EPIPHANY BY BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION, OSB - Part III

III

It happens at times that the star disappears from our sight.
Whether the inspiration of grace bear with it an extraordinary
character, as was the case with the Magi, or whether it be linked
to the supernatural providence of each day, as is the most
frequent case with us, the star sometimes ceases to be manifest.
The soul then finds itself in spiritual darkness. What is to be
done then ?

Let us see what the Magi did under these circumstances. The star
was shown to them only in the East, then it disappeared: Vidimus
stellam ejus in Oriente. If it taught them concerning the Birth of
the King of the Jews, it did not show the precise place where they
might find Him. What were they to do ? The Magi directed their
course towards Jerusalem, the capital of Judea, the metropolis of
the Jewish religion. Where, better than in the holy city, could
they learn what they sought to know ?

In the same way, when our star disappears, when the divine
inspiration leaves us in some uncertainty, it is God's will that
we should have recourse to the Church, to those who represent Him
amongst us, in order to learn from them the path to be followed.
This is the dispensation of Divine Providence. God loves that in
our doubts and in the difficulties of our progress towards Christ,
we should ask light and direction from those whom He has
established as His representatives: Qui vos audit, me audit (Lk
10:16).

Hear how Jesus replies to Saul's question: "Lord, what wilt Thou
have me to do ?" Does He make His will directly known? He might
have done so since He revealed Himself as the Lord; but He instead
sends Saul to His representative: "Go into the city, and there it
shall be told thee"-by another-"what thou must do" (Acts 9:7).

In submitting the aspirations of our souls to the control of those
who have the grace and mission to direct us in our seeking after
divine union, we run no risk of going astray, whatever be the
personal merits of those who guide us. At the time when the Magi
arrived at Jerusalem, the assembly of those who had authority to
interpret the Holy Scriptures was composed in great part of
unworthy members; and yet God willed that it should be by their
ministry and teaching that the Magi learnt officially where Christ
was born. Indeed, God cannot permit a soul to be deceived when,
with humility and confidence, she has recourse to the legitimate
representatives of His sovereign authority.

On the contrary, the soul will again find light and peace. Like
the Magi going out from Jerusalem, she will again see the star,
radiant and splendid, and, also like them, full of gladness, she
will go forward on her way: Videntes autem stellam, gavisi sunt
gaudio magno valde (Mt 2:10).

EPIPHANY BY BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION, OSB - Part II

II

If we now return to some of the details of the Gospel narrative,
we shall see how rich in teaching is this mystery.

I have said that the Magi at Bethlehem represented the Gentiles in
their vocation to the light of the Gospel. The way in which the
Magi acted show us the qualities that our faith ought to have.
What is at first apparent is the generous fidelity of this faith.
Let us consider it. The star appeared to the Magi. Whatever be the
country whence they originated-Persia, Chaldea, Arabia or India,-
the Magi, according to tradition, belonged to a priestly caste and
devoted themselves to the study of the stars. It is more than
probable that they were not ignorant of the revelation made to the
Jews of a King Who would be their Deliverer and the Master of the
world. The prophet Daniel, who had prophesied the time of His
coming, had been in relation with some of the Magi; perhaps even,
Balaam's prophecy that a star should "rise out of Jacob" (Num
24:17) was not unknown to them. However that may be, behold now a
wondrous star appears to them. Its extraordinary brightness
attracting their gaze, awakens their attention at the same time
that an inward grace of illumination enlightens their souls. This
grace prepared them to recognize the prerogatives of the One Whose
Birth the star announced; it inspired them to set out to seek Him
in order to offer Him their homage.

The Magi's fidelity to the inspiration of grace is wonderful.
Doubt takes no hold upon their minds; without staying to reason,
they immediately begin to carry out their design. Neither the
indifference nor the scepticism of those who surround them, nor
the disappearance of the star, nor the difficulties inherent to an
expedition of this kind, nor the length and dangers of the way
stop them. They obey the divine call without delay or hesitation.
"We have seen His star in the East and are come" (Mt 2:2).

In this the Magi are our models, whether it concerns the vocation
to the faith, or whether it be a question of the call to
perfection. There is indeed for every faithful soul a vocation to
holiness: Sancti estote quia ego sanctus (Lev 11:44). "Be holy
because I am holy." The apostle St. Paul assures us that from all
eternity there exists for us a divine decree full of love
containing this call: Elegit nos ante mundi constitutionem, ut
essemus sancti et immaculati in conspectu ejus (Eph 1:4).

And for those whom He calls to holiness God makes "all things work
together unto good": Iis qui secundim propositum vocati sunt
sancti (Rom 8:28). The manifestation of this vocation is for each
of us his or her star. It takes different forms, according to
God's designs, our character, the circumstances wherein we live,
the events that befall us; but it shines in the soul of each one.

And what is the end and object of this call ? For us as for the
Magi, it is to lead us to Jesus. The Heavenly Father causes the
star to shine in us; for, says Christ Himself, " no man can come
to Me, except the Father, Who hath sent Me, draw him ": Nemo
potest venire ad me, nisi Pater, qui misit me, traxerit eum (Jn
6:44).

If with fidelity we listen to the divine call, if we generously
press onward with our gaze fixed upon the star, we shall come to
Christ Who is the life of our souls. And whatever be our sins, our
failings, our miseries, Jesus will welcome us with kindness. He
has promised to do so: " All that the Father giveth Me shall come
to Me, and him that cometh to Me, I will not cast out ": Omne,
quod dat mihi Pater, ad me veniet: et eum qui venit ad me non
eficiam foras (Ibid. 6:37).

