of Jesus scourged,
+spitted upon, crowned with thorns, may well give us some searchings of
+heart in regard to our own easy-going, luxurious life. Nothing seems to
+disturb the modern person so much as the suggestion that the chief
+business of the Christian Religion is not to look after their comfort.
+They hold, it would appear, to the pre-Christian notion that prosperity
+is an obvious mark of God's favour, and that by the accumulation of
+wealth they are giving indisputable evidence of piety. It is well to
+recall that there is no such dangerous path as that of continual
+success. I do not in the least mean to imply that success is sinful or
+indicates the existence of sin, but I do mean to insist very strongly
+that the successful man needs to be a very spiritually watchful man. He
+is quite apt to think that he may take all sorts of liberties with the
+laws of God. There are, no doubt, evident dangers to the unsuccessful
+man, but the Holy Scriptures have not thought it worth while to spend
+much time in denouncing him. It has a good deal to say of the danger,
+not so much of wealth, as of prosperity in general: "Behold, this was
+the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and
+prosperous ease were in her." When we find ourselves in a satisfied and
+comfortable home life, so comfortable that we find it difficult to get
+up to a week-day Mass, and disinclined to go out to a service after
+dinner, we need watching.
+
+And the best watchman is oneself; and the best method of
+self-examination is by the Cross. Is there any sense in which we can be
+said to be following our Lord on the Sorrowful Way? Have we taken up the
+Cross to go after Him, or are we assuming that we can just as well drift
+along with the crowd of those who only look on? We all need from time to
+time to consider the Catholic teaching as to mortification and
+self-discipline. I am quite aware that to insist on this is not the way
+of popularity, but nevertheless I learned a long time ago that about the
+only way that a priest can take if he wishes to be saved is the way of
+unpopularity. And therefore I am going to insist that the practice of
+rigorous self-discipline is essential to any healthy Christian life. We
+cannot dispense ourselves from this, for the mere fact that we are
+dispensing ourselves is the proof that we need that upon which we are
+turning our back. Briefly, what I mean is that the assumption of the
+Cross by a Christian means that he is taking into his life, voluntarily,
+personal acts of self-sacrifice which he offers to our Lord as the
+evidence and the means of his own Cross-bearing.
+
+The unruliness of our nature can only be kept in order by continual acts
+of self-discipline. We, no doubt, recognise the need of the discipline
+of the passions, but our theory, so far as we can be said to have one,
+would seem to be that the discipline of the passions means resistence to
+special temptations as they arise. We may no doubt sin through the
+passions, and therefore we need a minimum of watchfulness to meet
+temptations which come our way. I submit that such a way of conducting
+life is quite sufficient to account for the vast amount of failure we
+witness or, perhaps, experience. When from time to time the country gets
+alarmed about its health, when it is threatened with some epidemic such
+as influenza, the papers are full of medical advice the sum of which is
+you cannot dodge all the disease germs that are in the air, but you can
+by a vigorous course of exercise and by careful diet, keep yourself in a
+state of such physical soundness that the chances are altogether
+favourable for your withstanding the assaults of disease. No doubt the
+vast majority of people prefer not to follow this advice. A considerable
+number of them resort to various magic cults, such as letting sudden
+drafts of cold air in upon the inoffensive bystander with a view to
+exorcising the germs. But it remains that the medical advice is sound:
+it amounts to saying, "Keep yourself in the best physical condition
+possible and you will run the minimum chance of being ill."
+
+The Catholic treatment of life and its recommendation of discipline and
+mortification has precisely the same basis as the physical advice--an
+ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. We are exposed to
+temptation constantly, and we need to recognise the fact and prepare
+ourselves to meet it; and the best preparation is the preparation of
+self-discipline for the purpose of keeping rebellious nature under
+control. Good farming does not consist in pulling up weeds; it consists
+in the choice and preparation of the ground in which the seed is to be
+sown; it looks primarily to the growth of the seed and not to the
+elimination of the weeds. Our nature is a field in which the Word of God
+is sown; its preparation and care is what we need to focus attention on,
+not the weeds.
+
+Self-discipline is the preparation of nature, the discipline of the
+powers of the spiritual life with a view to what they have to do. And
+one of the important phases of our preparation is to teach our passions
+obedience, to subject them to the control of the enlightened will. If
+they are accustomed to obey they are not very likely to get out of hand
+in some time of crisis. If they are broken in to the dominion of
+spiritual motive, they will instinctively seek that motive whenever they
+are incited to act. Hence the immense spiritual value of the habitual
+denial to ourselves of indulgence in various innocent kinds of activity.
+I do not at all mean that we are never to have innocent indulgences: I
+do mean that the declining of them occasionally for the purpose of
+self-discipline is a most wholesome practice. How frequently it is
+desirable must be determined by the individual circumstances. It is
+utterly disastrous to permit a child to have everything it wants because
+there is sufficient money to spend, to permit it to run to soda
+fountains or go to the picture houses as it desires. Any sane person
+recognises that; but does the same person recognise the sane principle
+as applying in his own life? Does he feel the value of going without
+something for a day or two, or staying from places of amusement for a
+time, or of abandoning for a while this or that luxury?
+
+The principle is of course the ascetic principle of self-mastery. It is
+best brought before us by the familiar practice of fasting, which is
+very mildly recommended to us in its lowest terms in the table in the
+Book of Common Prayer. Naturally, its value is not the value of going
+without this or that, but the value of self-mastery. The very fact that
+our appetites rebel at the notion shows their undisciplined character.
+The child at the table begins to ask, not for a sensible meal founded on
+sound reasons of hygiene, but for various things that are an immediate
+temptation to the appetite. The adult is not markedly different save
+that he preserves a certain order in indulgence. The principle of
+fasting is that he should from time to cut across the inclination of
+appetite, and either go without a meal altogether, or select such food
+as will maintain health without delighting appetite. So man gains the
+mastery over the animal side of his nature and shows himself the
+child of God.
+
+The actual practice of the ascetic life really carries us much farther
+than these surface matters of a physical nature that have been cited. It
+applies in particular to the disposition of time and the ruling of daily
+actions. The introduction of a definite order into the day actually
+seems to increase the time at one's disposal. I know, I can hear you
+saying: "If you were the head of a family, and had children to look
+after, you would not talk that way. You would know something of the
+practical difficulties of life." But indeed I am quite familiar with the
+situation. And if I were so situated I am certain that I should feel
+all the more need of order. Families are disorderly because we let them
+be; because we do not face the initial trouble of making them orderly. A
+school or a factory would be still more disorderly than a family if it
+were permitted to be. Any piece of human mechanism will get out of order
+if you will let it. That is precisely the reason for the insistence on
+the ascetic principle--this tendency of life to get out of order; that
+is the meaning of all that I have been saying, of the whole Catholic
+insistence on discipline. Time can be controlled; and, notwithstanding
+American experience, children can be controlled; and control means the
+rescuing of the life from disorder and sin, and the lifting it to a
+level of order and sanity and possible sanctity.
+
+We cannot hope to meet successfully the common temptations of life
+except we be prepared to meet them, except there be in our life an
+element of foresight. An undisciplined and untried strength is an
+unknown quantity. The man who expects to meet temptation when it occurs
+without any preparation is in fact preparing for failure. I do not
+believe that there is any other so great a source of spiritual weakness
+and disaster as the going out to meet life without preceding discipline,
+thus subjecting the powers of our nature to trials for which we have not
+fitted them. Self-control, self-discipline, ascetic practice, are
+indispensible to a successful Christian life.
+
+     O STAR of starres, with thy streames clear,
+     Star of the Sea, to shipman Light or Guide,
+     O lusty Living, most pleasant t'appear,
+     Whose brighte beames the cloudes may not hide:
+     O Way of Life to them that go or ride,
+     Haven from tempest, surest up t'arrive,
+     O me have mercy for thy Joyes five.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     O goodly Gladded, when that Gabriel
+     With joy thee gret that may not be numb'red,
+     Or half the bliss who coulde write or tell,
+     When th' Holy Ghost to thee was obumbred,
+     Wherethrough the fiendes were utterly encombred?
+     O wemless Maid, embellished in his birth,
+     That man and angel thereof hadden mirth.
+
+     John Lydgate of Bury,
+     XV Cent.
+     From Chaucerian and Other
+     Poems, edited by W. W. Skeat,
+     1894.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+HOLY WEEK II
+
+And after they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put
+his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.
+
+S. Matt. XXVII, 31.
+
+     Forgive, O Lord, we beseech thee, the sins of thy people:
+     that we, who are not able to do anything of ourselves, that
+     can be pleasing to thee, may be assisted in the way of
+     salvation by the prayers of the Mother of thy Son. Who.
+
+     Having partaken of thy heavenly table, we humbly beseech thy
+     clemency, O Lord, our God, that we who honour the Assumption
+     of the Mother of God, may, by her intercession, be delivered
+     from all evils. Through.
+
+OLD CATHOLIC.
+
+The way of the Cross is indeed a Sorrowful Way. We have meditated upon
+it so often that we are familiar with all the details of our Lord's
+action as He follows it from the Judgment Seat of Pilate to the Place of
+a Skull. I wonder if we enough pause to look with our Lord at the crowds
+that line the way, or at those who follow Him out of the city. It is not
+a mere matter of curiosity that we should do so, or an exercise of the
+devout imagination; the reason why we should examine carefully the faces
+of those men who attend our Lord on the way to His death is that
+somewhere in that crowd we shall see our own faces: it is a mirror of
+sinful humanity that we look into there. All the seven deadly sins are
+there incarnate.
+
+It is extremely important that we should get this sort of personal
+reaction from the Passion because we are so prone to be satisfied with
+generalities, to confess that we are miserable sinners, and let it go at
+that! But to stop there is to stop short of any possibility of
+improvement, because we can only hope to improve when we understand our
+lives in detail, when we face them as concrete examples of certain sins.
+
+There was pride there. It was expressed by both Roman and Jewish
+officialism which looked with scorn on this obscure fanatic who claimed
+to be a king! Pilate had satisfied himself of His harmlessness by a very
+cursory examination. This Galilean Prophet with His handful of
+followers, peasants and women, who had deserted Him at the first sign of
+danger, was hardly worth troubling about. The only ground for any action
+at all was the fear that the Jewish leaders might be disagreeable. Those
+Jewish leaders took a rather more serious view of the situation because
+they knew that through the purity of His teaching and His obvious power
+to perform miracles, a power but just now once more strikingly
+demonstrated in the raising of Lazarus, He had a powerful hold on the
+people. They, these Jewish leaders, declined a serious examination of
+the claims of such a man in their pride of place and knowledge of the
+Scriptures. They were concerned to sweep Him aside as a possible leader
+in a popular outbreak, not as one whose claim to the Messiahship needed
+a moment's examination.
+
+This intellectual pride is one of the very greatest sins to which
+humanity is tempted. It goes very deep in its destructive force because
+it is a sin, preeminently, of the spiritual nature, of that in us which
+is akin to God, His very image. It is, you will remember, the sin on
+which our Lord centres His chief denunciation. And common as it has
+always been, it has never been so common as it is to-day. Pilate and the
+chief priests are duplicated in every community in the thousands who
+reject Christianity without any adequate examination as incredible in
+view of what they actually hold, or as inconvenient in view of what they
+desire to practice. We have only to read very superficially in the
+current literature of the day, we have only to examine the teaching in
+colleges, to be completely convinced of the vast extent of the revolt
+against the Christian Religion. This revolt is for the most part a
+revolt without adequate examination. It assumes that the Christian
+Religion is contrary to science, or to something else that is
+established as true. It looks at Christianity superficially through the
+eyes of those who reject it and are ignorant of it. The fact is that
+Christianity cannot be understood in any complete sense of the word by
+those who do not practice it. Its "evidence" is no doubt of great force;
+of sufficient force to lead men to experiment; but the actual
+comprehension of Christ as the Saviour of man is an experience. The
+operation of the Holy Spirit in life is necessarily proved, and only
+completely proved, by the action of the Spirit Himself.
+
+Another demonstration of the same pride is seen in the refusal, without
+adequate examination, to accept the Catholic Religion, and the picking
+and choosing among articles of belief and sacraments and practices as to
+what we will use or observe. Men do not like this or that, and they
+therefore decline it. The whole attitude is one of self-will and pride.
+Whatsoever comes to us with a great weight of Christian experience back
+of it certainly deserves careful consideration; it demands of us that we
+treat it as other than a matter of taste. Pride is the commonest of sins
+and the most dangerous for it attacks the very heart of the spiritual
+life. It runs, to be sure, through a broad range of experience and not
+all manifestations of pride are mortal sin; but all manifestations of it
+are subtle and insidious and capable of expansion to an indefinite
+degree. For there is no difference in nature between the spiritual
+attitude of the person who says, "I do not see any sense in that and
+will not do it," when the matter in question may be the Church's rule of
+fasting, and that of the man who before Pilate's Judgment Seat cried
+out, "We have no king but Caesar."
+
+It was in fact because they found their own power and place threatened
+that the Jewish authorities were so determined on our Lord's death.
+Their sin from this point of view was the sin of covetousness. This sin
+reaches its highest point when it is greed for power over other men's
+lives and destinies, when it is ready to sacrifice the lives of others
+in order to gain or maintain its ends. In this broad sense it is the
+most socially destructive of sins. The wars of the world for these many
+years have been wars for commercial supremacy. The world is being
+continually exploited by commercial enterprises which will stop at
+nothing to gain their ends. Some day a history of the last two hundred
+years will be written which will tell the story of the commercial
+expansion of the world we call civilised, and it will be the most
+horrible book that has ever been written. It will contain the story of
+the Spanish colonisation of America. It will contain the history of the
+slave trade. It will contain the history of the Belgian Congo, and of
+the rubber industry in South America. It will contain the history of the
+American Indian and of the opium trade of India--and of many
+like things.
+
+But while we shudder at the world-torturing ways of the pursuit of
+wealth, of the world-wide seeking of money and power, we need not forget
+that the sin of covetousness is as common as any sin can be. It is so
+common and so subtle that it is almost impossible to know how far one is
+a victim of it. It is deliberately taught to us as children under the
+guise of thrift, which if it be a virtue is certainly one that the
+saints have overlooked. We are constantly called on to strike a balance
+between what are the proper needs of life and what is an improper
+concentration of attention upon ourselves. Waste of money, like waste of
+any other energy, is a sin; but it is a very nice question as to what is
+waste. I think it a pretty safe rule to give expenditure the benefit of
+the doubt when it is for others, and to deny it when it is for self.
+
+However, I imagine that those who are conscientiously trying to conduct
+their lives as the children of God will have little difficulty in this
+matter. The real trouble is not in the matter of expenditure but in the
+matter of gain. The ethics of business are very far from being the
+ethics of the Gospel, and we are often frankly told by those engaged in
+business that it cannot be successfully conducted on the basis of the
+ethics of the Gospel, That it is not so conducted is sufficiently
+obvious from a cursory scanning of the advertising columns of any
+newspaper or magazine. The ideal of the business world is success.
+Naturally, one cannot carry on an unsuccessful business, but need it be
+success by all means and to all extents? Are there no limits to the
+methods by which business is to be pushed, except legal limits? If there
+is no room for Christian ethics in the business world there can be but
+one end; competitive business will lead the civilisation that it
+controls to inevitable disaster. Our Lord said: "Take heed and beware of
+covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the
+things that he possesseth." And He went on to speak a parable which has
+come to be known as the Parable of the Rich Fool. The "practical man"
+may be as angered as he likes by this teaching, but in his soul he knows
+that our Lord was right. When such things are pointed out from the
+pulpit the "practical man" says: "What would become of the Church were
+it not for the rich and the successful?" I think that the answer is that
+in that case the Church would no more represent the rich and would have
+a fair chance of once more representing Jesus Christ.
+
+It may seem at the first sight that of the mortal sins lust was not
+represented here upon the Sorrowful Way; but that, I think is but a
+superficial analysis of the nature of lust, thinking only of some
+manifestations of it. There is however one sin that has its roots deep
+in lust which psychologists tell us is one of its commonest
+manifestations, and that is cruelty. Lust is not always, but commonly,
+cruel; and the desire to inflict pain on others is a very common form of
+its expression. There are sights we have seen or incidents we have read
+of, it may be a boy torturing an animal or another child, it may be a
+shouting mass of men about a prize-ring, it may be soldiers sacking a
+town,--when the action seems so senseless that we are at a loss to
+account for it; but the account of it lies in the mystery of our
+sensual nature, in the ultimate animal that we are. The savage joy that
+is being expressed by the participants in such scenes is ultimately a
+sensual joy. These men who delighted in the torture of our Lord were
+sensualists; and there are few of us who if we will watch our selves
+closely will not find traces of the animal showing itself from time to
+time. Of this crowd about the Cross relatively few could have known
+anything about the case of our Lord; but they were fascinated by the
+spectacle of a man's torture. If the executions of criminals were public
+to-day there would undoubtedly be huge crowds to gaze upon them.
+
+It is one of the lessons we learn from the study of sin that what we had
+thought was the essence of the sin was in fact but one of the
+manifestations of it, and that we have to carry our study far before we
+arrive at the ideal, Know thyself. It is always dangerous to assume that
+we know when we have not been at the pains to look at a subject on all
+sides. Our sensual nature needs a very careful discipline, and the mere
+freedom from certain forms of the sin of lust is not the equivalent of
+that purity which is the medium of the Vision of God.
+
+It is the sin of gluttony which is the least obvious in the Way of the
+Cross. There are no doubt plenty of gluttons there, but that is not what
+we are trying to find; we are trying to see how each sin contributed to
+this final act in the drama of our Lord's life, how each sin contributed
+to put men in opposition to our Lord. It is not the actual sin of
+gluttony that we shall find in operation here but certain inevitable
+effects of it, What is the effect of gluttony on the soul of man?
+Absorption in the pursuit of the pleasures that spring from material
+things; the indulgence of the appetite, and the natural result of such
+indulgence which is to render the soul insensitive to the spiritual. The
+man whose motto is, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," puts
+himself out of touch with the spiritual realities of life. He is
+materialistic, whatever may be his philosophy. He wants immediate
+results from life. When he is confronted with our Lord, when he is told
+that our Lord makes demands upon life for self-restraint and
+self-discipline, that He demands that the appetites be curbed rather
+than indulged, he declines allegiance. One can have no doubt that in our
+Lord's time as to-day indifference to His teaching and failure even to
+take in what the Gospel means or how it can be a possible rule of life
+is largely due to the dull spiritual state, outcome of the indulgence of
+the appetite for meat and drink. Men whose brains are clogged by over
+eating, and whose faculties are in a deadened state through the use of
+alcohol, cannot well understand the Gospel of God.
+
+There is abundant evidence of anger all along the Way of the Cross. The
+constant thwarting of the purpose of the Jewish authorities by our Lord,
+His unsparing criticism of them before the people, had stirred them to
+fury. If our Lord had seemed to them to threaten their "place and
+nation" we can understand that they would show toward Him intense
+hostility. Their attitude toward the people whose religious interests
+they were supposed to have in charge was one of utter contempt: "This
+people which knoweth not the Law is cursed." Our Lord's attitude was
+the opposite of all this. It was not, to be sure, as to-day it is
+represented to be an appeal to the people. He was not bidding for
+popular support, but he showed unbounded sympathy with the people; He
+cast His teaching in a form that would appeal to them and draw them to
+him. He made a popular appeal in that He showed Himself understanding of
+the popular mind and without social prejudice of any sort. This setting
+aside of the arrogant authorities of Israel roused them to implacable
+wrath. They felt that our Lord was setting Himself to undermine their
+authority, and as they felt that their authority was "of God" their
+indignation translated itself into terms of zeal for God.
+
+This anger that manages to wear a cloak of virtue is peculiarly
+dangerous to the soul. When we are just ordinarily mad over some offence
+committed against us it is no doubt a sin; but it is not a sin of the
+same malignity as when we feel that we can go any lengths because we are
+not angry on our own behalf, then our anger almost becomes an act of
+religion in our eyes. We have become the defenders of a cause. No doubt
+there is such a thing as "righteous indignation," but it is not a virtue
+that we are compelled to practice, and we would do well to leave it
+alone as much as possible lest our indignation exceed our righteousness,
+and we indentify our personal interests with the cause of God.
+
+The worst feature of tempermental flare-ups is the testimony they bear
+to our lack of discipline. When we excuse ourselves or others on the
+ground that action is "temperamental" we are in fact no more than
+restating the fact that there is sore need of discipline; and there is
+no more ground for excusing one variety of temperament for its lack of
+discipline than an other. In fact, the more inclined a temperament is to
+certain sins, the more necessity there is for the appropriate sort of
+training. People without self-control, who are constantly losing their
+temper, are public nuisances and ought to be suppressed. There is the
+worst kind of arrogance in the assumption that I do not have to control
+myself and can speak and act as I like. No one, whatever his position,
+has the right to ignore the feelings of others; and the more the
+position is one of authority, exempting him from a certain kind of
+criticism, the more is he bound to criticise himself and examine himself
+as to this particular sin.
+
+There are sins under this caption which do not contain much malice but
+are disturbing to life, and they are especially disturbing to one's
+spiritual life. There are peevish, complaining people, who do not seem
+to mean much harm, but keep themselves in a state of dissatisfaction
+which renders their spiritual growth impossible. They grow old without
+any of the grace and beauty of character which should mark a Christian
+old age. One knows old people who have been in intimate contact with the
+Church and the sacraments for many years but do not show any signs of
+having reached our Lord through them. They are dissatisfied and
+complaining and critical and generally disagreeable so that the task of
+those who take care of them is rendered very disheartening. What is the
+trouble? Has there never been any true spiritual discipline, but only a
+certain superficial conformity to a spiritual rule? When old age comes
+the will is weakened and the sense of self-respect undermined, with the
+result that what the person has all along been in reality, now comes to
+the surface and is, perhaps for the first time, visible to every one.
+
+Envy is closely related to pride on the one hand and to covetousness on
+the other. It begins in the perception of another's superiority, and
+carries its victim through the feeling of hurt pride at the contrast
+with himself to desire for that which is not his own. The envious person
+covets the qualities of possessions of another, while vividly denying
+that they are in fact superior to his own, except, it may be, in certain
+apparent and not very valuable aspects. The contrast between the
+superior and the inferior has one of two results: either the inferior is
+stirred to admiration, or he is stirred to a greater or less degree
+of envy.
+
+It was thus that contact with our Lord _revealed_ the reality of men. It
+was a very true judgment to associate with him. His apostles were simple
+men who never thought of putting themselves in comparison with Him: the
+more they knew Him the more wonderful He seemed to them. We feel all
+through the Gospel story what an overwhelming impression His personality
+made upon men. There is no criticism raised on His character from any
+point of view. His enemies fell back on the accusation of blasphemy
+growing out of His claims, an accusation that would be true, if the
+claims were not true. What we really discover in those who oppose Him is
+envy, envy of the influence He exercises over others, envy stirred by
+His obvious superiority to themselves.
+
+Envy is one of the sins of which we are least conscious. When people
+affirm that they envy others this or that: their leisure, their beauty,
+or what not, they clearly do not envy them at all, but are mildly
+covetous of the things that they see others possess. Where envy does
+show its presence and where we do not recognise its nature, is in that
+horrible inclination to depreciate others which is visible in certain
+characters. They seem never to hear another mentioned but they try to
+think of something which limits the praise bestowed upon him, or
+altogether counteracts it. It seems to be an instinctive hostility to
+superiority as involving an implied criticism of one's own inferiority.
+It is that curious love of the worst that lies at the root of gossip.
+
+And what about the last of the deadly sins, the sin of sloth? One is
+almost tempted to say that it is at once the least obvious and the most
+destructive of all the deadly sins. That would no doubt be somewhat of
+an exaggeration, but it would not be very far off the truth. It is
+spiritual sloth that prevents us from considering as we should the
+spiritual problems that are presented to us, and therefore prevents us
+from gaining their promise. It is the quality in humanity that blocks
+the consideration of the new on the ground that we already know and can
+gain nothing by further exertion. The Jewish religious leaders declined
+the intellectual and spiritual effort of considering our Lord's claims;
+they just set them aside unconsidered. And is not that just what we are
+constantly doing, and what constitutes the most pressing danger of the
+spiritual life? We will not consider the future as the field of
+constantly new opportunity and therefore new stages of growth. We do not
+want to make the effort that is implied in that attitude.
+
+Our sloth binds us hand and foot and delivers us to the enemy. There are
+no doubt some who cry out: "But I am not at all slothful; I am busy from
+morning to night; of whatever else I may be guilty, it is not of sloth!"
+My friend, busy people are quite often the most slothful people that
+there are. They are busy dodging their rightful duties and the
+opportunities that God offers them, all day long. Have you never
+discovered that when you had something that you ought to do and do not
+want to do, that the easiest method by which you can still your
+conscience is to make yourself terribly busy about something else, and
+then to tell yourself that the reason why you have not done what you
+know that you ought to have done is that really you have not had time?
+Do you not know that being busy is one of the most effective screens
+that you can put between your conscience and your obligation? Do you not
+know that tens of thousands of men and women to-day are putting the
+screens of good works, of social service of some sort, between their
+souls and the worship of God and the practice of the sacraments? Beware
+lest while you wear yourself out with activity your besetting sin be
+found to be sloth!
+
+And shall we find there on the Way of Sorrow the virtues that are the
+opposite of the Seven Sins? Perhaps, if we had time to look, or had
+sufficient knowledge of the crowd that lines the way. There are certain
+women over there wailing and lamenting; perhaps they could help us. In
+any case we know that there is one woman who has succeeded in keeping
+near whose love of Jesus is so intense that it will enable her to
+overcome all obstacles and be near Him to the very last. Jesus as He
+staggers along the way and falls at length under the intolerable weight
+of the Cross is the embodiment of all virtues and of all spiritual
+accomplishment, and his blessed Mother through His grace has been kept
+pure from all sin. She will show the perfection of purely human
+accomplishment. She is the best that humanity in union with the
+Incarnate Son has brought forth. We have seen--we have caught glimpses
+of her life through what the Scriptures tell us of her--how completely
+she has responded to grace in all the actions of her life. Not much do
+the Scriptures say, but what they do say is like the opening of windows
+through which we catch passing aspects of her life which we feel are
+perfectly characteristic and revealing.
