Jesus said to him, "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but by Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; henceforth you know Him and have seen Him."

Phillip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied."

Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know Me, Phillip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?"

"Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does His works."

"Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me; or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves." (John 14:6-11)

Friday, September 30, 2011

REDEMPTOR HOMINIS - Encyclical of Blessed John Paul II on Jesus Christ, the Center of the universe and history, Part I

Venerable Brothers, and dear Sons and Daughters
greetings and the Apostolic Blessing

1. At the close of the second Millennium

THE REDEEMER OF MAN, Jesus Christ, is the centre of the universe and of history. To him go my thoughts and my heart in this solemn moment of the world that the Church and the whole family of present-day humanity are now living. In fact, this time, in which God in his hidden design has entrusted to me, after my beloved Predecessor John Paul I, the universal service connected with the Chair of Saint Peter in Rome, is already very close to the year 2000. At this moment it is difficult to say what mark that year will leave on the face of human history or what it will bring to each people, nation, country and continent, in spite of the efforts already being made to foresee some events. For the Church, the People of God spread, although unevenly, to the most distant limits of the earth, it will be the year of a great Jubilee. We are already approaching that date, which, without prejudice to all the corrections imposed by chronological exactitude, will recall and reawaken in us in a special way our awareness of the key truth of faith which Saint John expressed at the beginning of his Gospel: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us"1, and elsewhere: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life"2.

We also are in a certain way in a season of a new Advent, a season of expectation: "In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son..."3, by the Son, his Word, who became man and was born of the Virgin Mary. This act of redemption marked the high point of the history of man within God's loving plan. God entered the history of humanity and, as a man, became an actor in that history, one of the thousands of millions of human beings but at the same time Unique! Through the Incarnation God gave human life the dimension that he intended man to have from his first beginning; he has granted that dimension de- finitively-in the way that is peculiar to him alone, in keeping with his eternal love and mercy, with the full freedom of God-and he has granted it also with the bounty that enables us, in considering the original sin and the whole history of the sins of humanity, and in considering the errors of the human intellect, will and heart, to repeat with amazement the words of the Sacred Liturgy: "O happy fault... which gained us so great a Redeemer!"4

2. The first words of the new Pontificate

It was to Christ the Redeemer that my feelings and my thoughts were directed on 16 October of last year, when, after the canonical election, I was asked: "Do you accept?" I then replied: "With obedience in faith to Christ, my Lord, and with trust in the Mother of Christ and of the Church, in spite of the great difficulties, I accept". Today I wish to make that reply known publicly to all without exception, thus showing that there is a link between the first fundamental truth of the Incarnation, already mentioned, and the ministry that, with my acceptance of my election as Bishop of Rome and Successor of the Apostle Peter, has become my specific duty in his See.

I chose the same names that were chosen by my beloved Predecessor John Paul I. Indeed, as soon as he announced to the Sacred College on 26 August 1978 that he wished to be called John Paul-such a double name being unprecedented in the history of the Papacy-I saw in it a clear presage of grace for the new pontificate. Since that pontificate lasted barely 33 days, it falls to me not only to continue it but in a certain sense to take it up again at the same starting point. This is confirmed by my choice of these two names. By following the example of my venerable Predecessor in choosing them, I wish like him to express my love for the unique inheritance left to the Church by Popes John XXIII and Paul VI and my personal readiness to develop that inheritance with God's help.

Through these two names and two pontificates I am linked with the whole tradition of the Apostolic See and with all my Predecessors in the expanse of the twentieth century and of the preceding centuries. I am connected, through one after another of the various ages back to the most remote, with the line of the mission and ministry that confers on Peter's See an altogether special place in the Church. John XXIII and Paul VI are a stage to which I wish to refer directly as a threshold from which I intend to continue, in a certain sensc together with John Paul I, into the future, letting myself be guided by unlimited trust in and obedience to the Spirit that Christ promised and sent to his Church. On the night before he suffered he said to his apostles: "It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you"5. "When the Counsellor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me; and you also are witnesses, because you have been with me from the beginning"6. "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come"7.

3. Trust in the Spirit of Truth and of Love

Entrusting myself fully to the Spirit of truth, therefore, I am entering into the rich inheritance of the recent pontificates. This inheritance has struck deep roots in the awareness of the Church in an utterly new way, quite unknown previously, thanks to the Second Vatican Council, which John XXIII convened and opened and which was later successfully concluded and perseveringly put into effect by Paul VI, whose activity I was myself able to watch from close at hand. I was constantly amazed at his profound wisdom and his courage and also by his constancy and patience in the difficult postconciliar period of his pontificate. As helmsman of the Church, the bark of Peter, he knew how to preserve a providential tranquillity and balance even in the most critical moments, when the Church seemed to be shaken from within, and he always maintained unhesitating hope in the Church's solidity. What the Spirit said to the Church through the Council of our time, what the Spirit says in this Church to all the Churches8 cannot lead to anything else-in spite of momentary uneasinesses-but still more mature solidity of the whole People of God, aware of their salvific mission.

Paul VI selected this present-day consciousness of the Church as the first theme in his fundamental Encyclical beginning with the words Ecclesiam Suam. Let me refer first of all to this Encyclical and link myself with it in this first document that, so to speak, inaugurates the present pontificate. The Church's consciousness, enlightened and supported by the Holy Spirit and fathoming more and more deeply both her divine mystery and her human mission, and even her human weaknesses-this consciousness is and must remain the first source of the Church's love, as love in turn helps to strengthen and deepen her consciousness. Paul VI left us a witness of such an extremely acute consciousness of the Church. Through the many things, often causing suffering, that went to make up his pontificate he taught us intrepid love for the Church, which is, as the Council states, a "sacrament or sign and means of intimate union with God, and of the unity of all mankind"9.

4. Reference to Paul VI's first Encyclical

Precisely for this reason, the Church's consciousness must go with universal openness, in order that all may be able to find in her "the unsearchable riches of Christ"10 spoken of by the Apostle of the Gentiles. Such openness, organically joined with the awareness of her own nature and certainty of her own truth, of which Christ said: "The word which you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me"11, is what gives the Church her apostolic, or in other words her missionary, dynamism, professing and proclaiming in its integrity the whole of the truth transmitted by Christ. At the same time she must carry on the dialogue that Paul VI, in his Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam called "the dialogue of salvation", distinguishing with precision the various circles within which it was to be carried on12. In referring today to this document that gave the programme of Paul VI's pontificate, I keep thanking God that this great Predecessor of mine, who was also truly my father, knew how to display ad extra, externally, the true coun- tenance of the Church, in spite of the various internal weaknesses that affected her in the postconciliar period. In this way much of the human family has become, it seems, more aware, in all humanity's various spheres of existence, of how really necessary the Church of Christ, her mission and her service are to humanity. At times this awareness has proved stronger than the various critical attitudes attacking ab intra, internally, the Church, her institutions and structures, and ecclesiastics and their activities. This growing criticism was certainly due to various causes and we are furthermore sure that it was not always without sincere love for the Church. Undoubtedly one of the tendencies it displayed was to overcome what has been called triumphalism, about which there was frequent discussion during the Council. While it is right that, in accordance with the example of her Master, who is "humble in heart"13, the Church also should have humility as her foundation, that she should have a critical sense with regard to all that goes to make up her human character and activity, and that she should always be very demanding on herself, nevertheless criticism too should have its just limits. Otherwise it ceases to be constructive and does not reveal truth, love and thankfulness for the grace in which we become sharers principally and fully in and through the Church. Furthermore such criticism does not express an attitude of service but rather a wish to direct the opinion of others in accordance with one's own, which is at times spread abroad in too thoughtless a manner.

Gratitude is due to Paul VI because, while respecting every particle of truth contained in the various human opinions, he preserved at the same time the providential balance of the bark's helmsman14. The Church that I-through John Paul I-have had entrusted to me almost immediately after him is admittedly not free of internal difficulties and tension. At the same time, however, she is internally more strengthened against the excesses of self-criticism: she can be said to be more critical with regard to the various thoughtless criticisms, more resistent with respect to the various "novelties", more mature in her spirit of discerning, better able to bring out of her everlasting treasure "what is new and what is old"15, more intent on her own mystery, and because of all that more serviceable for her mission of salvation for all: God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth"16.

5. Collegiality and apostolate

In spite of all appearances, the Church is now more united in the fellowship of service and in the awareness of apostolate. This unity springs from the principle of collegiality, mentioned by the Second Vatican Council. Christ himself made this principle a living part of the apostolic College of the Twelve with Peter at their head, and he is continuously renewing it in the College of the Bishops, which is growing more and more over all the earth, remaining united with and under the guidance of the Successor of Saint Peter. The Council did more than mention the principle of collegiality: it gave it immense new life, by -among other things-expressing the wish for a permanent organ of collegiality, which Paul VI founded by setting up the Synod of the Bishops, whose activity not only gave a new dimension to his pontificate but was also later clearly reflected in the pontificate of John Paul I and that of his unworthy Successor from the day they began.

The principle of collegiality showed itself particularly relevant in the difficult postconciliar period, when the shared unanimous position of the College of the Bishops-which displayed, chiefly through the Synod, its union with Peter's Successor-helped to dissipate doubts and at the same time indicated the correct ways for renewing the Church in her universal dimension. Indeed, the Synod was the source, among other things, of that essential momentum for evangelization that found expression in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi17, wich was so joyously welcomed as a programme for renewal which was both apostolic and also pastoral. The same line was followed in the work of the last ordinary session of the Synod of the Bishops, held about a year before the death of Pope Paul VI and dedicated, as is known, to catechesis. The results of this work have still to be arranged and enunciated by the Apostolic See.

As we are dealing with the evident development of the forms in which episcopal collegiality is expressed, mention must be made at least of the process of consolidation of National Episcopal Conferences throughout the Church and of other collegial structures of an international or continental character. Referring also to the centuriesold tradition of the Church, attention should be directed to the activity of the various diocesan, provincial and national Synods. It was the Council's idea, an idea consistently put into practice by Paul VI, that structures of this kind, with their centuries of trial by the Church, and the other forms of collegial collaboration by Bishops, such as the metropolitan structure-not to mention each individual diocese-should pulsate in full awareness of their own identity and, at the same time, of their own originality within the universal unity of the Church. The same spirit of collaboration and shared responsibility is spreading among priests also, as is confirmed by the many Councils of Priests that have sprung up since the Council. That spirit has extended also among the laity, not only strengthening the already existing organizations for lay apostolate but also creating new ones that often have a different outline and excellent dynamism. Furthermore, lay people conscious of their responsibility for the Church have willingly committed themselves to collaborating with the Pastors and with the representatives of the Institutes of consecrated life, in the spheres of the diocesan Synods and of the pastoral Councils in the parishes and dioceses.

I must keep all this in mind at the beginning of my pontificate as a reason for giving thanks to God, for warmly encouraging all my brothers and sisters and for recalling with heartfelt gratitude the work of the Second Vatican Council and my great Predecessors, who set in motion this new surge of life for the Church, a movement that is much stronger than the symptoms of doubt, collapse and crisis.