The Father drew Magdalen the sinner to the feet of Jesus. And see
how Magdalen, at once following with a generous faith the divine
ray of the star that shone in her soul, suddenly enters into tbe
festal hall to manifest publicly to Christ her repentance and her
love. Magdalen followed the star, and the star led Magdalen to the
Saviour: " Thy sins are forgiven thee... thy faith hath made thee
safe. Go in peace" (Lk 7:48, 50). Et eum qui venit ad me non
eficiam foras.

The lives of the saints and the experience of souls show that
there are often, in our supernatural life, decisive moments upon
which depend all the value of our inner life, and sometimes our
eternity itself.

Look at Saul upon the road to Damascus. He is the enemy and bitter
persecutor of the Christians: Spirans minarum, "breathing out
threatenings and slaughter, "against those who bore that name. And
then the voice of Jesus makes itself heard. It is for Saul the
star, the divine call. He hears the call, and follows the star:
"Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" What promptitude and what
generosity ! And from that moment, become a " vessel of election"
(Acts 9:1, 6, 15), he will live for Christ alone.

Look, on the other hand, at the young man full of good will, with
upright and sincere heart, who approaches Jesus and asks what he
must do to possess life everlasting. "Keep the commandments,"
answers our Divine Saviour. "Master, all these have I kept from my
youth, what is yet wanting to me?" Then, says the Gospel," Jesus,
looking on him, loved him": Jesus autem intuitus eum dilexit eum.
This look full of love was the ray of the star. And see how it is
immediately manifested: "One thing is wanting unto thee: if thou
wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and
thou shalt have a treasure in heaven; and come follow me." But the
youth does not follow the star. Sorrowful at this saying, "he went
away sad; for he had great possessions." Some commentators see the
prediction of the loss of this soul in the words that our Lord
pronounced immediately afterwards: "How hardly shall they that
have riches enter into the kingdom of God" (Mk 10:17-23; cf. Mt
19:16-23; Lk 18:18-24).

Thus, whether it concerns the call to faith or holiness, we shall
only find Christ and the life whereof He is the source on
condition that we are attentive to grace and perseveringly
faithful in seeking after divine union.

The Heavenly Father calls us to His Son by the inspiration of His
grace. Like the Magi, as soon as the star shines in our hearts, we
should instantly leave all: our sins, the occasions of sin, evil
habits, infidelities, imperfections, attachment to creatures.
Taking no account of criticism nor the opinion of men, nor the
difficulties of the work to be done, we should set out at once to
seek Jesus. He wills this whether we have lost Him by mortal sin,
or whether, already possessing Him by sanctifying grace, He calls
us to a closer and more intimate union with Himself.

Vidimus stellam: Lord, I have seen Thy star, and I come to Thee:
what wilt Thou have me to do ?

EPIPHANY BY BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION, OSB - Part I

I

The Fathers of the Church have seen in the call of the Magi to
Christ's cradle the vocation of pagan nations to the Faith. This
is the very foundation of the mystery, explicitly indicated by the
Church in the collect wherein she sums up the desires of her
children on this solemnity: Deus qui hodierna die Unigenitum tnum
GENTIBUS stella duce revelasti.

The Incarnate Word is first of all manifested to the Jews in the
person of the shepherds. Why was this? Because the Jewish people
were the Chosen People. From this people was to come forth the
Messias, the Son of David. The magnificent promises to be realised
in the establishing of the Messianic Kingdom had been made to this
people; it was to them that God had entrusted the Scriptures and
given the Law whereof each element prefigured the grace that was
to be brought by Christ. It was then befitting that the Incarnate
Word should first be manifested to the Jews.

The shepherds, simple and upright men, represented the Chosen
People at the Crib: Evangelizo vobis gaudium magnum.., quia natus
est vobis hodie Salvator (Lk 2:10-11).

Later on, in His public life, Our Lord would again manifest
Himself to the Jews, by the wisdom of His doctrine and the
splendour of His miracles.

We shall even find that He restricts His teaching to the Jews
alone. See, for example, when the woman of Canaan, from the pagan
regions of Tyre and Sidon, asks Him to have mercy upon her. What
does Christ answer to the disciples when they interpose in her
favour? "I was not sent but to the sheep that are lost of the
house of Israel" (Mt 15:24). It needed the ardent faith and
profound humility of the poor pagan woman to wrest from Jesus, so
to speak, the grace that she implored.

When, during His public life, Our Lord sent His Apostles to
preach, like Himself, the good news, He likewise said to them: "Go
ye not into the way of the Gentiles, and into the city of
Samaritans enter you ye not. But go ye rather to the lost

sheep of the house of Israel" (Mt 10:5-6). Why this strange
recommendation? Were the pagans excluded from the grace of
redemption and salvation brought by Christ? No; but it entered
into the divine economy to reserve the evangelization of the pagan
nations to the Apostles, after the Jews should have definitely
rejected the Son of God, by crucifying the Messias. When Our Lord
dies upon the cross, the veil of the temple is rent in twain to
show that the Ancient Covenant with the Hebrew people had ceased.

Many Jews indeed did not want to receive Christ. The pride of
some, the sensuality of others, blinded their souls, and they
would not receive Him as Son of God. It is of them that St. John
speaks when he says: "The light shineth in darkness, and the
darkness did not comprehend it" (Jn 1:5, 11). Therefore Our Lord
says to these incredulous Jews: "The Kingdom of God shall be taken
from you, and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruit
thereof" (Mt 21:43).

The pagan nations are called to become the inheritance promised by
the Father to His Son Jesus: Postula a me, et dabo tibi gentes
haereditatem tuam (Ps 11:8). Our Lord Himself says: "The good
shepherd giveth His life for His sheep," adding immediately:
"Other sheep I have, that are not of this fold": Alias oves habeo,
quae non sunt ex hoc ovili. "Them also I must bring, and they
shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd"
(Jn 10: 11, 16).