+
+And we have seen there, or we may see, may we not? the virtues which are
+the work of the Holy Spirit enabling us to overcome the deadly sins. We
+have seen the humility with which, without thought of self, she answered
+God's call to be the Mother of His Son. We have seen the liberality with
+which she places her whole life at God's disposal, withholding nothing
+from the divine service. Purity undefiled had been God's gift to her
+from the first moment of her existence. Hers too was that meekness
+which willingly accepted all that the appointment of God brought her,
+showing in her acceptance no withholding of the will, no trace of
+self-assertion. Hers was the great virtue of temperance, the power of
+self-restraint and self-discipline, which suppressed all movements of
+nature that would be contrary to God's will. There too was the love of
+the brother and of the neighbour which is the contrary of envy; and
+there was the eagerness in fulfilling the will of God which is the
+opposite of sloth.
+
+We have then two spotless examples,--how shall we not be stirred to
+follow them! There is Jesus manifesting the qualities of His sinless
+life, of the life of God's election, of humanity as God wills it to be,
+and as it ultimately will be when it gives itself to His will; and Mary
+in whom we see the work of God's grace perfectly accomplished by virtue
+of her perfect response to the love of her Sen. We look at these two
+lives and we see what is possible for us. We do not say, we cannot say,
+these things are too wonderful and great for me. We can only say,
+through the grace of God which is given me, "I can do all things." It is
+not my inevitable destiny that I should abide a sinner. I have the
+choice of being a sinner or a saint.
+
+     MARY: Ever I cried full piteously:
+     "Lordings, what have ye i-brought?
+     It is my Son I love so much:
+     For God's sake bury Him nought."
+     They would not stop though that I swooned,
+     Till that He in the grave were brought.
+     Rich clothes they around him wound:
+     And ever mercy I them besought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     They said there was no better way
+     But take and bury him full snel.
+     They looked on my cousin John
+     For sorrow both a-down we fell--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     By Him we fell that was My Child.
+     His sweet mouth well full oft I kissed.
+     John saw I was in point to spill,
+     That nigh mine heart did come to break.
+     He held his sorrow in his heart still
+     And mildly then to me did speak:
+     "Mary, if it be thy will
+     Go we hence; the Maudeleyn eke."
+     He led me to a chamber then
+     Where my Son was used to be,--
+     John and the Maudeleyn also;
+     For nothing would they from me flee.
+     I looked about me everywhere:
+     I could nowhere my Sone see.
+     We sat us down in sorrow and woe
+     And 'gan to weep all three.
+
+     From St. Bernard's Lamentation on Christ's Passion. Engl. version,
+     probably 13th Cent, by Richard Maydestone.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+     THE CRUCIFIXION
+
+     And they crucified him.
+
+     S. Matt. XXVII, 35.
+
+     In as much as we have no confidence because of our many sins,
+     do thou, O Virgin Mother of God, beseech him who was born of
+     thee; for a Mother's supplication availeth much to gain the
+     benignity of the Master. Despise not the prayers of sinners,
+     O all-august, for merciful and mighty to save is he, who
+     vouchsafed to suffer for us.
+
+     BYZANTINE.
+
+We have followed the Way of Sorrows to the very end and now stand on
+Calvary watching by the Cross, waiting for the death of the Son of God.
+The mystery of iniquity is consummated here where man in open rebellion
+against his God crucifies the Incarnate Son. Here is fulfilled the
+saying: "He came unto His own and His own received Him not." All that
+man can do to prove his own degredation he has done. In the person of
+Pilate he has condemned to death a man whom he knows to be innocent. The
+representative of human justice has denied justice for the sake of his
+own personal ends. In the person of Herod he has permitted the insult
+and abuse of One of whom he knows no ill, and has displayed toward Him
+wanton and brutal cruelty. In the person of the Jewish authorities he
+has rejected the Messenger of the God whom he recognises as his God, and
+will not listen to the voice of prophecy because he finds his personal
+ends countered by the fulfilment of the promises of the religion whose
+subject he professes to be. In the person of the disciples he shows
+himself too cowardly and self-regarding to stand by his innocent Master
+and to throw in his lot with Him. In the person of the people he shows
+himself cruel, hardened, indifferent to suffering and to justice, ready
+to be made the tool of unscrupulous politicians, unstable and ignorant.
+As we look on, we succeed in retaining any shred of respect for
+humanity only through the contemplation of the exceptions--of S. John
+and the little group of women who are faithful to the end: above all in
+the sight of blessed Mary standing by the Cross of her Son.
+
+It is the will of God that our Lord should follow the human lot to the
+very depth of its possible sufferings. There are no doubt many
+sufferings of humanity that our Lord does not share, they are those
+which spring out of personal sin. He in Whom was no sin could not suffer
+those things which spring from one's own wrong doing. That is one broad
+distinction between the burdens of the crosses on Calvary, a distinction
+which the penitent thief caught easily when he said to his reviling
+fellow-criminal, "Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same
+condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our
+deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss." And in as much as a great
+part of what we suffer is plainly just, the pain we bear is intensified
+by the knowledge that what we are is the outcome of what we have been.
+But our Lord, while He does not suffer as the result of His own sin,
+does suffer as the result of sin in that He wills to bear the result of
+men's sin by putting Himself at their mercy. He bears the burden of sin
+to the uttermost, looking down from the Cross at the faces of these men
+whose salvation He is making possible if in the days to come they will
+associate themselves with Him. One wonders how many of those who saw Him
+crucified came, before they died, to accept Him as the Saviour and their
+God. There must have been many wonderful first Communions in the early
+Church when those who had rejected Jesus in His humility came to receive
+Him glorified.
+
+But as we look at this scene of the dying we feel that the powers of
+evil are working their uttermost, they are driving their slaves to
+incredible sins. One feels the tremendous power that evil is as one
+looks at these human beings who are body and soul wholly under its
+dominion. The Power of Darkness appears utterly in control of the world
+of humanity; but we know that this moment in which its triumph seems
+most complete is in fact the moment in which its defeat is at hand. The
+victory that is being won is the victory of the Vanquished: and the
+moment when the victory of evil seems assured by the dying of Jesus, is
+in fact the moment when the chains of the slaves of sin are broken, and
+men who will to be free are henceforth free indeed. From that moment a
+new freedom is within the reach of men, the freedom which comes to them
+through their participation in the redemption wrought for them by God.
+Presently S. John will announce the great message of freedom to the
+Church, a message that he will tell in his own wonderful simplicity, a
+simplicity which almost deceives us as to its unfathomable depth of love
+and mystery: "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and
+this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.... We
+know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not: but He that was begotten
+of God keepeth him, and the evil one toucheth him not. And we know that
+we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one. And we know
+that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we
+may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His
+Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life."
+
+This is what the dying of Jesus achieved for us, that we should be free
+as men had never been free, and that we should be strong as men had
+never been strong.
+
+On their crosses the thieves agonise in the realisation of the sin that
+has brought them there; but our Lord, Who is free from sin, looks out on
+the scene before Him in a wonderful detachment from His personal
+suffering. Being without sin our Lord is without egotism, and never
+treats life from that purely personal standpoint that we are constantly
+tempted to adopt. Our own needs, our own interests, occupy the
+foreground and determine the judgment; and we are rarely able to see in
+dealing with the concrete case that our own interests are ultimately
+indentical with the interests of the whole Body. The lesson that if one
+member suffer, all the members suffer with it, that we are partners in
+joy and sorrow alike, is almost impossible of assimilation by the
+radical individualists that we are. Our theories break down before the
+test of actuality. But our Lord was not an individualist. He, in His
+relations with men, is the Head of the Body; and He admits no division
+of interests between His members. He therefore can think of the needs of
+others while He Himself is undergoing the last torture of death. He can
+impartially judge the separate cases of His members; He can attend to
+the spiritual welfare of a needy soul; He can think of His own death as
+an act of sacrifice willed by God, and not as a matter concerning
+Himself alone; and in doing these things He teaches us a much-needed
+lesson of the handling of life.
+
+No lesson is to-day more needed because we are more and more being
+influenced to treat life as a private matter. I have spoken of this
+before and need not elaborate it now; but I do want to insist, at
+whatever risk of repetition, that a Christian must, if his religion mean
+anything at all, look on the interests of the Body, not as a separate
+group of interests to which he is privileged or obligated to contribute
+such help as seems to him from time to time appropriate, but as in fact
+his own primary interests because his true significance in the world is
+gained through his membership in the Body. His life is hid with Christ
+in God and his conversation is in heaven. The life that he now lives in
+the flesh he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him and
+gave Himself for him. To assert separate interests is to break the
+essential relation of his life. He is nothing apart from the Body but a
+dry and withered branch fit for the burning. No doubt our egotism rebels
+against this view of life, but it is certain that it is the view of the
+Christian Religion. If we would realise the ideals of the Religion we
+must act as those who are in constant relations with the other members
+of the Body and whose life gets its significance through those
+relations.
+
+There is no more outstanding lesson of our Lord's life than this. It is
+true from whichever angle you look at it. If you think of our Lord as a
+divine Person it is at once evident how much of His meaning is included
+in His relations to the other Persons of the Blessed Trinity. He claims
+no independent will; it is the will of the Father that He has come to
+do. He claims no original work: it is the work that the Father has given
+Him to do that He is straightened until He accomplish. He has no
+individual possession, but all things that the Father has are His.
+Considered as God, our Lord is One Person in the one divine nature, no
+Unitarian interpretation of Him is possible. On the other hand, if you
+look at Him as Incarnate, as having identified Himself with humanity, He
+is in that respect made one with His brethren. He has made their
+interests His, and as their new Head is opening for them the gate of the
+future. He is inviting them into union with Himself, that in the status
+of His "brethren" and "friends" they may be also the true children of
+the heavenly Father. There is no hint anywhere that these things may be
+accomplished apart from Him, in individual isolation: indeed, if they
+could be so accomplished the Incarnation would be meaningless. He is the
+Way and no one cometh to the Father but by Him. He is the Truth, and no
+one knows the Father but he to whom the Son reveals Him. He is the Life,
+and no one spiritually lives except through His self-impartation. "He
+that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life. He that
+eateth me, even he shall live by me." In this outlook from the Cross
+which we recognise in our Blessed Lord when, forgetting His own
+sufferings in His appreciation of the needs of others, we see Him still
+fulfilling His ministry of mercy and of sympathy, we are certain that
+His eyes would rest upon one group which could not fail to pierce His
+heart with its pathos and tragedy. Our Lord's love is not a general,
+impersonal love of humanity; it is always love of a person. He no doubt
+felt a special love for this thief who appealed to Him from the cross by
+His side. In the whole course of His life our Lord had shown His oneness
+with us in that He loved special people in a special way. He loved
+Lazarus and his sisters, He loved S. John. Above all others He loved His
+Blessed Mother. And now looking down from the Cross He sees that the
+disciple whom He loved was succeeded in leading His mother into the very
+shadow of the Cross. How S. Mary had made her way there we do not know:
+only love knows how it triumphs over its obstacles and comes forth
+victorious. There is Blessed Mary, looking up into the face so scarred
+and bleeding, and there is the Son, looking down through the blinding
+blood into the face of the mother. This is the supreme human tragedy of
+Calvary. We can only stand and watch the exchange of love.
+
+And then comes the word--the word, by the way, which when it was spoken
+years ago in Cana of Galilee, men have interpreted as a harsh and
+rebuking word, with how much truth this scene tells--then comes the
+word: "Woman, behold thy son." In His love He gives her that which He
+had so much loved, the friendship of S. John. He brings together those
+who had so supremely loved Him in an association which would support
+them both in the trial of their loss. "Woman, behold thy son; behold thy
+mother." Bitter as was their sorrow in this hour, we know that they were
+marvellously comforted by this power of love which is able to transcend
+suffering and death. We know, because we know how utterly our Lord is
+one with us, that it was much to Him to look on the face that bent over
+Him in the Manger in Bethlehem. We know, because we know the perfect
+woman that was Mary, that there was deep joy as well as deep agony in
+being able to stand there at the last beneath the Cross.
+
+Do you think that we are going too far when we see in S. Mary not simply
+the mother of our Lord, but when we also see in her a certain
+representative character? Does she not represent us in one way and S.
+John represent us in another, in this supreme exchange of love? Do we
+not feel that in S. John we have been recommended to the love and care
+of Mary who is our mother? Do we not feel that in S. John the mother has
+been committed to our love and care? Surely, because we are members of
+her Son we have a special relation to S. Mary, and a special claim upon
+her, if it be permitted to express it in that way. It is no empty form
+of words when we call her mother, no exaltation of sentimentalism. The
+title represents a very real relation of love. It brings home to us that
+the love of Mary is as near infinite as the love of a creature can be,
+and that like the love of her Son it is an unselfish love. She is
+necessarily interested in all the members of the Body, and their cares
+and joys and sorrows she is glad to make her own. She is very close to
+us in her love and sympathy; she is very ready to help us with her
+prayers. We never go to her for succour but she hears us. "Behold thy
+son," her divine Son said to her on the Cross in His agony, and all who
+are members of that Son are her sons too. Her place in heaven above all
+creatures, most highly favoured as she is, is a place to which our
+prayers penetrate, and never penetrate unheard. For that other Son,
+through whose merits she is what she is, whose Face she ever beholds as
+the Face alike of her Redeemer and her Child, is ever ready to hear her
+intercessions for us because they come to Him with the power and the
+insight that perfect purity and perfect sympathy alone can give. So for
+us there is intense personal consolation in this word: "Behold
+thy mother."
+
+But there is another side to this committal. It is mutual: "Behold thy
+son." If we can see ourselves in S. John, committed to the Blessed
+Mother, we can also see ourselves in S. John to whom the blessed mother
+is committed. "Behold thy mother." There is a sense in which the blessed
+mother is committed to us; to-day she is our care. We see the
+fulfillment of this trust in the love and reverence wherewith
+Christendom from the beginning has surrounded S. Mary. It has accepted
+the charge with a passionate devotion. The growth of devotion to her is
+recorded in the vast literature of Mariology which comes to us from all
+parts and all eras of the Catholic Church. The details of the expression
+of this devotion have been wrought out through the centuries with
+loving care, and the result is that wherever there is a Catholic
+conception of religion, either in East or West, there is a grateful
+response to our Lord's trust of His Blessed mother to His Church in the
+person of S. John.
+
+We feel, do we not? that it is one of the great privileges of our
+spiritual life that we have found a personal part in this trust, that it
+is permitted us to preserve and hand on this reverence for Blessed Mary,
+and in so doing to gain personal contact with her as a spiritual power
+in the Kingdom of God. It means much to us that we can have the love and
+sympathy which are blended with her intercession, that we can associate
+our prayers with hers in the time of our need. Much as we value the
+sympathy and prayers of our friends here, we cannot but feel that in
+Mary we have a friend whose helpfulness is stimulated by a great love
+and directed by deep spiritual insight into the reality of our needs. We
+turn therefore to her with the certainty of her co-operation.
+
+Our Lord on the Cross had now fulfilled His mission in the care of
+individual persons, had prayed for His tormentors, had forgiven the
+penitent thief, and had commended those who were the special objects of
+His love to one another, and could now turn His thoughts away from earth
+to the love of the Father. His last words are intimate words to Him.
+They express the agony that tears His soul as the Face of the Father is
+for a moment hidden, and the peace of an accomplished work as He
+surrenders Himself into the hands of the Father that sent Him. He who
+had been our example all His life, showing us how to meet life, is our
+example in death, showing us how to meet death.
+
+But just wherein does the dying of Christ become an example for us? This
+final surrender to the Father of a will that had never been separate
+from the Father,--what can we derive from all that? There are many lines
+of approach and application. I can only touch on one or two:--
+
+"I have glorified Thee on the earth," our Lord said in the last
+wonderful prayer, "I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do."
+And here on the Cross He repeats, "It is finished." When we think of
+this we are impressed with the steadiness with which our Lord pursued
+His purpose, with the way He concentrated His whole life upon His work.
+He declined to be drawn aside by anything irrelevant to it. People came
+to Him with all sorts of requests, from the request that He will settle
+a disputed inheritance to the request that He will become their king;
+and He puts them all aside as having no pertinence to His mission. It is
+interesting to go through the Gospel and note just what are the details
+of this winnowing process; mark what our Lord accepts as relevant to His
+mission and what not. He is never too occupied or tired to attend to
+what belongs to His work. An ill old woman or idiot child is important
+to Him and He attends to them; but He declines the sort of work that
+will involve Him and His mission in controversy and politics. He is not
+a reformer of society but a reformer of men. He knows that only by the
+reformation of men can society be reformed.
+
+There is no doubt much to be learned from the study of our Lord's method
+of the limits of the social and political activity of His Church. It has
+constantly fallen a victim to the temptation to undertake the reform of
+the world by some other means than the conversion of it. It has shown
+itself quite willing to be made "a judge and divider." It has not always
+declined the invitation it has received to assume the purple. "Your
+business is to reform this miserable world which so sadly and so
+obviously needs you," men say to it; "You are not living up to your
+principles and you are neglecting your duty by not supporting this great
+movement for the betterment of the race," others say. Still others urge,
+"You are losing great masses of men through your inexplicable failure to
+adopt their cause." And the Church in the whole course of its history
+has constantly yielded to this temptation, and has not seen until too
+late that in so doing it was making itself the tool or the cat's-paw of
+one interest or another whose sole interest in religion was the
+possibility of exploiting the influence of the Church. In the stupid
+hope of forwarding its spiritual interests the Church has entangled
+itself with the responsibilities of temporal power; it has made itself
+the backer of "the divine right of kings"; and it has found itself bound
+hand and foot in the character of a national or state Church; and with a
+curious incapacity to learn anything from experience is now
+enthusiastically cheering for democracy! Poor Church, whose leaders are
+so constantly misleaders.
+
+It is all due to the hoary temptation to try to get to one's end by some
+sort of a short cut: "All these things will I give you if you will fall
+down and worship me." Our Lord knew that Satan could not really give Him
+the ends He was seeking; but His followers are constantly confident that
+he can, and are therefore his constant and ready tools for this or that
+party or interest. They sell themselves to monarchy or democracy, to
+capital or labour, with the same guileless innocence of what is
+happening to them, with the same simple-minded incapacity to learn
+anything from the lessons of the past. There are no short cuts to
+spiritual ends, and those ends can never be accomplished by secular
+means. The interests of the Kingdom of God can never be forwarded by
+alliance with the powers of this world; the interests of particular
+persons or parties in the Church may be--but that is quite
+another thing.
+
+The lesson is one that is not without application to the individual
+life. There again the tendency to mind something other than one's own
+business is almost ineradicable. We have before us the work of building
+our spiritual house, of finishing the work that the Father has given us
+to do, of carrying to a successful conclusion the work of our
+sanctification. In view of the experience of nearly two thousand years
+of Christianity and of our own personal experience, that would seem a
+sufficiently difficult and obligatory work to occupy the undivided
+energies of a life-time. But we are accustomed to treat this primary
+business of life quite as though it were a parergon, a thing to play
+with in our unoccupied hours, the fad of a collector rather than the
+supreme interest of an immortal being. That spiritual results are no
+oftener achieved than they are can occasion no surprise when one
+understands the sort of spirit wherewith they are approached. If the
+average man adopted toward his business the attitude he adopts toward
+his religion he would be bankrupt within a week,--and he knows it. You
+know that the attention you are paying to religion and the sort of
+energy and sacrifice you are putting into it are insufficient to secure
+any sort of a result worth having. Spiritually speaking, your life is an
+example of misdirected and dissipated energy. There is no spiritual
+result because there is no continuous and energetic effort in a
+spiritual direction. You are not like a master-builder planning and
+erecting a house. You are like a child playing with a box of blocks who
+begins to build a house with them and, when it is half built, is
+attracted by something else and runs after that--not even waiting to put
+the blocks back into the box!
+
+Life, no doubt, this modern city life into which we are plunged, is
+terribly distracting. Concentration upon a single aim is hard to attain.
+So we plead in our excuse, but the excuse is a false one and we know it.
+We know it because we know many people who have achieved the sort of
+concentration and simplicity of aim that we complain of as so difficult.
+They to be sure have other ends than those we claim to be ours, but that
+would not seem to be important. By far the greater part of the male
+population of this city is intensely concentrated in money making. I do
+not believe that I have overheard during the last year two men talking
+in a car or on the street who were not talking about money. There is a
+good enough example of the possibility of concentrating on a single end
+under the conditions of our life. There are other people, you know some
+of them, whose lives are devoted in the most thorough manner to the
+pursuit of pleasure. They find no difficulty in such concentration, and
+they afford an even better example of what we are discussing than the
+money-makers. The money-maker says, "I have to live and my family has to
+live, and we cannot live unless I devote myself to business. It is all
+very well to talk about spiritual interests, but those are the plain
+common sense facts. A man who spends all his time on religion will find
+it pretty difficult to live in New York." Very well, that seems
+unanswerable. But go back to the men and women whose sole interest is
+amusement--how do they live? In some way they seem to have so succeeded
+in subordinating business to pleasure that they get what they want, and
+they somehow escape starvation!
+
+There, I fancy, is the explanation--they get what they want. In a broad
+way we all get what we want. We accomplish in some degree at least the
+ends which we make the supreme ends of life. We are back therefore where
+we started: What are our supreme ends? Are they in fact spiritual? Have
+we mastered the technique of the Christian life sufficiently to be
+single-eyed and pure-hearted in our pursuit of life's ends? Are we
+devoted to the aim of manifesting the glory of God and finishing the
+work that He has given us to do?
+
+This, once more, was the secret of our Lord's life, and it is the secret
+of all those who have at all succeeded in imitating Him. They have
+followed Him with singleness of purpose. They have felt life to be
+before all else a vocation to manifest the will of God and to finish a
+given work. That was the attitude of our Blessed Mother; she began on
+that note: "Behold the hand-maid of the Lord; be it unto me according to
+thy word." It was the Gospel that she preached: "Whatsoever he saith
+unto you, do it." Her whole life was a response--the response of love
+to love.
+
+That no doubt, goes to the heart of the spiritual problem. If we are to
+accomplish anything at all in the way of spiritual development, if we
+are to conduct life in simplicity toward spiritual ends, it will only be
+when the source of life's energy is found in love. He who does not love
+has no compelling motive toward God and no abiding principle to control
+life. If we conceive the Christian life as a task that is forced upon
+us, and which in some way we are bound to fulfil, we may be sure that
+the way in which we shall fulfil it will be weak and halting. We may be
+as conscientious as you please, but we shall not be able to concentrate
+on a work which is merely a work of duty and not the embodiment of a
+great love. Our primary activity should be devout meditation and study
+of our Lord's life, with prayer for guidance and help, till something
+of the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, till we feel our hearts
+burn within us and our spirits glow and we become able to offer
+ourselves, soul and body, a living sacrifice unto Him.
+
+     MARY:       I cried: "Maudeleyn, help now!
+                 My Son hath loved full well thee;
+                 Pray Him that I may die,
+                 That I not forgotten be!
+                 Seest thou, Maudeleyn, now
+                 My Son is hanged on a tree,
+                 Yet alive am I and thou,--
+                 And thou, thou prayest not for me!"
+
+     MAUDELEYN  said: "I know no red,
+                Care hath smitten my heart sore.
+                I stand, I see my Lord nigh dead;
+                And thy weeping grieveth me more.
+                Come with me; I will thee lead
+                Into the Temple here before
+                For thou hast now i-wept full yore."
+
+     MARY:      "I ask thee, Maudeleyn, where is that place,--
+                In plain or valley or in hill?
+                Where I may hide in any case
+                That no sorrow come me till.
+                For He that all my joy was,
+                Now death with Him will do its will;
+                For me no better solace is
+                Than just to weep, to weep my fill."
+                   The Maudeleyn comforted me tho.
+                   To lead me hence, she said, was best:
+                   But care had smitten my heart so
+                   That I might never have no rest.
+
+               "Sister, wherever that I go
+               The woe of Him is in my breast,
+               While my Sone hangeth so
+               His pains are in mine own heart fast.
+               Should I let Him hangen there
+               Let my Son alone then be?
+               Maudeleyn, think, unkind I were
+               If He should hang and I should flee."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+               I bade them go where was their will,
+               This Maudeleyn and everyone,
+               And by myself remain I will
+               For I will flee for no man.
+
+     From St. Bernard's "Lamentation On Christ's Passion."
+
+     Engl. version, 13th Cent., by Richard Maydestone.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE DESCENT AND BURIAL
+
+     And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean
+     linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had
+     hewn out in the rock.
+
+     S. Matt. XXVII, 59, 60.
+
+     It is meet in very truth to bless thee the Theotokos, the
+     ever-blessed and all-immaculate and Mother of our God.
+     Honoured above the Cherubim, incomparably more glorious than
+     the Seraphim, thou who without stain gavest birth to God the
+     Word, and art truly Mother of God, we magnify thee.
+
+     BYZANTINE.
+
+The end had come--so it must have seemed to those who had loved and
+followed our Lord. As they came back from the burial, those of them who
+had remained true to the end, as they came out of their hiding places,
+those others who forsook Him and fled, they met in that "Upper Room"
+which was already consecrated by so many experiences. They came back
+from Joseph's Garden, S. John leading the blessed Mother, the Magdalen
+and the other Mary following, S. Peter came from whatever obscure corner
+he had found safety in. The other Apostles came one by one, a
+frightened, disheartened group, shame-faced and doubtful as to what
+might next befall them. The thing that to us seems strangest of all is
+that no one seems to have taken in the meaning of our Lord's words about
+His resurrection. Not even S. Mary herself appears to have seen any
+light through the surrounding darkness. I suppose that so much of what
+our Lord taught them was unintelligible until after the coming of the
+Holy Spirit that they rarely felt sure that they understood His meaning;
+and when the meaning was so unprecedented as that involved in His
+sayings about the resurrection we can understand that they should have
+been so little influenced by them.