6. The road to Christian unity

What shall I say of all the initiatives that have sprung from the new ecumenical orientation? The unforgettable Pope John XXIII set out the problem of Christian unity with evangelical clarity as a simple consequence of the will of Jesus Christ himself, our Master, the will that Jesus stated on several occasions but to which he gave expression in a special way in his prayer in the Upper Room the night before he died: "I pray... Father... that they may all be one"18. The Second Vatican Council responded concisely to this requirement with its Decree on ecumenism. Pope Paul VI, availing himself of the activities of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, began the first difficult steps on the road to the attainment of that unity. Have we gone far along that road? Without wishing to give a detailed reply, we can say that we have made real and important advances. And one thing is certain: we have worked with perseverance and consistency, and the representatives of other Christian Churches and Communities have also committed themselves together with us, for which we are heartily grateful to them. It is also certain that in the present historical situation of Christianity and the world the only possibility we see of fulfilling the Church's universal mission, with regard to ecumenical questions, is that of seeking sincerely, perseveringly, humbly and also courageously the ways of drawing closer and of union. Pope Paul VI gave us his personal example for this. We must therefore seek unity without being discouraged at the difficulties that can appear or accumulate along that road; otherwise we would be unfaithful to the word of Christ, we would fail to accomplish his testament. Have we the right to run this risk?

There are people who in the face of the difficulties or because they consider that the first ecumenical endeavours have brought negative results would have liked to turn back. Some even express the opinion that these efforts are harmful to the cause of the Gospel, are leading to a further rupture in the Church, are causing confusion of ideas in questions of faith and morals and are ending up with a specific indifferentism. It is perhaps a good thing that the spokesmen for these opinions should express their fears. However, in this respect also, correct limits must be maintained. It is obvious that this new stage in the Church's life demands of us a faith that is particularly aware, profound and responsible. True ecumenical activity means openness, drawing closer, availability for dialogue, and a shared investigation of the truth in the full evangelical and Christian sense; but in no way does it or can it mean giving up or in any way diminishing the treasures of divine truth that the Church has constantly confessed and taught. To all who, for whatever motive, would wish to dissuade the Church from seeking the universal unity of Christians the question must once again be put: Have we the right not to do it? Can we fail to have trust-in spite of all human weakness and all the faults of past centuries-in our Lord's grace as revealed recently through what the Holy Spirit said and we heard during the Council? If we were to do so, we would deny the truth concerning ourselves that was so eloquently expressed by the Apostle: "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me was not in vain"19.

What we have just said must also be applied -although in another way and with the due differences-to activity for coming closer together with the representatives of the non-Christian religions, an activity expressed through dialogue, contacts, prayer in common, investigation of the treasures of human spirituality, in which, as we know well, the members of these religions also are not lacking. Does it not sometimes happen that the firm belief of the followers of the non-Christian religions-a belief that is also an effect of the Spirit of truth operating outside the visible confines of the Mystical Body-can make Christians ashamed at being often themselves so disposed to doubt concerning the truths revealed by God and proclaimed by the Church and so prone to relax moral principles and open the way to ethical permissiveness. It is a noble thing to have a predisposition for understanding every person, analyzing every system and recognizing what is right; this does not at all mean losing certitude about one's own faith20 or weakening the principles of morality, the lack of which will soon make itself felt in the life of whole societies, with deplorable consequences besides.

1. Jn. 1:14.

2. Jn. 3:16.

3. Heb. 1:1-2.

4. Exsultet at the Easter Vigil.

5. Jn. 16:7.

6. Jn. 15:26-27.

7. Jn. 16:13.

8. Cf. Rev. 2:7.

9. Vatican Council II: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 1: AAS 57 (1965) 5.

10. Eph. 3:8.

11. Jn. 14:24.

12. Pope Paul VI: Encyclical Letter Ecclesiam Suam: AAS 56 (1964) 650ff.

13. Mt. 11:29.

14. Mention must be made here of the salient documents of the pontificate of Paul VI, some of which were spoken of by himself in his address during Mass on the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in 1978: Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam: AAS 56 (1964) 609-659; Apostolic Letter Investigabiles Divitias Christi: AAS 57 (1965) 298-301; Encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus: AAS 59 (1967) 657-697; Solemn Profession of Faith: AAS 60 (1968) 433-445; Encyclical Humanae Vitae: AAS 60 (1968) 481-503; Apostolic Exhortation Quinque Iam Anni: AAS 63 (1971) 97-106; Apostolic Exhortation Evangelica Testificatio: AAS 63 (1971) 497-535; Apostolic Exhortation Paterna cum Benevolentia: AAS 67 (1975) 5-23; Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete in Domino: AAS 67 (1975) 289-322; Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi: AAS 68 (1976) 5-76.

15. Mt. 13:52.

16. 1 Tim. 2:4.

17. Pope Paul VI: Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi: AAS 68 (1976) 5-76.

18. Jn. 17:21; cf. 17:11, 22-23; 10:16; Lk 9:49, 50, 54.

19. 1 Cor. 15:10.

20. Cf. Vatican Council I: Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, Cap. III De fide, can. 6: Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, Ed. Istituto per le Scienze Religiose, Bologna 1973 3, p. 811.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Excerpt from Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa, Volume IV, Chapter XI

CHAPTER XI -- THE CONQUEST OF DEATH
(Q. 53-59)

To a young doctor just beginning his practice, or a young married couple setting out on their common life, it seems impossible that anyone can ever get too old to dream. In a sense they are right; but it is true that it is the youth of a man that is filled with dreams. As adolescence changes into manhood and womanhood, vast horizons open up to give birth to the dreams of the young. The long, wide roads are faced with a tingling joy of anticipation; yet in the very midst of the grand dreams of conquest, there is often a note of misgiving, a tinge of fear on venturing into this huge new world.

If this fear actually takes precedence, an unhealthy state of indecision develops, spelling the end of effort, of accomplishment, even of life in the human sense of hearty living. On the other hand, if that fear is kept healthy, it is an invaluable check-rein on our plunging hearts, keeping them from running wild by insisting on caution and some measure of prudence in even our boldest efforts.

This strange mingling of joy, anticipation, and fear seems to be the common note of all the goals that open up new roads, the ends which are beginnings. It seems to be the genius of our nature to be forever seeking wider, longer, harder goals, to approach them with mingled joy and fear; yet to be stagnated, stifled without them. All this is, of course, true of the goal of death which opens up the horizons of eternity. From this point of view, the story of Our Lord's resurrection was particularly well told, with its note of fear on the part of the soldiers, of great joy on the part of the disciples; for the combination of these two is typical of the emotions of every man as he reaches an end that starts him off again on a new road.

The double note in the conquest of death: Of joy in the destruction of its finality

There is reason enough for joy in Christ's conquest of death, for it tore down the wall at the end of life's last blind alley, lifting the barrier of finality which lies heavy across the path of every human heart. A barrier is always a source of suffering for a human heart with its innate drive for newer, wider, higher goals, and which never has enough of traveling, since it was made for the infinite. When the last door, the door of death, swings wide, there is an immediate, joyous release from the haunting fear that perhaps there is an end of love, of knowledge, of accomplishment, and of all the other things that the human heart treasures; the fear that what a man presses on to so desperately for all of a lifetime may yet be taken away from him.

It is quite certain that life is not long enough by far. Youth surely does not know the deep values hidden in the roar and confusion of life; it takes time to appreciate these things, since we learn so very slowly. Life is a cathedral which must be visited many times to get more than a dim appreciation of the beauty of its lines; it is a masterpiece that must be looked at lovingly hour after hour, day after day, if our eyes are to see the soul of it; it is a book to be read again and again, each reading giving its lines new significance, new depths. When life is nearly over we begin to put proper values on such familiar, homely things as spring sunshine and the pure beauty of winter. Not even then have we more than scratched the surface of the mystery of love, of sacrifice, of selfless family life, and God's hovering benevolence. We need more time. It would not do to lose life just as we begin to penetrate its worth.

Of fear in the guarantee of responsibility and judgment

Yet, seeing this door of death swing wide into a new life, there is, too, a distinct and healthy note of fear in facing the endless stretches that will satisfy our hearts. For if death is conquered and life goes on forever, while the good is preserved, the record of evil, too, has to be faced. Man cannot wipe out his deeds with the help of a faulty memory; he must face his life, all of it, with responsibility for the evil as well as with pride and affection for the good. The man who is utterly fearless at such a prospect is somewhat of a fool. Briefly, the conquest of death not only opens up the possibilities of heaven but also of hell; it guarantees judgment, complete and accurate casting up of all accounts.

Basis of the denial of the conquest: Fear of living

This is a fearful truth for a man; it is insupportable for a coward. To some men of every age, the news of Christ's resurrection has been bad news, so bad as to drive them to the childishly irrational extreme of refusing to read the news as though that would destroy it. A prospective lawyer who would burn the report of his bar examination for fear of learning that he had failed would soon discover that he could not begin his practice simply because he had destroyed that report; the men who refuse to read the news of Christ's resurrection must ultimately learn that they cannot go out and live just because they maintained their ignorance of life. In actual fact, what they have done is to give fear the upper hand, ending all real effort, real accomplishment, real living by going on record as denying anything in life worth living for, worth the awful burden of responsibility.

Pride of life

In a strange paradox, these cowards who are afraid of life put their denial of life on the basis of pride and thus join hands with others whose pride has gone so far as to submerge even healthy fear. Both conclude to the supremacy of man. One, by releasing him, through a denial of responsibility, from answering to any superior; the other, by a strong, indignant rejection of dependence as a slur on human greatness: what we cannot reach by our human powers simply cannot exist.

It is hard for the hand, the eye, or the mind of a man to reach to the uttermost limits of truth; so hard, in fact, as to be impossible. Though the truth that the soul of man is undying can be reached and has been reached by the human mind, these men will have none of it. As for the resurrection of the body to eternal life, that is incredible. After all, we have only God's word for it; and we are not taking anyone's word for anything. We, they say, depend on no one. We live our own lives. We stand on top of the world. Though we had nothing to do with our own beginnings, though we have less to say about our own ending, though our knowledge of the space between these two is pitifully vague and our knowledge of the space beyond either beginning or end is necessarily second hand, we are supreme. After all, we can know more than a tree, a dog, or a cosmic force; so we must know all that can be known.

Pride and fear are no new things in human life. It is true that we have no record, in the story of Christ's resurrection, of the kind of fear we know so well today, the fear that destroys life in preference to living it. But we have a record of a pride that would go so far as to bribe witnesses to deny the uncomfortable truth. However, neither pride nor fear destroys truth. Christ rose again from the dead; man has his life to face, both its good and its evil.

The conquest and the Conqueror: The resurrection of Christ:

Its necessity and fittingness

In a sense, Christ had to rise from the dead. He had made the resurrection the test of the divinity of His mission; it was the supreme sign granted to the stiff-necks of His own generation. Without the resurrection, His doctrine and His life would have seemed to men only another episode in the long history of pseudo-prophets, continuing to our own day, who promise to return shortly after death and whose disciples have kicked their heels while they waited, feeling more and more foolish, more and more angry at having been duped, until, finally, they stalk off, through forever with the master who did not keep his appointment.