This is why, before ascending into heaven, He sends His Apostles
to continue His work and mission of salvation, no longer among the
lost sheep of Israel, but among all people. "Going therefore," He
says to them, "teach ye all nations... preach the gospel to every
creature... I am with you all days, even to the consummation of
the world" (Mt 28:19-20).

The Word Incarnate did not, however, await His Ascension to shed
abroad the grace of the Gospel upon the Gentile world. As soon as
He appeared here below, He invited it to His cradle in the person
of the Magi. He, Eternal Wisdom, would thus show us that He
brought peace, Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis (Lk 2:14), not only
to those who were nigh to Him- the faithful Jews represented by
the shepherds, -but also to those who " were afar off "-the Pagans
represented by the Magi. Thus, as St. Paul says, of the two people
He made but one: Qui fecit utraque unum, because He alone, by the
union of His Humanity with His Divinity, is the perfect Mediator,
and "by Him we have access both in one Spirit to the Father" (Eph
2:14, 17-18).

The calling of the Magi and their sanctification signifies the
vocation of the Gentiles to the faith and to salvation. God sends
an angel to the shepherds, for the Chosen People were accustomed
to the apparition of the celestial spirits; to the Magi, who
studied the stars, He causes a marvellous star to appear. This
star is the symbol of the inward illumination that enlightens
souls in order to call them to God.

The soul of every grown-up person is in fact enlightened, once at
least, like the Magi, by the star of the vocation to eternal
salvation. To all the light is given. It is a dogma of our faith
that God "will have all men to be saved": Qui OMNES homines vult
salvos fieri, et ad agnitionem veritatis venire (1 Tim 2:4).

On the day of judgment, all without exception will proclaim, with
the conviction produced by evidence, the infinite justice of God
and the perfect rectitude of His judgments: Justus es, Domine, et
rectum judicium tuum (Ps 118:137). Those whom God shall have told
to depart from Him for ever will acknowledge that they are the
workers of their own ruin.

Now this would not be true if the reprobate had not had the
possibility of knowing and accepting the divine light of faith. It
would be contrary not only to God's infinite goodness, but even to
His justice, to condemn a soul on account of its invincible
ignorance.

Doubtless, the star that calls men to the Christian faith is not
the same for all; it shines in different ways, but its brightness
is visible enough for hearts of good will to be able to recognise
it and see in it the sign of the Divine call. In His providence
full of wisdom, God incessantly varies His action,
incomprehensible like Himself. He varies it according to the ever
active promptings of His love and the ever holy exigencies of His
justice. We ought herein to adore the unfathomable depths of God's
ways and proclaim that they infinitely surpass our created views.
Indeed "who hath known the mind Or the Lord ? Or who hath been His
counsellor ? " O altitudo divitiarum sapientiae et scientiae Dei!
Quam incomprehensibilia sunt judicia ejus et investigabiles viae
ejus! (Rom 11:33).

We have "seen the star" and have recognised as our God the Babe of
Bethlehem; we have the happiness of belonging to the Church
whereof the Magi were the first fruits.

In the office of the feast, the Liturgy celebrates this vocation
of all humanity to faith and salvation in the person of the Magi
as the nuptials of the Church with the Bridegroom. Hear with what
gladness, in what magnificent symbolical terms, borrowed from the
prophet Isaias, the liturgy proclaims (Epistle of the Mass) the
splendour of this spiritual Jerusalem which is to receive into her
maternal bosom the nations become the inheritance of her divine
Bridegroom. "Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem, for thy light is
come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold,
darkness shall cover the earth, and a mist the people; but the
Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee.
And the Gentiles shall walk in thy light, and kings in the
brightness of thy rising. Lift up thy eyes round about, and see;
all these gathered together, they are come to thee: thy sons shall
come from afar, and daughters shall rise up at thy side. Then
shalt thou see, and abound, and thy heart shall wonder and be
enlarged, when the multitude of the sea shall be converted to
thee, the strength of the Gentiles shall come to thee" (Is 60:15).

Let us offer continual thanksgiving to God "Who hath delivered us
from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the
kingdom of the Son of His love" (Col 1:13), " that is to say into
His Church.

The call to the faith is a signal benefit because it contains in
germ the vocation to the eternal beatitude of the Divine vision.
Never let us forget that this call was the dawn of all God's
mercies towards us, and that for man all is summed up in fidelity
to this vocation; faith is to bring us to the Beatific Vision
(Collect for the Feast).

Not only ought we to thank God for this grace of the Christian
faith, but we ought each day to render ourselves more worthy of it
by safeguarding our faith against all the dangers that it
encounters in our age of naturalism, scepticism, indifference,
human respect, and by living a life of faith with constant
fidelity.

Moreover, let us beseech God to grant this precious gift of the
Christian faith to all the souls who yet "sit in darkness, and in
the shadow of death"; let us beseech Our Lord that the star may
shine upon them; that, through His tender mercy, He Himself will
be the Sun to visit them from on high: Per viscera misericordiae
Dei nostri in quibus visitavit nos, Oriens ex alto (Lk 1:78-79)

This prayer is very pleasing to Our Lord; it is, in fact, to
beseech Him that He may be known and exalted as the Saviour of all
mankind and the King of kings.

It is likewise pleasing to the Father, for He desires nothing so
much as the glorification of His Son. Let us then often repeat,
during these holy days, the prayer that the Incarnate Word Himself
has put upon our lips: O Heavenly Father, "Father of Lights," Thy
Kingdom come, that kingdom whereof Thy Son Jesus is the head.
Adveniat regnum tuum! May Thy Son be more and more known, loved,
served, glorified, so that in His turn He may, by manifesting Thee
the more to men, glorify Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost:
Pater, clarifica Filium taum ut Filius tuus clarificet te !