+
+S. Mary's grief would have been so deep, so overwhelming, that she would
+have been unable to think of the future at all save as a dreary waste
+of pain. She could only think that her Son who was all to her, was dead.
+She had stood by the Cross through all the agony of His dying: she had
+heard His last words. That final word to her had sunk very deep into her
+heart. She had once more felt His Body in her arms as it was taken down
+from the Cross; and she had followed to the place where was a Garden and
+a new tomb wherein man had never yet lain, there she had seen the Body
+placed and hastily cared for, as much as the shortness of the time on
+the Passover Eve would permit. And then she had gone away, not caring at
+all where she was taken, with but one thought monotonously beating in
+her brain,--He is dead, He is dead.
+
+It would not be possible in such moments calmly to recall what He
+Himself had taught about death. Death for the moment would mean what it
+had always meant to religious people of her time and circle. What that
+was we have very clearly presented to us in the talk with Martha that
+our Lord had near the place where Lazarus lay dead. There is a fuller
+knowledge than we find explicit in the Old Testament, showing a growth
+in the understanding of the Revelation in the years that fall between
+the close of the Old Testament canon and the coming of our Lord. There
+is a belief in survival to be followed by resurrection at the last day.
+That would no doubt be St. Mary's belief about death. That is still the
+belief of many Christians to-day. "I know that he shall rise again in
+the resurrection at the last day." There are still many who think that
+they have accepted the full Revelation of God in Christ who have not
+appreciated the vast difference that the triumph of Christ over death
+has made for us here and now.
+
+So we have no difficulty in understanding the gloom that fell on the
+Apostolic circle, accentuated as it was by the very vivid fear that at
+any moment they might hear the approaching feet of the Jewish and Roman
+officials and the knock of armed hands upon the door. What to do? How
+escape? Had they so utterly misunderstood and misinterpreted Christ that
+this is the natural outcome of His movement? Had they been the victims
+of foolish hopes and of a baseless ambition when they saw in Him the
+Christ, the one who should at this time restore again the Kingdom to
+Israel? They had persistently clung to this nationalistic interpretation
+of His work although He had never encouraged it; but it was the only
+meaning that they were able to see in it. And now all their expectations
+had collapsed, and they were left hopeless and leaderless to face the
+consequences of a series of acts that had ended in the death of their
+Master and would end, they knew not how, for them. Was it at all likely
+that the Jewish authorities having disposed of the leader in a dangerous
+movement would be content to let the followers go free? Would they not
+rather seek to wipe out the last traces of the movement in blood?
+
+So they would have thought, gathered in that Upper Room, while outside
+the Jewish authorities were keeping the Passover. What a Passover it was
+to them with this nightmare of a rebellion which threatened their whole
+place and power passed away. What mutual congratulations were theirs on
+the clever way in which the whole matter had been handled. There had
+been a moment when they were on the very point of failure, when Pilate
+was ready to let Jesus go free. That was their moment of greatest
+danger; and they took their courage in both hands and threw the
+challenge squarely in the face of the cowardly Governor: "If thou let
+this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend!" The chief priests knew their
+man, and they carried their plan against him with a determined hand,
+declining to accept any compromise, anything less than the death of
+Jesus. Great was the rejoicing; hearty were the mutual congratulations
+in the official circles of Jerusalem. It had been long since they had
+celebrated so wonderful a Passover as that!
+
+So limited, so mistaken, is the human outlook on life. They had but to
+await another night's passing and all would be changed. But in the
+meantime the position of the disciples was pitiful. They were in that
+state of dull, hopeless discouragement that is one of the most painful
+of human states. It is a state to which we who are Christians do from
+time to time fall victims with much less excuse. We are hopeless, we say
+and feel. We look at the future, at the problems with which we are
+fronted, and we see no ray of light, no suggestion of a solution. We
+have been robbed of what we most valued and life looks wholly blank to
+us. For those others there was this of excuse,--they did not know Jesus
+risen, they did not know the power of the resurrection life. For us
+there is no such excuse because we have a sure basis of hope in our
+knowledge of the meaning of the Lord.
+
+Hope is one of the great trilogy of Christian Virtues, the gift to
+Christians of God the Holy Ghost. As Christians we have the virtue of
+hope, the question is whether we will excercise it or no. It is one of
+the many fruits of our being in a state of grace. Many blunder when they
+think of hope in that they confound it with an optimistic feeling about
+the future. We hear of hopeful persons and we know that by the
+description is meant persons who are confident "that everything will be
+all right," when there seems no ground at all for thinking so. They have
+a "buoyant temperament," by which I suppose is meant a temperament which
+soars above facts. That not very intelligent attitude has nothing to do
+with the Christian virtue of hope. Hope is born of our relation to God.
+It is the conviction: "God is on my side; I will not fear what man can
+do unto me." It is the serene and untroubled trust of one who knows that
+he is safe in the hands of God, and that his life is really ordered by
+the will and Providence of God.
+
+This virtue, had they possessed it, would have carried the disciples
+through the crisis of our Lord's death. They had had sufficient
+experience of Him to know that they might utterly rely on Him in all the
+circumstances of their lives. He had always sustained them and carried
+them through all crises. They had often been puzzled by Him, no doubt;
+they had felt helpless to fathom much of His teaching, but they had
+slowly arrived at certain conclusions about Him which He Himself had
+confirmed. On that day at Caesarea Phillipi they had reached the
+conclusion of His Messiahship, a slumbering conviction had broken into
+flame and light in the great confession of S. Peter. The meaning of
+Messiahship was a part of their national religious tradition; and
+although in some important respects mistaken, they yet, one would think,
+have been led to perfect trust in our Lord when they acknowledged His
+Messianic claims. But death? They could not get over the apparent
+finality of death. But, again, perhaps we are not very far beyond this
+in our understanding of it. To us still death seems very final.
+
+But it was just that sense of its finality--of its constituting a
+hopeless break in the continuity of existence--that our Lord was engaged
+in removing during these days which to them were days of hopelessness
+and despair. When they came to know what in these days was taking place;
+and when the Church guided by the Holy Spirit came to meditate upon the
+meaning of our Lord's action it would see death in a changed light. The
+sense of a cataclysmic disaster in death would pass and be replaced by a
+sense of the continuity of life. Hitherto attention had been
+concentrated on this world, and death had been a disappearence from this
+world, the stopping of worldly loves and interests. Presently death
+would be seen to be the translation of the human being to a new sphere
+of activities, but involving no cessation of consciousness or failure of
+personal activities. Men had thought, naturally enough in their lack of
+knowledge, of the effect of death on the survivors, of the break in
+their relations with the dead. Now death would be viewed from the point
+of view of the interests of the person who is dead; and it would emerge
+that he continued under different conditions, and in the end it would
+come to be seen that even in the relations of the survivors with the
+dead there was no necessary and absolute break, but that the new
+conditions of life made possible renewed intercourse under altered
+circumstances.
+
+Our Lord, the disciples learned not long after, during these days went
+to preach to the spirits in prison, which the thought of the Church has
+interpreted to mean that He carried the news of the Redemption He had
+wrought through His dying, to the place of the dead, to the region where
+the souls of the faithful were patiently waiting the time of their
+perfecting. The doors of the heavenly world could not be opened till the
+time when He by His Cross and Passion, by His death and resurrection,
+opened them. The Heads of the Gates could not be lifted till they were
+lifted for the entrance of the King of Glory. But once lifted they were
+lifted forever; and when He ascended up on high He led His troop of
+captives redeemed from the bondage of death and hell.
+
+It is through these lifted Gates that the companies of the sanctified
+have been streaming ever since; and the difference that has been made in
+our view of death has been immense. If we have the faith of a Christian
+death has been transformed. There remains, of course, the natural grief
+which is ours when we part from those whom we love. This grief is
+natural and holy as it is in fact an expression of our love. It is not
+rebellion against the will of God, but is the expression of a feeling
+wherewith God has endowed us. But there is no longer in it the sting of
+hopelessness that we find, for instance, in the inscriptions on pagan
+tombs, nay, on tombs still, though created by Christians and found in
+Christian cemeteries. Rather it is the expression of a love which is
+learning to exercise itself under new conditions. We do not find it
+possible to reverse all our habits in a moment; and the new relation
+with the dead is one to which we have to learn to accustom ourselves. I
+remember a case where a mother and a son had never been separated for
+more than a day at a time, though he was far on in manhood. There came a
+time of indeterminate separation and the mother's grief was intense
+notwithstanding that there was no thought of a permanent separation. It
+took some time for her to accustom herself to the new mode of
+communication by letter. It is not far otherwise in death; it takes some
+time for us to accustom ourselves to the new mode of intercourse through
+prayer, but we succeed, and the new intercourse is very real and very
+precious. In a sense, too, it is a nearer, more intimate intercourse. It
+lacks the homely, daily touches, no doubt; but in compensation it
+reveals to us the spiritual values in life. We speedily learn, we learn
+almost by a spiritual instinct, what are the common grounds on which we
+can now meet. By our intercourse with our dead we get a new grasp on the
+truth of our common life in Christ: it is in and through Him that all
+our converse is now mediated. We have little difficulty in knowing what
+are the thoughts and interests which may be shared under the new
+conditions in which we find ourselves. Our perception of spiritual
+interests and spiritual values grows and deepens, and our communion with
+our dead becomes an indication of the extent of our own
+spiritual growth.
+
+There come times in the spiritual experience of most of us when we seem
+to have got to the end. There is a deepening sense of failure which is
+not, when we analyse it, so much a failure in this or that detail, as a
+general sense of the futility of the life of the Church as expressed in
+our individual lives. It came to those primitive congregations, you
+remember, to which S. Peter was writing; "Where is the promise of his
+coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they
+were from the beginning of creation." It is the weariness of continuous
+effort from which we conclude that we are getting quite
+insufficient results.
+
+No doubt that is true. The results are never what we expect, possibly
+because the effort is never what we imagine it to be. We continually
+underestimate the opposing force of evil, the difficulty of dealing with
+a humanity which falls so easily under the slightest temptation. It is
+not that sinners decline to hear the Word of God, but that those who
+profess themselves to be the servants of God, and who in fact intend to
+be such, are so lamentably weak and ineffective. We think of the effort
+of God in the Incarnation; we have been following that effort in some
+detail through the Passion. We are surprised, shocked, disheartened by
+the spectacle of the hatred that innocence stirs up, at the lengths men
+will go when they see their personal ends threatened. We are horrified
+by Caiphas, Pilate, Herod. But is that the really horrifying thing
+about the Passion of our Lord? To me the supreme example of human
+incomprehension is that all the disciples forsook Him and fled, that He
+was left to die almost alone. There we get the most disheartening
+failure in the tragedy.
+
+For we expect the antagonism of the world, especially that part of the
+world that has seen and rejected Christ. There we find Satanic
+activities. One of the outstanding features of the literature of to-day
+in the Western world, the world that had known from childhood the story
+of Jesus, is its utter hatred of Christianity; its revolt from all that
+Christianity stands for. This is markedly true in regard to the
+Christian teaching in the matter of purity. The contemporary English
+novel is perhaps the vilest thing that has yet appeared on this earth.
+There have been plenty of unclean books written in the course of the
+world's history--we have only to recall the literature of the
+Renaissance--but for the most part they have been written in careless or
+boastful disregard of moral sanctions which they still regarded as
+existing; but the novel of the present is an immoral propaganda--it is
+deliberately and of malice immoral, not out of careless levity, but out
+of deliberate intention. You do not feel that the modern author is just
+describing immoral actions which grow out of his story, but that he is
+constructing his story for the purpose of propagating immoral theory. He
+hates the whole teaching of the Christian Religion in the matter of
+purity. He has thrown it overboard on the ground that it is an
+"unnatural" restraint. To those who have studied the development of
+thought since the Renaissance there is nothing surprising in this.
+
+But what does still surprise those who are as yet capable of being
+surprised is the light way in which the mass of Christians take their
+religion. Occasionally, in moments of frankness, they admit that they
+are not getting anything out of it; but it is harder to get them to
+admit that the reason is that they are not putting anything into it. You
+do not expect to get returns from a business into which you are putting
+no capital, and you have no right to expect returns from a religion into
+which you are putting no energy. What is meant by that is that those
+Christians who are keeping the minimum routine of Christianity, who are
+going to High Mass on Sunday (or perhaps only to low Mass) and then
+making the rest of the day a time of self-indulgence and pleasure; who
+make their communions but rarely; who do not go to confession, or go
+only at Easter; who are giving no active support to the work of the
+Gospel as represented in parish and diocese have no right to be
+surprised if they find that they do not seem to get any results from
+their religion; that it is often rather a bore to do even so much as
+they do, and that they see no point in permitting it further to
+interfere with their customary amusements and avocations. I do not know
+what such persons expect from their religion, but I am sure that they
+will be disappointed if they are expecting any spiritual result.
+Naturally, they will be disappointed if they look in themselves for any
+evidence of the virtue of hope. The most that can be looked for under
+the circumstances is that mockery of hope, presumption.
+
+We are not to be discouraged in our estimate of the Christian Religion
+by this which seems to be the failure of God. We are not to echo the
+cry: "Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were
+from the beginning of the creation." S. Peter pointed out to those
+pessimists that all things do not continue the same, that there are
+times of crisis which are the judgments of God. Such a judgment was that
+of old which swept the wickedness of the world away, "whereby the world
+that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." He goes on to
+state that the present order likewise will issue in judgment: "The
+heavens and the earth which are now ... are kept in store, reserved unto
+fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." What
+renders men hopeless is the feeling of God's inactivity; but this
+declaration of impending judgment certifies the active interest of God.
+God's dealing with the world is a perpetual judgment of which we are apt
+to decline the evidence until the cataclysm reveals the final scene. But
+every society, every individual life, is being judged through the whole
+course of its existence, and there is no need that either society or
+individual should be blind to the fact that such a judgment is taking
+place. There is no failure of God. There is a failure on our part to
+understand the works of God.
+
+We may very well consider the problem an individual one and ask
+ourselves what ground of hope we have. On the basis of our present
+effort can we, ought we, to have more than we have? The spiritual life
+is not an accident that befalls certain people; it is an art that is
+acquired by such persons as are interested in it. It is attained through
+the careful training and exercise of the faculties wherewith we have
+been endowed. The answer to our question is itself a perfectly simple
+one, as simple as would be the answer to the question: "Do you speak
+French?" We speak French if we have taken the trouble to learn French;
+and we have gained results in the way of spiritual development and
+culture if we have taken the trouble to do so. I do not know why we
+should expect results on any other ground than that.
+
+But certain persons say: "I have tried, and have not attained any
+results." Well, I should want to know what the trying means in that
+case. It is well for a person who aspires to spiritual culture to think
+of his past history. What sort of character-development has so far been
+going on? Commonly it happens that there has been no spiritual effort
+that is worth thinking about; but that does not mean that nothing
+spiritual has been happening. It means on the contrary that there has
+been going on a spiritual atrophy, the spiritual powers have been
+without exercise and will be difficult to arouse to activity. In such a
+case as that spiritual awakening will be followed by a long period of
+spiritual struggle against habits of thought and action which we have
+already formed, a period in which unused and immature spiritual powers
+must be roused to action and disciplined to use. The simplest
+illustration of this is the difficulty experienced by the enthusiastic
+beginner in holding the attention fixed on spiritual acts such as the
+various forms of prayer. In all such attempts at spiritual activity
+there will be the constant drag of old habits, the recurrence of states
+of mind and imagination that had become habitual. These hindrances can
+be overcome, but only by steady and rather tedious labour. They call for
+the display of the virtue of patience which is not one of the virtues
+characteristic of spiritual immaturity. Hence reaction and the feeling
+that one is not getting on, the feeling that we have quite possibly made
+a mistake about the whole matter.
+
+This is the place for the exercise of hope; and hope will come if we
+look away from our not very encouraging acquirement to the ground that
+we have for expecting any acquirement at all. If we ask: "Why hope?" we
+shall see that our basis of hope is not in ourselves at all but in God.
+We hope because of the promises of God, because of His will for us as
+revealed in His Son. "He loved us and gave Himself for us"; and that
+giving will not be in vain. "He gave Himself for me," I tell myself,
+"and therefore I am justified in my expectation of spiritual success."
+So one tries to learn from the present failure as it seems; so one
+repents and pushes on; so one learns that it is through tenacity of
+purpose that one attains results.
+
+And again: I am sustained by hope because I see that the results that I
+covet are not imaginary. They exist. I see them in operation all about
+me. I learn of them as I study the lives of other Christians past and
+present. They are reality not theory, fact not dream. And what has been
+so richly and abundantly the outcome of spiritual living in others must
+be within my own reach. The results they attained were not miraculous
+gifts, but they were the working of God the Holy Spirit in lives yielded
+to Him and co-operating with Him.
+
+Once more: is it not true that after a period of honest labour I do find
+results? Perhaps not all that I would like but all that I am justified
+in expecting from the energy I have spent? I do not believe that any one
+can look back over a year's honest labour and not see that the labour
+has born fruit.
+
+In any case the fact that we do not see just what we are looking for
+does not mean that no spiritual work is going on. It may seem that our
+Lord is silent and that to our cries there is no voice nor any that
+answers; but that may mean that we are looking in the wrong place or
+listening for the wrong word. The disciples looked that the outcome of
+our Lord's life should be that the Kingdom should be restored to Israel;
+and when they turned away from the tomb in Joseph's Garden they felt
+that what they had looked for and prayed for was hopeless of
+accomplishment. But the important point was not their vision of the
+Kingdom at all, but that they had yielded themselves to our Lord and
+become His disciples and lovers. This is not what they intended to do,
+but it is what actually had happened: and when the grave yielded up the
+dead Whom they thought that they had lost forever, Jesus came back with
+a mission for them that was infinitely wider than their dream: the
+mission of founding not the old Kingdom of David, but the Kingdom of
+David's Son. All their aspirations and prayers were fulfilled by being
+transcended, and they found themselves in a position vastly more
+important than had been reached even in their dreams.
+
+Something like that not infrequently happens in our experience. We
+conceive a spiritual ambition and work for a spiritual end, and seem
+always to miss it; and then the day comes when God reveals to us what He
+has been doing, and we find that through the very discipline of our
+failure we have been being prepared for a success of which we had not
+thought: and when we raise our eyes from the path we thought so toilsome
+and uninteresting, it is to find ourselves at the very gate of the City
+of God. It will be with us as with the Apostles who in the darkest hour
+of their imagined failure, when they were gathered together in hiding
+from the Jews were startled by the appearence among them of the risen
+Jesus, and were filled with the unutterable joy of His message of peace.
+
+     "His body is wrapped all in woe,
+     Hand and foot He may not go.
+     Thy Son, Lady, that thou lovest so
+     Naked is nailed upon a tree.
+
+     "The Blessed Body that thou hast born,
+     To save mankind that was forlorn,
+     His body, Lady, the Jews have torn,
+     And hurt His Head, as ye may see."
+
+     When John his tale began to tell
+     Mary would not longer dwell
+     But hied her fast unto that hill
+     Where she might her own Son see.
+
+     "My sweete Son, Thou art me dear,
+     Oh why have men hanged thee here?
+     Thy head is closed with a brier,
+     O why have men so done to Thee?"
+
+     "John, this woman I thee betake;
+     Keep My Mother for My sake.
+     On Rood I hang for mannes sake
+     For sinful men as thou may see.
+
+     "This game alone I have to play,
+     For sinful souls that are to die.
+     Not one man goeth by the way
+     That on my pains will look and see.
+
+     "Father, my soul I thee betake,
+     My body dieth for mannes sake;
+     To hell I go withouten wake,
+     Mannes soul to maken free."
+
+     Pray we all that Blessed Son
+     That He help us when may no man
+     And bring to bliss each everyone
+     Amen, amen, amen for Charity.
+
+Early English Lyrics, p. 146. From an MS. in the Sloane collection.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE RESURRECTION
+
+And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted; ye seek Jesus of Nazareth,
+which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here.
+
+S. Mark XVI, 6.
+
+     O God, who wast pleased that thy Word, when the angel
+     delivered his message, should take flesh in the womb of the
+     blessed Virgin Mary, give ear to our humble petitions, and
+     grant that we who believe her truly to be the Mother of God,
+     may be helped by her prayers. Through.
+
+     O Almighty and merciful God, who hast wonderfully provided
+     perpetual succour for the defence of Christian people in the
+     most blessed Virgin Mary; mercifully grant that, contending
+     during life under the protection of such patronage, we may be
+     enabled to gain the victory, over the malignant enemy in
+     death. Through.
+
+     OLD CATHOLIC.
+
+Whatever may be our grief, however life may seem to have been emptied
+of all interest for us, nevertheless the routine of life reasserts
+itself and forces us back to the daily tasks no matter how savourless
+they may now seem. We speedily find that we are not isolated but units
+in a social order which claims us and calls on us to fulfil the duties
+of our place. Blessed Mary was led away from the tomb of her Son in the
+prostration of grief; but her very duty to Him would have forced her
+thought away from herself and led her to join in the preparations which
+were being made for the proper care of the Sacred Body. And in that sad
+duty she would find solace of a kind; there is an expression of love in
+the care we give our dead. This body now so helpless and unresponsive,
+has been the medium through which the soul expressed itself to us; it
+has been the instrument of love and the sacrament of our union. How well
+we know it! How well the mother knows every feature of her child, how
+she now lingers over the preparations for the burial feeling that the
+separation is not quite accomplished so long as her hands can touch and
+her eyes see the familiar features. In the pause that the Sabbath forced
+on the friends of Jesus we may be sure that they were making what
+preparations might be made under the restrictions of their religion, and
+that they looked eagerly for the passing of the Sabbath as giving them
+one more opportunity of service to the Master. There was the group of
+women who had followed Him and "ministered of their substance" who were
+faithful still. The Mother had no "substance"; she shared the poverty of
+her Son. Her support during the Sabbath would be the expectancy of
+looking once more upon His Face.
+
+But when the first day of the week dawned it proved to be a day of
+stupendous wonder. They, the Disciples and these faithful women, seemed
+to themselves, no doubt, to have passed into a new world where the
+presuppositions of the old world were upset and reversed. There were
+visions of angels, reported appearances of Jesus, an empty tomb. Through
+the incredible reports that came to them from various sources the light
+gradually broke for them. It was true then, that saying of Jesus, that
+He would rise again from the dead! It was not some mysterious bit of
+teaching, the exact bearing of which they did not catch, but a literal
+fact! And then while they still hesitated and doubted, while they still
+hid behind the closed doors, Jesus Himself came and stood in the midst
+with His message of peace. It is often so, is it not? While we are in
+perplexity and fear, while we think the next sound will be the knock of
+armed hands on the door, it is not the Jews that come, but Jesus with a
+message of peace. Our fears are so pathetic, so pitiful; we meet life
+and death with so little of the understanding and the courage that our
+Lord's promises ought to inspire in us! We stand so shudderingly before
+the vision of death, are so much appalled by the thought of the grave!
+We shudder and tremble as the hand of death is stretched out toward us
+and ours. One is often tempted to ask as one hears people talking of
+death: "Are these Christians? Do they believe in immortality? Have they
+heard the message of the first Easter morning, the angelic announcement
+of the resurrection of Christ? Have they never found the peace of
+believing, the utter quiet of the spirit in the confidence of a certain
+hope which belongs to those who have grasped the meaning of the
+resurrection of the dead?" Here in Jerusalem in a few days the whole
+point of view is changed. The frightened group of disciples is
+transformed by the resurrection experience into the group of glad and
+triumphant missionaries who will be ready when they are endowed with
+power from on high to go out and preach Jesus and the resurrection to
+the ends of the earth.
+
+What in these first days the resurrection meant to them was no doubt
+just the return of Jesus. He was with them once more, and they were
+going to take hope again in the old life, to resume the old mission
+which had been interrupted by the disaster of Calvary. All other feeling
+would have been swallowed up in the mere joy of the recovery. But it
+could not be many hours before it would be plain that if Jesus was
+restored to them He was restored with a difference. A new element had
+entered their intercourse which was due to some subtle change that had
+passed upon Him. We get the first note of it in that wonderful scene in
+Joseph's Garden when the Lord appears to the Magdalen. There is all the
+love and sympathy there had ever been; but when in response to her name
+uttered in the familiar voice the Magdalen throws herself at His Feet,
+there is a new word that marks a new phase in their relation: "Touch Me
+not, for I am not yet ascended."
+
+This new thing in our Lord which held them back with a new word that
+they had never experienced before must have become plainer each day. S.
+Mary feels no less love in her Son restored to her from; the grave, but
+she does not find just the same freedom of approach. S. John could no
+longer think of leaning on His Heart at supper as before. Jesus was the
+same as before. There was the same thoughtful sympathy; the same tender
+love; but it is now mediated through a nature that has undergone some
+profound change in the days between death and resurrection. The humanity
+has acquired new powers, the spirit is obviously more in control of the
+body. Our Lord appeared and disappeared abruptly. His control over
+matter was absolute. And in His intercourse with the disciples there was
+a difference. He did not linger with them but appeared briefly from time
+to time as though He were but a passing visitor to the world. There were
+no longer the confidential talks in the fading light after the day's
+work and teaching was over. There was no longer the common meal with its
+intimacy and friendliness. There was, and this was a striking change, no
+longer any attempt to approach those outside the apostolic circle, no
+demonstration of His resurrection to the world that had, as it thought,
+safely disposed of Him. He came for brief times and with brief
+messages, short, pregnant instructions, filled with meaning for the
+future into which they are soon to enter.