The Mother of Christ, in her triumphant song, had said of God that He exalted the humble and brought down the mighty. Her Son had insisted "The first shall be last and the last shall be first"; "He that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." He Himself had been humbled to the utmost degree, even to the disgraceful death on the cross. The exaltation of His resurrection was God's only fitting answer to the humiliation of Calvary.

The heavy hearts and slow steps of the disciples trudging to Emmaus are a faint picture of the feeble faith that would have flickered in the disciples of Christ had He not risen; Paul was right when he maintained that if Christ had not risen our faith would have been vain. Notice the bitter regret in the words of the two disciples making their way out of Jerusalem to escape the scene of their great disappointment; they explained to the risen Christ, Whom they did not know, that they had hoped their Master was the Messiah Who had come to save all Israel. This is only a faint rumbling hint of the thunderous, crashing disappointment that would have come to the hearts of men if Christ had not risen, a disappointment the more disastrous because of the great heights to which the hopes of men had been raised.

The coaxing phrase which they addressed to Christ, "it is now toward evening and the day is far spent," is much more than a statement of the time of day; it is a threat of the approach of an eternal night over the hearts of men if their Master be not risen. On the contrary, the high hearts and eager steps with which they rushed back to Jerusalem, not waiting for rest or food, shows us faintly to what faith and hope, confirmed by the risen Christ, will reach: no hour is too late, no day too fatiguing, no journey too long. For we have risen from the death of sin and the bright goal of eternity lies invitingly before us.

A half-finished job may be a testimony to a man's good intentions; in deference to these, we sometimes blind our eyes and still our tongue before this pitiful evidence of man's wavering will. That half-finished job is, in fact, an unanswerable declaration that its author was a victim of impulse. Perhaps it is because he did not realize the backaches that must go into a garden that he must now survey a healthy crop of weeds; perhaps it is because he did not see the hardships involved in what Stevenson has called "domesticating the recording angel" that a man of today finds himself in a divorce court. At any rate, while impulse is a great beginner, it is a very poor finisher. God is not the victim of impulse. He never turns out a half- finished job, laughing it off or hiding it in confusion. What He starts, He finishes; that is why He started it. All this is, of course, true of our redemption. It is the work of God and so it is not left half-finished. Christ did not come merely to free us from evils, for that is only half the job; He came, finishing the job, to move us to good. Salvation means much more than throwing off the chains of sin; it means rushing forward to scale the walls of the kingdom of heaven. To achieve the first of these, Christ bore our evils for us; for the rest, He gave us a start, a goal, and an exemplar of the high things to be accomplished by the keen, sharp steel He put into our hands.

Perfect as the work of redemption might be with the full wisdom and power of divinity to guarantee its completion, men could still attempt to escape it. As is the way of God, He allowed men to go their tortuous way when they insisted on blinding themselves. But, again in His divine way, He foresaw and forestalled the vagaries of the human mind in its attempt to dodge a difficult truth. There was a human and divine nature in Christ; so, of course, some men would question His divinity, while others would doubt His humanity. God left no grounds for either uncertainty; if men must escape the truth, they would be forced to spin their doubts from the frail thread of falsehood.

If Christ had popped out of the tomb as soon as the guards arrived, not giving them time to settle themselves for a long vigil, they might have questioned the reality of His death, considering it a conjuror's trick with the executioners playing the part of accomplices. If He had let weeks, months, or even years roll by, men might easily have forgotten about His death, have surrendered hope, and actually have questioned the resurrection when it did happen. It was, of course, for Christ to choose the moment of His resurrection. That absurd gesture of the cords tied about the hands of God in Gethsemane was no more absurd than the solemn sealing of His tomb and the establishment of a soldier guard before it; as if the Omnipotent were to be held by bonds that are efficacious against men.

As a matter of fact, Christ had tried to ease the reception of the news of the miracle of His resurrection by what might be called the practice sessions or rehearsals: the resurrections of Lazarus, the son of the widow of Naim, and the saints who walked the streets of the Holy City after His death. He could not hope that men would accept the fact of a man walking from the tomb quite as nonchalantly as they do the fact of a man walking from the door of his house in the morning; but, at least, the shock of contact with divine power in meeting death might be eased enough so that the minds of men would not be numbed by it. Of course, these were merely rehearsals; these men who had risen from the dead had to die again, and men saw them die. Christ was the first Who rose from the dead immortal; He was the real conqueror of death. The rest of us are to share in that conquest but it was first accomplished by Him.

Its primacy and cause

It is obvious that a dead man can do little for himself, otherwise he would certainly not put up with the banked flowers that cloy the air with sweetness. Man's re-entry, like his first appearance on life's stage, is not written into the script by man himself. Christ the man was as helpless as any other human bang. In fact, once He had bowed His head and died, that Man no longer existed; His soul was separated from His body and their reunion could not be arranged by either the body or the soul. It is to be remembered, however, that divinity was still united to that dead body, still joined to that separated soul; the Person of the Son of God still possessed both the body and the soul. By the divine power of that Person, the soul and body could be reunited, and they were Christ raised Himself from the dead. It was by His own power that the soul and body were reunited and the Man walked forth from the tomb: not in answer to a command, as did Lazarus; not raised up by the hand of another, as was the widow's son; but of His own power, for Christ was God.

All through this tract on the conquest of death by Christ, Thomas walks on the solid ground of divine authority. This is not material about which a man can afford to guess. These things are important. We must know them, and beyond all doubt, because they are the things that wait at the end of life and give it its fullest meaning. At that, Thomas's caution was no more than an imitation of the caution of God; for every detail of this conquest of death was expressly brought out by God Himself and carefully set down in His inspired writings. In this tract, every article of Thomas proceeds from an explicit text of Sacred Scripture.

Body of the Conqueror: Its reality

From the darkness of the narrow tomb, through the daylight of that first Easter morning, came the same Man Who had died on the cross, possessed of the same body and the same soul. The body, kept incorrupt in the tomb for three days by divine power, was now reunited to the soul; the identical body that had been laid in the tomb by others now came forth by itself. There was no point in an apparent or fantastic body being shown to men that morning; that would mean that Christ had not risen and, as we have seen, Christ had to rise from the dead. Lest there be any doubt of the reality of that body of His, Christ invited the terrified disciples to "Touch me and see, that a spirit has not flesh and bones as I have." With the condescension to their defects, such as we make to the blind in allowing them to run their fingers over our face that they might feel what they cannot see, Christ allowed His disciples, spiritually blind, to feel what they could not believe they saw.

The body they touched, while the Son of God stood patiently suffering their incredulousness, was the same one they had seen nailed to a cross; now it was whole, integral, with every drop of blood lost in the passion recovered. Though Christ had come through closed doors, He allowed the disciples to touch Him; but even sight and touch were not enough.

They must have been strange with Him, tense, pretty well capable of speech; after all, one doesn't have much chance to practice talking to a man who has just died. At any rate, something was needed to break the ice, some little human thing that would put everyone at his ease; with that subtle divine graciousness that is a compliment in its benefactions, Christ asked the disciples if they had anything to eat. At once they were at home with Him again. They had hold of His arm, they were sitting at table with Him, talking to Him again after the nightmare of Calvary.

Its qualities

Though Christ's body was the same, it was now in a quite different condition. It was no longer capable of suffering, for it was a glorified, a spiritualized body with all the sublime qualities of a body completely subject to the soul. Now there was no longer any need, as there had been in the beginning, to stem the flow of the double glory of Christ's divinity and His human soul. Christ came through closed doors, walked with the disciples to Emmaus and they knew Him not; He was at table with them and, when He willed, they immediately recognized Him and He disappeared from their eyes. He could eat food but was not dependent on it. He could move from place to place with the speed of thought. One quality of a glorified body He kept hidden, lest it overwhelm them as it had on Tabor, and that was the splendor that shines through the body from the beatific perfection of the soul.

At our own resurrection, considerable repair work will be necessary. There will be broken noses to be straightened, lined faces to be smoothed out, missing teeth to be recovered, gnarled hands to be returned to the fine beauty of youth. There was none of that repair work necessary in Christ. His body, being miraculously formed, had been perfect. The one thing that might have been done, the removal of the awful scars of the passion, was left undone; these scars were no longer awful but rather things of striking beauty They were a badge of merit, an eternal prayer for men, a declaration and an inspiration to courage and unquestioning love. They were identifying marks that would be worn in their turn by thousands of men and women who literally took up His cross; to others, who would refuse that cross, they would be an eternal rebuke, as unanswerable as unrequited love.

When we speak of the witnesses of the resurrection, following the lead of Scripture which itself uses the word, we must be careful to understand what is meant by the phrase. The resurrection of Christ was not the sort of thing that could be seen or tested by human means. Our knowledge has a wide scope, but it also has a limit; certainly, one of its limits is marked by the tombstone. What we know of the future life, we know, not by human investigation, but by being told, that is, through revelation; and the resurrection of Christ, being well beyond the milestone of death, certainly pertains to the future life.

We can see the punishment and pains of life; so men witnessed the passion of Christ. We see public rewards, and reasonably so, for these stir other men on as punishments give them pause. But the punishments and rewards that follow on death are not administered in a market place for all to see. They are God's secrets; through His goodness, they are told to some that the good news might be spread. So it was with the resurrection; it was not a public fĂȘte but rather the mystery of an Easter dawn.

We know nothing whatsoever of Christ's first visit with His mother, though merely on human grounds, leaving aside His divine thoughtfulness, we can have no doubt that His first appearance was to her. We do know, however, that, of all His other appearances, the first was to a woman, Mary Magdalen. That appearance was the climax of a story which has meant more to sinners than anyone but God can tell, showing them what they know deep in their own hearts, namely, that their capacity for great love is not less but more than their capacity for great sin. Even on Calvary, Magdalen had hardly reached such heights of loyalty, of unselfish devotion, and complete, unquestioning love. Of all His followers, she alone received the risen Christ without question; in that scene there was no room for explanations, for protestations, for demands. He merely said, "Mary"; instantly, joyously, she responded in words that left nothing to be said: "My Master."

One turns from the scene regretfully, as though much more had been missed than had been seen, as much was there to see. Outstanding is the delicate thoughtfulness of God balancing womanhood's accounts; a woman had begun the sad story which ended in man's death, now a woman began the glad story of this Man's conquest of death. Then, too, there is the divine recognition and appreciation of human love. This woman had been faithful even to the end: when the disciples scattered before the threat of Calvary, she was under the cross, when they huddled in fear and doubt in Jerusalem, she was at the tomb; even though it was apparently empty, she clung to it, for it was all she had left of the Master to Whom she had given her heart. His first appearance to a woman was a rebuke and a refutation to the pride of men. For it is not by strength, power, or keenness of intellect that our place in the kingdom of God is determined; but by our success in living, a success which is measured by the heart's approach to God.