EPIPHANY BY BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION, OSB - INTRODUCTORY SUMMARY

VIII. --THE EPIPHANY

Abbot Marmion, O.S.B.

SUMMARY. - - God Eternal light, is chiefly manifested by the
Incarnation. - I. The manifestation to the Magi signifies the
calling of the pagan nations to the light of the Gospel. II. The
Magi's faith, prompt and generous, is the model of what ours
should be. - III. What the Magi did when the star disappeared. - -
IV. The greatness of their faith at Bethlehem; symbolism of the
gifts offered by them to the Child God; how we may imitate them

Whenever a soul comes into a more intimate contact with God, she
feels herself wrapt around with mystery: Nubes et caligo in
circuitu ejus (Ps 46:2). This mystery is the inevitable
consequence of the infinite distance that separates the creature
from the Creator. On all sides, the finite being is surpassed by
Him Who, everlastingly, is the plenitude of Being.

This is why one of the most profound characters of the Divine
Being is His incomprehensibility. The invisibility here below of
the Divine Light is a truly wonderful thing.

"God is Light," says St. John; He is the Infinite Light, "and in
Him there is no darkness": Deus lux est, et tenebrae in eo non
sunt ullae. St. John is careful to note that this truth
constitutes one of the foundations of his Gospel: Et haec est
annuntiatio quam audivimus ab eo, et annuntiamus vobis (1 Jn 1:5).
But this light, which bathes us all in its brightness, instead of
manifesting God to the eyes of our souls, hides Him. It is with
this light as with the sun: its very brilliancy prevents us from
contemplating it: Lucem inhabitat inaccessibilem (1 Tim 6:16).

And yet this light is the life of the soul. You will have noticed
that, in Holy Scripture, the ideas of life and light are
frequently associated. When the psalmist wants to describe the
eternal beatitude whereof God is the source, he says that in God
is the principle of life: Torrente voluptatis tuae potabis eos.
Quoniam apud te est fons VITAE; and he immediately adds: "And in
Thy light we shall see light": Et in lumine tuo VIDEBIMUS LUMEN
(Ps 35:9-10). It is in the same way that Our Lord declares Himself
to be "the Light of the world". Again He says (and here is
something more than a mere juxtaposition of words), "He that
followeth Me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of
life ":: Habebit LUMEN VITAE (Jn 8:12). And this light of life
proceeds from the Life by essence which is Light: In ipso vita
erat, et vita erat lux hominum (Ibid 1:4). Our life in heaven will
be to know the Eternal Light unveiled, and to rejoice in the
splendour of this Light.

Already, here below, God gives a participation of this light by
endowing the human soul with reason. Signatum est super nos lumen
vultus tui, Domine (Ps 4:7). Reason is a true light for man. All
the natural activity of man, if he is to be worthy of himself,
ought to be directed first of all by that light which shows him
the good to be pursued; a light so powerful that it is even
capable of revealing to man the existence of God and some of His
perfections. St. Paul, writing to the faithful in Rome (Rom 1:20),
declares the pagans to be inexcusable for not having known God
through contemplating the world, His handiwork. God's works
contain a vestige, a reflection of His perfections, and thus, up
to a certain point, declare the infinite light.

There is another deeper, more merciful manifestation that God has
made of Himself: it is the Incarnation.

The divine light, too dazzling to be manifested in all its
splendour to our feeble sight, is veiled beneath the sacred
Humanity: quod est velamen, is the expression of St. Paul" (Cf.
Heb 10:20). "The brightness of eternal light" (Sap 7:26), light
shining forth from light, lumen de lumine, the Word had clad
Himself in our flesh that through it we may contemplate the
Divinity: Nova mentis nostrae oculis lux tuae claritatis infulsit
(Preface for the Nativity), Christ is God brought within our
reach, showing Himself to us in a life authentically human; the
veil of the Humanity prevents the infinite and dazzling splendour
of the Divinity from blinding us.

But for every soul of good will, rays come forth from this Man
revealing that He is likewise God. The soul enlightened by faith
knows the splendour hidden behind the veil of this Holy of Holies.
In the mortal Man that Jesus is, faith finds God Himself, and in
finding God, she drinks at the source of light, salvation and
immortal life: Quia cum Unigenitus tuus in substantia nostrae
mortalitatis apparuit, nova nos immortalitatis suae luce reparavit
(Preface for the Epiphany).

This manifestation of God to men is so extraordinary a mystery, a
work so full of mercy; it constitutes one of the characters so
essential to the Incarnation that, in the first centuries, the
Church had no special feast in honour of the Saviour's Birth at
Bethlehem. She celebrated the feast of the "Theophania," the feast
of the "Divine manifestations" in the Person of the Incarnate
Word:-the manifestation to the Magi,-the manifestation upon the
banks of the Jordan at the Baptism of Jesus,-and the manifestation
at the marriage feast of Cana where Christ wrought His first
miracle. In passing from the Church of the East to that of the
West, the feast has retained its name in Greek: Epiphany, the
"manifestation"; but it has almost exclusively for its object the
manifestation of the Saviour to the Gentile world, to the pagan
nations, in the person of the Magi.

You well know the Gospel narrative of the coming of the Magi to
Bethlehem, a narrative illustrated and popularised by tradition
(Most authors place the coming of the Magi after the presentation
of Jesus in the Temple we here follow the order indicated by the
Church which, in the liturgy, celebrates the Epiphany on January
6th and the Presentation on February 2nd.) . I will simply say a
few words upon the general signification of the mystery;
afterwards, whilst dwelling on certain details, I will point out
some of the numerous lessons that it contains for our devotion.