+
+What did it mean, this resurrection of Jesus? It meant the demonstration
+of the continuity of our nature in our Lord. The Son of God took upon
+Him our nature and lived and died in that nature. Our pressing question
+is, what difference has that made to us? How are _we_ affected? Has
+humanity been permanently affected by the resumption of it by God in the
+resurrection? If the assumption of humanity by our Lord was but a
+passing assumption; if He took flesh for a certain purpose, and that
+purpose fulfilled, laid it aside, and once more assumed His
+pre-incarnate state, we should have difficulty in seeing that our
+humanity was deeply affected by the Incarnation. There would have been
+exhibited a perfect human life, but what would have been left at the end
+of that life would have been just the story of it, a thing wholly of the
+past. It is not much better if it is assumed that the meaning of the
+resurrection is the revelation of the immortality of the human spirit,
+that in fact the resurrection means that the soul of Jesus is now in the
+world of the spirit, but that His Body returned to the dust. We are not
+very much interested in the bare fact of survival. What interests us is
+the mode of survival, the conditions under which we survive. We are
+interested, that is to say, in our survival as human beings and not in
+our survival as something else--souls.
+
+A soul is not a human being; a human being is a composite of soul and
+body. It is interesting to note that people who do not believe in the
+resurrection of our Lord, do not believe in our survival as human
+beings, consequently do not believe in a heaven that is of any human
+interest. But we feel, do we not? a certain lack of interest in a future
+in which we shall be something quite different in constitution from what
+we are now. We can think of a time between death and the resurrection in
+which we shall be incomplete, but that is tolerable because it is
+disciplinary and temporary and looks on to our restitution to full
+humanity in the resurrection at the Last Day. And we feel that the
+promise, the certainty of this is sealed by our Lord's resurrection from
+the dead. We are certain that that took place because it is needful to
+the completion of His Work.
+
+The Creed is one: and if one denies one article one speedily finds that
+there is an effect on others. The denial of the resurrection is part and
+parcel of the attempt to reduce Christianity to a history of something
+that once took place which is important to us to-day because it affords
+us a standard of life, a pattern after which we are to shape ourselves.
+Else should we be very much in the dark. We gain from the Christian
+Revelation a conception of God as a kindly Father Who desires His
+children to follow the example of His Son. That example, no doubt, must
+not be pressed too literally, must be adapted to modern conditions; but
+we can get some light and guidance from the study of it. Still, if you
+do not care to follow it nothing will happen to you. It is merely a
+pleasing occupation for those who are interested in such things. The
+affirmation of the resurrection, on the other hand, is the affirmation
+of the continuity of the work of God Incarnate; it is an assertion that
+Christianity is a supernatural action of God going on all the time, the
+essence of which is, not that it invites the believer to imitation of
+the life of Christ, so far as seems practical under modern conditions,
+but that it calls him to union with Christ; it makes it his life's
+meaning to recreate the Christ-experience, to be born and live and die
+through the experience of Incarnate God. It fixes his attention not on
+what Jesus did but on what Jesus is. It insists on a present vital
+organic relation to God, mediated by the humanity of Jesus; and if there
+be no humanity of Jesus, if at His death He ceased to be completely
+human, then there is no possibility of such a relation to God in Christ
+as the Catholic Religion has from the beginning postulated; and unless
+we are to continue human there seems no continuing basis for such a
+relation to one another in the future as would make the future of any
+interest to us. For us, as for S. Paul, all our hope hangs on the
+resurrection of Christ from the dead; and if Christ be not risen from
+the dead then is our faith vain.
+
+For us then, as for the men who wrote the Gospel, and for the men who
+planted the Church and watered it with their blood, the resurrection of
+Jesus means the return of His Spirit from the place whither it had gone
+to preach to the spirits in prison and its reunion with the Body which
+had been laid in the tomb in Joseph's Garden, and the issuing of
+perfect God and perfect man from that tomb on the first Easter morning.
+That humanity had, no doubt, undergone profound changes to fit it to be
+the perfect instrument of the spirit of Christ Jesus henceforward. It is
+now the resurrection body, the spiritual body of the new man. We
+understand that it is now a body fitted for the new conditions of the
+resurrection life, and we also understand that it is the exemplar of
+what our risen bodies will be. They will be endowed with new powers and
+capacities, but they will be human bodies, the medium of the spirit's
+expression and a recognisable means of intercourse with our friends. We
+lie down in the grave with a certainty of preserving our identity and of
+maintaining the capacity of intercourse with those we know and love.
+That is what really interests us in the future which would be
+uninteresting on other terms; and that is what our Lord's appearances
+after the resurrection seem to guarantee. He resumed a human intercourse
+with those whom He had gathered about Him. He continued His work of
+instruction and preparation for the future. And when at length He left
+them they were prepared to understand that His departure was but the
+beginning of a new relation. But also they would feel much less that
+there was an absolute break with the past than if He had not appeared to
+them after the Crucifixion, and they had been left with but a belief in
+His immortality. They would, too, now be able to look on to the future
+as containing a renewal of the relations now changed, to read a definite
+meaning into His promises that where He is there shall His servants be.
+
+It is much to know that we are immortal: it is much more to know that
+this immortality is a human immortality. One feels in studying the
+pre-Christian beliefs in immortality that they had very little
+effectiveness, and that the reason was that there was no real link
+connecting life in this world with life in the next. Death was a fearful
+catastrophe that man in some sense survived, but in a sense that
+separated his two modes of existence by a great gulf. Man survived, but
+his interests did not survive, and therefore he looked to the future
+with indifference or fear. This life seemed to him much preferable to
+the life which was on the other side of the grave. So far as the Old
+Testament writings touch on the future world, they touch upon it without
+enthusiasm. There is an immense difference between the attitude of the
+Old Testament saint toward death and that, for instance, of the early
+Christian martyr. And the difference is that the martyr does not feel
+that death will put an end to all he knows and loves and set him, alive
+it may be, but alive in a strange country. He feels that he is about to
+pass into a state of being in which he will find his finer interests not
+lost but intensified. At the center of his religious expression is a
+personal love of Jesus and a martyr's death would mean immediate
+admission to the presence and love of His Master. He would--of this he
+had no shadow of doubt--he would see Jesus, not the spirit of Jesus, but
+the Jesus Who is God Incarnate, whose earthly life he had gone over so
+many times, Whom he felt that he should recognise at once. Death was not
+the breaking off of all in which he was interested but was rather the
+fulfilment of all that he had dreamed. And this must be true always
+where our interests are truly Christian interests. It is no doubt true
+that we find in Christian congregations a large number of individuals
+whose attitude toward death and the future is purely heathen. They
+believe in survival, but they have no vital interest in it. I fancy that
+there are a good many people who would experience relief to be persuaded
+that death is the end of conscious existence, that they do not have to
+look forward to a continuous life under other conditions. And this not
+at all, as no doubt it would in some cases be, because it was the
+lifting of the weighty burden of responsibility for the sort of life one
+leads, because it was relief from the thought of a judgment to be one
+day faced, but because the world to come, as they have grasped its
+meaning, is a world in which they have no sort of interest. Our Lord in
+His Presentation of the future does actually point us to the natural
+human interest by which our affection will follow that which we do in
+fact value. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." But
+the class of whom I am thinking have no treasures. Notwithstanding some
+sort of conformity to the Christian Religion, conceived most likely
+under the aspect of a compulsory moral code, there is nothing in their
+experience that one can call a love of our Lord, no actually felt
+personal affection for Him that makes them long to see Him. There were
+those with whom they had intimately lived and whom they had loved and
+who have passed through the experience of death, but in the years that
+have passed they have become used to living without them and there is
+no passionate longing to be with them again. There are no interests in
+their lives which when they think of them they feel that they can carry
+with them to the world beyond. Whatever they have succeeded in
+accumulating in life is hardly to be regarded as heavenly treasure!
+
+There then is the vital centre of the Christian doctrine of the world to
+come,--that it is a life continuous with this life, not in bare
+existence, but in the persistence of relations and interests upon which
+we have entered here. At the center of that world as it is revealed to
+us, is Jesus Christ, God in our nature, and about Him ever the saints of
+His Kingdom, who are still human with human interests, and who look on
+to the time when the fulness of humanity will be restored to them by the
+resurrection of the body. The interests that are vital here are also the
+interests that are vital there, the interests of the Kingdom of God. As
+the Christian thinks of the life of the world to come he thinks of it as
+the sphere in which his ambitions can be and will be realised, where the
+ends of which he has so long and so earnestly striven will be attained.
+His life has been a life given to the service of our Lord and to his
+Kingdom, and it had, no doubt, often seemed to small purpose; it has
+often seemed that the Kingdom was not prospering and the work of God
+coming to naught. And then he looks on to the future and sees that the
+work that he knows is an insignificant fragment of the whole work; and
+he thinks with longing of the time when he shall see revealed all that
+has been accomplished. He feels like a colonist who in some outlying
+province of an empire is striving to promote the interests of his
+Homeland. His work is to build up peace and order and to civilise
+barbarous tribes. And there are days when the work seems very long and
+very hopeless; and then he comforts himself with the thought that this
+is but a corner of the empire and that one day he will be relieved and
+called home. There at the centre he will be able to see the whole fact,
+will be able to understand what this colony means, and will rejoice in
+the slight contribution to its upbuilding that it has been his mission
+to make. The heart of the Christian is really in the Homeland and he
+feels acutely that here he is on the Pilgrim Way. But he feels too that
+his present vocation is here and that he is here contributing the part
+that God has appointed him for the upbuilding of the Kingdom, and that
+the more he loves our Lord and the more he longs for Him the more
+faithfully and exactly will he strive to accomplish his appointed work.
+
+They are right, those who are continually reproaching Christians with
+having a centre of interest outside this world; but we do not mind the
+reproach because we are quite sure that only those will have an
+intelligent interest in this world who feel that it does not stand by
+itself as a final and complete fact, but is a single stage of the many
+stages of God's working. We no more think it a disgrace to be thinking
+of a future world and to have our centre of interest there than we think
+it a disgrace for the college lad to be looking forward to the career
+that lies beyond the college boundaries and for which his college is
+supposed to be preparing him. We do not consider that boy ideal whose
+whole time and energy is given to the present interests of a college,
+its athletics, its societies, and in the end is found to have paid so
+little attention to the intellectual work that he is sent there to
+perform that he fails to pass his examinations. Christians are
+interested in this world because it is a province of the Kingdom of God
+and that they are set here to work out certain problems, and that they
+are quite sure that the successful solution of these problems is the
+best and highest contribution that they can make to the development of
+life in this world. They do not believe that as a social contribution to
+the betterment of human life a saint is less valuable than an agnostic
+professor of sociology or an atheistic socialistic leader; nor does the
+Christian believe that strict attention to the affairs of the Kingdom of
+God renders him less valuable as a citizen than strict attention to a
+brewery or a bank. A whole-hearted Christian life which has in view all
+the relations of the Kingdom of God in this or in any other world, which
+loves God and loves its neighbour in God, is quite the best contribution
+that a human being can make to the cause of social progress. If it were
+possible to put in evidence anywhere a wholly Christian community I am
+quite convinced that we should see that our social problems were there
+solved. I think then we shall be right to insist that what is needed is
+not less otherworldliness but more: that more otherworldliness would
+work a social revolution of a beneficent character. The result might be
+that we should spend less of our national income on preparations for
+war and more in making the conditions of life tolerable for the poor;
+that we should begin to pay something of the same sort of care for the
+training of children that we now bestow on the nurture of pigs and
+calves. We might possibly look on those whom we curiously call the
+"inferior races" as less objects of commercial exploitation and more as
+objects of moral and spiritual interest.
+
+We shall no doubt do this when we have more fully grasped what the
+resurrection of Christ has done and made possible. It is no account of
+that resurrection to think of it as a demonstration of immortality. It
+only touches the fringes of its importance when we think of it as
+setting the seal of divine approval upon the teaching of Jesus. We get
+to the heart of the matter when we think of the risen humanity of our
+Lord as having become for us a source of energy. The truth of our Lord's
+life is not that He gave us an example of how we ought to live, but that
+He provided the power that enables us to live as He lived. Also He gave
+us the point of view from which to estimate life. The writer of the
+Epistles to the Hebrews uses a striking phrase when he speaks of "the
+power of an endless life." Is not that an illuminating phrase when we
+think of our relation to our Lord? His revelation of the meaning of
+human life has brought to us the vision of what that life may become and
+the power to attain that end. The fact of our endlessness at once puts a
+certain order into life. Things, interests, occupations fall into their
+right places. There are so many things which seem not worth while
+because of the revelation of the importance of our work. Other things
+there are which we should not have dared to undertake if we had but this
+life in which to accomplish them. But he who understands that he is
+building for eternity can build with all the care and all the
+deliberation that is needed for so vast a work. There is no haste if we
+select those things which have eternal value. We can undertake the
+development of the Christian qualities of character with entire
+hopefulness. The very conception of the beauty and perfectness of the
+fruits of the Spirit might discourage us if our time were limited. But
+if we feel that the work we have done on them, however elementary and
+fragmentary, as long as it is honest and heartfelt, will not be lost
+when death comes, then we can go securely on. We can go on in any
+spiritual work we have undertaken without that sense of feverish haste
+lest death overtake us and put an end to our labour which so affects men
+in purely secular things. To us death is not an interruption. Death does
+not destroy our human personality, nor does it destroy our interest in
+anything that like us is permanent. We feel perfectly secure when we
+have identified ourselves with the business of the Kingdom of God. Then
+we almost feel the throb of our immortality; the power of an endless
+life is now ours. We have not to wait for death and resurrection to
+endue us with that power because it is the gift of God to us here, that
+gift of enternal life which our Lord came to bestow upon us. Only the
+gift which we realise imperfectly or not at all at its bestowal we come
+to understand in something of its real power; and henceforth we live in
+the possession and fruition of it, growing up "into Him in all things,
+which is the Head, even Christ."
+
+     Hail, thou brightest Star of Ocean;
+     Hail, thou Mother of our God;
+     Hail, thou Ever-sinless Virgin,
+     Gateway of the blest abode.
+     Ave; 'tis an angel's greeting--
+     Thou didst hear his music sound,
+     Changing thus the name of Eva--
+     Shed the gifts of peace around.
+     Burst the sinner's bonds in sunder;
+     Pour the day on darkling eyes;
+     Chase our ills; invoke upon us
+     All the blessings of the skies.
+     Show thyself a watchful Mother;
+     And may He our pleadings hear,
+     Who for us a helpless Infant
+     Owned thee for His mother dear.
+     Maid, above all maids excelling,
+     Maid, above all maidens mild,
+     Freed from sin, oh, make our bosoms
+     Sweetly meek and undefiled.
+     Keep our lives all pure and stainless,
+     Guide us on our heavenly way,
+     'Till we see the face of Jesus,
+     And exult in endless day.
+     Glory to the Eternal Father;
+     Glory to the Eternal Son;
+     Glory to the Eternal Spirit:
+     Blest for ever, Three in One.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE FORTY DAYS
+
+     To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by
+     many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and
+     speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
+
+Acts I, 3.
+
+     Open unto us the door of thy loving kindness, O blessed
+     Mother of God; we have set our hope on thee, may we not be
+     disappointed, but through thee may we be delivered from
+     adversity, for thou art the saving help of all
+     Christian people.
+
+     O Mother of God, thou who art a deep well of infinite mercy,
+     bestow upon us thy compassion; look upon thy people who have
+     sinned, and continue to make manifest thy power. For thee do
+     we trust, and to thee do we cry, Hail! even as of old did
+     Gabriel, the chief of the angelic hosts.
+
+RUSSIAN.
+
+These Forty Days that intervened between our Lord's resurrection and
+ascension must have been utterly bewildering in the experience of the
+Apostles. Our Lord was once more with them; He had come back from the
+grave; that would have been the central experience. But in His
+intercourse with them He was so changed, the same and yet with a vast
+difference. We think of the perplexed group of the disciples gathered in
+the familiar place, going over the recent facts and trying to adjust
+themselves to them. Just what is the difference that death and
+resurrection have made, we hear them discussing. Is it that He appears
+and disappears so strangely, not coming any longer to be with them in
+the old way, with the old familiar intercourse? There is obviously no
+failure in Himself, no decline in love; but there is a decline in
+intimacy. They themselves feel a strange awe in His presence such as
+they had not been accustomed to feel in the past. They feel too that
+this restrained intercourse is but temporary, that at any moment it may
+end. The instructions He is giving them are so obviously final
+instructions, fitting them for a future in which He will not be
+with them.
+
+Amid all this perplexity we try to see Our Lady and to get at her mind.
+She was no doubt in the small group eagerly waiting our Lord's coming,
+dreading each time He left them that He would return no more. One
+thinks of her as less bewildered than the others because her interest
+was more concentrated. She had no problems to work out, no perplexities
+to absorb her; she had simply to love. Life to her was just love--love
+of the Son Whom she had brought forth and Whom she had followed so far.
+She lived in His appearings; and between them she lived in remembrance
+of them. One does not think of her as dwelling very much on what He
+says, but as dwelling upon Him. The thought of Him absorbs her. She has
+passed into that relation to our Lord that in the years to come many
+souls will strive to acquire--the state of absorbed contemplation, the
+state in which all things else for the time recede and one is alone with
+God. God so fills the soul that there is room there for nothing else.
+
+For the Apostles these were days of immense importance as days in which
+they were compelled to reconstruct their whole view of the meeting of
+our Lord's mission and of their relation to it. They came to these days
+with their settled notion about the renewed Kingdom of Israel and of our
+Lord's reign on earth which His teaching hitherto had not been able to
+expel; but now they are compelled to see that the Kingdom of God of
+which they are to be the missionaries is a Kingdom in another sense than
+they had so far conceived it. It differs vastly from their dream of an
+Israelite empire. It is no doubt true that this mental revolution is of
+slow operation, and that even when certain truths are grasped it will
+still take time to grasp them in all their implications. For long their
+Judaism will impede their full understanding of the meaning of the
+Kingdom of God. It will be years before they can see that it is a
+non-Jewish fact and that other nations will stand on an equality with
+them. But they will by the end of the Forty Days have grasped the fact
+that they are not engaged in a secular revolution and are not entering
+on a career of worldly power. They will be ready for their active
+ministry after Pentecost, a ministry of spiritual initiation into the
+Kingdom of God. When in response to their preaching men asked the
+question: "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" They were ready with
+their answer: "Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of
+Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of
+the Holy Ghost."
+
+So the Forty Days were filled with new meanings emerging from the old
+teaching, of suddenly grasped significance in some saying of our Lord
+that they had assumed that they understood but in reality had attributed
+little meaning to. It is one of the striking things about our relation
+to spiritual truth that we can go on for long thinking that we are
+attaching a meaning to something which in fact, it turns out, has meant
+almost nothing to us. Some day a phrase which we have often read or
+repeated suddenly is lighted up with a significance we had never dreamed
+of. We have long been looking some truth in the face, but in fact it has
+never laid hold of us; we have made no inferences from it, deduced no
+necessity of action, till on a day the significance of it emerges and
+we are overwhelmed by the revelation of our blunder, of our stupidity.
+The fact is that we assume that our conduct is quite right, and we
+interpret truth in the light of our conduct rather than interpret
+conduct in the light of truth. It is the explanation, I suppose, of the
+fact that so many people read their Bible regularly without, so far as
+one can see, the reading having any effect upon their conduct. The
+conduct is a settled affair and they are finding it reflected in the
+pages of the Gospel. Their minds are already definitely made up to the
+effect that they know what the Gospel means, and that is the meaning
+that they put into the Bible. One does not know otherwise how to account
+for the fact that it is precisely those who think themselves "Bible
+Christians" who are farthest from accepting the explicit teaching of the
+Bible. If there is anything plain in the New Testament it is that the
+whole teaching of our Lord is sacramental. If anything is taught there
+one would think it was the nature and obligation of baptism, the
+Presence of our Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar, the gift of
+Confirmation, the meaning of absolution. Yet it is to "Bible Christians"
+that sacraments appear to have no value, are things which can be
+dispensed with as mere ornaments of the Christian Religion.
+
+I wonder if we have wholly got beyond that point of view? I wonder if we
+have got a religious practice which is settled or one that is
+continually expanding? I wonder if we force our meaning on the Bible or
+if we are trying to find therein new stimulus to action? That in truth
+is the reason for reading the Holy Scriptures at all--to find therein
+stimulus, stimulus for life; that we may see how little or how much our
+conduct conforms to the ideal set out there. We do not read to learn a
+religion, but to learn to practice the religion that we already have.
+
+Now to take just one point in illustration. The commission of our Lord
+to His Church in the person of the Apostles was a commission to forgive
+sins. "He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy
+Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and
+whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." As to how in detail,
+this commission is to be exercised is a matter for the Church to order
+as the circumstances of its life require. As I read my Bible certain
+facts emerge: I am a sinner; Christ died for my sins; He left power in
+His Church for the forgiveness of sin--of my sin. And then the question
+arises: What is the bearing of all that on my personal practice? Have I
+settled a practice for myself to which I am subjecting the teaching of
+the Bible and the Church? Or am I alert to see a contrast or a
+contradiction between my practice and the teaching of the Bible and the
+Church, if such exist? Now there are many people in the Church who make
+no use of the sacrament of penance, and there are many others who make
+use of it very sparingly. It is clear that either they must be right, or
+the Bible and the Church must be right. It is clear that such persons,
+to press it no farther, are imposing the interpretation of their own
+conduct on the teaching of the Christian Religion and asserting by
+their constant practice that that interpretation is quite inadequate,
+notwithstanding the contrary practice of the entire Catholic world.
+That, to put it mildly, is a very peculiar intellectual and
+spiritual attitude.
+
+We can most of us, I have no doubt, find by searching somewhere in our
+religious practice parallel attitudes toward truth. We have settled many
+questions in a sense that is agreeable to us. We cannot tell just how we
+got them settled, but settled they are. Take a very familiar matter
+which greatly concerns us in this parish dedicated to the Blessed Virgin
+Mary, the question of the honour and reverence due to our Blessed
+Mother. We had got settled in our practice that certain things were
+right and certain wrong. I doubt if a very intelligent account of
+this--why they were right or wrong--could, in many cases have been
+given. But the settled opinion and practice was there.
+
+And then came the demand for a review; that we look our practice
+squarely in the face and ask, "What is the ground of this? Does it
+correspond with the teaching of Scripture and of the Catholic Church?
+And if it does not, what am I going to do about it? Have I only a
+collection of prejudices there where I supposed that I had a collection
+of settled truths? Do I see that it is quite possible that I may be
+wholly wrong, and that I am hindered by pride from reversing my
+attitude?" For there is a certain pride which operates in these matters
+of belief and practice as well as elsewhere. We are quite apt to pride
+ourselves on our consistency and think it an unworthy thing to change
+our minds. That is rather a foolish attitude; changing one's mind is
+commonly not a mark of fickleness but of intellectual advance. It means
+oftentimes the abandonment of prejudice or the giving up of an opinion
+which we have discovered to have no foundation. This is rather a large
+universe in which we live, and it is improbable that any man's thought
+of it at any time should be adequate. Intellectual progress means the
+assimilation of new truths. The Christian Religion is a large and
+complex phenomenon, and any individual's thought of it at any time must
+be, in the nature of things, an inadequate thought. Progress in religion
+means the constant assimilation of new truths--new, that is, to us.
+Surely it is a very peculiar attitude to be proud of never learning
+anything, making it a virtue to have precisely the same opinions this
+year as last! I should be very much ashamed of myself if a year were to
+pass in which I had learned nothing, had changed my mind about nothing.
+In religion, one knows that the articles of the Faith are expressed in
+the dogmatic definitions of the Church; but one will never know, seek as
+one will, all that these mean in detail, all that they demand in
+practice. And our only tolerable attitude is that of learners constantly
+seeking to fill up the _lacunae_ in our beliefs and practice.
+
+In fact, any living Christian experience is always in process of
+adjustment. Those who conceive a dogmatic religion as an immovable
+religion, as a collection of cut and dried formulae which each
+generation is expected to learn and repeat and to which it has no other
+relation, are quite right in condemning that conception, only that is
+not, in fact, what the Christian Religion is. The content of the
+Christian dogmas is so full and so complex that there is never any
+danger of intellectual sterility in those who are called to deal with
+them; and their application to life is so rich and so manifold that
+there is not the least danger that those who set out to apply them to
+the problems of daily existence will become mere formalists. The attempt
+to live a truly Christian life is a never-ending, inexhaustible
+adventure. Only those can miss this fact who have utterly misconceived
+Christianity as a barren set of prohibitions, warning its devotees off
+the field of great sections of human experience. There are those who
+appear to imagine that the primary business of Christianity is to deal
+with sin, and that in order to keep itself occupied it has to invent a
+large number of unreal sins. Unfortunately sin, as the deliberate
+rejection of the known will of God, exists; and, fortunately, the grace
+of our Lord Jesus Christ Who came into the world to save sinners also
+exists. We can be unendingly thankful for that. But it is also true that
+the action of Christianity is not exhausted in the negative work of
+dealing with sin. Christianity is primarily a positive action for the
+bringing about and development of the relation of the soul with God in
+the state of union. We may say that Christianity has to turn aside from
+this its proper business of developing the spiritual life to the
+preliminary work of dealing with sin which kills spirituality and
+hinders its development. But it is not necessary to make the blunder of
+assuming that this dealing with sin is the essential work of
+Christianity because it has so continually to be at it, any more than
+it is necessary to assume that the essential work of a farmer is the
+digging up of weeds. Surely it would be no adequate treatise on
+agriculture which would confine itself to description of the nature of
+weeds and of methods of dealing with them. There is a branch of theology
+which deals with sin, the methods of its treatment and its cure; but
+there are also other branches of theology: and the direction of the Holy
+Scripture is not to get rid of sin and stop; but having done that, to go
+on to perfection.
