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)

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Invitation to Love by Leo Cormican, O.M.I. - Chapter 1


GOD'S QUEST FOR LOVE


            Of all the lovers who have caught the imagination or stirred the hearts of men, the greatest by far is Christ. No other has ever hungered so eagerly for love, nor found the road to the heart of the beloved so beset with disappointments and obstacles. No lover has ever suffered so much from human fickleness, coldness, disdain and infidelity. More than any other, He has found that "the course of true love never did run smooth." No one has ever been so patient, so resolute in the face of disappointments, so gentle, so forgiving in the midst of infidelities. The love story of Christ is unique, because the lovers in it are not remote figures who lived in a distant past, nor imaginary people who never lived at all, but the living Christ and our living selves. The bride whose love He seeks to win is the human race. He seeks His beloved ardently not because her beauty draws Him powerfully to her, but because she is so ungainly and ungracious that only He can give her lasting beauty and joy; she is so needy that only He has riches enough to fill her heart.
            He desires neither a helpless slave nor a mercenary hireling, but a spouse who will give herself to Him as He gives Himself to her- fully, freely, in the unbreakable bonds of marriage. He wishes to force nothing on her or from her, but seeks her ready, complete consent to that unreserved intimacy which can grow only from mutual love. It is only by her wish that He can fill her with all the comeliness and grace He ardently seeks to bestow. His seeking must go on to the end of the world; only then will the number of the elect be filled up, and His lovers present themselves to Him as a bride without spot or wrinkle or blemish (Ephs. V.27.); only then will the hunger of His Heart be satisfied.

            Human history is the period of Christ's courtship; until history has passed into eternity, He has the arduous, painful task of winning His bride. He is not hampered, as other men are, by the limitations of time or space. In His search for lovers, He roams over the whole earth, and to the end of time; He is with us all days, as lover no less than as king, to the consummation of the world. By His church, His teaching, His grace, He seeks to draw every human heart to Himself. His bride-to-be little guesses how whole-heartedly she is loved and sought; she pays but little attention to His pleadings or His promises. But neither rebuff nor rejection can weary Him. For the Eternal Father who entrusted Him with the quest for love has fitted Him perfectly for it. He has given His Son a patience that no unkindness can discourage, a tenderness which meets our rejection with compassion rather than with anger, a Heart that meets our slightest response with generosity and ardour. That Heart enables Him now, as it did in the Passion, to surmount the worst that men can do to Him, and to go on seeking the love of men till time shall be no more.

            As His great work is to plead for love, our great work is to respond. We are all, even the greatest of us, limited and ineffective in many ways; but however weak we may be in mind or body, there is one kind of genuine greatness we can all achieve—the greatness of an ardent, unreserved love. The first person who grasped the intensity of Christ's appeal for love was His Mother; she became the greatest of God's creatures because she responded most perfectly to His appeal. True devotion to the Sacred Heart was first and best understood by her in whom God took a human heart to Himself. We should try to imitate Mary by 'pondering over God's words in our hearts' (Luke II. 19), so as to see how much He has loved us, and so be prompted to love Him worthily in return. We should endeavour to understand the true nature of devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Understanding the Devotion

            Every true devotion is marked by two great characteristics: it finds its roots in solid doctrine, it produces flowers of solid practice. It takes its rise in revealed truth, not in imagination or in sentimentality, and it leads on constantly to acts of virtue. To understand any devotion properly, we must see divine doctrine as the motive and the guide for the devotion we practise; it is useful then to collect in one place some of the main beliefs which lie at the root of devotion to the Sacred Heart.

            We must first remind ourselves of the unique and mysterious nature of any devotion to the humanity of Christ. For when we think of doctrine, or teaching, we are inclined immediately to think of words, spoken or written. But the Word on which the devotion to the humanity is based is neither spoken nor written, but is a divine Person who has always been with God, and is God. Christianity is not primarily a matter of embracing a form of belief, of accepting a particular doctrine; it is accepting or receiving a Person. "God, having spoken of old to the fathers through the prophets by many partial revelations and in various ways, in these last days hath spoken to us by one who is Son. As many as received Him, He gave them power to become the sons of God." (Hebrews I.1; John I.12.) The Word of God, sent into the world in the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans VIII.3.), is God's supreme manifestation and revelation of Himself. The Incarnate Word is the basis and the source of all true belief and of all salutary action. Devotion to the Sacred Heart is a particular way of knowing, loving and imitating the Incarnate Word. Doctrine we need, words and ideas we need; but the ideas, the words and the doctrine are of value only in so far as they bring us into living contact with the Person, the Divine Word. We must study not so much a belief, as a Person; we must love and imitate that Person, that Man, rather than merely exercise our intellects.