THE LITURGICAL YEAR (CHRISTMAS) BY THE VERY REV. DOM PROSPER GUÉRANGER, ABBOT OF SOLESMES

CHAPTER THE THIRD
PRACTICE DURING CHRISTMAS

The time has now come for the faithful soul to reap the fruit of the efforts she made during the penitential weeks of Advent to prepare a dwelling-place for the Son of God, who desires to be born within her. The Nuptials of the Lamb are come, and his Spouse hath prepared herself [Apoc. xix 7]. Now the Spouse is the Church; the Spouse is also every faithful soul. Our Lord gives his whole self to the whole flock, and to each sheep of the flock with as much love as though he loved but that one. What garments shall we put on, to go and meet the Bridegroom? Where shall we find the pearls and jewels wherewith to deck our soul for this happy meeting? Our holy Mother the Church will tell us all this in her Liturgy. Our best plan for spending Christmas is, undoubtedly, to keep close to her, and do what she does; for she is most dear to God, and being our Mother, we ought to obey all her injunctions.

But, before we speak of the mystic Coming of the Incarnate Word into our souls; before we tell the secrets of that sublime familiarity between the Creator and the Creature; let us, first, learn from the Church the duties which human nature and each of our souls owes to the Divine Infant, whom the Heavens have at length given to us as the refreshing Dew we asked them to rain down upon our earth. During Advent, we united with the Saints of the Old Law, in praying for the coming of the Messias, our Redeemer; now that he is come, let us consider what is the homage we must pay him.

The Church offers to the Infant-God, during this holy season, the tribute of her profound adoration, the enthusiasm of her exceeding joy, the return of her unbounded gratitude, and the fondness of her intense love. These four offerings, adoration, joy, gratitude, and love, must be also those of every Christian to his Jesus, his Emmanuel, the Babe of Bethlehem. The prayers of the Liturgy will express all four sentiments in a way that no other Devotions could do. But, the better to appropriate to ourselves these admirable formulas of the Church, let us understand thoroughly the nature of each of these four sentiments.

The first of our duties at our Saviour’s Crib is Adoration. Adoration is Religion’s first act; but there is something in the Mystery of our Lord’s Birth which seems to make this duty doubly necessary. In heaven the Angels veil their faces, and prostrate themselves before the throne of Jehovah; the Four-and-Twenty Elders are for ever casting their crowns before the throne [Apoc. iv 10] of the Lamb; what, then, shall we do - we who are sinners, and unworthy members of the Tribe of the Redeemer - now that this same great God shows himself to us, humbled for our sakes, and stript of all his glory? now that the duties of the creature to his Creator are fulfilled by the Creator himself? now that the eternal God bows down not only before the Sovereign Majesty of the Godhead, but even before sinful man, his creature?

Let us endeavour to make, by our profound adorations, some return to the God who thus humbles himself for us; let us thus give him back some little of that whereof he has deprived himself out of love for us, and in obedience to the will of his Father. It is incumbent on us to emulate, as far as possible, the sentiments of the Angels in heaven, and never to approach the Divine Infant without bringing with us the incense of our soul's adoration, the protestation of our own extreme unworthiness, and lastly, the homage of our whole being. All this is due to the infinite Majesty of the Babe of Bethlehem, who is the more worthy of every tribute we can pay him, because he has made himself thus little for our sakes. Unhappy we, if the apparent weakness of the Divine Child, or the familiarity wherewith he is ready to caress us, should make us negligent in this our first duty, or forget what he is, and what we are!

The example of his Blessed Mother will teach us to be thus humble. Mary was humble in the presence of her God, even before she became his Mother; but, once his Mother, she comported herself before him who was her God and her Child with greater humility than ever. We too, poor sinners, sinners so long and so often, we must adore with all the power of our soul him who has come down so low: we must study to find out how by our self-humiliation to make him amends for this Crib, these swathing-bands, this eclipse of his glory. And yet all our humiliations will never bring us so low as that we shall be on a level with his lowliness. No; only God could reach the humiliations of God.

But our Mother, the Church, does not only offer to the Infant God the tribute of her profound adoration. The mystery of Emmanuel, that is, of God with us, is to her a source of singular joy. Look at her sublime Canticles for this holy Season, and you will find the two sentiments admirably blended - her deep reverence for her God, and her glad joy at his Birth. Joy! did not the very Angels come down and urge her to it? She therefore studies to imitate the blithe Shepherds, who ran for joy to Bethlehem [St Luke ii 16], and the glad Magi, who were well-nigh out of themselves with delight when, on quitting Jerusalem, the star again appeared and led them to the Cave where the Child was [St Matt. ii 10]. Joy at Christmas is a Christian instinct, which originated those many Carols, which, like so many other beautiful traditions of the ages of Faith, are unfortunately dying out amongst us; but which Rome still encourages, gladly welcoming each year those rude musicians, the Pifferari, who come down from the Apennines, and make the streets of the Eternal City re-echo with their shrill melodies.