+
+Christian experience is a constant process of adjustment, a constantly
+growing experience. By the study of the Christian revelation it is
+always finding new meanings in old truths, new modes of application of
+familiar practices. This simply means that the Christian is alive and
+not a fossil. It means that his relation to our Lord is such that it
+opens to him inexhaustible depths of experience. It is easy to see this
+in the concrete by taking up the life of almost any saint. It is easy to
+trace the growth of S. John from the young fisherman, fiery, impatient,
+who wished to call down fire from heaven upon his adversaries as Elijah
+did, and gained the rebuke: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are
+of," to the mature and supremely calm and simple experience which is
+reflected in the Gospel and Epistles. It is easy to trace the
+development of the impulsive, zealous Pharisee that Paul of Tarsus was,
+through all the stages of spiritual growth that are reflected in his
+Letters, till he is Paul the aged waiting to depart and be with Christ
+"which is far better." You can study it in the confessions of S.
+Augustine in its first stage and follow it through its later stages in
+his letters and other writings, and in many another saint beside. If you
+have any spiritual experience at all you can trace it in your own case:
+you have grown, not through dealing with sin, but through the pursuit of
+ideal perfection, that perfection which is set before you by the
+Christian Religion. You may not feel that you have gone very far: that
+is not the point at present; you know that you have found a method by
+which you may go on indefinitely; that there is no need that you should
+stop anywhere short of the Beatific Vision. You do know that your
+religion is not the deadening repetition of dogmas which the unbeliever
+conceives it to be, but is the never ceasing attempt to master the
+inexhaustible truth that is contained in your relation to our Lord. You
+do know that however far you have gone you feel that you are still but
+on the threshold and that the path before your feet runs out into
+infinity. Let us go back again to our examination of the experience of
+the Apostles. When we examine their training we find there, I think, two
+quite distinct elements both of which must have had a formative
+influence upon their ministry. In the first place there was the element
+of dogmatic teaching. There is a class of persons who are accustomed to
+tell us that there is no dogma in the New Testament, by which they
+appear to mean that the particular dogmatic affirmations of the Creed
+are not formulated in the pages of the New Testament, but are of later
+production. That, no doubt, is true; but nevertheless it would be
+difficult to find a more dogmatic book than the New Testament, or a
+more dogmatic teacher than was our Lord. And our Lord taught the
+Apostles in a most definite way the expected acceptance of His teaching
+because He taught it. "He taught as one having authority, and not as the
+scribes," it was noted. The point about the teaching of the scribes was
+that it was traditional, wholly an interpretation of the meaning of the
+Old Testament. It made no claim to originality but rather based its
+claim on the fact it was not original. Our Lord, it was noticed, did not
+base His claim on tradition. In fact He often noticed the Jewish
+tradition for the purpose of marking the contrast between it and His own
+teaching. "Ye have heard that it hath been said of old time ... but I
+say unto you." He commonly refused to give an explanation of what He had
+said, but demanded acceptance on His authority. He brought discipleship
+to the test of hard sayings, and permitted the departure of those who
+could not accept them. He cut across popular prejudices and took small
+account of the "modern mind" as expressed by the Sadducees. He expected
+the same unhesitating submission from the Apostles whom He was training,
+though it was also a part of their training to be the future heralds of
+the Kingdom that they should have the "mysteries of the Kingdom"
+explained to them. But from the time when Jesus began to preach, saying
+"the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," He preached and taught with the same
+unhesitating note of certainty, and with the same demand for
+intellectual submission on the part of those who heard Him.
+
+And that continues to the end. During the Forty Days, the few sayings
+that have come to us have the same ring of authority, of dogmatic
+certainty. The result was that when the Apostles went out to teach they
+were equipped with a body of truth which they presented to the world in
+the same unhesitating way. Indeed, that is the only way in which the
+central truths of the Christian Faith can be presented. They are not the
+conclusions of argument, which may be taken up and argued over again to
+the end of the world,--they are the dicta of revelation. We either know
+them to be true because they have been revealed, or we do not know them
+to be true at all. They are mysteries, that is, truths beyond the
+possibility of human finding which have been made known to man by God
+Himself. They are the appropriate data of religion and what
+distinguishes it from philosophy. The presence of mystery in philosophy
+is annoying, and the aim is to get rid of it, but a religion without
+mystery is absurd. Religion deals with the fundamental relations between
+God and man and the light it brings us must be a supernatural light.
+Such a religion in its presentation naturally cut across the
+preconceptions of the traditionalists in Jerusalem to whom nothing new
+could be true, as across the preconceptions of the sophists of Athens,
+to whom nothing that was not new was interesting.
+
+This dogmatic equipment was but one side, however, of the Apostolic
+training for their future work, a training to which the finishing
+touches, so to say, were put during the Forty Days. The other side of
+the training was the impression upon them of the Personality of our
+Lord, the effect of their close association with Him. This has an
+importance that dwarfs all other influences of the time; and we feel all
+through the Gospel that it was what our Lord himself counted upon in
+forming them for their mission. In the beginning "He chose twelve to be
+with Him," and their day by day association with Him was constantly
+changing their point of view and reforming their character. It was not
+the teaching, the explanation of parables, or the sight of the miracles;
+it was the silent effect of a personality that was in contact with them
+constantly and was constantly presenting to them an ideal of life, an
+ideal of absolute submission to the will of the Father and of utter
+consecration to the, mission that had been committed to Him.
+
+We all know this silent pressure of life upon life. We have most of us,
+I suppose, experienced it either from our parents or from friends in
+later life; and we can through that experience of ours attempt the
+explanation of our Lord's influence on the Apostles. There were not only
+the hours of formal teaching--they, in a way, were perhaps the less
+important from our present point of view. We have more in mind the
+informal talks that would go on as they went from village to village in
+Galilee, or as they gathered about the door of some cottage in the
+evening or sat in the shelter of some grove during the noon-day heat. It
+was just talk arising naturally out of the incidents of the day, but it
+was always talk guided by Jesus--talk in which Jesus was constantly
+revealing Himself to them, impressing upon them His point of view,
+making plain his own judgment upon life. And when we turn to His formal
+teaching we realise how revolutionary was His point of view in regard to
+life, how He swept aside the customary conventions by which they were
+accustomed to guide life, and substituted the radical principles that
+they have left on record in the Sermon on the Mount for the perplexity
+of a world yet far from understanding them. Evidently the Apostles would
+find their accustomed values tossed aside and a wholly new set of values
+presented to them.
+
+I suppose we find it difficult to appreciate how utterly revolutionary
+the Gospel teaching continually is, not because we have become
+accustomed to follow it, but because we have got used to hearing it and
+evacuating it of most of its meaning by clever glossing. It was thus
+that the teaching classes in Jerusalem avoided the pressure of Old
+Testament ideals by a facile system of interpretation which made "void
+the Word of God by their traditions." Human nature has not altered; and
+we succeed by the same method in making the Gospel of none effect. We
+are so well accustomed to do this that we lose the point and pungency of
+much of our Lord's teaching. But we know that the apostles did not. We
+know that they presented that teaching in all its sharpness to would-be
+disciples. It could not be otherwise with those who for three years had
+been in day by day intimacy with our Lord and had assimilated His point
+of view and his judgment on life.
+
+One effect of their contact with our Lord in the days following the
+resurrection would be that whatever changes the passage to a new level
+of existence had wrought in Him, it had not changed either the tone of
+His teaching or the beauty and attractiveness of His Personality. The
+concluding charges that were given them, the great commission of
+proclaiming the Kingdom with which they were now definitely endued, the
+powers which were committed to them in the great words: "All power is
+given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all
+nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
+of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
+commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the
+world," would but confirm and strengthen all that had gone before in
+their experience of Him. The Jesus of the resurrection was no pale ghost
+returned from the grave, intermittently to appear to them to assure them
+of the fact of immortality. He was "the same Jesus" Whom they had known
+for three years, and whose return from the dead triumphant over the
+powers that had opposed Him, set quite plainly and definitely the seal
+of indisputable authority upon all the teaching and the example that had
+gone before. The period of their probation was over: The commission was
+theirs: It remained that they should abide in Jerusalem until they
+should be "endued with power from on high."
+
+     Proclaimed Queen and Mother of a God,
+       The Light of earth, the Sovereign of saints,
+     With pilgrim foot up tiring hills she trod,
+       And heavenly stile with handmaids' toil acquaints;
+         Her youth to age, her health to sick she lends;
+         Her heart to God, to neighbor hand she bends.
+
+     A Prince she is, and mightier Prince doth bear,
+       Yet pomp of princely train she would not have;
+     But doubtless, heavenly choirs attendant were,
+       Her Child from harm, herself from fall to save:
+         Word to the voice, song to the tune she brings,
+         The voice her word, the tune her ditty sings.
+
+     Eternal lights enclosed in her breast
+       Shot out such piercing beams of burning love,
+     That when her voice her cousin's ears possessed
+       The force thereof did force her babe to move:
+         With secret signs the children greet each other;
+         But, open praise each leaveth to his mother.
+
+     Robert Southwell, S.J. 1560-1595.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE ASCENSION
+
+
+     And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted
+     from them, and carried up into heaven.
+
+                                S. Luke XXIV, 51.
+
+     O Mother of God, since we have obtained confidence in thee,
+     we shall not be put to shame, but we shall be saved.
+
+     And since we have obtained thy help and thy meditation, O,
+     thou holy, pure, and perfect one!
+
+     We fear not but that we shall put our enemies to flight and
+     scatter them.
+
+     We have taken unto us the shelter of thy mighty help in all
+     things like a shield.
+
+     And we pray, and beseech thee that we may call upon thee, O
+     Mother of God, so that thou deliver us through thy prayers.
+
+     And that thou mayest raise us up again from the sleep of
+     darkness, to offer praise through the might of God Who took
+     flesh in thee.
+
+     COPTIC.
+
+
+There would be no doubt of the finality of our Lord's physical
+withdrawal this time. As the group of disciples stood on the hilltop in
+Galilee and watched the clouds close about Him, they would feel that
+this was the end of the kind of intercourse to which they had been
+accustomed. The past Forty Days would have done much to prepare them for
+the separation. Their conception of our Lord's work as issuing in the
+establishment of an earthly Kingdom had been swept away; the changed
+terms of their intercourse with Him in the resurrection state had
+emphasised the change that had taken place; His teaching during these
+weeks which was centered on the work of the future in which they were to
+carry on the mission He had initiated; all these elements prepared them
+for the definite withdrawal of the ascension. Nevertheless we can
+understand the wrench that must have been involved in His actual
+withdrawal. We face the dying of some one we love. We know that it is a
+matter of weeks; the weeks shorten to days, and we are "prepared" for
+the death; but what we mean is that the death will not take us by
+surprise. However prepared we may be, the pain of parting will be a
+quite definite pain; there is no way of avoiding that.
+
+We know that there was no way for the disciples to avoid the pain of the
+going of Jesus. It was not the same sort of pain that they felt now, as
+they gazed up from the hill top to the cloud drifting into the
+distance, as the pain that had been theirs as they hurried trembling and
+affrighted through the streets of Jerusalem on the afternoon of the
+Crucifixion. This pain had no sting of remorse for a duty undone, or of
+fear for a danger to be met. It was the calm pain of love in the
+realisation that the parting is final.
+
+We know that among the group that watched the receding cloud the eyes
+that would linger longest and would find it hardest to turn away would
+be those of the Blessed Mother. Her mission about our Lord during all
+these past years had been a very characteristically womanly mission, a
+mission of silence and help and sympathy. She was with the women who
+ministered to Him, never obtrusive, never self-assertive; but always
+ready when need was. It was the silent service of a great love. That is
+the perfection of service. There are types of service which claim reward
+or recognition. We are not unfamiliar in the work of the Kingdom with
+people who have to be cajoled and petted and made much of because of
+what they do. Verily, they have their reward. But the type we are
+considering, of which the Blessed Mother is the highest expression, is
+without thought of self, being wholly lost in the wonder of being
+permitted to serve God at all. To be permitted to give one's time and
+personal ministry to our Lord in His Kingdom and in His members is so
+splendid a grace of God that all thought of self is lost in the joy of
+it. We know that S. Mary could have had no other thought than the
+offering of her love in whatever way it was permitted to express
+itself; and we know that the quality of that love was such that the
+moment of the ascension would have left her desolate, watching the cloud
+that veiled Him from her eyes.
+
+All of which does not mean that we are wrong when we speak of the
+ascension as one of the "Glorious Mysteries" of S. Mary. There we are
+viewing it in its wide bearing as S. Mary would come to view it in a
+short while. When the meaning of the ascension became plain, when under
+the guidance of the Holy Spirit, S. Mary was able to view her Son as
+"the One Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus," when she
+was able to think of the human nature that God had taken from her as
+permanently enthroned in heaven,--then would all this be to her creative
+of intense joy. We, seeing so clearly what the ascension essentially
+meant, can think of it as a mystery of intense joy, but as our Lord
+passed away from sight the passing would for the moment be one last stab
+of the sword through this so-often wounded heart.
+
+There would be no lingering upon the hill top. The angel messengers
+press the lesson that the life before them is a life of eager contest,
+of energetic action. Jesus had indeed gone in the clouds of heaven, but
+they were reminded that there would be a reappearance, a coming-again in
+the clouds of heaven, and in the meantime there was much to do, work
+that would require their self-expenditure even unto death. Back must
+they go to Jerusalem and there await the opening of the next act of the
+drama of the Kingdom of God.
+
+As we turn to the Epistles of the New Testament and to the slowly
+shaping theology of the early Church, we find set out for us the nature
+of our Lord's heavenly activity; we see the full meaning of His
+Incarnation. The human nature which the Son of God assumed from a pure
+Virgin, He assumed permanently. He took it from the tomb on the
+resurrection morning, he bore it with Him from the Galilean hill to the
+very presence of uncreated God. When the Gates lift and admit the
+Conqueror to heaven, what enters heaven is our nature, what is enthroned
+at the Right Hand of God is man, forever united to God. And when we ask,
+"What is the purpose of this?" The answer is that it is the continual
+purpose of the incarnation, the purpose of mediatorship between the
+created and the uncreated, between God and man. The constant purpose of
+the incarnation is mediation--of the need of mediation there is no end.
+Our Lord's work was not finished, though there are those who appear to
+believe that it was finished, when, as a Galilean Preacher He had taught
+men of the Father: nor was it finished when He bought redemption for us
+on the Cross, and triumphing over death in the resurrection, returned to
+heaven at the ascension. There is a very real sense in which we can say
+that all those acts were the preliminaries of His work, were what made
+the work possible. We then mean by His work the age-long work of
+building the Kingdom of Heaven, and through it bringing souls to the
+Father. To insist perhaps over-much: We are not saved by the memory of
+what our Lord did, we are saved by what He now does. We are saved by the
+present application to us of the work that was wrought in the years of
+His earthly life.
+
+We need to grasp this living and present character of our Lord's work if
+we will understand the meaning of His mediation. There is a gulf between
+the divine, the purely spiritual, and the human, which needs some bridge
+to enable the human to cross it. That bridge was thrown across in the
+incarnation when God and man became united in the Person of the second
+Person of the ever blessed Trinity. When God the Son became incarnate,
+God and man were forever united and the door of heaven was about to
+swing open. Henceforth from the demonstrated triumph of our Lord in the
+Ascension the Kingdom of Heaven is open to all believers, and there is
+an ever-ready way of approach to God the Blessed Trinity by the
+Incarnate Person of the Son Who is the One Mediator between God and man.
+Whoever approaches God, whoever would reach to the Divine, must approach
+by that path, the path of Jesus Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
+
+He is the Way to God: and that Way is one that we follow by
+participation in His nature, by being taken up into Him. We do not reach
+God by thinking about our Lord, or by believing about our Lord: thinking
+and believing are the preliminaries of action. There are wonderful
+riches in the King's Treasury, but you do not get them because you think
+of them or because you believe that they are there. You get them when
+you go after them. And you get the ends of the Christian Religion not
+because you believe them to exist, but because you go after them in the
+way in which Christ directed. Inasmuch as He is the Way to the Father,
+we reach the Father by being made one with the Son, by being made a
+member of Him, by being taken into Him in the life of union. "No man
+cometh unto the Father but by me," He says. And the process of coming is
+by believing all that He said and acting upon His Word to the uttermost.
+Those who by partaking of the Sacraments are in Christ have passed by
+His mediation to the knowledge of the Father.
+
+For a road can be travelled in either direction. Christ is the road by
+which we come to the Father, to participation in the life of the Blessed
+Trinity; but also we can think of Him as the road by which the Father
+comes to us. We can think of ourselves as drawing near to God in His
+Beloved Son: I love to think the other way of the road, of God drawing
+near to me, of God pouring of His riches into human life and elevating
+that life to His very Self. I like to think of the Christian life as a
+life to which God continually communicates Himself, till we are filled
+"with all the fulness of God." Can we imagine any more wonderful
+expression of the life of holiness to which we are called than that? We
+"grow up into Him in all things." That is the true account of the
+Christian life, not some thin and dull routine of moral duty, but the
+spiritual adventure of the road that travels out into the infinite
+pursuit of spiritual accomplishment till it is lost in the very heart
+of God.
+
+This was the starting point of Blessed Mary. She was filled with all
+the fulness of God from the moment of her conception, and was never
+separated from the joy of the great possession. We are born in sin and
+have to travel the road to the very end. Yet we, too, begin in union,
+because we are born of our baptism into Christ soon after our natural
+birth, and our problem is to achieve in experience the content of our
+birthright. In other words: our feet are set in the Way from the
+beginning, and our part is to keep to the Way and not wander to the
+right hand or to the left; that this may be possible for us Christ lived
+and died and to-day is at the Right Hand of the Father where He ever
+liveth to make intercession for us. We need never walk without Christ.
+The weariness of the journey is sustained by His constant and ready
+help. The way is lighted by the Truth which is Himself, and the life
+that we live is His communicated life. "I live, yet not I, but Christ
+liveth in me." There are those who find the road godward, the road of
+the Christ-life, wearisome because they keep their eyes fixed on the
+difficulties of the way and treat each step as though it were a separate
+thing and not one step in a wonderful journey. The way to avoid the
+weariness of the day's travel is to keep one's eye fixed on the end, to
+raise the eyes to the heavens where Jesus sitteth enthroned at the Right
+Hand of the Father. The day's song is the Sursum Corda,--"Lift up your
+hearts unto the Lord!"
+
+The mediatorial office of our Lord is exercised chiefly through His
+Sacrifice. He ever liveth to make intercession for us; and this
+intercession is the presentation of the Sacrifice that He Himself
+offered once for all in Blood upon the Cross, and forever presents to
+the Father in heaven "one unending sacrifice." This heavenly oblation of
+our Lord which is the means wherethrough we approach pure Divinity, is
+also the Sacrifice of the Church here on earth. The heavenly Altar and
+the earthly Altar are but one in that there is but one Priest and one
+Victim here and there. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the Church's
+presentation of her Head as her means of approach to God, as the ground
+of all her prayers. These prayers make their appeal through Jesus Who
+died and rose again for us and is on the Right Hand of Power. We know of
+no other way of approach, we plead no other merit as the hope of our
+acceptance. Let us be very clear about this centrality of our Lord's
+mediation because I shall presently have certain things to say which are
+often assumed to be in conflict with his Mediatorial Office, but which
+in reality do not so conflict, but exist at all because of the Office.
+
+We approach Divinity, then, through our Lord's humanity; and we at once
+see how that teaching, so common to-day, which denies the Resurrection
+of our Lord's Body, and believes simply in the survival of His human
+soul strikes at the very heart of the Catholic Religion. If Revelation
+be true, our approach to God is rendered possible because there is a
+Mediator between God and man, the MAN Christ Jesus. All our prayers
+have explicitly, or implicitly, this fact in view. All our Masses are a
+pleading of this fact.
+
+How great is our joy and confidence when we realise this! We come
+together, let us say, on Sunday morning at the High Mass. We are coming
+to offer the Blessed Sacrifice of our Lord's Body and Blood. But who,
+precisely, is to make the offering? When we ask what this congregation
+is, what is the answer? The congregation is the congregation of Christ's
+Flock: it is the Body of Christ gathered together for the worship of
+Almighty God. The act that is to be performed is the act of a Body, not
+primarily of individuals. Our participation in the act of worship in the
+full sense of participation is conditioned upon our being members of the
+Body. If we are not members of the Body we have no recognised status as
+worshippers. No doubt we each one have our individual aspirations and
+needs which we bring with us, but they are the needs and aspirations of
+a member of the Body of Christ, and our ability to unite them with the
+act that is to be performed grows out of our status as members of the
+Body; as such, we join our own intention to the sacrificial act and make
+our petitions through it. But we are here as offerers of the Sacrifice,
+and may not neglect our official significance, and attempt to turn the
+Mass into a private act of worship.
+
+We, then, the Body of Christ in this place, offer the Sacrifice of
+Christ. What is the status of the priest? He is a differentiated organ
+of the Body, not created by the Body, but created by God in the creation
+of the Body. He is not separate from the Body, an official imposed upon
+it from the outside, nor is he a creation of the Body set apart to act
+upon its behalf. He is one mode of the expression of the Body's
+life--the Body could not perfectly perform its functions without him
+any more than a physical body can perfectly function without a hand or
+an eye. But neither has the priest any existence apart from the Body of
+which he is a function. The Sacrifice that he offers is not his on
+behalf of the Body, but the Body's own Sacrifice which is made through
+his agency.
+
+But a complete body has a head; and of the Body which is the Church the
+Head is Christ. We, the members, have our life from Him, the Head; we
+are able at all to act spiritually because of our union with Him. He is
+our life; and the acts of the Body are ultimately the acts of the Head.
+The Sacrifice which the Body offers as the means of its approach to
+Divinity is One Sacrifice of the Head: and the priestly function of the
+Body has any vitality because it is Christ Who is its life, Who
+functions through the priest, Who is, in fact, the true Priest. He
+Himself is both Sacrifice and Priest; and that which is offered here is
+indentical with that which is offered there.
+
+Our life flows from our Head, is the life of Christ in us. So closely
+are we associated with Him that we are called His members, the
+instrument through which His life expresses itself, through which He
+acts. By virtue of the life of Christ of which all we are partakers, we
+are not only members of Christ, but members one of another. Our
+spiritual life is not our own affair, but we have duties one to another,
+and all the members of the Body are concerned in our exercise of our
+gifts, have, in fact, claims on the exercise of them.
+
+This mutual inherence of the members of the Body and these obligations
+to one another are in strict subordination to the Head; but they are
+very real duties and privileges which are ours to exercise. What we are
+concerned with at present is that from, this view of them that I have
+been presenting there results the possibility and obligation of
+intercession; the love and care of the members for one another is
+exercised in their prayers for one another. This privilege of
+intercession is one of the privileges most widely valued and most
+constantly exercised throughout the Church. Days of intercession,
+litanies, the offering of the Blessed Sacrifice with special intention,
+the constant requests for prayers for objects in which people are
+interested, all testify to the value we place on the privilege. Here is
+one action in regard to which there is no doubting voice in Christendom.
+
+But curiously, and for some reason to me wholly unintelligible, there
+are a great many who think of this right and duty of intercession
+between the members of the One Body as exclusively the right and duty of
+those who are living here on earth; or at least if it pertain to the
+"dead" it is in a way in which we can have no part. One would think--and
+so the Catholic Church has always thought--that those whom we call dead,
+but who are really "alive unto God" with a life more intense, a life
+more spiritually clear-visioned, than our own, would have a special
+power and earnestness in prayer, and that a share in their intercessions
+is a spiritual privilege much to be valued. They are members with us of
+the same Body; death has not cut them off from their membership,
+rather, if possible, it has intensified it, or at least their perception
+of what is involved in it. They remain under all the obligations of the
+life of the Body and consequently under the obligation to care for other
+members of the Body. The intercession of the saints for us is a fact
+that the Church has never doubted and cannot doubt except under penalty
+of denying at the same time the existence of the Body. That certain
+members of the Church have of late years doubted our right to invoke the
+saints, to call upon them for the aid of their prayers, is true; but
+there seems no ground for rejecting the tradition of invocation except
+the rather odd ground that we do not know the mode by which our requests
+reach them! As there are a good many other spiritual facts of which we
+do not know the mode, I do not think that we need be deterred from the
+practice of invocation on that ground: certainly the Church has never
+been so deterred.
+
+It is strange how little people attempt to think out their religion, and
+especially their obligation to religious practice. I have so often heard
+people say, when the practice of invocation of saints was urged: Why ask
+the saints? Why not go directly to God? And these same people are
+constantly asking the prayers of their fellow Christians here on earth!
+Suppose when some pious soul comes to me and asks me if I will not pray
+for a sick child, or a friend at sea, I were to reply: "Why come to me?
+Why not go directly to God?" I should be rightly thought unfeeling and
+unchristian. But that is precisely what the same person says when I
+suggest that the saints or the Blessed Mother of God be invoked for some
+cause that we have in hand! A person comes to me and asks my prayers,
+and I go to a saint and ask his prayers on precisely the same basis and
+for precisely the same reason, namely, that we are both members of the
+Body of Christ and of one another. We have the right to expect the
+interest and to count on the love of our fellow-members in Christ. We go
+to the saints with the same directness and the same simplicity with
+which we go to the living members of the Body, living, I mean in the
+Church on earth. If it be not possible to do that, then death has made a
+very disastrous break in the unity of the Body of Christ.
+
+And if we can count so without hesitation upon the love and sympathy and
+interest of the saints, surely we can count upon finding the same or
+greater love and sympathy in the greatest of all the saints, our blessed
+Mother, who is also the Mother of God. She in her spotless purity is the
+highest of creatures. She by her special privilege has boundless power
+of intercession; not power as I have explained before, because of any
+sort of favouritism, but power because her spiritual perfection gives
+her unique insight into the mind of God. Power in prayer really means
+that, through spiritual insight we are enabled to ask according to His
+will "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask
+anything according to his will, he heareth us." That is why
+righteousness is the ground of prevailing intercession, because
+righteousness means sympathetic understanding of the mind of God.