            The great ways in which the Incarnate Word enters into our daily lives may be put by bringing together the ideas of Saints John and Paul: He in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells in a corporal manner, dwelt amongst us full of grace and truth, and of His fullness we have all received; for from Moses we received the Law, but through Jesus Christ we received grace and truth. (Col. II.9; John I.14,16,17.) Since Christ is "true God of true God, of one Substance with the Father" (the Nicene Creed), the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him, yet in a corporal manner because He has united humanity to His divinity, in order that He may manifest the power and lovableness of divinity in a way accommodated to our weak human understanding. Even as man, He is full of grace and truth, that is, full of the perfections which make Him eminently pleasing to God ("full of grace:); and He is "full of truth" because He teaches men all they need to know in a way they can understand. Thereby Christ gives us something better than the Law which God gave to men through Moses; that is, Moses could instruct us on what our obligations are, but he could not usurp the function of Christ which is to impart the inner strength and motivation which enables us to fulfill those obligations. Christ, unlike Moses, and a fortiori unlike all merely human teachers, works in the innermost heart of man by sanctifying grace and by all the virtues.

            The following paraphrase of New Testament texts is offered as a summary of the divine doctrine which underlies the devotion to the Sacred Heart. Since that devotion is a way of honouring the Incarnate Word, it is necessary to see the Incarnation in relation to the whole plan of Divine Providence.

            The Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with every spiritual good in Christ. In Him He singled us out before the creation of the world in order to sanctify us wholly. In His great love for us, even before our creation, He chose to adopt us as His sons in Christ through the abundant riches of His grace. From God we derive our union with Christ Jesus, because He has become to us wisdom God-imparted, yea and justification from sin, and redemption. He has thereby delivered us from the powers of evil, and transferred us to His own kingdom to be ruled by His Son. Being rich in mercy, He has given us life in Christ, and has seated us with Christ in the heavenly places to show forth, in the ages to come, the surpassing riches of His grace through His kindness to us in Christ.

            It was as the great High Priest of these good things to come that Christ was sent into the world to offer for men a perfect sacrifice; what He offered did not belong to the natural creation, it was an offering not of the blood of goats and calves (as in the Old Testament), but of His own blood, thus obtaining for us everlasting redemption. By the guidance of the Eternal Spirit, He offered Himself to God, purifying our guilty consciences from the corruption and death of sin, and elevating us to the service of the living God. This High Priest, Christ, had already in His mortal life all the perfection necessary for this great work and for supplying our needs; He was holy, undefiled, set apart from sinners, exalted above all created things, even the most heavenly; He was so perfect that, unlike other priests, He did not need to offer sacrifice for Himself or for any sins of His own; and, unlike others, He is not removed from His priesthood by death, for, having offered Himself on one single occasion as a sacrifice for the people, He now remains forever and possesses an everlasting priesthood. It is in this way that He can at all times save those who approach God through Him, since He lives on to intercede continually for them.

            When He first came into the world (by conception in the womb of Mary), He declared that His one desire was to do the will of God perfectly. He who was the Word of God, equal to God, emptied Himself, taking to His own divine nature the nature of a servant completely submissive to God's commands. He became obedient, even to the point of dying for God's will, nay even to the point of dying on a cross. By His sufferings and death in human nature, we obtain redemption, the forgiveness of sins; for it has pleased the Father through Christ to reconcile all men to Himself, establishing peace between God and men through the blood of Christ's cross.

            Christ, by being lifted up on the cross, draws all men to Himself. For all must now feel the compelling urgency of the love He showed us in His death. And those who refuse to return Him love for love must at least acknowledge His power. For, on account of His perfect obedience, God has exalted Him above the highest, has bestowed on Him a name which is above all names; He has subjected all things beneath His feet, and has decreed for us a share in His triumph and glory. We can then truly say that it is out of love that God gave His only-begotten Son to the world, and sent His Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save it, for He is a propitiation for our sins.