Come, then, faithful Children of the Church, let us take our share in her joy! This is not the season for sighing or for weeping. For unto us a Child is born! [Isa. ix 6]. He for whom we have been so long waiting is come; and he is come to dwell among us [St John i 14]. Great, indeed, and long was our suspense; so much the more let us love our possessing him. The day will too soon come when this Child, now born to us, will be the Man of Sorrows [Isa. liii 3], and then we will compassionate him; but at present we must rejoice and be glad at his coming and sing round his Crib with the Angels. Heaven sends us a present of its own joy: we need joy, and forty days are not too many for us to get it well into our hearts. The Scripture tells us that a secure mind is like a continual feast  [Prov. xv 15], and a secure mind can only be where there is peace; now it is Peace which these blessed days bring to the earth; Peace, say the Angels, to men of good will!
Intimately and inseparably united with this exquisite mystic joy is the sentiment of gratitude. Gratitude is indeed due to him who, neither deterred by our unworthiness nor restrained by the infinite respect which becomes his sovereign Majesty, deigned to be born of his own creature, and have a stable for his birth-place. Oh! how vehemently must he not have desired to advance the work of our salvation, to remove everything which could make us afraid of approaching him, and to encourage us, by his own example, to return, by the path of humility, to the heaven we had strayed from by pride!

Gratefully, therefore, let us receive the precious gift - this Divine Babe, our Deliverer. He is the Only- Begotten Son of the Father, that Father who hath so loved the world as to give his only Son [St John iii 16]. He, the Son, unreservedly ratifies his Father’s will, and comes to offer himself because it is his own will [Isa. liii 7]. How, as the Apostle expresses it, hath not the Father with him given us all things? [Rom. viii 32]. O gift inestimable! How shall we be able to repay it by suitable gratitude, we who are so poor as not to know how to appreciate it? God alone, and the Divine Infant in his Crib, know the value of the mystery of Bethlehem, which is given to us.

Shall our debt, then, never be paid? Not so: we can pay it by love, which, though finite, gives itself without measure, and may grow for ever in intensity. For this reason, the Church, after she has offered her adorations and hymns and gratitude, to her Infant Saviour, gives him also her tenderest Love. She says to him: ‘How beautiful art thou, my Beloved One, and how comely! [Cant. i 15]. How sweet to me is thy rising, O Divine Sun of Justice! How my heart glows in the warmth of thy beams! Nay, dearest Jesus, the means thou usest for gaining me over to thyself are irresistible - the feebleness and humility of a Child!’ Thus do all her words end in love; and her adoration, praise, and thanksgiving, when she expresses them in her Canticles, are transformed into love.

Christians! let us imitate our Mother, and give our hearts to our Emmanuel. The Shepherds offer him their simple gifts, the Magi bring him their rich presents, and no one must appear before the Divine Infant without something worthy his acceptance. Know, then, that nothing will please him, but that which he came to seek - our love. It was for this that he came down from heaven. Hard indeed is that heart which can say, He shall not have my love!

These, then, are the duties we owe to our Divine Master in this his first Coming, which, as St Bernard says, is in the flesh and in weakness, and is for the salvation, not for the judgement, of the world.

As regards that other Coming, which is to be in majesty and power on the Last Day, we have meditated upon it during Advent. The fear of the Wrath to come should have roused our souls from their lethargy, and have prepared them, by humility of heart, to receive the visit of Jesus in that secret Coming which he makes to the soul of man. It is the ineffable mystery of this intermediate Coming that we are now going to explain.
We have shown elsewhere how the time of Advent belongs to that period of the spiritual life which is called, in Mystic Theology, the Purgative Life, during which the soul cleanses herself from sin and the occasions of sin, by the fear of God’s judgements, and by combating against evil concupiscence. We are taking it for granted that every faithful soul has journeyed through these rugged paths, which must be gone through before she could be admitted to the Feast to which the Church invites all mankind, saying to them, on the Saturday of the Second Week of Advent, these words of the Prophet Isaias: Lo! this is our God: we hare waited for him, and he will save us. We have patiently waited for him, and we shall rejoice and be joyful in his Salvation! [Isa. xxv 9]. As in the house of our heavenly Father there are many mansions [St John xiv 2], so likewise, on the grand Solemnity of Christmas, when those words of Isaias are realized, the Church sees, amongst the countless throng who receive the Bread of Life, a great variety of sentiments and dispositions. Some were dead, and the graces given during the holy Season of Advent have restored them to life: others, whose spiritual life had long been healthy, have so spent their Advent that its holy exercises have redoubled their love of their Lord, and their entrance into Bethlehem has been to them a renewal of their soul’s life.

Now every soul that has been admitted to Bethlehem, that is to say, into the House of Bread, and has been united with him who is the Light of the World - that soul no longer walks in darkness. The mystery of Christmas is one of Illumination; and the grace it produces in the soul that corresponds with it, places her in the second stage of the mystic Life, which is called the Illuminative Life. Henceforward, then, we need no longer weary ourselves watching for our Saviour’s arrival; he has come, he has shone upon us, and we are resolved to keep up the light, nay, to cherish its growth within us, in proportion as the Liturgical Year unfolds its successive seasons of mysteries and graces. God grant that we may reflect in our souls the Church’s progressive development of this divine Light; and he led by its brightness to that Union which crowns both the year of the Church, and the faithful soul which has spent the year under the Church’s guidance!

But, in the mystery of Christmastide, this Light is given to us, so to speak, softened down; our weakness required that it should be so. It is indeed the Divine Word, the Wisdom of the Father, that we are invited to know and imitate; but this Word, this Wisdom, are shown us under the appearance of a Child. Let nothing keep us from approaching him. We might fear were he seated on a throne in his palace; but he is lying on a crib in a stable! Were it the time of his Fatigues, his Bloody Sweat, his Cross, his Burial, or even of his Glory and his Victory, we might say we had not courage enough: but what courage is needed to go near him in Bethlehem, where all is sweetness and silence, and a simple Little Babe! Come to Him, says the Psalmist, and be enlightened! [Ps. xxxiii 6].