There were no eye-witnesses to the resurrection of Our Lord. True, the guards had good reason to suspect that something was happening: "there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and drawing near rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment like snow. And for fear of him the guards were terrified, and became like dead men." One can understand their terror; but it was terror of an angel, not of the risen Christ. The picture of a glorious Christ stunning the heavily armed soldiers by His splendor is more an artistic summary of the whole significance of the resurrection than a portrayal of the fact. This resurrection exceeded all human knowledge; it could be learned only from above. As the order of divine providence has always been to lead the lower by the higher, men learned of the resurrection through the angel who sat on the stone where Christ was laid and answered men's unspoken questions: "Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here. He is risen."

Its qualities

For themselves, and for the rest of the world, it was important that the disciples know, and know well, the facts of Christ's resurrection. In making it His personal business that they should know, Our Lord stressed two points: the truth of the resurrection and the glory of His risen body. The first He brought home to them by appearing to them, talking with them, eating and drinking with them, permitting them to touch His body. The second, that is, the fact that He had risen to a different life, He brought out clearly enough by showing His body's dominion over matter; and even more impressively, from the standpoint of the human heart, by His refusal to return to that life of constant social intercourse and familiarity which had marked all His days with them.

Manifestation of the conquest: Its limitations

Superficially, it would seem a mark of much greater love for Him to give them the full measure of the comfort of His presence during the few days still left before His Ascension. Actually, however, that would have been a rather feeble, nearsighted love which could not look beyond the moment into the future, beyond the surface into the depths of the souls of the disciples. They might easily have fallen into the error, had He lived intimately with them again, that would hide the full sweep of life after death; they might have been satisfied that He was among them again, falling back into old ways, taking for granted that His life now was as it had been before. There was no chance for this when the Master was here only for a moment and gone again.

As it was, there was no time to get used to Christ, to begin to take Him for granted. He came from nowhere and disappeared as mysteriously. Locked doors, great distances offered Him no impediment. To some, He revealed Himself fully and clearly, matching the clear, solid faith in their minds with the clarity of His appearance; to others, it was only with a veil of mystery about Him that matched the veil of doubt and confusion that their tepid faith had allowed to drop before their eyes. Under such circumstances, they were always on tiptoe of mystery and expectation; their minds were sharp, their attention keen, their ears alert, faith digging deeper and deeper foundations in their hearts.

The proofs offered

Christ did not attempt to argue His disciples into accepting the resurrection by overpowering them with syllogisms. This thing was not susceptible of proof; in its beginnings and in its goal, it was outside the whole scope of nature. What He did do again and again was to give them evident signs of His resurrection, signs of the credibility of the mystery. The signs were indeed necessary, for their hearts were not easily disposed to belief; their very slowness and stubbornness adds a force and validity to their testimony which place it above all suspicion by those who came after them through the centuries. In a real sense, we might say that all men put their hands into the side of Christ along with Thomas.

There was an abundance of these signs sufficient to satisfy the most exacting, the sort of abundance we have come to expect from God. There was, for instance, the testimony of the angels and that of Scripture to the fact of the resurrection. To assure men of the reality of His risen body, Christ did everything but put Himself under a microscope: the apostles saw His body, they touched it, they even put their hands into His side and their fingers into the wounds of His hands and feet. In testimony to the living character of this body, to its being vivified by a soul, Christ performed all the operations proper to man: on the side of the nutritive powers, Christ ate and drank; on the side of the sensitive powers, He saw and heard His disciples, answering their questions, saluting them; on the intellectual side, Christ discoursed with them, and explained the Scriptures. On the divine side, He showed the possession of divine power by the miracle of the fishes the apostles found already broiling on the shores of the Lake of Galilee when they scrambled from their boat to greet Him. To the glory of the resurrection, He brought the testimony of entrance through closed doors, invisibility or visibility as He willed, and so on. In view of all this, it would be an unreasonable man indeed who would doubt that it is reasonable to believe that the Son of God had risen from the dead.

Causality of the conquest: As to bodies

It is a truth well worth the believing. For it is the model, the exemplar of every other resurrection. Indeed, it is the cause that lies behind the rise of the countless thousands of men who have lived and died, and will live again; this is the fact that changed the rock at the door of the tomb from a blocking boulder to a triumphal arch. Perhaps we can see this best if we look at the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as an integral whole, as indeed they were, destined to destroy death and restore life. This whole was the instrument used by the first cause, divinity itself: thus the life, passion and death of Christ were the common instrumental causes of both the conquest of death and the beginning of eternal, glorious life; His resurrection, by way of exemplar, was the cause of the destruction of our death and the restoration of our life to immortality.

As to souls

In exactly the same way, the resurrection of Our Lord is the cause and exemplar of an even more wonderful resurrection that goes on about us every day: the resurrection of the soul from the death of sin to the life of grace. That spiritual tomb is sealed by our choice of sin; it is guarded, not by the soldiers of Rome, but by the legions of Satan and the disorderly hordes of inordinate appetites, guards who do not fall asleep. Because Christ has risen, the soul can come forth from this tomb in its original splendor. Again, there are no witnesses; only the weeping Magdalen, our own soul, overcome at finding the Master and Friend once more.

Consequences of the conquest. The ascension of Christ: Its fittingness

We are never more conscious that we were not made for earth than after such a fresh resurrection from the tomb of sin; then, above all other times, we realize keenly that we are pilgrims, that our soul is a little lonely, a little out of place in a world of matter, a little anxious for the world of the spirit. In much the same way, the body of Christ was a little out of place after the resurrection; it did not belong in a world of corruptible bodies, for it had begun an immortal and incorruptible life. It belonged in a heavenly and incorruptible place. So, when the time of consolation and instruction of the apostles had come to its close, the Master took them to the top of the hill overlooking Jerusalem, said His last farewell, gave the last assignments that would keep His followers occupied to the end of time, and ascended into heaven. Behind Him He left a lonely, frightened, helpless group which was yet the nucleus for the conversion of the world. That group was so stupefied by His loss that it took an angel to get them back into the city; there, they huddled in fear of their lives for ten days in an upper room.

Had not Christ said He would be with them always? Yea He was and He will be by His divine presence. But He also said, "It is better for you that I go," and He was right, as God is always right. This was the work of strong love, not of that coddling, imperfect, weak love that saps all the strength out of the one loved. It was better, much better. It would be hard for them ever again to tear their hearts away from the goal of heaven, for He took a large part of their hearts with Him. It would never be hard for them again to hope, knowing He had gone before to prepare a place. Now, indeed, their faith would have its full scope, resting utterly without question on His word alone. He had given them a few days of consolation; now they must stand on their own feet, through His help; not attached to creatures, not dependent on men, not holding even to such a lovable thing as familiar, human life with the Man Christ.

Its cause; its goal

Christ rose to the height, of heaven by the same power by which He had come forth from the tomb. He ascended to a place above every other created thing, a place worthy of His grace, His merits, His dignity. The Head of the Mystical Body blazed the trail in glory as He did in suffering, preparing our way. He is the high-priest entering the holy of holies that He might constantly intercede for us, taking His rightful seat at the court of heaven as Master and Lord of all things, not forgetting us but rather sending us His divine gifts in new abundance. Of course He took our hearts with Him, deepening our reverence and awe for His glorious humanity, with no lessening of our faith, our love, our hope of one day standing before Him and saying with Thomas, but without his doubts, "My Lord and my God."

His place at the right hand of the Father

We may smile at the astonishing versions a child can give of the Apostle's Creed; but, after all, "Jack Dempsey shall come" does not sound so very unlike "from whence He shall come." It would be only just if the angels smiled at an adult's no less childish mistake of trying to picture the right hand of the Father. The phrase, of course, is not to be taken literally; it contains no slight to left-handed people, indeed, a left-handed God would be no more absurd than a right-handed one. The phrase is a vivid metaphor with at least three senses. The right hand figuratively means the glory of divinity, the happiness of heaven, or the judicial position of the Judge of the world. For Christ, then, to sit at the right hand of the Father means that with the Father He has the glory, the happiness, and the judicial power of divinity. By His divine nature, Christ sits at the right hand of the Father inasmuch as He is equal to the Father; according to His human nature, He occupies that position because He is in possession of the divine goods of heaven in a more excellent degree than any one else in that kingdom. But it is precisely as judge that the risen Christ captures our fascinated eyes.

His judicial power: His title to judgment

To be a judge, clearly it is not enough for a man to look like one, talk like one, or walk like one; he must have power. Even possessed of power, he is no judge whose judgment proceeds from anger, greed, or any other vice; he is a mock judge rendering mock judgment because he is not judging from justice. If these two, power and love of justice, are the predispositions to judgment, the very soul of it is the wisdom by which it proceeds. So true is this, that in human affairs that wisdom is not left to individual capacities to the best of our ability, we embody our common wisdom in the law by which a judge must judge. The predispositions to judgment are evident enough in Christ: He is the head of all men, the Son of God, with complete power and jurisdiction; He had died for love of justice, the justice of His offended Father. But it is particularly on the third count, the wisdom which the soul of judgment, that His pre-eminent title to judgeship is clear; He is the incarnate Wisdom, the Word of God.

It is true that judgment, as a work external to God, is common to the whole Trinity; it is attributed, however, to the Second Person as to divine Wisdom. God is always the first source of just judgment; but, as in this life the power of judgment is committed to men relative to those who are subject to them, so in heaven the power of judgment is committed to Christ the Man. After all, He was a man himself, living His life intimately with His fellows His judgment, severe as it may be, will not taste so bitter coming from one of our own. It is eminently fitting that the risen bodies of men be brought before the First of the risen and the Cause of the resurrection of all others; then men can stand facing their Judge, looking into His eyes as they have loved or feared to do during life.

Even if Christ did not have title to Judgeship on the grounds of His divine nature, even if His supreme dignity as Head of the Mystical Body, His superabundance of sanctifying grace, and so of justice, be put aside, there is still the strong title of His merits. He had earned that judgeship. It was just according to the justice of God that He should judge Who had fought so hard for that justice, and conquered; Who had subjected Himself to the judgment of men and tasted all the bitterness of their unjust judgment.

The extent of the judgment

The sweep of the judgment of Christ staggers the mind. If we attempt to conceive of a judgment that takes in every detail of one human life, we must confess our failure. Extend that to all men living at any one instant, or, indeed, to a judgment of all men dying at any one instant, and we are overwhelmed by the massive detail involved. If we push it further to include all men who ever have lived and died or ever will live and die, and then go on to the myriads of the angelic host, at the same time realizing that we never have evidence for a complete judgment of any one human action because we cannot reach the hearts of men, it begins to dawn on us that judgment is God's work. Perhaps we had best leave the working out of it to Him.

The second judgment

The angels have already faced judgment by the Son of God when, in the beginning of the world, they fought their fight and lost or won; yet, they must face another judgment, as every man must, for the details of their lives, like ours, are not finished for years, for centuries, perhaps even to the end of time. An attempt to judge the damage done by fire is futile until the fire is extinguished. Neither can the life of a man be judged until its very last effect is accomplished; it is often only after the passing of time, even of long periods of time, that we can determine whether those effects are ultimately good or bad.