+
+And in none is there such sympathetic understanding because in none is
+there such nearness to God, as in Blessed Mary. To go to her in our
+prayers and to beg her to intercede for us is, of course, no more a
+trenching upon the unique mediatorship of our Lord than it is to ask my
+human friend to pray for me. We tend, do we not? to select from among
+the circle of our acquaintance those whom for some reason we feel to
+have what we call a special power in prayer when we seek for some one to
+pray for us in our need. Is it not wholly natural then that we should go
+to our Blessed Mother on whose sympathy we can unfailingly count and in
+whose spiritual understanding we can implicitly trust, when we want to
+interest those who are dear to our Lord in our special needs? We have
+every claim upon their sympathy because they are fellow-members of the
+same Body; and we know, too, that He Who has made us one in His Body
+wills that we should receive His graces through our mutual
+ministrations.
+
+     Mary, Maiden, mild and free,
+     Chamber of the Trinity,
+     A little while now list to me,
+      As greeting I thee give;
+     What though my heart unclean may be,
+      My offering yet receive.
+
+     Thou art the Queen of Paradise,
+     Of heaven, of earth, of all that is;
+     Thou bore in thee the King of Bliss
+      Without or spot or stain;
+     Thou didst put right what was amiss,
+      What man had lost, re-gain.
+
+     The gentle Dove of Noe thou art
+     The Branch of Olive-tree that brought,
+     In token that a peace was wrought,
+      And man to God was dear:
+     Sweet Ladye, be my Fort,
+      When the last fight draws near.
+
+     Thou art the Sling, thy Son the Stone
+     That David at Goliath flung;
+     Eke Aaron's rod, whence blossom sprung
+      Though bare it was, and dry:
+     'Tis known to all, who've looked upon
+      Thy childbirth wondrous high.
+
+     In thee has God become a Child,
+     The wretched foe in thee is foiled;
+     That Unicorn that was so wild
+      Is thrown by woman chaste;
+     Him hast thou tamed, and forced to yield,
+      With milk from Virgin breast.
+
+     Like as the sun full clear doth pass,
+     Without a break, through shining glass,
+     Thy Maidenhood unblemished was
+       For bearing of the Lord:
+     Now, sweetest Comfort of our race,
+       To sinners be thou good.
+
+     Take, Ladye dear, this little Song
+     That out of sinful heart has come;
+     Against the fiend now make me strong,
+       Guide well my wandering soul:
+     And though I once have done thee wrong,
+       Forgive, and make me whole.
+     Wm. De Shoreham's translation
+     from the Latin, or French of
+     Robt. Grosseteste; C. 1325.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
+
+     And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire,
+     and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with
+     the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the
+     Spirit gave them utterance.
+
+Acts II, 3.
+
+     Holy Mother of God, Virgin ever blessed, glorious and noble,
+     chaste and inviolate, O Mary Immaculate, chosen and beloved
+     of God, endowed win singular sanctity, worthy of all praise,
+     thou who art the Advocate for the sins of the whole world; O
+     listen, listen, listen to us, O holy Mary, Pray for us.
+     Intercede for us. Disdain not to help us. For we are
+     confident and know for certain that thou canst obtain all
+     that thou wiliest from thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, God
+     Almighty, the King of ages, Who liveth with the Father and
+     the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever.
+
+MS. Book of Cerne, belonging to Ethelwald, BP. of Sherbourne, 760.
+
+"When the Day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one
+accord in one place"--I suppose the "all" will be not merely the
+"twelve," but the "all" that were mentioned by S. Luke a few verses
+before. He mentions the Apostles by name and then adds, "These all
+continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women,
+and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren."
+
+We think of our Lady as sharing in the Pentecostal gift. This was the
+first act of her ascended Son, this sending forth of the Holy Spirit
+whom He had promised. It was the fulfilment of the prophecy: "I will
+pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters
+shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men
+shall dream dreams." I do not know of anything in the teaching of the
+Church to lead us to suppose that this gift was to the Apostles alone:
+rather the thought of the Church is that to all Christians is there a
+gift of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is imparted to the Church as such,
+and within the organisation He functions through appropriate organs.
+"There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." Whatever the
+operations of God through the Body of Christ, the same divine energy is
+making them possible. "All these worketh that one and selfsame Spirit,
+dividing to every man severally as he will."
+
+That the Holy Spirit should manifest Himself in her life was, of
+course, no new experience for S. Mary. Her conscious vocation to be the
+Mother of God had begun when the Holy Ghost had come upon her, and she
+had conceived that "Holy Thing" which was called the Son of God. And we
+cannot think that the Spirit Who is the Spirit of sanctity had ever been
+absent from her from the moment of her wonderful conception when by the
+creative act of the Spirit she was conceived without sin, that is, in
+union with God. But as there are diversities of gifts, so the coming of
+the Spirit on Pentecost would have meant to her some new or increased
+gift of God.
+
+For the Church as such this coming of the Spirit meant the entrance of
+the work of the Incarnation upon a new phase of its action. We may, I
+suppose, think of the work of our Lord during the years of His Ministry
+as intensive. It was the work of preparing the men to whom was to be
+committed the commission to preach the Kingdom of God. They had been
+chosen to be with Him, and their training had been essentially an
+experience of Him, an experience which was to be the essence of their
+Gospel and which their mission was to interpret to the world. "Who is
+this Jesus of Nazareth Whom ye preach? What does He mean?" was to be the
+question that they would have to answer in the coming years; and they
+would have to answer it to all sorts of men; to Jews who would find this
+conception of a suffering and rejected Messiah "a stumbling-block"; to
+the Greeks who would find "Jesus and the resurrection" "foolishness"; to
+all races of men who would have to be persuaded to leave their
+ancestral religions and revolutionise their lives, and before they would
+do so would wish to know what was the true meaning of Christ in whose
+name their whole past was challenged. As we watch the perplexity, the
+bewilderment, of these Apostles in the face of the collapse of all their
+hopes on the first Good Friday, as we see them struggling with the fact
+of the Resurrection, and attempting to adjust their lives to that; and
+then listen to their preaching and follow their action in the days
+succeeding Pentecost, we have brought home to us the nature of the
+action of the Holy Spirit when He came to them as the Spirit of Jesus to
+enable them to carry on the work that Jesus had committed to them.
+
+We understand that the work of the Spirit was first of all the work of
+interpreting the experience of the last three years. During these years
+they had been with Jesus, and the result was an experience which,
+however wonderful, or rather, just because it was wonderful, was in
+their consciousness at present little more than a chaotic mass of
+impressions and memories. It was the work of the Spirit to enkindle and
+illuminate their understanding so that they could put the experiences of
+the last three years in order, if one may put it in that way. He enabled
+them to draw out the meaning of what they had gone through. We are at
+once impressed with the reality of the work of the Spirit when we listen
+to the sermon of S. Peter to those who have witnessed the miracle of
+Pentecost. Here is another miracle of which we have, perhaps, missed
+something of the wonder. This man who in answer to the mockeries of the
+crowd--"these men are full of new wine"--stands forth to deliver this
+exposition of Jesus is the same man who but a few days before had denied
+his Lord through fear; he is the same man who even after the
+Resurrection was filled with such discouragement that he could think of
+nothing to do but to return to the old life of a fisherman, who had said
+on a day, "I go a-fishing." If we wish to understand the meaning of the
+coming of the Spirit, let us forget for the moment the tongues of fire,
+which are the symbol, and read over the words of S. Peter which are the
+true miracle of Pentecost.
+
+And this action of the Spirit is not sporadic or temporary. We follow
+the annals of the Church and we find the constant evidence of the
+Spirit's power and action in the Christian propaganda. The courage with
+which the Christians meet the opposition of Jews and Romans, in their
+resourcefulness in dealing with the utterly unprecedented problems they
+are called on to face, in the intellectual grip of the Apologists who
+have to meet the criticism of very diverse sets of opponents, in their
+rapidly growing comprehension of what the Incarnation means, and of all
+in the way of action that our Lord's directions involve,--all these,
+when we recall the antecedents of these men, lead us to a clearer
+apprehension of the nature of the Spirit's work in the Church. As our
+Lord had promised, He is bringing "all things to their remembrance" and
+"leading them into all the truth." If we need proof of the constant
+supernatural action of God in the Church, we get all we can ask in the
+preaching of Jesus by His followers in these opening years of
+their ministry.
+
+I said that our Lord's work in the time of His ministry was intensive,
+the preparing of instruments for the founding of the Kingdom. With
+Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit it passes into a new stage; it
+becomes _extensive_ in that it now reaches out to gather all men into
+the Kingdom. To this end there is now a vast development of the
+machinery (so to call it) of the Gospel, a calling into existence of the
+means whereby Christ is to continue His action in men's souls. For there
+must continue a direct action of Christ or the Gospel will sink to the
+condition of a twice-told tale: it will be the constant repetition of
+the story of Jesus of Nazareth Who went about doing good: and it will
+have less and less power to be of any help to men as it receeds into the
+past. Without the means which are called into existence to produce
+continual contact between the Redeemer and the Redeemed we cannot
+conceive of the Gospel continuing to exist as power.
+
+This is not a matter of pure theory: it is a thing that we have seen
+happen. We have seen the growth of a theory of Christianity which
+dispenses wholly or nearly wholly with the means of grace, and reduces
+the presentation of the Gospel to the presentation of the ideal of a
+good life as an object of imitation. When one asks: "Why should I
+imitate this life which, however good in an abstract way, is not very
+harmonious with the ideals of society at present?" one is told that it
+is the best life ever lived, the life that best interprets God, our
+heavenly Father to us. If one asks: "What is likely to happen if one
+does not imitate this life, but prefers some more modern type of
+usefulness?" the answer seems to be: "Nothing in particular will
+happen." In other words, the preaching of the Gospel divorced from the
+means of grace tends more and more to decline to the presentation of a
+humanitarian ideal of life which has little, and constantly less,
+driving power.
+
+We see then as we study the history of the early days of the Church the
+constant presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the mode and means by
+which the Gospel is presented. We see it particularly in the development
+of the ministry and the growth of the sacramental system. It seems to me
+not very important to find a detailed justification of all the things
+that were done or established in explicit words or acts in the New
+Testament. If we are dealing, as we believe that we are, with an
+organism of which the life is God the Holy Ghost Who is the Vicar of
+Christ in the building and administration of His Kingdom, I do not see
+why we should not find in the action of the Kingdom as much of
+inspiration as we find in its writings. I do not see why we should
+accept certain things on the authority of the action of the early
+Christian community, as the baptism of infants and the communion of
+women, and reject others, as the reservation of the Blessed Sacraments
+and prayers for the dead. Nor do I see why we should draw some sort of
+an artificial line through the history of the Church and declare all the
+things on one side of it primitive and desirable, and all on the other
+late and suspect! Especially as no one seems to be able to explain why
+the line should be drawn in one place rather than in another.
+
+If the Holy Spirit was sent by our Lord as His Vicar to preside in the
+Church, as I suppose we all believe, it was in fulfilment of our Lord's
+promise to be with it till the end of the world and that the gates of
+hell should not prevail against it. There is nothing anywhere in Holy
+Scripture indicating that the Holy Spirit was to be sent to the
+"primitive Church," even if any one could tell what the primitive Church
+is, or rather when the Church ceased to be primitive. The Holy Spirit is
+present as a guide to the Church to-day quite as fully as He was in the
+first century. His presence then was not a guarantee that all men should
+believe the truth or do the right, nor is it now. The state of
+Christendom is a sufficient evidence of the ability of men to defy the
+will of God, the Holy Spirit; but that does not mean that the Holy
+Spirit has withdrawn any more than the state of things at Corinth which
+called out S. Paul's two Epistles to that Church is a proof that God the
+Holy Ghost never came or did not stay with that primitive Christian
+community. The power of the Spirit is not an irresistible power, but a
+spiritual influence which will guide those who are willing to be guided,
+who will to be submissive to His will. But the will of God can always be
+resisted--and always is. Nevertheless the Holy Spirit is in the Church.
+He shaped and is shaping its beliefs and institutions: and to-day we
+trust that He is leading us back to His obedience that we may at length
+realize the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.
+
+The work of the Holy Spirit in the individual Christian is a
+constructive work; it has in view the growth of the child of God in
+holiness. He makes the soul of the baptised His dwelling-place and
+wishes to remain there as in His Temple, carrying on the work of its
+sanctification. The state of guiltlessness that follows absolution is
+not the equivalent of sanctity. Guiltlessness is a negative, sanctity is
+a positive state, and is acquired as the result of active correspondence
+with the will of God. In order that there may be this correspondence the
+will of God must be known, not merely as we know the things that we have
+learned by rote, but known in the sense of understood and appreciated.
+The will of God is knowable: that is, it has been revealed to man; but
+it needs to be effectively made known to the individual man. He must be
+convinced of the importance of divine truth to him. We know that just
+there is the supremely vital point in the teaching of the truth. Men
+assent to truth as true; but they are not thereby necessarily moved to
+act upon it: it may remain unassimilated. The vast majority of the
+people of this country, if they were questioned, would assert a belief
+in God; but a surprising number of them are unmoved by that belief, are
+led by it to no action. Or take the membership of any parish; they would
+all profess a belief in the efficacy of the sacraments: yet there is a
+surprisingly large number who do not frequent the sacraments. How many
+of you, for example, make your confessions and communions with the
+frequency and regularity that your theory about the sacraments implies?
+
+Now it is the work of the Holy Spirit to effect the passage in life
+from theory to practice, from profession to action. He illuminates the
+mind that we may understand; He stirs the will that we may act. He aids
+us to overcome the intellectual and physical sloth which is the
+arch-enemy of Christian practice. He intercedes for us, and He pleads
+with us that we may act as the children of God that we believe ourselves
+to be. But all He can do is to entice the will; if we remain unwilling,
+unmoved, He is ultimately grieved and leaves us. We may hope that that
+despair of the Holy Spirit of a soul rarely happens because it is a
+spiritual disaster awful to contemplate. In most men and women we can
+see enough impulse toward God, enough struggle with evil, to encourage
+us to think that the Holy Spirit has not utterly abandoned them. And it
+is never safe for us to judge definitely of another's spiritual case;
+but we do see lives that are so given over to malignancy that our hope
+for them is an optimism which has small basis on which to rest.
+
+In most we may be certain that there is going on a very active pleading
+of the Holy Spirit. He is interpreting the meaning of the truth we
+accept. He is present in a careful reading of the Bible, in meditation,
+in devotional study. He receives of Christ and shows it unto us. I am
+sure we ought to think more of this interpretative assistance of the
+Holy Spirit in the work of understanding the Christian Religion,
+especially in its application to the daily life. I am quite certain, and
+I have no doubt that the experience of some of you, at least, will bear
+me out, that it makes a vast difference in the results of our reading
+and study if we undertake it under the direct invocation of the Holy
+Spirit and with the conscious giving ourselves up to His guidance. We
+have to make a meditation, for example, and we begin with prayer to God
+the Holy Ghost for guidance and enlightenment. It is often well to let
+that prayer run on as long as it will. It may be in the end that instead
+of making the meditation we had planned we shall have spent the time in
+a prayer of union with the Holy Spirit and will find ourselves refreshed
+and enlightened as the result. There is need of that sort of yielding of
+self to the promptings of the Spirit. I think that it not infrequently
+happens that our rules get in the way of His action by destroying or
+checking in us a certain flexibility which is necessary if we are to
+respond quickly to the voice of the Spirit. As in the case just
+mentioned where the Spirit is leading us to communion with Him we are
+apt to think: "I must get on with my meditation or the time will be up
+and I shall not have made it," and we turn from the Spirit and stop the
+work that He was accomplishing.
+
+He has so much to do for us, so many things to show us, so many grounds
+to urge for our more earnest seeking of sanctity. The true point of our
+Bible reading is that it is the opportunity of the Holy Spirit to
+exhibit truth to us so that in us it will become energetic. We already
+are familiar with the incidents of our Lord's Passion. If it be a matter
+of knowledge there is no need to-night to take up the Gospel and read
+the chapters which tell of the Crucifixion. There is not much point in
+reading through a chapter as a matter of pious habit. It is
+extraordinary how many there are who speak with contempt of "mediaeval
+prayers" such as the recitation of the Rosary, who yet "read a chapter"
+once a day in the shortest possible time and with the minimum of
+attention. We can think of all religious practices as opportunities that
+we offer to God the Holy Ghost. The few verses of Holy Scripture we read
+may well be the medium of His action upon us. He may give us new insight
+into their meaning, He may stir our wills to correspondence with their
+teaching, He may kindle our hearts by the evidence of the divine love
+that He presses home. Who does not remember moments when new meaning
+seemed to flash from the familiar pages, when we felt ourselves
+convicted of inadequate response to the knowledge we have, or when we
+felt our heart stir and send us to our knees in an act of
+thanksgiving and love?
+
+Our constant need is the clear knowledge of ourselves. We may, we often
+do, see clearly God's will, and then we deceive ourselves as to the
+nature of our response. We think we are seeking for God when in reality
+we are seeking our own ends. We make our own plans and then seek to
+impose them on the will of God. Self-seeking, which we mistake for
+something else, is at the root of much spiritual failure. We try to
+believe that God's will is our will, and we succeed in a measure. We
+need therefore to be constantly examining ourselves by the revealed
+standard of God's will, to let in the light of the Spirit on our
+judgments and acts. For the struggle of the Spirit for control is a
+struggle with a resisting and sluggish will. We see, but we do not
+move; we know, but we do not act. The horrible inertia of spiritual
+sloth paralyses us, and the call of the Spirit is heard in vain. Like
+the man in our Lord's parable we plead the lateness of the hour, and our
+unwillingness to disturb others as our excuse for not rising at the
+Spirit's summons. But the Spirit, like the Friend at midnight, still
+knocks at the door, and the sound of the summons penetrates the
+quietness of the house and breaks in upon our slumbers. Well is it for
+us if in the end we rise and open to Him.
+
+It is only as we thus become energetic by the yielding to God of our
+wills that He can go on to His desired work. The aim of God in dealing
+with our lives is creative. He wills that we bring forth fruit, and the
+fruit that He wills that we bring forth is the Fruit of the Spirit. The
+general notion of holiness analyses into these qualities which are the
+evidence of God's indwelling, of His actual possession of the soul. When
+the soul yields at last to the divine will and begins to follow the
+divinely indicated course of action, then it loses self and finds God,
+then the results begin to show in the growth of the character-qualities
+that we call fruits or virtues. The presence or the absence of these is
+infallible evidence of the Spirit's success or failure in His work in
+us. If we abide in Christ, then the natural results of such abiding must
+be forthcoming. "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in
+me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye
+can do nothing."
+
+A vine bears fruit because it assimilates the natural elements which
+are furnished it by the Providence of God through earth and air and
+water, and works them into the fruit which is the end, the meaning of
+its existence. Our Lord through the constant operation within us of the
+Holy Spirit gives us the spiritual power to work over the endowments of
+nature and the opportunities of life into the spiritual product which is
+holiness. We can just as well, and perhaps easier, work up the same
+natural elements into a quite different product. The result of our
+life's action may be that we can show the works of the flesh. But what
+is the will of the Spirit, S. Paul sets before us in these words: "For
+when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What
+fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the
+end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and
+become the servants of God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the
+end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God
+is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
+
+Any adequate self-examination, therefore, bears not only on our sins,
+our failures, but on our accomplishment. A tree is known by its fruits;
+and fruits are things which are evident to all men. If indeed the work
+of the Spirit in us is love, joy, peace and the rest of the fruits,
+these qualities cannot be hid. Certainly they cannot be hid from
+ourselves. They are the evidence to us of precisely where we stand in
+the way of spiritual accomplishment. And we must remember that they are
+supernatural qualities, and not be deceived by the existence in us of a
+set of human counterfeits. Love is not good-natured tolerance; joy is
+not superficial gaiety, peace is not clever dodging of difficulties. The
+fruits of the Spirit are not of easy growth, but come only at the end of
+a long period of cultivation, of energetic striving. But like all the
+gifts of God they do come if we want them to come. "If ye abide in me,
+and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be
+done unto you." But when we ask our Lord for gifts we must remember that
+the giving is not a mechanical giving. What our Lord gives is the Might
+of the Spirit to effect what we desire. If a man ask of God a good
+harvest the prayer is answered if there be given the conditions under
+which a good harvest can be produced; it will not be produced without
+the appropriate human labour. And when we ask of God the Fruits of the
+Spirit the prayer is granted if the conditions are given under which
+this Fruit may be brought forth. But neither here may we expect Fruit
+without appropriate action on our part. God gives, but He gives to those
+who want.
+
+I
+
+others do of grace bereave, When, in their mother's womb, they life
+receive, God, as his sole-borne Daughter, loved thee: To match thee like
+thy birth's nobility, He thee his Spirit for thy Spouse did leave, Of
+whom thou didst his only Son conceive; And so was linked to all the
+Trinity. Cease, then, O queens, who earthly crowns do wear, To glory in
+the pomp of worldly, things: If men such respect unto you bear Which
+daughters, wives and mothers are of kings; What honour should unto that
+Queen be done Who had your God for Father, Spouse and Son?
+
+II
+
+Sovereign of Queens, if vain ambition move My heart to seek an earthly
+prince's grace, Show me thy Son in his imperial place, Whose servants
+reign our kings and queens above: And, if alluring passions I do prove
+By pleasing sighs--show me thy lovely face, Whose beams the angels'
+beauty do deface, And even inflame the seraphins with love. So by
+ambition I shall humble be, When, in the presence of the highest King, I
+serve all his, that he may honour me; And love, my heart to chaste
+desires shall bring, When fairest Queen looks on me from her throne, And
+jealous, bids me love but her alone.
+
+III
+
+Why should I any love, O Queen, but thee, If favor past a thankful love
+should breed? Thy womb did bear, thy breast my Saviour feed, And thou
+didst never cease to succour me. If love do follow worth and dignity,
+Thou all in thy perfections dost exceed; If love be led by hope of
+future meed, What pleasure more than thee in heaven to see? An earthly
+sight doth only please the eye, And breeds desire, but doth not satisfy:
+Thy sight gives us possession of all joy; And with such full delights
+each sense shall fill, As heart shall wish but for to see thee still,
+And ever seeing, ever shall enjoy.
+
+IV
+
+Sweet Queen, although thy beauty raise up me From sight of baser
+beauties here below, Yet, let me not rest there; but, higher go To him,
+who took his shape from God and thee. And if thy form in him more fair I
+see, What pleasure from his deity shall flow, By whose fair beams his
+beauty shineth so, When I shall it behold eternally? Then, shall my love
+of pleasure have his fill, When beauty's self, in whom all pleasure is,
+Shall my enamoured soul embrace and kiss, And shall new loves and new
+delights distill, Which from my soul shall gush into my heart, And
+through my body flow to every part.
+
+HENRY CONSTABLE: 1562-1613.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE HOME OF S. JOHN
+
+And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.
+
+S. John XIX, 27.
+
+But now we unite to praise thee, O Pure and Immaculate One, blessed
+Virgin and sinless Mother of thy great Son and the God of all. O
+perfectly spotless and altogether holy, thou art the hope of despairing
+sinners. We bless thee as most full of grace, who didst give birth to
+Christ, God and Man. And we fall down before thee. We all invoke thee
+and implore thy help. Deliver us, O Virgin, holy and undefiled, from
+every pressing strait and from all temptations of the Evil One. Be thou
+our peacemaker in the hour of death and judgment. Do thou save us from
+the future unquenchable fire and from the outer darkness. Do thou render
+us worthy of the glory of thy Son, O Virgin and Mother, most sweet
+and clement.
+
+A PRAYER OF S. EPHREM THE SYRIAN.
+
+There is no scene in the whole range of Scripture narrative which is
+more full of pathos than this scene of the Cross. Two agonies meet: the
+agony of the nailing, the lifting, the dying; and the agony that looks
+on in silent helplessness. But while our Lord's physical agony was in
+some sort swallowed up in the intensity of the love which was the motive
+for enduring it, overpassed in the vision of the need of those for whom
+He was dying, S. Mary's agony was the pain of a love concentrated upon
+the Sufferer Who hangs dying before her eyes. If there be anything that
+can lighten the pain of such love it is that it feels itself answered,
+that its object is conscious of it and is helped by it. And S. Mary had
+that consolation: the love poured to her from the Cross, and revealed
+itself when the suffering Son turned His eyes upon her agony and,
+understanding what her desolation would be, committed her to His beloved
+disciple: "Behold thy Mother; behold thy son." These two great loves
+which had been our Lord's human consolation were thus committed to one
+another. And when the darkness fell, and death relieved the agony, and
+the Sacred Body had been cared for, then the mother found refuge with S.
+John: "and from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home."
+
+From the day of Pentecost on, S. Mary is no more heard of in the history
+of the Church. As so often, the Scriptures are silent and decline to
+answer our interested questions. They go on with the essentails of their
+story, the founding of the Church of God, and leave other things aside.
+So we do not know any of the last years of the life of Blessed Mary.
+Where did she live? How long did she live? The traditions, in any case
+of quite an untrustworthy nature, are contradictory. Jerusalem and
+Ephesus contend for the honour of our Lady's residence. Jerusalem must
+have been the site of that "home" to which S. John took her after the
+crucifixion. Did she remain there, or did she follow S. John, and at
+length come to live with him in Ephesus? Ephesus puts forward the claim,
+and we feel that it would be well founded in the nature of the relation
+between these two, if S. Mary lived until the settlement of the last of
+the apostles in the Asian city. Our Lord's committal of His Mother to
+the beloved disciple implies their personal association as long as S.
+Mary lived: if till S. John was settled in Ephesus, then we may be sure
+that she was there. She would be with S. John as long as she lived, but
+can we think of her as living long? Would not a great love draw her to
+another world and the presence of her triumphant Son?
+
+Let us, however think, as one tradition bids us, of our Lady as living
+some time with S. John at Ephesus. We can understand the situation
+because it is so much like our own. These Asia Minor cities of the
+imperial period were curiously like the great centers of population in
+the Western world of to-day--London, Paris, New York, Chicago. There was
+the same over-crowding of population, the same intense commercial
+activity, the same almost insane thirst for amusement and excitement,
+the same degeneracy of moral fibre. The sins that sapped the life of
+Ephesus are the same that degrade contemporary life. In some ways
+Ephesus was, possibly, more frankly corrupt; but on the other hand it
+had no daily press to advertise and promote sin and social corruption.