Where shall we find an interpreter of the twofold mystery which is wrought at this holy season - the mystery of the Infancy of Jesus in the soul of man, and the mystery of the infancy of man’s soul in his Jesus? None of the Holy Fathers has so admirably spoken upon it as St Leo: let us listen to his grand words.

‘Although that Childhood, which the majesty of the Son of God did not disdain to assume, has developed, by growth of age, into the fulness of the perfect man, and, the triumph of his Passion and Resurrection having been achieved, all the humiliations he submitted to for our sakes are passed; nevertheless, the Feast we are now keeping brings back to us the sacred Birth of the Virgin Mary’s Child, Jesus our Lord. So that whilst adoring his Birth, we are, in truth, celebrating our own commencement of life; for the Generation of Christ is the origin of the Christian people, and the Birth Day of him that is our Head is the Birth Day of us that are his Body. It is true, that each Christian has his own rank, and the children of the Church are born each in their respective times; yet the whole mass of the Faithful, once having been regenerated in the font of Baptism, are born, on this Day of Christmas, together with Christ; just as they are crucified together with him in his Passion, and have risen together with his Resurrection, and in his Ascension are placed at the right hand of the Father. For every believer, no matter in what part of the work he may be living, is born again in Christ; his birth according to nature is not taken into account; he becomes a new man by his second birth; neither is he any longer called of the family of his father in the flesh, but of the family of our Redeemer, who unto this was made a Son of Man, that we might become the Sons of God.’ [Sixth Sermon On the Nativity of our Lord, Ch. 2].

Yes, this is the Mystery achieved in us by the holy Season of Christmas! It is expressed in those words of the passage from St John’s Gospel which the Church has chosen for the third Mass of the great Feast: As many as received him, he gave them power to be made the Sons of God, to them that believe in his name; who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God [St John i 22]. So that all they who, having purified their souls, freed themselves from the slavery of flesh and blood, and renounced everything which is of man, inasmuch as man means sinner, wish now to open their hearts to the Divine Word, that is, to the LIGHT which shineth in darkness, which darkness did not comprehend [Ibid. i 5], these, I say, are born with Jesus; they are born of God; they begin a new life, as did the Son of God himself in this mystery of his Birth in Bethlehem.

How beautiful are these first beginnings of the Christian Life! How great is the glory of Bethlehem, that is, of our holy Mother the Church, the true House of Bread! for in her midst there is produced, during these days of Christmas, and everywhere throughout the world, a countless number of sons of God. Oh! the unceasing vitality of our mysteries! As the Lamb, who was slain from the beginning of the world [Apoc. xiii 8], sacrifices himself without ceasing, ever since his real sacrifice; so also, once born of the Holy Virgin his Mother, he makes it a part of his glory to be ceaselessly born in the souls of men. We are not, therefore, to think for a moment that the dignity of Mary’s divine Maternity is lessened, or that our souls enjoy the same grand honour which was granted to her: far from that, ‘let us,’ as Venerable Bede says, ‘raise our voice from amid the crowd, as did the woman in the Gospel, and say to our Saviour, with the Catholic Church, of which that woman was the type: Blessed is the Womb that bore thee, and the Breasts that gave thee suck!’ [Commentary on St Luke, Bk. 4, Ch. 49]. Mary’s prerogative is indeed incommunicable, and it makes her the Mother of God, and the Mother of men. But we must also remember the answer made by our Saviour to the woman, who spoke those words: Yea rather, said Jesus, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it [St Matt. xii 50], ‘hereby declaring,’ continues Venerable Bede, ‘that not only is she blessed, who merited to conceive in the flesh the Word of God, but they also who endeavour to conceive this same Word spiritually, by the hearing of faith, and to give him birth and nourish him by keeping and doing what is good, either in their own or their neighbour’s heart. For the Mother of God herself was Blessed in that she was made, for a time, the minister to the wants of the Incarnate Word; but much more Blessed was she, in that she was and ever will be the keeper and doer of the love due to that same her Son.’
Is it not this same truth which our Lord teaches us on that other occasion, where he says: Whosoever shall do the will of my Father that is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother? [St Matt xii 50]. And why was the Angel sent to Mary in preference to all the rest of the daughters of Israel, but because she had already conceived the Divine Word in her heart by the vehemence of her Undivided love, the greatness of her profound humility and the incomparable merit of her virginity? Why again, is this Blessed among women holy above all creatures, but because, having once conceived and brought forth a Son of God, she continues for ever his Mother, by her fidelity in doing the will of the heavenly Father, by her love for the uncreated light of the Divine Word, and by her union as Spouse with the Spirit of sanctification?

But no member of the human race is excluded from the honour of imitating Mary, though at a humble distance, in this her spiritual Maternity: for, by that real birth which she gave him in Bethlehem, which we are now celebrating, and which initiated the world into the mysteries of God, this ever Blessed Mother of Jesus has shown us how we may bear the resemblance of her own grand prerogative. We ought to have prepared the way of the Lord [St Matt. iii 3; Isa. xl 3] during the weeks of Advent; and if so, our hearts have conceived him: therefore now our good works must bring him forth, that thus our heavenly Father, seeing not us ourselves, but his own Son Jesus now living within us, may say of each of us, in his mercy, what he heretofore said in very truth of the Incarnate Word: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased [St Matt. iii 17].