Our lives, you see, are not contained within the narrow boundaries of our years. Our smallest actions, because these are our own and we are answerable for them, are not to be measured by the distance a voice will carry or the fragile things our strength will crush. We have lived and we die; but we live on in the memory of men, a memory which may treasure a lie of ours that will endure for centuries doing its deadly work, a lie that must ultimately be damned to make way for truth. Our children live after us, and theirs after them. Who can say when the surge of our life dies out of theirs? The apostles preached for a few years before being crushed by the power of Rome; has the effect of that preaching yet stopped? The great heresiarchs Arius, Luther, and the rest -- were stopped by the barrier of death; their words and works were limited by the finite limits of a man's power, but the effects, which were their very own, are still being reaped by other harvesters though centuries have passed.

Something the same is true of the angels and the devils, for they play their part in the world of men and the actions of men. They have their work, a work of hate or of joy; they will have their rewards and punishments, meted out fully only when the last trace of that work has ceased to agitate or ennoble the world. The whole of a man's life is to be rewarded or punished, all of it; and the reward or punishment is given to the whole man, all of him, body and soul.

Conclusion: The battle of life and death

It is only when bodies and souls are reunited that the conquest of death has reached completion; only then can the last word be said on this conquest. It may seem odd that the word "conquest" has been insisted on again and again in this chapter. Really, no other word will do. It is a fighting word to describe a grand fight. Even in the physical sense, these two, life and death, are at each other's throat from the first instant of infant life; death is a threat, an enemy encroaching, an enemy who never gives up the fight. In the spiritual sense, the same battle of life and death, of virtue and sin, is on from the first dawn of reason; it is a struggle where no quarter is possible, no end in eight, until one or the other has lost.

It is not the kind of fight a man can stand aside and watch. There is no possibility of neutrality. He is plunged into it by his very manhood. He must take sides. It is paradoxical, but strictly true, that those who think too much of life, fight desperately on the side of death; those who think too much of the joy of life, fight unceasingly on the side of misery; those who think too much of the glimpse of heaven possible in this life, fight strongly for hell. Men must take sides and they do. Life or death must win in the career of every man. We have seen the results of the victory of life; how about the victory of death?

The conquest of life by death: Its double aspect: of relief and of sadness

In the denial of the resurrection, that is, in the surrender of the palm of victory to death, there is a double note paralleling, at least on the surface, that of life's victory. There is, first of all, a note of relief, a sense of escape; one has succeeded in throwing off the stifling blanket of responsibility, escaped from the haunting possibility of evil into a world without barriers, a world of new freedom. Man no longer has to answer eternally for his life and his acts; he is free. But the note is false. It is a release that sets man at the mercy of his desire, delivers him up to the animal world, makes him the victim of a civil war within himself and of slavery from without.

Along with this sense of relief, there is a hopeless sadness, a penetrating, tragic thing patient of no consolation; for man is convinced that life, love, knowledge, accomplishment, justice, companionship and all the rest do have an end. Man cannot stand that sort of tragedy very long. He copes with it, in some cases, by unreasoning resignation which produces a fatalistic calm and creates its own ends of vague generalities to minister the small comfort of empty dreams. In other cases, he meets it with an eager, desperate draining of the cup of life before it be dashed from his hand. Or, finally, he arms himself with a cynical refusal to live a life which has no meaning; it is this attitude which takes its ghoulish satisfaction in a mocking disruption of the lives of others and the destruction of its own.

Common significance of these two

Both these notes of death's victory take the heart out of human living. The first, in the name of freedom, delivers a man to slavery, a fact easily verifiable in any "age of freedom." The second either squeezes the meat out of life, destroying man's taste for the very things he started out to clutch so eagerly -- leisure, pleasure, power, and the rest; or, in the case of the fatalist, it makes life a ghostly thing, a hollow, haunted existence. In these victories of death, men must walk in the darkness of unreason, if they are to walk at all, or frankly face the despair of it and surrender unconditionally.

Their common consequences

In a word, death has conquered life and made of it a grim masquerade of the living dead. The air, the odor, the very color of death in its corruption penetrate the deepest reaches of life; the blinding darkness of the tomb hovers over all; its doors are already closed forever.

The conquest of death by life

In Christ, life has conquered death. The air, the odor, the very color of life enter into the darkest corner of the tomb. Death is a gateway, as is life; a motion to high goals, as is life; a fulfillment of hope, an unveiling of faith, a consummation of charity, as life never is. Life's promises are fulfilled by death's opening up of enduring life. The rehearsal is over, death lifts the curtain, and the eternal play is on.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

The Personality of Christ by Dom Anscar Vonier, OSB - Chapters IX and X

THE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST BY DOM ANSCAR VONIER, OSB

CHAPTER IX

HOW COMPLETELY OUR LORD’S HUMAN NATURE IS DIVINE

ST. THOMAS (second question) asks himself this question : Is Hypostatic Union natural to Christ as man ? One sees the meaning of his interrogation. We have said that Hypostatic Union is nothing else than the personal existence of the Word, being directly the existence of Christ’s soul, and of Christ’s body.

The question, then, of St. Thomas is this : How far is this union between Divine Personality and human nature natural to the human part of our Lord’s Person?

First of all, it could not be natural in the sense of its flowing as it were from the human, the created part of Christ ; a creature of whatever rank could never have in itself the power of such a union.

It all comes from above. There is, however, another point of view. Our Lord’s human part never was without that divine existence ; neither His soul nor His body existed even for one instant in an un-divine way ; and it is on that account that it may be said that Hypostatic Union is natural to Our Lord as man, because as man He never knew any other sort of existence. It does not seem to imply contra diction that an adult human personality should be at a given moment hypostatically united with a divine person. But in that case, Hypostatic Union could not be called natural, as it succeeded a created human personal existence, and the Mother of that hypostatically assumed human nature could not truly be called the Mother of God. Our Lady, on the contrary, is truly the Mother of God, because Her Child never existed otherwise than as the Son of God.

However, we have not exhausted the subject yet. There is one more way for our Lord’s human nature to be naturally divine, more excellent than the mere fact of His never having been anything but divine. It is this. The mode of Our Lord’s formation in the womb of His Blessed Mother was such that the result had to be human nature with divine existence. She conceived from the Holy Ghost, and conception from the Holy Ghost is necessarily the origin of a nature that must have divinity. So Our Lord as man is naturally God, because the way in which He was conceived admits of nothing else.

This is clearly expressed in the archangel’s message to Our Lady. The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the Power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, and therefore also the Holy that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. He shall be called the Son of God, precisely because the Holy Ghost will overshadow her, so that Our Lord as man is God, in virtue of his conception through the Holy Ghost.

It might be said therefore that in Hypostatic Union the human nature is as divine as divine can be, not only because it always has been divine, but it is divine because, through the laws of the conception, it had to be divine.

The grace of the (Hypostatic) Union is natural to Him in His humanity according to a propriety of His Nativity, as He was thus conceived from the

Holy Ghost, that one and the same person should be naturally the Son of God and the Son of Man.

We ought never to think of Christ’s humanity as in any way separable from His Divinity, as prior to it, or as being the object of a predestination by itself. It was always divine, and according to St. Paul’s energetic expression Christ Jesus . . . being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. 2 There seems to be no inherent contradiction in the supposition that a living, grown-up human person might be united with a divine person hypostatically at a given moment. Human personality, then, would be swallowed up by Divine Personality. But such a union would differ in many things from the Hypostatic Union that is in Christ. The greatest difference, a difference which perhaps would constitute an infinite difference, would be this, that in such a supposition the human nature would not be divine by the very laws of its conception and birth.

The hypothesis would safeguard Hypostatic Union, but it would not be Christianity, and the mother of the privileged human being would not be the Mother of God ; she would be the mother of a man who became God, which is a totally different thing. The Church in her struggle with Nestorianism established the doctrine not only of the substitution of Divine Personality for human personality in Christ, but also the title of Mary to divine maternity, because her Son was conceived in such a wise as to be necessarily God.

In my hypothesis the man thus elevated to Hypostatic Union, though truly the Son of God, would owe endless gratitude to God for the favour. In the Hypostatic Union that is in Christ it could not be said that Christ’s humanity owes a debt of gratitude for its privilege. It has Divine Personality, divine existence through the laws of its birth ; Propter proprietates Nativitatis ipsius, as St. Thomas says in the article I have cited.

Nothing short of Hypostatic Conception can give us a complete idea of Christ. His flesh is all divine, and from the very beginning of the Nestorian controversies, the champions of orthodoxy appealed to the mystery of Christ’s body in the Eucharist as an argument in favour of the personal union, from the very start, in Christ. This very fact that we acknowledge that the only begotten Son of God died in His flesh, rose and ascended into heaven, qualifies us for offering the unbloody sacrifice in the Church and, by participating in the holy flesh and precious blood of the Redeemer, for receiving the mystical blessing so as to be sanctified. We receive it not as a common flesh, nor as the flesh of an eminently sanctified man, or of one who has received dignity by being united with the Logos or by divine indwelling, but as the true life-giving and proper flesh of the Word. For since He is, as God is, in His own nature life, and is become One with His own flesh, so has He imparted to this flesh a life-giving power. 1 This profession of faith, formulated in the council of Alexandria A.D. 430 under the presidency of St. Cyril, preparatory to the great Ephesine council, shows how clear and definite the views of Christian thinkers were as to the extent of Christ’s divineness.

There is one more consideration that finds a natural place here : St. Thomas says 2 that Hypostatic Union is something created. This doctrine, strongly emphasised by Aquinas, whilst containing a world of wisdom, might be easily misleading, as implying apparently an inferiority of divineness for Christ’s humanity.

That Hypostatic Union is a created thing ought to be clear to everyone, after a little thought. In Hypostatic Union Divine Personality replaces human personality ; or, what is more to the present purpose, Divine Personality is united with an individual human nature. Now such a union is brought about by God’s creative Omnipotence, uniting the two extremes into the One Ineffable.

If creative Omnipotence did not intervene, a human nature could never have divine existence, Divine Personality, except in the pantheistic sense. Personal being outside God is always the result of a creative act of God. Now the circumstance that personal being exists before namely, the second Person of the Trinity does not alter the case. It had to be given to an individual human nature, and such granting, or such uniting, supposes as much a creative act as the production of personal being ex nihilo. In this sense Hypostatic Union is something created, aliquid creatum. It is the result of a created act, but a result that implies a series of infinitudes. For though Hypostatic

Union be something created, in no sense is it something finite. To be a created thing and to be a finite thing are not necessarily synonymous. Philosophers admit degrees in Infinitude : there are greater infinitudes and lesser infinitudes. In order to explain Hypostatic Union exhaustively, no doubt every kind of infinitude ought to be pressed into service : it is deep calling unto deep. But one thing is certain : it has no finite element, though it be a created marvel. Christ’s human nature no doubt has finite elements, but that thing that makes the nature divine, Hypostatic Union, is all made up of Immensity and Illimitability.

CHAPTER X

THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH

THE commonest theological formula stating the Mystery of the Incarnation is this : God was made man/ We have scriptural authority for it in the words of St. John’s Gospel, first chapter : And the Word was made flesh/

St. Thomas makes an exhaustive study of the various formulas that express the wondrous mystery, in the sixteenth question of his third part of the Summa. It shows amongst other things how various were the aspects of the mystery known to the great thinker.