+There is more of Christianity and of Christian influence in the modern
+city, but even here there is a curious resemblance between the two. The
+Christian Religion had but recently been introduced into Ephesus, but
+already it had precisely that touch of ineffectiveness that seems to us
+so modern. The message of the risen Lord to the angel of the Church in
+Ephesus is: "Nevertheless I have this against thee, that thou hast left
+thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and
+repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly,
+and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent."
+
+The things that hearten us are sometimes strange; but I suppose that
+there is a feeling of encouragement in our present day distress and
+spiritual ineffectiveness in the thought that even under S. John the
+Church in Ephesus was not wholly ideal. The conditions which baffle us,
+baffled him. The converts who were so promising and enthusiastic
+declined in zeal and fell back under the spell of worldliness. Zeal is a
+quality which is maintained with great difficulty, and the pull of the
+world, whether social or business, is steadily exercised. Converts in
+Ephesus, like converts in New York, felt that their friends were right
+who declared that they were quite unnecessarily strict, and that in
+order to serve Christ it was not necessary to turn their backs
+absolutely on Diana.
+
+As one tries to reconstruct the situation in Ephesus, one feels that our
+Lady would have had no prominence in the Church in the way of an
+actively exercised influence. One thinks of her as living in retirement,
+as not even talking very much. If she lived long she would be an object
+of increasing interest and even of awe to the new converts, and an
+object of growing love to all those who were admitted to any sort of
+fellowship with her. But one cannot imagine a crowd about her, inquiring
+into her experiences and her memories of her divine Son. Once she told
+of her experience, for it was necessary that the Church should know of
+the circumstances of the coming of the Son of God into the world, but
+beyond that necessary communication of her experience we cannot think of
+her as speaking of her sacred memories. Silence and meditation, longing
+and waiting, would have filled the years till the hour of her release.
+
+But in the quiet hours spent with S. John it would be different. Between
+the Blessed Virgin and S. John there was perfect understanding and
+perfect sympathy, and we love to think of the hours that they would have
+spent together in deep spiritual intercourse. Those hours would not be
+hours of reminiscence merely; they would rather be hours in which these
+two would attempt with the aid of the Spirit Who ruled in them so fully
+to enter deeper and ever deeper into the meaning of Incarnate God.
+Jesus would be the continual object of their thought and their love, and
+meditation upon His words and acts would lead them to an ever increasing
+appreciation of their depth and meaning.
+
+We have all felt, in reading the pages of S. John, how vast is the
+difference both in attitude toward his subject and in his understanding
+of it from that of the other Evangelists. The earlier Evangelists seem
+deliberately to keep all feeling out of their story, to tell the life of
+our Lord in the most meagre outline, confining themselves to the
+essential facts. Anything like interpretation they decline. In S. John
+all this is changed. The Jesus whom he presents is the same Jesus, but
+seen through what different eyes! The same life is presented, but with
+what changes in selection of material! The Gospel of S. John seems
+almost a series of mediations upon selected facts of an already familiar
+life rather than an attempt to tell a life-story. And so indeed we think
+of it. When S. John wrote, the life of our Lord as a series of events
+was already before the Church. The Church had the synoptic Gospels, and
+it had a still living tradition to inform it. What it needed, and what
+the Holy Spirit led S. John to give it, was some glimpse of the inner
+meaning of the Incarnation, some unfolding of the spiritual depths of
+the teaching of Jesus.
+
+We know how it is that different people listening to the same words get
+different impressions and carry away with them quite different meanings.
+We hear what we are able to hear. And S. John was able to hear what the
+other disciples of our Lord seem not to have heard. What dwelt in his
+memory and was worked up in his meditations and was at length
+transmitted to us, was the meaning of such incidents as the interview
+with Nicodemus, and the talk with the woman of Samaria, the discourse on
+the Holy Eucharist and the great High-priestly prayer. Men have felt the
+contrast between S. John and the other Evangelists so intensely that
+they have said that this is another Christ who is presented by S. John,
+and the influences which have shaped the author of the Fourth Gospel are
+quite other than those which shaped the men of the inner circle of
+Jesus. But no: it is the instinctive, or rather the Spirit-guided,
+selection of the material afforded by those years of association with
+Jesus for the purpose of transmitting to the Church a spiritual depth
+and beauty, a spiritual significance in our Lord's teaching, that the
+earlier Gospel had hardly touched.
+
+Which perhaps they could not touch because when they wrote there was not
+yet in the Church the spiritual experience which could fully interpret
+our Lord. Through the life of union with the risen Jesus and all the
+spiritual experience, all the illumined intelligence that that life
+brought, S. John was enabled to understand and interpret as he did.
+Writing far on toward the end of the first century he was writing out of
+the personal experience of Christian living of many years, which brought
+with it year by year an increased power of spiritual vision opening to
+him the depth and wonder of the fact of God made man. It is to an
+experience of our Lord that he appeals as the basis of his teaching.
+"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have
+seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have
+handled, of the Word of life: (for the life was manifested, and we have
+seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which
+was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) that which we have
+seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship
+with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and His Son Jesus
+Christ." And as we read on in S. John's Epistles we cannot fail to see
+how deeply the years of meditation have influenced his understanding of
+our Lord and His teaching, and how much his past experience of our Lord
+has been illumined by the experience of the risen Jesus which has
+followed. At no time, we are certain, has S. John been out of touch with
+his Master.
+
+And can we for a moment think that the years of intercourse with our
+Lady meant nothing in the spiritual development of S. John? On the
+contrary, may we not think that much of the spiritual richness which is
+the outstanding feature of his writings was the outcome of his
+association with the blessed Mother? No one has ever shown the
+sympathetic understanding of our Lord, has been so well able
+convincingly to interpret Him, as the beloved disciple. I myself have no
+doubt that much of his understanding came by way of S. Mary. Her
+interpretative insight would have been deeper than any one else's, not
+only because of her long association with Jesus, but because of her
+sinlessness. No two lives ever touched so closely; and there was not
+between them the bar that so blocks our spiritual understanding and
+clouds our spiritual vision, the bar of sin. I suppose it is almost
+impossible for us to appreciate the effect of sin in clouding vision and
+dulling sympathy. Our every day familiarity with venial sin, our easy
+tolerance of it, the adjustment of our lives to habits that involve it,
+have resulted in a lack of spiritual sensitiveness. Much of the meaning
+of our Lord's life and words passes over us just because of this dimness
+of vision, this insensitiveness to suggestion. And therefore we find it
+difficult to imagine what would be the understanding, the insight, the
+response to our Lord, of one between whom and Him there was no shadow of
+sin. And such an one was the blessed Mother. With unclouded vision she
+looked into the face of her Son. As His life expanded she followed with
+perfect sympathy; indeed, sometimes, as at Cana, her understanding of
+what He was made her precipitate in concluding as to His necessary
+action. When He became a public teacher and unfolded largely in parable
+His doctrine, it was her sinless soul which would see clearest and
+deepest, and with the most ready response. And therefore I am sure that
+we cannot go astray in thinking that S. John's relation to S. Mary was
+not simply that of a guardian of her from the pressure of the world, but
+was indeed that of a son who listened and learned from the experience of
+his Mother. No doubt S. John himself was of a very subtle spiritual
+understanding; notwithstanding that, and notwithstanding his exceptional
+opportunities of learning, we may still believe that there are many
+touches in his Gospel which are the result of his association with his
+Lord's Mother.
+
+Is it not possible for us to have our share in that pure insight of
+blessed Mary? When we try to think out the lines of our own spiritual
+development and the influences that have contributed to shape it, do we
+not find that the presence or absence of devotion to our Lady has been a
+factor of considerable importance? Devotion to her injected an element
+into our religion which is of vast moment, an element of sympathy, of
+gentleness, of purity. You can if you like, in condemnatory accents,
+call that element sentimentalism, although it is not that but the
+exercise of those gentler elements of our nature without whose exercise
+our nature functions one-sidedly. You may call it the feminine element,
+if you like; you will still be indicating the same order of activity.
+Surely, an all around spiritual development will bring out the feminine
+as well as the masculine qualities. And it seems to be historically true
+that those systems of religion which represent a revolt against the
+cultus of our Lady and carefully exclude all traces of it from their
+worship, show as a consequence of this exclusion a hardness and a
+barrenness which makes their human appeal quite one-sided. And when
+those same systems have realised their limitations and their lack of
+human appeal, and have tried to supply what is lacking, they have again
+failed, because instead of reverting to historical Christianity they
+have taken the road of humanitarianism, basing themselves on our Lord's
+human life and consequent brotherhood with us, rather than upon His
+supernatural Personality as operative through His mystical Body. Stress
+is laid upon charitable helpfulness rather than upon the power of grace.
+The modern man tries to reform life rather than to regenerate it.
+
+And, I repeat, I cannot help associating with a repudiation of the
+cultus of the saints, and especially of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a
+consequent failure to understand the Christian life as a supernatural
+creation. If one leaves out of account the greater part of the Kingdom
+of Heaven, all the multitudes of the redeemed, and their activities, and
+fastens one's attention exclusively upon that small part of the Kingdom
+which is the Church on earth, one can hardly fail to miss the
+significance of the earthly Church itself. Religion understood in this
+limited way may well drift more and more toward Deism and
+Humanitarianism, and further and further from any supernatural
+implications. This is no theory; it is what has happened. It was the
+course of Protestantism from the Reformation to the eighteenth century;
+and, after a partial revival of supernaturalism, is once more the rapid
+course of Protestantism to-day. Protestantism has lost or is fast losing
+any grip on the Trinity or the Incarnation: to it God is more and more a
+barren unity, and Jesus a good man. And this largely because all
+interest in the world of the Redeemed has been abandoned and all
+intercourse with the inhabitants of that world denied.
+
+It is therefore of the last importance that we, infected as we are with
+Protestantism, should stress the revival of the cultus of the saints,
+and should insist upon our right and privilege to pay due honour to the
+Mother of God and ask our share in her prayers. We must do all we can to
+make her known to our brethren. We need her sympathy, her aid,
+her example.
+
+Above all, the example of her spotless purity. It is notorious that one
+of the most marked features of our time is the virulent assault on
+purity. We had long emphasised a certain quality of conduct which we
+called modesty; it was, perhaps, largely a convention, but it was one of
+those protective conventions which are valuable as preservative of
+qualities we prize. It was protective of purity; and however artificial
+it was, in some respects, it existed because we felt that purity was a
+thing too precious to be exposed to unnecessary risk. Well, modesty is
+gone now, whether in conduct or convention. One hears discussed at
+dinner-tables and in the presence of young girls matters which our
+mothers would have blushed to mention at all. The quality of modesty is
+declared Puritanical and hypocritical. "Hypocritical virtue" is a phrase
+one frequently meets; and we seem fast going on to the time when all
+virtue will be regarded as hypocrisy. Customary standards are falling
+all about us, overthrown in the name of personal liberty.
+
+And by liberty, one gathers, is meant freedom to do as one pleases, and
+especially as one sexually pleases. The assault is pushed hardest just
+now against the sanctity of the sacrament of matrimony and the morals of
+that sacrament as they have been developed by the Christian Church.
+Protestantism long ago assented to the overthrow of Christian standards
+in the marriage relation and has aided the sexual anarchy with which we
+are faced to-day. To-day the chief attack is on the purity of marriage
+in the interests, ostensibly, of humanity. A vigorous campaign in favour
+of what is called birth-control is being carried on, and is being
+supported in quarters which are professedly Christian. There are many
+grounds for opposing the movement, social, humanitarian and other. We
+are here concerned with it only as it is an attack on purity. From the
+Christian point of view the marriage relation has for its end the
+procreation of children for the upbuilding of the Kingdom of God. If
+circumstances are such, through reasons of health or economy, that
+children seem undesirable, the remedy is plain, self control. The theory
+that human beings have no more control over their appetites than beasts,
+while it has much to support it in contemporary life, cannot be admitted
+from the point of view of religion. Self-control is always possible, and
+is constantly exercised by many men and women who choose to be guided by
+principle rather than by passion. And in any case the Christian Religion
+can become no partner, not even a silent one, in a conspiracy to murder,
+or in the sort of compromise that turns marriage into a licensed sodomy.
+If indeed the economic status of the modern world is such that the
+average couple cannot support a family, then the Christian Church may
+well aid in the bringing about of an economic revolution; but it can
+hardly aid in the destruction of its own ideals of purity.
+
+What is ultimately at stake in the modern world is the whole conception
+of purity as a quality that is desirable. This attitude has become
+possible among us for one reason because we have consented to the
+suppression of ideals of life which were calculated to sustain it. To
+sustain any moral or spiritual conception there must be maintained
+certain appropriate ideals which, while out of the reach of the average
+man, create and sustain in him an admiration and respect for the ideal
+standard. So the standard of purity presented in Mary and protected by
+the belief in her Immaculate Conception and her assumption, has the
+effect, not only of commending the life of chastity in the sense of the
+vows of religion, but also in the broad sense of the restraint and
+discipline of appetite whether within or without the marriage relation.
+It impresses upon us the truth that purity is not only a human quality
+but a divinely created virtue, the result of the infusion of sanctifying
+grace into the soul. Is it not largely because the young are taught
+(when they are taught anything at all in the premises) that purity is a
+matter of the _will_, that they so often fail? If they were taught the
+nature of the _virtue_ and were led to rely more on the indwelling might
+of the Holy Spirit would they not have better success? And if there were
+held constantly before their eyes the example of the saints and
+especially of Blessed Mary ever-virgin, would not they have an increased
+sense of the value of purity?
+
+The life and example of S. Mary are an inestimable treasure of the
+Church of God, and her removal from the world has only enhanced that
+value. To-day her meaning is clearer to us than ever. The spirit-guided
+mind of the Church has through the centuries been meditating on the
+meaning of her office as Mother of God. The words in which she accepts
+her vocation, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, implying, as they do, an
+active co-operation with the divine purpose, a voluntary association of
+herself with it, imply, too, the perpetual continuance of that
+association, and contain in germ all Catholic teaching in regard to her
+office. She passed from this world silently, and to the world unknown;
+but to the Church of God she ever remains of all human beings the
+greatest spiritual force in the Kingdom of God.
+
+     Weep, living things, of life the Mother dies;
+       The world doth lose the sum of all her bliss,
+     The Queen of earth, the Empress of the skies;
+       By Mary's death mankind an orphan is.
+         Let Nature weep, yea, let all graces moan,
+         Their glory, grace and gifts die all in one.
+
+     It was no death to her, but to her woe,
+       By which her joys began, her griefs did end;
+     Death was to her a friend, to us a foe,
+       Life of whose lives did on her life depend:
+         Not prey of death, but praise to death she was.
+         Whose ugly shape seemed glorious in her face.
+
+     Her face a heaven; two planets were her eyes,
+       Whose gracious light did make our clearest day;
+     But one such heaven there was, and lo, it dies,
+       Death's dark eclipse hath dimmed every, ray:
+         Sun, hide thy light, thy beams untimely shine;
+         True light since we have lost, we crave not thine.
+     Robert Southwell, 1560-1595
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+     THE ASSUMPTION
+
+     Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with
+     me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast
+     given me.
+
+     S. John XVII, 24.
+
+     Hail! Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail! Our life, our
+     sweetness, our hope, all hail. To thee we cry, poor exiled
+     children of Eve. To thee we send up our cries, weeping and
+     mourning in this vale of tears. Turn, then, Most gracious
+     Advocate, thy merciful eyes upon us, and now, after this our
+     exile, show unto us the blessed Fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O
+     gracious, O merciful, O sweet Virgin Mary.
+     Anthem from the breviary. Attributed
+     to Hermann Contractus, 1013-54.
+
+There is nothing more wonderful or beautiful, nothing that brings to us
+a more perfect revelation of our Lord's mind, than this prayer which is
+recorded for us by S. John. There is in it a complete unfolding of that
+sympathy and love which we feel to underlie and explain our Lord's
+mission. As we come to know what God is only when we see Him revealed in
+Jesus; when we enter into our Lord's saying, "He that hath seen me, hath
+seen the Father," so in the revelation of Jesus we understand God's
+attitude toward us. In Jesus the love of God shows itself, not as an
+abstract quality, a philosophical conception, but as a burning,
+passionate eagerness to rescue, an outgoing of God to individual souls.
+There is a deep personal affection displayed in this final scene in the
+Upper Chamber. This is our Lord's real parting from His disciples. He
+will see them again, but under conditions of strain and tragedy, or
+under such changed circumstances that they cannot well enter into the
+old intimacy. But here there is no bar to the expression of love. Here
+He gives them the final evidence of His utter union with them in the
+humility of the foot-washing. Here He marvellously imparts Himself in
+the Breaking of the Bread, wherein is consummated His personal union
+with them. This is the demonstration, if one were needed, that having
+loved His own, He loved them unto the uttermost.
+
+It is inconceivable that passionate love such as this should ever end.
+It is a personal relation which must endure while personality endures.
+It is really the demands of love which more than anything else outside
+revelation are the evidence of immortality. We are certain that the love
+of God which in its fulness has been made known in Christ cannot be
+annihilated by death. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love;
+therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee." Love such as that
+must draw men, not only in this world, but in all worlds. If it can draw
+men out of sin to God, it must create an enduring bond. If it can draw
+God to men, it must be the revelation of a permanent attitude of God to
+man. It is a love that goes out beyond the world, that love of which S.
+Paul says: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor
+angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
+to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
+separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
+
+Our instinctive thought of the Judgment seems to be of it as
+condemnation, or, at best, as acquittal. But why not think of it as
+consummation? Why not think of it as setting the seal of God's approval
+upon our accomplishment of His will and purpose for us? The final
+Judgment is surely that,--the entrance of those who are saved into the
+full joy of their Lord. There once more will our humanity be complete
+because it is the whole man, not the soul only, but the soul clothed
+with the body of the resurrection, once more clothed upon with its
+"house from heaven," which is filled with the joy of the Beatific
+Vision. The thought of the particular judgment may fill us with dread;
+but if we are able to look beyond that to the general Judgment at the
+last day, we shall think only of our perfect bliss in the enjoyment
+of God.
+
+The belief in the Assumption of our Lady is a belief that in her case
+that which is the inheritance of all the saints, that they shall rise
+again with their bodies and be admitted to the Vision of God, has been
+anticipated. In her, that which we all look forward to and dream of for
+ourselves, has been attained. She to-day is in God's presence in her
+entire humanity, clothed with her body of glory.
+
+This teaching, one finds, still causes some searching of hearts among
+us, and is thought to raise many questions difficult to answer. And it
+may be admitted at the outset that it is not a truth taught in Holy
+Scripture but a truth arrived at by the mind of the Church after
+centuries of thought. Unless we can think of the Church as a divine
+organism with a continuous life from the day of Pentecost until now, as
+being the home of the Holy Spirit, and as being continuously guided by
+Him into all the truth; unless we can accept in their full sense our
+Lord's promises that He will be with the Church until the end of the
+world, we shall not find it possible to accept the assumption as a fact,
+but shall decline to believe that, and not only that but, if we are
+consistent, many another belief of the Christian Church. But if we have
+an adequate understanding of what is implied in the continuity of the
+Church as the organ of the present action of the Holy Spirit, we shall
+not find that the fact that a given doctrine is not explicitly contained
+in Holy Scripture is any bar to its acceptance. We shall have learned
+that the revelation of God in Christ, and our relation to God in Christ,
+are facts of such tremendous import and inexhaustible content that it
+would be absurd to suppose that all their meaning had been understood
+and explicitly stated in the first generation of the Christian Church.
+
+We shall not, then, find it any bar to the acceptance of belief in the
+assumption of our Lady that its formal statement came, as is said,
+"late." We simply want to know that when it came it came as the outcome
+of the mature thought of the Church, the Body of Christ, the Fulness of
+Him that filleth all in all.
+
+It is to be noted that the assumption is not a wholly isolated fact.
+There are several cases of assumption in the Old Testament though of a
+slightly different character in that they were assumptions directly from
+life without any interval of death. Such were the assumptions of Enoch
+and Elijah. Moses, too, it has been constantly believed, was assumed
+into heaven,--in his case after death and with his resurrection body. A
+case which is more strangely like what is believed to have taken place
+in the experience of blessed Mary is that closely connected with our
+Lord's resurrection and recorded by S. Matthew. "And the graves were
+opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of
+the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and
+appeared unto many." Although it is not asserted that these were assumed
+into heaven, it seems impossible to avoid the inference; and if "many
+saints which slept" were raised from the dead and assumed into the
+heavenly world, there can be no _a priori_ difficulty in believing the
+same thing to have taken place in the Blessed Mother of God. Nay if such
+a thing as an assumption is at all possible for any human being one
+would naturally conclude from the very relation of S. Mary to our Lord
+that the possibility would be realised in her.
+
+And there were elements in her case which were lacking in all the other
+cases which suggest a certain fitness, if not inevitability, in her
+assumption. She was conceived without sin,--never had any breath of sin
+tainted her. Was it then possible that she should be holden by death?
+Surely, in any case, it was impossible that her holy body should see
+corruption: we cannot think of the dissolution of that body which had no
+part in sin. If ever an assumption were possible, here it was
+inevitable--so the thought of the Church shaped itself. The compelling
+motives of the belief were theological rather than historical. The germ
+out of consideration of which was evolved the belief in the assumption
+was the relation of Blessed Mary to her Son. That unique relation might
+be expected to carry with it unique consequences, and among these the
+consequence that the body which was bound by no sin should be reunited
+to the soul which had needed no purgation, but had passed at once to the
+presence of its God and its Redeemer who was likewise Son. It is well to
+stress the fact that the assumption is not only a fact but a doctrine.
+Fact, of course, it was or there could be no doctrine; but the truth of
+the fact is certified by the growing conviction in the mind of the
+Church of the inevitability of the doctrine.
+
+What is implied in the word assumption is that the body of the Mother of
+our Lord was after her death and burial raised to heaven by the power of
+God. It differed therefore essentially from the ascension of our Lord
+which was accomplished by His Own inherent power. When this assumption
+took place we have no means of knowing. We do not certainly know where
+S. Mary lived, nor where and when she died. Jerusalem and Ephesus
+contend in tradition for the privilege of having sheltered her last days
+and reverently carried her body to its burial. There is no way of
+deciding between these two claims, although the fact that our Lord
+confided His Mother to S. John throws some little weight into the scale
+of Ephesus. And yet S. Mary may have died before S. John settled in
+Ephesus. We can only say that history gives us no reliable information
+on the matter.
+
+In the silence of Scripture we naturally turn to the other writings of
+the early Church for light and guidance on the matter; but there, too,
+there is little help. There is, to be sure, a group of Apocryphal
+writings which have a good deal to say about the life of S. Mary, where
+the Scriptures and tradition are silent. Among other things these
+Apocryphal writings have a good deal to say, and some very beautiful
+stories to tell, of S. Mary's last days, of her burial and assumption.
+Are we to think of these stories as containing any grain of truth? If
+they do, it is now impossible to sift it from the chaff. These stories
+are generally rejected as a basis of knowledge. And there has been, and
+still is in some quarters, a conviction that the belief of the Church in
+the assumption rests on nothing better or more stable than these
+Apocryphal stories; that the authors of these Apocrypha were inventing
+their stories out of nothing, and that in an uncritical age their
+legends came to be taken as history. Thus was a belief in the assumption
+foisted upon the Church, having no slightest ground in fact. The human
+tendency to fill in the silences of Scripture has resulted in many
+legends, that of the assumption among them.
+
+There is a good deal to be said for this position, yet I do not feel
+that it is convincing. That the incidents of the life of the Blessed
+Virgin Mary as narrated in the Apocrypha are historical, of course
+cannot be maintained. But neither is it at all probable that such
+stories grew up out of nothing: indeed, their existence implies that
+there were certain facts widely accepted in the Christian community that
+served as their starting point. While the Apocryphal stories of the life
+of our Lady cannot be accepted as history, they do presuppose certain
+beliefs as universally, or at least widely, held. Thus one may reject
+all the details of the story of the death and burial and assumption of
+our Lady, and yet feel that the story is evidence of a belief in the
+assumption among those for whom the story was written. What was new to
+them was not the fact of the assumption but the detailed incidents with
+which the Apocrypha embroidered it. I feel no doubt that these
+Apocryphal stories are not the source of belief in the assumption, but
+are our earliest witness to the existence of the belief. They actually
+presuppose its existence in the Church as the necessary condition of
+their own existence.
+
+Another fact that tells in the same direction is the absence of any
+physical relics of our Lady. At a time when great stress was laid upon
+relics, and there was little scruple in inventing them, if the authentic
+ones were not forthcoming, there were no relics produced which were
+alleged to be the physical relics of S. Mary. Why was this? Surely,
+unless there were some inhibiting circumstances, relics, real or forged,
+would have been produced. The only probable explanation is that the
+inhibiting circumstance was the established belief in the assumption. If
+the assumption were a fact, there would be no physical relics; if it
+were an established belief, there would be no fraud possible. Add to
+this that various relics of our Lady were alleged to exist; but they
+were not relics of her body.
+
+Again: by the seventh century the celebration of the feast of the
+assumption had spread throughout the whole church. This universal
+establishment of the feast implies a preceding history of considerable
+length, going well back into the past. The feast was kept in many
+places, and under a variety of names which seem to imply, not mere
+copying, but independent development. It is alleged, to be sure, that
+the names by which the feast was called do not imply belief in the
+assumption. The feast is called "the Sleeping," "the Repose," "the
+Passage" of the Virgin, as well as by the Western title, the assumption.
+But a study of the liturgies and of the sermons preached in honour of
+the feast will convince any one that the underlying tradition was that
+of our Lady's assumption.