            For, although He died once, He is now raised from the dead, and death has no more power over Him. It is God's plan to unite us to Christ's sufferings and death, and thereby unite us to Him in His resurrection, joy and glory. By baptism, we enter into a share in His death, and we are buried along with Him. But the purpose of this is that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the power of the Father, so we should rise from the death of sin to the life of grace. If we become one with Him in the likeness of His death, why then we shall be like Him also in His resurrection.

            So Christ's work as Redeemer is not yet complete. We must co-operate with Him by joining in His sufferings. Completion will come when Christ has dispossessed every other sort of power and has subdued all His enemies. The last of these enemies is death, which He will overcome in the general resurrection. Then Christ, in His Mystical Body, will be completely subject to God; the evil will be forever cut off from God's kingdom of love (those who have rejected His love will submit to His justice). The work of Divine Providence will be fully achieved.

            May Christ then dwell by faith in our hearts so that, rooted and established in God's love, we may be able to comprehend with all His saints the vast extent of His plan and love, to know the charity of Christ which goes beyond anything we can understand, and thus the work of God's love may be fulfilled in each of us.

            The foregoing texts emphasize the two basic essentials of the devotion to Christ's Heart: (1) God's love is infinitely abundant and infinitely compassionate towards sinners; (2) such love demands all our love in return. These two truths are phases or aspects of the great truth of the Incarnation.

            By the Incarnation God the Son unites human nature to Himself in personal union. This is the greatest possible act of love for human nature that even God could perform. Greater honour and esteem not even God could show for our nature than this. This act of perfect love demands the greatest possible return from man; man of himself cannot make any adequate return; love in return is given first by the God-man Christ, then through Him, by all who are united to Him by love. The love which the man Christ offers God is a love perfectly commensurate with the demands of the Infinite Goodness. Christ the man is full of this love in order that we may receive of His fullness. The Incarnation is an act of Divine Providence elevating and enriching the humanity of Christ, but it touches all men; all men can come to share in the privileges and powers of the humanity of Christ "according to the measure of Christ's bestowing." (Eph. IV. 7.)

            While the Incarnation did not change the divine nature, yet certain things became true of the divine Person which would not otherwise be true. He who is eternity itself became temporal and mortal; He who is equal to the Father became subject to the Father; He who is absolute Lord became subject even to men. Men acquired a new power over God because they entered into a new relation to the humanity He assumed. Mary is truly the mother of God, Veronica the consoler of God, and Judas the betrayer of God. Men are admitted to a share of the divine power which destroys sin and the effects of sin. What Christ communicates to us, He communicates through His great universal acts—His Sacrifice on Calvary, His triumph over death through the Resurrection, and the perpetuation of the sacrifice and the triumph in the Mass. We come to possess the degree of grace He intends for us by our union with Him in His death, in His resurrection, that is, by our desire to suffer whatever may be necessary in order to do what pleases Him, by the triumph of grace over the sinful inclinations of our human nature.

            St. Margaret herself was very convinced of this connection between the devotion and the love of Christ's cross. She saw, as all the saints have seen, that we can love Christ only in the degree in which we love the cross of Christ. Lest any one be inclined to think her ideal too high, we should realize that the saint was merely proposing what Paul taught, and taught to the generality of Christians: "They that are of Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires." (Gals. V.24.) And this in turn is but an exposition of the great commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart", that is, with the readiness to strip away all that is opposed to the love of God. Thus the love of the Christ who suffered so much for us is the beginning, the sustaining power and the crowning perfection of the Christian life, of our "life which is hid with Christ in God." (Cols. III.3.)

            For the law of the Christian life is the law of growth. Christ desires that the seed planted at baptism should develop throughout life; life is the period of time given to us to achieve the degree of perfection to which we are called. The lowest degree of sanctifying grace is already a dignity and a power which surpass the whole of the natural creation; God wishes that dignity to grow till it ennobles the whole man; He wishes the power to grow till it seizes full possession of man, surrendering him wholly to the wishes of divine love.