Now the formula God was made man has his full approval. It is a true statement. His interpretation is this : God is said to have been made man, because a human nature began to have being through the personality of a divine nature that pre-exists from all eternity/ l

In other words, for God to become man is merely the fact of a Divine Personality doing duty of personality for a particular human nature. Such office, Divine Personality did not exert from all eternity, but started it in time, in the hour which had been predestined. So it is both orthodox and grammatical to say : God became man.

Many of us would feel easier in our minds with that other formula, Man became God/ as it expresses better the elevation of human nature through Hypostatic Union, as it seems to contain no narrowing of the Godhead, but a broadening of manhood. Yet St. Thomas rejects the formula as misleading. His reasons are best given in the third article of the thirty-third question, where he treats of Christ’s conception. I give his meaning. We say with great propriety of language that God became man ; but we cannot say with any propriety that man became God. God merely assumed what is human ; but this human element never existed before the assumption. If it had existed it would have had a separate personality. Now it would be against the nature of Hypostatic Union to unite Divine Personality with a pre-existing complete human being having already personal existence.

In other words, the reason why it cannot be said that man became God is this, that the human part of Christ never had a personal existence of its own. The Godhead that created it in Mary’s womb performed the functions of personality in it from the first moment of its existence.

This, and no other, is the reason why the two propositions, God became man, and man became God, are not convertible propositions. Divine Personality existed in Itself from eternity, before it discharged the office of personality to a human nature. But the human nature never existed before it was given Divine Personality. Its creation and its being raised to Divine Personality are not two divisible moments.

But, on the other hand, St. Thomas admits the convertibility of the two propositions : God is man, and man is God. It is the factum est ( became ) the theologian does not like when Christ’s human nature is spoken of in connection with the possession of perfect Divinity. Only a pre-existing thing becomes properly something new, has new relations, new functions. St. John describes in his first chapter the life of the Word before the Word became flesh/ There is no history of Christ’s humanity before it became divine. Its history starts with its being supported in existence by the Personality of the Word.

But man is God, and God is man. For some minds the first formula is more prolific in spiritual consolations ; for other minds the second formula is more delightful. One is as good as the other, from the point of view of theological accuracy. By the first we mean that Divine Personality has replaced human personality ; by the second we look directly at the human element having its existence through Divine Personality. The first is no narrowing down of limitless infinitude, the second is limitless broadening of finiteness.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Excerpt from Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa, Volume IV, Chapter X

CHAPTER X -- CHRIST THE VICTIM


(Q. 46-52)

Men and the mysteries of suffering and death: The place of suffering and death in human life



TO THE superficial observer, suffering is obviously an interruption of the motion of life, while death is its end. Naturally, then, men have felt keenly about suffering and death; they have felt even more keenly about their inability to understand them. When the two are thrust full force upon the attentions of men, as when the world is subjected to a siege of severe suffering and violent death, philosophies of protest spring up like mushrooms to mark the soil made fruitful of doubt by the flood of mystery. From the early nineteen-twenties, for example, philosophers rebelled at the idea of a providence, of a good God, of an orderly world because men had just been through a World War. No doubt in the nineteen-fifties, if human reason is still recognized, a whole new crop of protest-philosophies will rise up and set themselves against eternal truths because men by the millions have suffered and died.



It is plain that the divine model of human living could not ignore these two spectres that dog the steps of every man. An extremely rare few may escape physical suffering; no one escapes death. Christ had come that all men might know by a glance at His life what they were to do at any moment of their own. To make sure there would be no mistake about these two crucial periods of man's life, He merged the two in a gigantic climax to His own life that the attention of these two thousand years might be focused on that part of His life. He did not minimize the importance of a knowledge of the meaning and technique of suffering and dying.



Their significance for human life: Meaningless catastrophes



In one way or another, every man must meet these supremely hard facts of suffering and death. The way men have met them is an indication of what they have learned of the business of living, how much they have known of the meaning of life. To some men, stopping short at a superficial view of life, suffering was a thing of horror, a meaningless catastrophe which interrupted work, love, pleasure; the mystery, finality, the corruption, and inevitability of death were terrifying, it was the complete end of the only life, the only value they knew. In the face of these threatening unknowns, they fled; but of course they did not escape They are still trying to escape by pushing the suffering of others from sight, by legalizing any means to avoid suffering of their own even though this demands the coining of such high, sounding names as euthanasia, therapeutic abortion, mercy killing, and so on for the dastardly act which has always been known as murder. Obviously, there is little of nobility or mercy in this sort of thing when death means what it does to these modern champions of escape -- the end of everything.



Inhuman events inhumanly met



Other men could find no human meaning in suffering; it was an inhuman thing and they met it inhumanly. Sometimes the weapon of defense was the perversion of sadism and masochism, a perverted wringing of pleasure from pain from which nature itself shrinks in revulsion. In their flight to an ecstasy of passion to block out all reason, these men faced suffering by digging down to a level beneath that of the animal. Still others met this inhuman thing by brutalizing their own sensibilities, by animalizing man. They submitted to suffering stolidly, like dead things, not because suffering had any reason to it, but in a kind of stupid endurance that was a denial of the individual's own nature.



Means to ends worthwhile



Men who saw beneath the surface of life met suffering and death humanly. They saw that the motion of life was not merely the movement of arms, legs, lips, or eyes, but also of mind and heart. Life was, above all, a spiritual race to a spiritual goal; it was not to be held up by a physical impediment, any more than an angel is to be thrown by a stalwart football player. These men left suffering and pain intact, not denying them, not meeting them with brutal indifference, not twisting them into a horrible pleasure; rather they ordered them to the soul's high purposes which are not to be interfered with by any created force. They destroyed nothing of man, neither his higher nor his lower nature; rather they subordinated the lower to the higher in all reason, thus perfecting the whole man.



A divine prescription for success: The way of the cross and its interpretations



In His death on the cross, Christ gave the full human meaning of suffering and added to it the rich flavor of the divine. He was not merely submitting to suffering, making a virtue of necessity; He embraced suffering. So the graphic symbol of His last moments became the universal symbol of all His doctrine and His Life. Those who watered down His doctrine in later centuries quite logically stripped the body from the crucifix; those who revolted against Him, trampled on the crucifix or made it a mockery. They were quite right. For on Calvary, by His cross, Christ gave the full statement of His way of human living, the full details for life to those who would come after Him. If we are to abandon His way of life, we should destroy the cross.



The friends of Christ and His gifts to them



He Himself has said that the only way to follow Him was to take up the cross; and this has been astounding advice to human ears. It is strange to men that divine wisdom, in mapping out the best way for men to live, could hit upon no better way than that of the cross. This was not mere theory, even divine theory, for God took that royal road Himself; it was not a drastic exercise to round the spiritually flabby into shape, for He gave it to the most perfect of His friends -- to Peter, James, John, Magdalen, and His mother. His methods have not varied. The very special gift to the followers of Christ has always been a full cup of suffering; their response to His gift has always been as astounding as the death of the Author of life on the barren hill of Calvary. To them, suffering was not a thing to be cringed from in terror; it was not a brutal dose to be taken in dull stupidity; rather, it was a share in and a completion of the works of the Master to be joyfully embraced, a vital help to others, a safe, sure, short way to heaven. Above all, it was an opportunity for the concrete expression of love, for sacrifice.



On Calvary, Christ's way of dealing with suffering and death was mocked as evidence of effeminate weakness by those whose god was brute strength. The hedonists of the time, whose norm was pleasure, recoiled from it. The intellectually proud, who could not see beyond the walls of the world, looked on with pity or indifference.



Paradox of eager suffering and instant charity



The men of the world have not changed much since then. The Cross of Christ is still seen as an exhibition of weakness, a shocking, revolting thing, or a needless, useless loss. This paradox of a suffering and dying God is not to be understood by the world. The initial paradox was bad enough, that He Who had come that men's joy might be full should leave a prescription of suffering. The consequences of it have been positively bewildering: for the most joyous people in the world are those who most eagerly embrace suffering for themselves; yet these willing victims are the most thoughtful, the most kind, the most pitying towards suffering in others But, then, isn't this a fairly exact correspondence with the Model Who had time and heart, even in His agony, to continue the work of healing the sick, comforting the distressed, forgiving sinners, and providing for the lonely hearts of the world?



The secret of this paradox, as of all the paradoxes of Christian action, is to be found in the union of the divine and the human. Those of Christ's own life flowed from the substantial union of human and divine nature in the Person of the Word of God; those of the twentieth century's Christian life take their rise in the participation of divine life by men through grace. Of course Christianity is a puzzling phenomenon to those who know nothing of God and little of man. The full implications for human living of the crucified Christ are gathered only by one who knows both God and man and spends a lifetime of contemplation, with divine assistance, of both.



It is certainly true that any appreciation of the paradox of Calvary depends upon a humble study of the union of the human and divine in that tragedy. A whimper of pain immediately awakes some pity in us, for pain is well within the field of our own experience; when we have traced it down and found that a man and not a dog is suffering, our appreciation of the pain is deeper, our pity more profound, for we know how much more it means to a man to suffer than to a mere animal. On Calvary, we are trying to understand something of the sufferings of God. The work of this chapter is to look at the passion of Christ in itself, to see what it means for a God-man to suffer.



The suffering of Christ: The passion itself:

The necessity and manner of it



Obviously Christ did not have to suffer as the sea has to roar in a wild wind; He did not have to suffer as a man is forced to stand upright because he is lashed to a post. Had Christ not passed through the hands of His enemies untouched when they tried to seize Him earlier in His life? Even there in the Garden of Gethsemane, the crowd that had come roaring out for His blood fell down at the mention of His name. On His own word, He could have had twelve legions of angels when God knows one alone would have been more than enough. His word had called the world into being; and men came to reduce Him to helplessness with swords and clubs! What stupid weapons for a battle with God!



It is essential that we see clearly that Christ was not forced into His passion. What necessity was involved was that of a means to an end, the necessity a man is under to walk across the street if he is to get to the other side. Man was to be freed from sin, the humanity of Christ was to be exalted, the prophecies of Scripture to be fulfilled; and the passion and death of the Savior were the means by which these things were to be done. This is not a denial of the possibility of other means to attain these ends; the point is that this is the way that had been decided on by God, and God's are not changing plans accommodating themselves to last-minute information pouring in from the ends of the earth.



His choice, then, of the means to the end of the Incarnation was a supremely wise, eternal choice. The passion and death of the Son of God were the best ways to obtain the things for which the Incarnation took place. The point is worth stressing. Perhaps we can understand it by a glance at the reasons for the superiority of the modern transparent, compact, extremely light raincoats for women over a raincoat made, let us say, of sheet-iron. The latter would certainly keep out the rain and so attain the chief end of a raincoat; but it would be folded into a hand-bag with extreme difficulty, would hardly be beneficial to the clothes beneath it, and might easily wear off a few layers of skin. It would certainly be no help to the disposition in hot weather, and be an irritating thing to find draped over a chair. The modern raincoat contributes many more things by which the end of all raincoats can be more fittingly attained. The Christ-child might have glanced around His stable nursery, given one baby smile, of infinite worth because He was God, and then returned to eternal glory. This would have been more than sufficient to redeem men, to attain the principal end of the Incarnation. But would that divine smile have produced all the other things which pertain to the salvation of men over and above the forgiveness of sin?