+
+These quite separate and yet converging lines of evidence seem to me to
+show convincingly what was the wide-spread belief of the early Christian
+community as to the destiny of Blessed Mary. They imply a tradition
+going well back into the past, so far back, that in view of the
+theological expression of the mind of the Church they may well be
+regarded as apostolic. Our personal belief in the assumption will still
+rest primarily upon its theological expression in the mind of the
+Church, but having attained certainty as to the doctrine, which is of
+course at the same time certainty as to the fact, we shall have no
+difficulty in finding in the above sketched lines of historical
+development the evidence of the primitive character of the belief.
+
+It may not be amiss to give a few characteristic quotations as
+indicating the mind of the Church in this matter.
+
+S. Modestus, patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 614), preaching on the Falling
+Asleep of the Mother of God, said:--
+
+"The Lord of heaven and earth has to-day consecrated the human
+tabernacle in which He Himself, according to the flesh, was received,
+that it may enjoy with Him forever the gift of incorruptibility. O
+blessed sleep of the glorious, ever-virgin Mother of God, who has not
+known the corruption of the grave; for Christ, our all-powerful Saviour,
+has kept intact that flesh which gave Him His flesh.... Hail, most holy
+Mother of God: Jesus has willed to have you in His Kingdom with your
+body clothed in incorruptibility.... The most glorious Mother of Christ
+our Lord and Saviour, Who gave life and immortality, is raised by her
+Son, and forever possesses incorruptibility with Him Who called her from
+the tomb."
+
+S. Andrew, Archbishop of Crete (d. 676), also preaching on the Falling
+Asleep of the Mother of God, says:--"It is a wholly new sight, and one
+that surpasses the reason, that of a woman purer than the heavens
+entering heaven with her body. As she was born without corruption, so
+after death her flesh is restored to life."
+
+In one of his sermons at the same feast, S. Germanus of Constantinople
+(d. 733), speaks thus:--"It was impossible that the tomb should hold the
+body which had been the living temple of the Son of God. How should your
+flesh be reduced to dust and ashes who, by the Son born of you, have
+delivered the human race from the corruption of death?"
+
+Preaching on the same festival, S. John Damascene (d. 760) said:--"Your
+flesh has known no corruption. Your immaculate body, which knew no
+stain, was not left in the tomb. You remained virgin in your
+child-bearing; and in your death your body was not reduced to dust but
+has been placed in a better and celestial state."
+
+There are one or two practical consequences of this doctrine concerning
+which, perhaps, it may be well to say a few words. The first is as the
+result of such devotions to our Lady as are implied in, or have in fact
+followed, a belief in her assumption. It is objected to them that even
+granting the truth of the fact of the assumption, still the stress laid
+on the fact and the devotions to our Lady which are held to be
+appropriate to it, are unhealthy in their nature, and do, in fact, tend
+to obscure the worship of our Lord: that where devotions to our Lady are
+fostered, there devotion to our Lord declines. That therefore instead of
+trying to advance the cultus of our Lady, we should do much better to
+hold to the sanity and reserve which has characterised the Anglican
+Church since the Reformation.
+
+These and the like arguments seem to me to hang in the air and to be
+quite divorced from facts. They imply a state of things which does not
+exist. The assertion that where devotion to our Lady prevails devotion
+to our Lord declines is as far as possible from being true. Where to-day
+is the Deity of our Lord defended most ardently and devotion to Him most
+wide spread? Is it in Churches where devotion to our Lady is suppressed?
+On the contrary, do you not know with absolute certainty, that in any
+church where you find devotion to our Lady encouraged, there will you
+find the Deity of our Lord maintained? Has the Anglican "sanity and
+reserve" in regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary saved the Anglican Church
+from the inroads of unitarianism and rationalism? Is it not precisely in
+those circles where the very virginity of our Lady is denied that the
+divinity of our Lord is denied also? No, devotion to Mary is far indeed
+from detracting from the honour due to Mary's Son.
+
+And we cannot insist too much or too often that the doctrines of the
+Christian Church form a closely woven system such that none, even the
+seemingly least important, can be denied without injuring the whole. No
+article of Christian belief expresses an independent truth, but always a
+truth depending upon other truths, and in its turn lending others its
+support. To deny any truth that the mind of the Church has expressed is
+equivalent to the removal of an organ from a living body.
+
+And to-day we feel more than ever the need of the doctrine of the
+assumption. One of the bitterest attacks on the Christian Faith which is
+being made to-day, emanating principally from within the Christian
+community, and even from within the Christian ministry, is that which is
+being made on the truth of the resurrection of the body, whether the
+resurrection of our Lord, or our own resurrection. In place of the
+Christian doctrine believed and preached from the beginning, we are
+asked to lapse back into heathenism and a doctrine of immortality. Not
+many seem to realise the vastness of the difference that is made in our
+outlook to the future by a belief in the resurrection of the body as
+distinguished from immortality. But the character of the religions
+resulting from these two contrary beliefs is absolutely different. It
+needs only to study them as they actually exist to be convinced of
+this fact.
+
+And it is precisely the doctrine of the assumption of our Lady which
+contributes strong support to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection
+of the body. It teaches us that in her case the vision and hope of
+mankind at large has been anticipated and accomplished. The resurrection
+of our Lord is found, in fact, to extend (if one may so express it) to
+the members of His mystical body; and the promise which is fulfilled in
+Blessed Mary, is that hope of a joyful resurrection which is thus
+confirmed to us all. In its stress upon the assumption the mind of the
+Christian Church has not been led astray, has not been betrayed into
+fostering superstitions, but has been led by the Spirit of Christ which
+He promised it to the development of a truth not only revealing the
+present place of His glorious Mother in the Kingdom of her Son, but
+encouraging and heartening us in our following of the heavenly way.
+
+     Whoe is shee that assends so high
+       Next the heavenlye Kinge,
+     Round about whome angells flie
+       And her prayses singe?
+
+     Who is shee that adorned with light,
+       Makes the sunne her robe,
+     At whose feete the queene of night
+       Layes her changing globe?
+
+     To that crowne direct thine eye,
+       Which her heade attyres;
+     There thou mayst her name discrie
+       Wrytt in starry fires.
+
+     This is shee, in whose pure wombe
+       Heaven's Prince remained;
+     Therefore, in noe earthly tombe
+       Cann shee be contayned.
+
+     Heaven shee was, which held that fire
+       Whence the world tooke light,
+     And to heaven doth now aspire,
+       Fflames with fflames to unite.
+
+     Shee that did so clearly shyne
+       When our day begunne,
+     See, howe bright her beames decline
+       Nowe shee sytts with the sunne.
+
+     Sir John Beaumont, 1582-1628.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE CORONATION
+
+
+     And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed
+     with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head
+     a crown of twelve stars.
+
+     Rev. XII, I.
+
+     To-day the Angel Gabriel brought the palm and the crown to
+     the triumphant Virgin. To-day he introduced to the Lord of
+     all, her, who was the Temple of the Most High, and the
+     dwelling of the Holy Spirit.
+
+     FOR THE ASSUMPTION. ARMENIAN.
+
+The heaven which S. John the Evangelist shows us is the continuation of
+the earthly Church. As we read his pages we feel that entrance there
+would be a real home-coming for the earnest Christian. We are familiar
+enough with presentations of heaven which seem to us to be so detached
+from Christian reality as to lack any human appeal. We think of
+philosophic presentations of the future with entire indifference. It is
+possible, we say, that they may be true; but they are utterly
+uninteresting. It is not so in the visions of S. John. Here we have a
+heaven which is humanly interesting because it is continous with the
+present life, and its interests are the interests that it has been the
+object of our religion to foster. The qualities of character which the
+Christian religion has urged upon our attention are presented as finding
+their clear field of development in the world to come. There, too, are
+unveiled the objects of our adoration, the ever-blessed Three who yet
+are but one. Love which has striven for development under the conditions
+and limitations of our earthly life, which has tried to see God and has
+gone out to seek Him in the dimness of revelation, now sees and is
+satisfied. Whom now we see in a mirror, enigmatically, we shall then see
+face to face.
+
+And it is a heaven thronged with saints, with men and women who have
+gone through the same experiences as those to which we are subjected,
+and have come forth purified and triumphant. We sometimes in
+discouragement think of life as continuous struggle. It is perhaps
+natural and inevitable that we should thus concentrate attention upon
+the present, but if we lift our eyes so as to clear them from the mists
+of the present we see that it is far from a hopeless struggle, but
+rather the necessary discipline from which we emerge triumphant. Those
+saints whom we see rejoicing about the throne of God, those who go out
+to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, passed through the struggle
+of persecution to their triumphant attainment of the Vision. It is our
+eternal temptation to expect to triumph here; but it is only in a very
+limited sense that this can be true: our triumph is indeed here, but the
+enjoyment of it and all that is implied in it is elsewhere. Here even
+our most complete achievement is conditioned by the limitations of
+earth: there the limitations are done away and life expands in
+perfectness.
+
+So we look eagerly through the door that is opened in heaven as those
+who are looking into their future home. That is what we all are striving
+for--presumably. We are consciously selecting out of life precisely
+those elements, are centering on those interests, which have eternal
+significance and are imperishable values. As we travel along the Pilgrim
+Way it is with hearts uplifted and stimulated by the Vision of the end.
+We advance as seeing Him Who is invisible. We live by hope, knowing that
+we shall attain no enduring satisfaction until we pass through the gates
+into the City, and mingle with the throng of worshippers who sing the
+song of Moses and of the Lamb. Therefore our life is always
+forward-looking and optimistic: because we are sure of the end, we wait
+for it with patience and endurance, thankful for all the experience of
+the Way. As the years flow by we do not look back on them with regret as
+the unrenewable experiences of a vanished youth, but we think of them as
+the bearers of experiences by which we have profited, and of goods which
+we have safely garnered, waiting the time when their stored values can
+be fully realised.
+
+Over all the saints whom the Church has seen rejoicing in the heavenly
+life, rises the form of Mary, Mother of God. S. John's vision of the
+"great sign in heaven" in its primary meaning has, no doubt, reference
+to the Church itself; but the form of its symbolism would be impossible
+if there were not a secondary reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It
+is the thought of her and of her office as Mother of the Redeemer that
+has determined the form of the vision. The details are too clear to
+permit of doubt, and such has been the constant mind of Catholic
+interpreters.
+
+And how else than as Queen of the heavenly host should we expect her to
+be represented? What does the Church teaching as to sanctity imply?
+
+It implies the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision. The normal Christian
+life begins in the sacramental act by which the regenerate child is made
+one with God, being made a partaker of the divine nature, and develops
+through sacramental experience and constant response to the will of God
+to that spiritual capacity which is the medium of the Beatific Vision
+and which we call sanctity or purity. "The pure in heart shall see God."
+
+But the teaching of the Church also implies that there is a marvellous
+diversity in the sanctity of the members of the Body of Christ. Each
+saint retains his personal characteristics, and his sanctity is not the
+refashioning of his character in a common mould but the perfecting of
+his character on its own lines. We sometimes hear it said that the
+Christian conception of heaven is monotonous, but that is very far from
+being the fact. It is only those conceptions of heaven which have
+excluded the communion of saints, and have thought of heaven as the
+solitary communion of the soul with God; which have in other words,
+excluded the notion of human society from heaven, which have appeared
+monotonous. As we read any series of the lives of the saints, and
+realise that it is these men and women and multitudes of others like
+them, that make up the society of heaven, we get rid of any other notion
+than that of endless diversity. And thus studying individual saints we
+come to understand that not only is the sanctity of them diverse in
+experience but different in degree. All men have not the same capacity
+for sanctity, we infer; all cannot develop to the same level of
+attainment. We may perhaps say that while all partake of God, all do not
+reflect God in the same way or in the same degree.
+
+But if there be a hierachy of saints it is impossible that we should
+think of any other at its head than Blessed Mary. Whatsoever diversity
+there may be in the attainments of the saints, there is one saint who
+is pre-eminent in all things, who,--because in her case there has never
+been any moment in which she was separate from God, when the bond of
+union was so much as strained,--is the completest embodiment of the
+grace of God. That is, I think, essentially what is meant by the
+Coronation of our Lady,--that her supremacy in sanctity makes her the
+head of the heirarchy of saints, that in her the possibilities of the
+life of union have been developed to the highest degree through her
+unstained purity and unfailing response to the divine will.
+
+It is of the last importance, if the Catholic conceptions are to be
+influential in our lives, that we should gain such a hold on the life of
+heaven, the life that the saints, with Saint Mary at their head, are
+leading to-day, as shall make it a present reality to us, not a picture
+in some sort of dreamland. Our lives are shaped by their ideals; and
+although we may never attain to our ideals here, yet we shall never
+attain them anywhere unless we shape them here. Heaven must be grasped
+as the issue of a certain sort of life, as the necessary consequence of
+the application of Christian principles to daily living. It is wholly
+bad to conceive it as a vague future into which we shall be ushered at
+death, if only we are "good"; it must be understood as a state we win to
+by the use of the means placed at our disposal for the purpose. Those
+attain to heaven in the future who are interested in heaven in
+the present.
+
+And a study of the means is wholly possible for us because we have at
+hand in great detail the lives of those whom the Church, by raising
+them to her altars, has guaranteed to us as having achieved sanctity and
+been admitted to the Beatific Vision. They achieved sanctity here--that
+is, in the past. They achieved it under an infinite variety of
+circumstanies,--that is the encouragement. They now enjoy the fruits of
+it in the world of heaven,--that is the promise.
+
+And nowhere can we better turn for the purpose of our study than to the
+life of Blessed Mary. There is the consummate flower of sainthood; and
+therefore it it best there that we can study its meaning. And for two
+principal reasons can we best study it there. In the first place because
+of its completeness: nowhere else are all the elements of sanctity so
+well developed. And in the second place because of the riches of the
+material for understanding Blessed Mary that is placed at our disposal
+by the labour of many generations of saints and doctors. All that devout
+meditation can do to understand the sanctity of Blessed Mary has
+been done.
+
+Our limit is necessarily reduced, our selection partial and our
+accomplishment fragmentary. We cannot however miss our way if we follow
+in the steps of Holy Revelation in making love the central quality. S.
+Mary's greatness is ultimately the greatness of her love. It began as a
+love of the will of God. She appears as utterly selfless, as having
+devoted herself to the will of God as He shall manifest that will. And
+therefore when the time comes she makes the great sacrifice that is
+asked of her without hesitation and without effort: "Behold, the
+handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." And all her
+life henceforth is loving response to what is unfolded as the content of
+the accepted revelation. That is a noteworthy thing that I fancy is
+often missed. It is not uncommon for one to accept a vocation as a
+whole, and then subsequently, as it unfolds, shrink from this or that
+detail of it. But in the case of S. Mary the acceptance of the vocation
+meant the acceptance of _God_, and there was no holding back from the
+result of that.
+
+That must be our guide in the pursuit of the heavenly life: we must
+understand that we are not called to accept this or that belief or
+practice, but are called to accept God--God speaking to us through the
+revelation He has entrusted to His Catholic Church. We do not, when we
+make our act of acceptance, know all or very much of what God is going
+to mean; but whatever God turns out to mean in experience, there can be
+no holding back. The note of a true acceptance of vocation is precisely
+this limitless surrender, a surrender without reservation. S. Mary could
+by no means understand what was to be asked of her: she only knew it was
+God Who asked it. She could not foresee the years of the ministry when
+her Son would not have where to lay His head, followed by the anxiety of
+Holy Week and the watch by the Cross on Good Friday; but as these things
+came she could understand them as involved in her vocation, in her
+acceptance of God.
+
+And cannot we get the same attitude toward life? In the acceptance of
+the Christian Religion what we have accepted is God. We have
+acknowledged the supremacy of a will outside ourselves. We say, "we are
+not our own, we are bought with a price," the price of the Precious
+Blood. But if our acceptance is a reality and not a theory it will turn
+out to involve much more than we imagined at the first. The frequent and
+pathetic failures of those who have made profession of Christianity is
+largely accounted for by this,--that the demands of the Christian
+Religion on life turn out to be more searching and far-reaching than was
+supposed would be the case. Religion turns out to be not one interest to
+be adjusted to the other interests of life, but to be a demand that all
+life and action shall be controlled by supernatural motive. Those who
+would willingly give a part, find it impossible to surrender the whole.
+The world is full of Young Rulers who are willing "to contribute
+liberally to the support of religion," but shrink from the demand that
+they "sell all." "I seek not yours, but you," S. Paul writes to the
+Corinthians; and that is also the seeking of God--"Not yours but you."
+And because the limit of our willingness is reached in contribution and
+does not extend to sacrifice, we fail.
+
+But Blessed Mary did not fail because there was no limit to her
+willingness to sacrifice. Her will to sacrifice had the same limitless
+quality as her love; and because of the limitless quality of her
+self-giving her growth in the life of union was unlimited, or limited
+only by the limitations of creaturehood. When therefore we think of her
+to-day as Queen of Saints we are not thinking of an arbitrarily
+conferred position; we are thinking of a position which comes to her
+because she is what she is. She through the unstinting sacrifice of her
+love came into more intimate relations with God than is possible for any
+other, and through that relation came to know more of the mind of God
+than any other. The power of her intercession is the power of her
+understanding, of her sympathy with the thoughts of God. When we come to
+her with our request for her intercession we feel that we are sure of
+her sympathy and her understanding. Her experience of human life, we
+think, was not very wide: can she whose life was passed under such
+narrow conditions understand the complex needs of the modern man or
+woman? It is true that her actual experience of human life was not very
+wide; but her experience of God is very wide indeed, and she is able to
+understand our experience better than we can understand it ourselves
+because of her understanding of God's mind and will. It is seeing life
+through God's eyes that reveals the truth about it.
+
+Hence the blunder and the tragedy of those who seek to know life by
+experience, when they mean experience gained by participation in life's
+evil as well as in its good. They succeed in soiling life rather than in
+understanding it; for participation in evil effectually prevents our
+understandings of good. It is on the face of things that the farther a
+man goes into sin, the less is righteousness intelligible to him. Our
+Lord's rule "He that doeth the will shall know of the doctrine" is not
+an arbitrary maxim, but embodies the deepest psychological truth. There
+is but one path to full understanding, and that is the path of
+sympathy. And therefore are we sure of our Lady's understanding and
+come to her unhesitatingly for the help of her intercession. She
+understands our case because she sees it revealed in the mind of
+her Son.
+
+It cannot be questioned that much of the weakness of religion to-day is
+due to the fact that Christian ideals make but faint appeal. By many
+they are frankly repudiated as impossible of attainment in a world such
+as this, and as weakening to human character so far as they are
+attained. Christians, of course, are unable to take this point of view,
+and, therefore, they treat the ideals with respect, but continue to
+govern their lives by motives which are not harmonious with them. It is
+tacitly assumed on all sides that a consistent pursuit of Christians
+ideals will assure failure in social or business life. This, of course,
+is tantamount to a confession that social and business life are
+unchristian, and raises the same sort of grave questions as to the duty
+of a Christian as were raised in the early days of the Church under the
+heathen empire. With that, however, we may not concern ourselves now. We
+are merely concerned to note and to emphasise the fact that, whatever
+may be true of society or business, our religion is lamentably
+ineffective because of its failure to emphasise the ideals of sanctity
+and to present those ideals as the ideals of _all_ Christian life, not
+as the ideals of a select few. While religious teachers asquiesce in the
+present set of compromises as an adequate expression of Christian
+character, we may expect a decline in the Church as a spiritual force,
+whatever may be true of it as a social force.
+
+If Christian ideals are to resume their appeal to the membership of the
+Church as a whole it is requisite that they be studied by the clergy and
+intelligently presented. But little is to be hoped in this direction so
+long as our theological training ignores religion and concentrates its
+attention on something that it takes for scholarship. The raw material
+that is sent by our parishes to the seminaries to be educated for Holy
+Orders is commonly turned out of the seminary with less religion that it
+entered. The outlook for the presentation of Christian ideals is not
+hopeful. We seem destined to drift on indefinitely in our habitual
+compromises.
+
+All the more is it necessary that we should lift our eyes to the heavens
+where humility and meekness, where sacrifice and obdience, are, in the
+person of Blessed Mary, crowned as the most perfect expression of
+sanctity, as the qualities that raise man nearest God. And what consoles
+us in the present depressing circumstances of the Church is that we are
+permitted to look through S. John's eyes into the world of heaven, and
+there see "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations,
+and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, before the throne and before the
+Lamb, clothed with white robes, and with palms in their hands." Somehow,
+we feel, under whatever distressing and discouraging circumstances, the
+work of God in the regeneration of souls goes on. No doubt it is a work
+that is largely hidden from our eyes, from those eyes which are blinded
+to the reality of spiritual things. Humility and meekness are the
+qualities of a hidden life; they do not flaunt themselves before men's
+eyes. But in their silence and obscurity great souls are growing up,
+growing to the spiritual status of the saints of God. In our estimate of
+values we shall do well to lay to heart the utterances of WISDOM: "Then
+shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such
+as have afflicted him, and made no account of his labours. When they see
+it, they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at
+the strangeness of his salvation, so far beyond all that they had looked
+for. And they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say
+among themselves, This is he, whom we had sometime in derision, and a
+proverb of reproach: we fools accounted his life madness, and his end
+without honour: how is he numbered among the children of God, and his
+lot is among the saints! Verily we went astray from the way of truth,
+and the light of righteousness shined not unto us, and the sun of
+righteousness rose not upon us."
+
+When we have attained to the point of view as to life's value which is
+expressed in the ideal of sanctity then we shall know how to estimate at
+their true worth the constant criticisms which are directed against
+those ideals and those who seek them. The saints, we are told, were no
+doubt estimable men and women, but they were weak, and for the purpose
+of the world's work, useless. But is this true, to keep to a specific
+example, of the Blessed Virgin Mary? What is there about her life that
+suggests weakness? And what can be the meaning of calling such a life
+useless to the world? Take but one aspect of it. It has for centuries
+furnished an ideal of womanhood. It is contended that the women who
+have taken Blessed Mary for their ideal have shown themselves weak and
+useless?--that those women are stronger in character and of more value
+to the world who have thrown over the ideals of sanctity and built their
+lives upon the social ideals prevalent at present? I no not care to
+attempt any characterisation of the feminine ideal which is commended to
+us at present; it is sufficient to say that it is difficult to
+understand how it can be considered socially valuable; still less how it
+can be considered an advance on the character qualities which
+distinguish the Christian ideal of sanctity.
+
+In the midst of the present confusion of values it is for us of vast
+significance that we have in this matter the mind of Christ. There need
+be no confusion in our minds. What Christ commended has proved to be
+practical of accomplishment, the evidence of which is the great
+multitude which no man can number who to-day sing about the throne of
+God and of the Lamb. What God approves is evidenced by the Coronation of
+the Blessed Mother over all the multitudes of the saints of God. Blessed
+Mary is the embodied thought of God for humanity, the realised ideal of
+a human life. He that is mighty hath magnified her, till she shines
+resplendent in spiritual qualities over all the hosts of the elect.
+
+But though so highly exalted she is not thereby removed to an
+inaccessible distance. She who is privileged to bear the incredible
+title, MOTHER OF GOD is our Mother as well. Upon the Cross our Lord
+said to us in the person of His beloved Disciple, "Behold thy Mother";
+and it is a mother's love that we find flowing to us from the heart of
+Mary. Have we been cold to her, and inappreciative of her love? Have we
+felt that we have no need of her in the conduct of our lives? If so,
+what we have been doing is to isolate ourselves from the divinely
+provided fount of human sympathy which ever flows from our star-crowned
+Mother. Is life so rich in sources of help and sympathy and love that we
+can afford to over-pass the eagerness of God's saints to help us, the
+willingness of the very Mother of God to intercede? Is not the life that
+shuts out from itself the society of heaven pitifully impoverished?
+
+Too many of us are like the man who owned the field wherein was the
+buried treasure. Limitless aid is at our disposal, but on condition that
+we want it and will seek it. Let us try to understand what it is to have
+at our disposal the love and sympathy of the saints of God,--that they
+are not remote inhabitants of a distant sphere whose present interests
+have led to forgetfulness of what they once were, whose present joy is
+so intense as to make them self-centred, but that their very attainment
+of perfection implies the perfection of their love and the completeness
+of their sympathy. The perfection of God's saints and their attainment
+of the end of their course in the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision, has
+but made them more sensitive of our needs and more eager to help.
+
+The spiritual wisdom and power of the Mother of God is at our disposal
+to-day. To the feebleness of our prayers may be added the spiritual
+wisdom and strength of her intercession. He Whose will it is that we
+should pray for one another, wills too that the prayers of His Blessed
+Mother should be at the disposal of all who call upon her. Let us take
+the fact of the intercession of the Queen of Saints seriously as a
+source of power ever open to us.
+
+Thou who art God's Mother and also ours, thou who lookst constantly into
+the Face of the Son, thou who art the fullest manifestation of the love
+of the Blessed Trinity, thou Mary, our Mother, pray for us now and in
+the hour of our death.
+
+     All hail, O Virgin crowned with stars
+       and moon under thy feet,
+     Obtain us pardon of our sins
+       of Christ, our Saviour sweet;
+     For though thou art Mother of any God,
+       yet thy humility
+     Disdaineth not this simple wretch
+       that flies for help to thee.
+     Thou knowest thou art more dear to me
+       than any can express,
+     And that I do congratulate
+       With joy thy happiness.
+     Thou who art the Queen of Heaven and Earth
+       thy helping hand me lend,
+     That I may love and praise my God
+       and have a happy end.
+     And though my sins me terrify,
+       yet hoping still in thee,
+     I find my soul refreshed much
+       when to thee I do flee;
+     For thou most willingly to God
+       petitions dost present,
+     And dost obtain much grace for us
+       in this our banishment.
+     The honour and the glorious praise
+       by all be given to thee,
+     Which Jesus thy beloved Son,
+       ordained eternally;
+     For thee whom he exalts in heaven
+       above the angels all,
+     And whom we find a Patroness
+       when unto thee we call.
+     O Mater Dei, memento mei. Amen.
+
+     Dame Gertrude More, O.S.B.
+     Ob. 1633.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR LADY SAINT MARY***
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+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689
+
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+
+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
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