            The appeal of the Sacred Heart is but a special form of the general invitation to all men to love God, to love God perfectly; it is a special form of the invitation to that perfect love without which no one can enter heaven. The devotion is special, not in the sense that it is addressed to any special class, such as priests or contemplatives, since all are equally called to perfection; it is special rather because it presents God's claims to us in a specially appealing way. No one need hope to travel along the road to perfection any more quickly than the speed determined by God; no one need expect the special gifts (such as visions, ecstasies and miracles) which God keeps in His own hands. But everyone is called to the love of the cross: "unless a man take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple." (Matt. X.38.) However imperfect or even sinful we may be at the moment, the love of the cross is an ideal which no one can reject without rejecting Christ. No one, not even Christ, could love the cross for its own sake since it is, and typifies, all that is repugnant and repulsive to human nature. But even the lowest degree of sanctifying grace supposes the readiness to embrace anything, however painful, in order to avoid offending God grievously. And from there God wishes to lead us on to the love that gladly embraces any pain in order to please God in every way that is open to us. To put it as briefly as possible: we do not need at any moment to be perfect, but we do need at every moment to wish to be perfect- for the love of Him who has loved us so much. The manner and the degree of our suffering God will reveal to us as we approach Him through generous love. It is He who presents us with the cross, He who gives us the love for the cross, He who sustains us in carrying it till we achieve the final victory.

            This practical readiness to embrace the cross- to understand it in the light of divine faith, to bear it in the strength of divine love, to see beyond it to the everlasting victory that hope promises to us- this readiness is what Paul calls the "mind of Christ." (1 Cor. 11.16; Phils. II.5.) "Let that mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. For He, though He was by nature God, …emptied Himself by taking the nature of a slave and becoming like unto men. ...He humbled Himself by obedience unto death, yea, unto death upon a cross." Or, as our Lord had put it "Everyone of you that doth not renounce all that he possesseth, cannot be my disciple; it behoved Christ to suffer and so to enter into His glory, and the disciple is not above his master." (Luke XIV.33, XXIV.46; Matt. X.24.)

            Since this "mind of Christ" is so great and precious a power we need not be surprised that it is the gift of God, unobtainable by any efforts we might make by our human faculties. It is set up in us by baptism, strengthened by confirmation, restored by penance, nourished by Holy Communion. It is by these sacraments and by the fervent hearing of Holy Mass that we enter more fully, more intensely and more continuously into the mind and Heart of Christ, so as to possess His habitual dispositions and aspirations. We thereby grow in the power to see with the eyes of Christ, to think with His mind, to feel with His Heart. We are thereby made one with Him so closely that, with the growth of grace, He can lead us wheresoever He wishes; and He wishes to lead us through Calvary to the eventual triumph.

            Throughout the long road that stretches between our present sinfulness and our future perfect union with God, we must meet many difficulties; but all the time, we are drawing on the patience, meekness, obedience, humility, on the immense strength and immense love of Christ. For He is "the way, the truth and the life." (John XIV.6.) He is the way, since "no man cometh to the Father except by Him" (John XIV.6.); He is the truth, since He is "the true light that enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world" (John I.9.); He is the life, since He came that we "might have life and have it more abundantly" (John X.10.); He is the 'wisdom of God and the power of God' (I Cor. I.24.), who teaches us all we need to know and strengthens us to do all we need to perform. In His Heart are all the treasures of wisdom and grace; He opens His Heart that we may draw on these treasures as we need or desire. To draw on them we need to enter into His Heart, we need to have our being in Christ, 'to lead the life which is hid with Christ in God'. (Cols. III. 3.) In this way Christ comes to live in us more and more fully. And so we have that unique phrase, the Christian life which includes in its meaning the life of the Christian and that of Christ at the same time. For the Christian life is not merely a life that we lead- it 'is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us'; what enables us to lead the Christian life is the 'Christ who dwells in our hearts by faith' (Eph. III.17.); the actions of the Christian are not so much the actions he performs by his powers, but rather the fine flowers and fruits of the Vine which flourishes within him.

            For Christ the Vine to flourish within us, we must understand what Christ wishes of us, we must have the 'mind of Christ'; and we learn His mind from His Heart. Even in human affairs, love brings us inside another's mind with an insight unparalleled by any other form of knowledge. It is love, setting up in us a fellow-feeling with Christ's Heart, that shows us what is in His mind. Devotion to His Heart is not reserved for special persons, occasions or actions; it is a matter of trying, even in the simplest things, to carry out what is in Christ's mind for us, to find opportunities to love Him who has loved us so much. Winding an alarm clock is an act of devotion if we do it to ensure our punctuality at Mass or work — for He gives us work, as He gives us the Mass, that through it we may grow perfect in love; eating a meal becomes an act of true devotion if we try to find in it the strength to do Christ's work. Whatever our present imperfection or sinfulness, true devotion must aim at co-operating with Christ that the divine life He purchased for us on Calvary and bestowed on us in baptism may come to the fullness He wishes to give us.