Would it, for example, have given them that unanswerable protestation of limitless divine love that would stop their human hearts and start them off again in a rapid, eager beat as they attempted to respond to that love? Would men have had that terrifying estimate of the price of their souls, with its consequent conviction of the grave necessity for avoiding sin? Would it have flashed before men's eyes the living examples of humility, obedience, constancy, and justice that were struck out from the flint of the cross? Would it have sent men down the ages with their shoulders a little straighter, their heads a little higher, their step a little firmer in the knowledge that man, who had been conquered by the devil, had turned about and given his enemy a beating; that man, who had merited death, had conquered death by dying on a cross?



That cross against the sky with its arm flung out to the world was not a beau geste. It was not the exaggerated declaration of love from a cavalier professional in these matters. Hung between the earth and the sky, the blood that edged slowly down its rough surface to the earth beneath it consecrated the ground men walked on, while its arms purified the air as if to say a new world had been made. It stood there on the brow of the hill in a bold, challenging rebuke to the fears of men. This was the worst men could do and it could not stop the triumph of a Man; what, then, is to be feared from men? By the fruit of a tree, men had met defeat; by the bitter fruit of this tree, they conquered. Here was the new Moses with arms outstretched, praying. Here was a new rod, striking not the living rock but the very gates of heaven to swing them wide and loose a flood of grace upon the hearts of men.



Fighting men returning from war usually bring back a full quota of strange and interesting stories. It is to be noticed, however, that the stories revolve around the comic side of army life, the strange customs of foreign peoples, the compelling beauty of strange lands. These men have practically nothing to say of suffering and death. It is hard to go into the details of these things. It is much harder when the subject of the suffering is not merely a companion in arms but a companion in heart. Thomas, for all his reputation as a cold-blooded metaphysician, showed this same reticence when he came on slow feet to the very cross itself and looked at the divine Victim. He makes no attempt to detail every suffering of Christ; indeed, what human word could contain them, what human heart hold them? Rather, Thomas adheres to a generalization of Christ's sufferings, to a classification rather than a description of them.



Its degree



Looking at the cross through the eyes of Thomas, it is evident to us, as it was to him, that there is no question of Christ facing the evils which affect the soul directly, such evils as sin or the loss of grace. Nor could there be question of such intrinsic evils as sickness or the corruption of the body. What Christ suffered was brought upon Him from extrinsic sources. In this sense, Christ underwent all suffering.



Not that Christ underwent every individual suffering. Even the ingenuity of hate has its limitations. The officers of Elizabeth had to work fast to complete the sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering. Had a few more details, such as drowning, poisoning, shooting, scalding, and overeating been added, their complete obedience would have been impossible. Add a few modern touches, such as airplane crashes, train wrecks, plunging from skyscrapers, and it is fairly easy to see that no one man can possibly undergo every individual suffering. What Christ suffered was every kind of suffering. His passion was the work of Jews and gentiles, of men and women, of princes and their officials, of priests and people, of friends and enemies. What can a man suffer? Well, he can be deserted by his friends. He can be stripped of his reputation, robbed of respect and honor. He can lose his possessions, even his very clothes. His soul can be weighed down by the weariness of distaste, by fear, by sorrow. His body can be beaten and wounded. It was in this sense of a man utterly stripped that Christ hung naked on the cross.



A man's body can be made to suffer in a great variety of ways. His head, for instance, might be crowned with thorns, his hands and feet transfixed by nails, his face beaten and spit upon, his whole body torn by lashes. He might suffer in his sense of touch, in his sense of smell as by dying in a place long used as a depository of dead criminals, the place of skulls; his ears might be assailed by insults, obscenities, blasphemies; and his eyes might reveal to him the course of the tears streaming down his mother's face as she watched him suffering all these things. All these could happen to a man; all of them did happen to Christ.



He suffered every manner of suffering and His sufferings were greater in intensity than any other the world has seen. Understand, we are still viewing the Victim under that merciful light of generality. It is quite possible that some other man be crowned with sharper thorns or carry a cross a greater distance; the question here is not of this or that suffering but of all these sufferings taken together in a subject Who was the Son of God. We have some notion of the intensity of Christ's sufferings even if we stop at their universality and the slow, exceedingly painful relief that comes through death by crucifixion.



A more penetrating light is thrown on this intensity of suffering if we keep in mind the interior sufferings of Christ. It must be realized that He was bearing the sins of all the world, bearing them with a wisdom and charity that brought the full horror of sin, every sin, directly before His eyes. We must appreciate something of the torment of His soul when we remember that He could look into the very souls of His executioners and disciples as they sinned; and He was God to whom nothing is more hateful than sin. This last point, the subject of these sufferings, brings out fully the length to which God will go in search of love from men. Knowing that this man was God, we can know with what suffering the Man Christ saw the slow approach of death, the loss of this life which was above all other lives, the life of God. The wine at Cana had astonished the master of the feast for, like all things miraculously produced, it was perfect. So was this miraculously produced body of Christ endowed with the keenest of senses, the sharpest responsiveness of appetite; it was most perfectly fitted to respond thrillingly to the lightest touch of joy and, by that very fact, to shudder with the utmost of agony under the brutal blows of pain.



In other men, pain may be assuaged by reason; the martyrs, for example, in their ecstasy could be insensible to pain, or a woman in labor be joyful in her pain thinking of the child who will soon be in her arms. A child might even rejoice a little in the misfortune of having to have a sliver removed from finger, considering the reward promised for submitting bravely to the process. There was none of this in Christ. He would not permit it; rather, He insisted that every faculty operate to its fullest for the redemption of man. All this suffering was in the most complete sense voluntary. He took upon Himself the amount and degree of suffering proportionate to the fruit that suffering was expected to bear -- nothing less than the redemption of all men from all sin; proportionate, that is, to the sins of all the world. That He should have died so soon, after only three hours of agony, could be a surprise only to those who did not know what suffering He was undergoing, only to those who did not understand that this was the perfect Son of Mary Who was redeeming the world.



In insisting on the universality and supreme intensity of the suffering of Christ, Thomas is not forgetting that Christ enjoyed the beatific vision, the joy of heaven. This in no way interfered with or lessened the tragedy of Calvary; rather, the very absence of its resonance in the body of Christ is just one more word in the long recorded testimony of divine love.



The superior reason of man is not a direct subject of sorrow; its object is truth. It becomes involved only in the suffering of the whole man. And it was by this superior reason that man sees God in heaven. Christ on the cross did not suffer directly in this superior reason; but intolerable suffering came to it indirectly from the suffering of the whole man. At the lame time, the limitless joy of the vision was in Christ's will, but damned up lest one trickle of it relieve the suffering offered for men. In heaven, the flood of that vision to the body is such as to spiritualize the material, to glorify the body with the radiance that was seen in the transfiguration of Christ; but on Calvary, this played not the smallest part in relieving the suffering of the body of Christ.



Its circumstances



Death seems so far removed from the young that it is particularly hard to watch a young man die. Christ died a young man, in His early thirties. There was this comfort in His dying: since he surrendered that life in the name of love, there could never again be any question of the unconditional character of that love. The perfect age of thirty is a sad time to die. But it is the right time to bring out the full, deliberate offering of a life for love.



The hill upon which Christ died is just outside the old walls of the city of Jerusalem. It rises sharply from the very foot of those walls to a height that is just about level with the top of the old walls, and so close that a man could easily throw a stone from the wall to the brow of the hill or, peering a little, could read the inscriptions over the crosses of the criminals dying on the hill. Jerusalem was the place for Christ to die, for Jerusalem was a royal city and He was a king; Jerusalem was the killer of the prophets and He was the greatest of the prophets. According to St. Thomas, Jerusalem was the center of the world, the navel of the universe; and this is certainly true if we are speaking of the world of the spirit. It was a fitting place for Him to die Whose death was to have repercussions to all the ends of the earth. He died outside the walls as the scapegoat of humanity, rejected and outcast by His people.



He hung on the cross between two thieves. Perhaps that special touch of disgrace was added in the hope that the people whom He had loved and healed, comforted and forgiven would identify Him with these criminals; if so the hope was vain. Ever since, the world has talked of His cross with hardly a word for the other crosses; kings have searched for and found and carried His cross, particles of it are still adored throughout the world. The others? They have played their part. They clustered around that central cross as around a judgment seat and heard a divine sentence passed. They showed to all men that suffering can be a soaring flight direct to heaven, or a weight pressing us down deeper into hell; for it was from the vantage point of a cross that one criminal recognized the throne and royal robes of the King, while the other saw only a dying criminal who could be safely mocked.



The cause of the passion: The part of Christ



Christ, dying on the cross, was a willing victim but He did not kill Himself. It was not Christ Who stripped off His garments, drove the nails into His hands, or the spear into His side. His enemies could and did kill Him; but only because He submitted to them. He could have rendered them impotent or, submitting, He could have brought His body unscathed through their feeble, human gestures of attack. He did neither. Life was not so much being taken from Him as being laid down by Him. Not envy, not hatred, not the power of His enemies, but the obedience and love of the victim tells the real story of His sacrifice; He was obedient even unto death. An unwilling sacrifice is no sacrifice at all; surely, it is not the means of such a sweeping reconciliation as Christ planned. Man had lost God by disobedience; here, God was regained by the obedience of a Man.



Christ laid down His life in obedience to the command of His Father; the obedience, like the command, was inspired by an infinite love for men. That obedience brought out the terrible severity of divine justice's refusal to forgive sin until the penalty had been undergone; at the same time, it revealed the infinite goodness of God Who sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die that men might escape the penalty of their sin. With the help of His own people, Christ was handed over to the Gentiles to be put to death; salvation follows the same course, from the Jews to the Gentiles, not for the destruction of God but for the happiness of man.



The part of His executioners



Strictly speaking, there were very many who had a part in Christ's death, but their roles were vastly different. His Father gave Him over to death moved by justice, goodness, and love for men. The Son surrendered to death from that same goodness, and from obedience. Judas betrayed his Master from greed; the Jews betrayed Him from envy. Pilate handed Him over to the mob because of a cowardly fear that made him tremble at the name of Caesar. The surrender of the Father and the Son will be praised for all eternity; the acts of the others will be condemned without end.



True, there was some little excuse for the Romans. What did they know about the Messiah and His coming? What interest did they have in the rumors they had heard of the wonders worked by Christ? There was even some excuse for most of the mob that hooted at the heels of Christ up to Calvary; and then dunk away in terror to their homes. They had none of the expert knowledge of the Scriptures that would enable them to judge of Christ independently; even though they had been impressed and enthusiastic about His life and works, it was the function of their leaders to approve and dis approve. They themselves were easy subjects of deception.



But the leaders of the people -- there is a different story. They had the Scriptures and they knew them. They had followed the works of Christ in detail and had examined them with expert eyes. They had the norms of discrimination between the works of God and the works of men. Like all the others gathered on Calvary to kill Christ, they did not know He was the Son of God; but they, above all others, should have known. They could have known only by faith; but they did not receive the faith that would allow their eyes to pierce the veil of His humanity because they did not want that faith. They put the impediments of hate, envy, arid deceit in the way of faith; and only those of good will can see the things that belong to the eyes of God.



On them, as they wished, rests the blood of this innocent Man. Theirs was the greatest sin, a sin in itself greater than any other that can be committed. As we pass down the line of the executioners, the sin becomes less, for the norm of gravity in sin will always be the malice of the will; that malice lessened definitely after Judas and the princes of the people, coming down in a steadily decreasing degree to the common people, Pilate, and the Roman soldiers.



Some one has defined the efficiency of modern transport as the ability to get us a long way quickly so that we can start back sooner. This is really more than jest; it is an epitome of the fact and the vanity of our worship of activity. We have actually come to the irrational stage of seeing positive virtue in rush, hurry, aggression. As a corollary of that, there is pity in our hearts for the poor people who are condemned to live their lives in one place, particularly a small place. To our minds, what a man does with his hands, his feet, or even his brain, are all important; we do not at all appreciate what a man can do with his heart. To the thorough modern, then, Christ on the cross is a picture of utter helplessness, of complete frustration; He could not go anywhere, could not get anything done. A religious-minded modern might ponder sadly on what those helpless hands of Christ might have done, what words the swollen tongue might have spoken, what sinners might have been sought out by the transfixed feet. As a matter of fact, it was when Christ was so helplessly fixed to the cross that He got the most done.



Mode of operation of the passion -- merit, satisfaction, sacrifice, redemption, and efficient causality Divinity has certainly gone to extreme lengths to bring us to our senses, to a realization that in rushing around the world we are only circling back to the place from which we started. We move in circles, inevitably, unless it is our heart that moves. All that Christ had done in those busy three years in which He had not so much as time to eat, was as nothing compared to what He accomplished on Calvary. Just when the full causality of the God-man was unleashed, men stood mocking or pitying His helplessness. From that cross, Christ's divinity operated as the efficient cause of all the wide effects produced by the passion of Christ in the lives of men; Christ's human will, from the deep roots of grace and charity, merited all those effects; His flesh satisfied for the punishment due to our sins, freed us from the slavery of sin, and was the means of sacrifice by which we are reconciled to God. The efficient, the meritorious, the redemptive, the satisfactory, and sacrificial causality of the redemption of men flowed out from a man dying on a cross. This was God's way of getting things done.



Effects of the passion: Negative



A modern true to his training would immediately object that as far as could be observed, all that Christ did on Calvary was to die in disgrace and tear out the hearts of His friends. Just what did Christ get done there? To understand the difficulty of answering that question to the satisfaction of the twentieth century, as well as to appreciate how far we have drifted today from the goals of men, it is only necessary to reflect for a moment on how little the revolutionary effects of Christ's passion mean to the modern world. What do these things mean today: liberation from sin, freedom from the power of the devil, release from the punishment due to sin, reconciliation with God, the opening of the gates of heaven, and the exaltation of the God-man, Christ? What a snicker such a litany would win in Union Square! What reasons for a man to die!



Positive



Yet, it is only by these effects that a man can win the fight of his life. Indeed, it is only the thoughtfulness of divinity and the divine respect for the powers of man that still keep every man's fight his very own. These effects of Christ have been won for us; but we must allow their application in our own lives. The life of man is a battle he must win himself, one that is worth winning for himself as an individual, but one that he can win only because God died on a cross. And the world shrugs in indifference!



The death of Christ: The fact and its effects:



When Christ bowed His head and died, His life ended, as every man's does, by His soul leaving His body. But it is a serious mistake to see that dead body in the arms of His mother as so much human wreckage, a mass of matter destined for corruption. The soul of Christ was not a tow-rope hooking His body to divinity any more than His flesh was a chain tying His soul to divinity. There was no intermediary of that union of God and human nature; the union was immediate and by reason of the Person. As He was taken down from the cross and during those three days of death, the Person of the Son of God and His divinity were still intimately united to that body, still intimately united to that soul, even though soul and body were separated. This Person did not result from the union of body and soul, nor from the union of human and divine nature; this was an eternal Person, not to be destroyed by the destruction of the union of body and soul. What God took, He kept. That grace of union; like all grace, could be lost only by sin; and there was no more sin is the dead Christ than in the living one.



The burial of Christ: Its reasons



In this light, the care and love given to the dead body of Christ, the courage of Joseph of Arimathea in demanding it of Pilate, the sorrow of His mother receiving it from the cross, were more than the reverence that springs from loving memories. Everything suffered by that dead body, even though it were only the caress of love, had infinite value for the souls of men. It is true, of course, that during those three days, Christ was dead; that is, He was no longer man, for man is not a body, neither is he a soul, but a composite of the two. Here that composite had been dissolved. The dead body of Christ was a body without a soul; but otherwise it was exactly the same, still possessed by the same Person, still united to divinity through that Person. Christ had not merited death, but He took it; He had not merited corruption of the body, and this He would not take lest there be any slightest doubt of His divinity.



Its effects on the body



Indeed, it was not at all fitting that that body should suffer corruption; the fact that it did not has ever since been a serene comfort to men and an unanswerable refutation of Christ's enemies. It was a foregone conclusion that men would doubt Christ's death; even though Pilate sent a spear through His heart, and His tomb was sealed and guarded day and night. Precautions such as these cannot stop the doubts of men when doubt seems so much more comfortable a thing than belief; even though it may be necessary to stoop to stupidity by hiring sleeping witnesses to testify to events happening during their deep, such men will have their doubts. Either Christ's death or His resurrection must be rejected under penalty of accepting every single detail of His life and doctrine. For us, who have no doubts, there is comfort in watching Christ placed in the tomb; from that time on, men could watch those they loved placed in a tomb and remember that the doors of every tomb are not eternally locked, that every tomb has an exit as well as an entrance, that it is a gate rather than the end of a road.



Its duration



Perhaps, too, the burial of Christ was to remind us that we are to die to sin by Baptism, to be buried from the world, and separated from the inordinate passions of men. Christ was in that tomb for two nights and a day that we might know it is a double death, the death of sin and the death of the body, that we escape by Baptism and its full consummation.



The descent into hell: Its fittingness



As His body drooped on the cross with the breath of life gone out of it, the soul of Christ descended into hell; not to the hell of the damned, but to the hell which we call Limbo. There was already confusion and despair enough in the devil's kingdom as the knowledge of His victory became more apparent; in Limbo the souls of the just awaited the opening of the gates of life by the death of the Author of life. It is not at all strange to us that Our Lord's first thought in death would be for others, as all the thoughts of His life had been. Only God knows how long the centuries had seemed, waiting there in Limbo; perhaps that was why He hurried so. Surely, only God can tell us of the hilariously joyful reception given the Savior of the world by those who tasted the first fruits of His sacrifice.



Recipients of its benefits



When the short visit was over, there would be a little note of sadness such as perpetually dogs the steps of sin. For there would be souls in Purgatory who had not yet satisfied for their sin and these could have no part in His triumphant possession of His kingdom until the last farthing had been paid; the souls in Limbo would still bear the stain of original sin, and so could never enter that kingdom. As for the damned in hell, He had not come to them, He had nothing to bring them, not the slightest bit of their punishment was relieved. They had chosen, and held fast to their choice; not even the Conqueror, the Master of the universe, the God of all, forces the human will to change even so stupidly disastrous a choice as this.



Mary, on the arm of John, went down from the hill and its sepulchre into a city empty of Christ; but she carried with her the secret that would change forever the view of men on suffering and death. To Mary and John, the mystery of death and suffering was cleared up by faith: its finality was done away with by the knowledge that it was the beginning of a new life; its corruption was more than matched by the glorification of the body that was the ultimate goal of death; death's inevitability was more than made up for by the certitude of immortality.



Conclusion. Philosophies of suffering: Philosopy of joy



In other words, they entered that empty city in full possession of the Christian philosophy of suffering and death. They had learned from the dead Christ that suffering was to be joyfully embraced yet to be mercifully and constantly relieved in others. They knew now that suffering would be their lot in order that their joy might be full; that the way of the cross, for all its sorrows, was a joyful road leading to fuller, and perpetual, joy.



Philosophies of suffering: Philosophy of gloom



In sharp contrast to this, the materialistic philosophies of their age still shuddered before the sight of suffering and the terror of death. To them, suffering and death still remained mysterious, something for the most part hated, yet, paradoxically, something that is quite willingly inflicted upon others. Those philosophies were then, as they have been ever since, apparently dedicated to pleasure and to flight from pain; yet in actual fact, they were philosophies of gloom and pessimism not only to the victims sacrificed to their ends, but to the very champions of these philosophies.



Double basis of difference: The sufferer a victim or a sovereign master



Mary and John, and all who would come after them, faced suffering and death, not only as men and women, but as men and women who had been made partakers in the life of God. Their materialistic contemporaries, and ours, faced these mysteries of pain and death, not as participators in the life of God, not even as men and women, but in a fashion worthy only of something less than a man. Really, it should have been so; the basic differences of the two views clearly would allow nothing less sharply contrasted to the Christian, the victim, the sufferer who dies, is in reality a sovereign master, wielding even such terrible weapons as his own pain and death for his own high purposes, rising above the material and what the material can inflict upon him, always carrying within himself that spark that gives him independence of all that is less than the spirit. In the other view, the sufferer is simply and solely a victim of superior forces; he is beaten, vanquished. There is nothing within him to give him title to independence of the forces that crash upon him to his destruction; he is the slave of obviously superior forces; his outlook is one of hopeless despair.



The goal of great worth



In fact, the materialist has no reason for fighting against hopeless odds. He has no place to go, no goal worthy of suffering, nothing worth the price of death. The one thing he knows is the life he has in his hands, and he knows precious little about that; to preserve it, he should logically go to any lengths, scruple at no means however base. On the other hand, the follower of Christ along the way of the cross aims at goals that are not only worthy of a man; they are goals proper to God, goals so far superior to anything material as to make the loss of any material things, or all of them, a mere trifling price to pay. The Master's question still remains unanswerable: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?" His incredible promise still holds: "He that shall lose his life shall find it." For there are some things worth the price of all the suffering a man can endure, even of all the sufferings that the God-man could endure; and there are some things to which death is not a threat but a gateway.



The Victim Who conquered and His book of the cross



The world of our time, or of any time, gazing on the Son of God dead on the cross, looks at a willing Victim who conquered, at a Man who died and, dying, conquered death, at a Man who wrote in the indelible words of infinitely precious acts a fundamentally important lesson for all men to read. There it is written, never to be erased, that the spiritual is superior to the material, that all things in man's life, even life itself, are to be ordered to the good of his soul. In the crucifix, the universal symbol of the life, doctrine, and death of Christ, He has left us the whole book of divine wisdom for human living. It is a compact thing, readily scrutinized by the most ignorant, though it is never exhausted by the most wise and the most holy. It has been the book of the saints. In that book there is the answer to the enigma of suffering and to the horror of death. There is the ultimate chapter on human living by the divine Exemplar of human life.