Let us give ear to the words of the Seraphic St Bonaventure, who in one of his sermons for Christmas Day thus explains the mystery of the birth of Jesus in the soul of man: ‘This happy birth happens when the soul, prepared by long thought and reflection, passes at length to action; when the flesh being made subject to the spirit, good works are produced in due time: then do interior peace and joy return to the soul. In this birth there is neither travail nor pain nor fear; everything is admiration and delight and glory. If then, O devout soul! thou art desirous for this birth, imagine thyself to be like Mary. Mary signifies bitterness; bitterly bewail thy sins: it signifies illuminatrix, be thou illumined by thy virtues: and lastly, it signifies
Mistress; learn how to be mistress and controller of thy evil passions. Then will Christ be born of thee, and oh! with what happiness to thyself ! For it is then that the soul tastes and sees how sweet is her Lord Jesus. She experiences this sweetness when, in holy meditation, she nourishes this Divine Infant; when she covers him with her tears; when she clothes him with her holy longings; when she presses him to her heart in the embrace of holy tenderness; when, in a word, she cherishes him in the warmth of her glowing love. O happy Crib of Bethlehem in thee I find the King of glory: but happier still than thou, the pious soul which holds within itself him whom thou couldst hold but corporally!’

Now that we may pass on from this spiritual conception to the birth of our Lord Jesus; in other words, that we may pass from Advent to Christmas, we must unceasingly keep the eyes of our soul on him who wishes to be born within us, and in whom the world is born to a new life. Our study and ambition should be, how best to become like Jesus, by imitating him; for, though the imitation must needs be imperfect, yet we know from the Apostle that our heavenly Father himself gives this as the sign of the elect - that they are made like to the image of his Son [Rom. viii 29].

Let us, therefore, hearken to the invitation of the Angels, and go over to Bethlehem [St Luke ii 15].We know what sign will be given to us of our Jesus - a Child wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and laid in a crib [Ibid. ii 22]. So that you, O Christians must become children; you must not disdain to be tied in the bonds of a spiritual childhood; you must come down from your proud spirit, and meet your Saviour who has come down from heaven, and with him hide yourselves in the humility of the crib. Thus will you begin, with him, a new life. Thus will the Light that goeth forwards and increaseth even to perfect day [Prov. iv 18] illumine your path the whole remaining length of your Journey. Thus the sight of God which leaves room for faith, which you receive at Bethlehem, will merit for you the face-to-face vision on Thabor, and prepare you for the blissful UNION, which is not merely Light, but the plenitude and repose of Love.

So far we have been speaking only of the living members of the Church, whether they began the life of grace during the holy Season of Advent, or were already living in the grace of the Holy Ghost when the ecclesiastical year commenced, and spent their Advent in preparing to be born with Jesus to a new year of higher perfection. But how shall we overlook those of our Brethren who are dead in sin; and so dead, that neither the coming of their Emmanuel, nor the example of the Christians throughout the universal Church earnestly preparing for that coming, could rouse them? No, we cannot forget them: we love them, and come to tell them (for even now they may yield to grace, and live), that there hath appeared the goodness and kindness of God our Saviour [Tit. iii 4]. If this volume of ours should perchance fall into the hands of any of those who have not yielded to the solicitations of grace, which press them to be converted to the sweet Babe of Bethlehem, their Lord and their God; who, instead of spending the weeks of Advent in preparing to receive him at Christmas, lived them out, as they began them, in indifference and in sin: we shall, perhaps, be helping them to a knowledge of the grievousness of their state, by reminding them of the ancient discipline of the Church, which obliged all the Faithful, under pain of being considered as no longer Catholics, to receive Holy Communion on Christmas Day, as well as on Easter and Whit Sundays. We find a formal decree of this obligation given in the fifteenth Canon of the Council of Agatha (Agde) held in 506. We would also ask these poor sinners to reflect on the joy the Church feels at seeing, throughout the whole world, the immense number of her children, who still, in spite of the general decay of piety, keep the Feast of the birth of the Divine Lamb, by the sacramental participation of his Body and Blood.

Sinners! take courage; this Feast of Christmas is one of grace and mercy, on which all, both just and sinners, meet in the fellowship of the same glad Mystery. The heavenly Father has resolved to honour the Birthday of his Son, by granting pardon to all save those who obstinately refuse it. Oh! how worthy is the Coming of our dear Emmanuel to be honoured by this divine amnesty!

Nor is it we that give this invitation; it is the Church herself. Yes, it is she that with divine authority invites you to begin the work of your new life on this day whereon the Son of God begins the career of his human life. That we may the more worthily convey to you this her invitation, we will borrow the words of a great and saintly Bishop of the Middle Ages, the pious Rabanus Maurus, who, in a homily on the Nativity of our Lord, encourages sinners to come and take their place, side by side with the just, in the stable of Bethlehem, where even the ox and the ass recognize their Master in the Babe who lies there.

‘I beseech you, dearly beloved Brethren, that you receive with fervent hearts the words our Lord speaks to you through me on this most sweet Feast, on which even infidels and sinners are touched with compunction; on which the wicked man is moved to mercy, the contrite heart hopes for pardon, the exile despairs not of returning to his country, and the sick man longs for his cure; on which is born the Lamb who taketh away the sins of the world, that is, Christ our Saviour. On such a Birthday, he that has a good conscience rejoices more than usual; and he whose conscience is guilty fears with a more useful fear ... Yes, it is a sweet Feast, bringing true sweetness and forgiveness to all true penitents. My little children, I promise you without hesitation that every one who, on this day, shall repent from his heart, and return not to the vomit of his sins, shall obtain all whatsoever he shall ask; let him only ask with a firm faith, and not return to sinful pleasures.
‘On this day are taken away the sins of the entire world: why needs the sinner despair? ... On this day of our Lord’s Birth let us, dearest Brethren, offer our promises to this Jesus, and keep them, as it is written: Vow ye, and pay to the Lord your God [Ps. lxxv 12]. Let us make our promises with confidence and love; he will enable us to keep them. ... And when I speak of promises, I would not have anyone think that I mean the promise of fleeting and earthly goods. No - I mean, that each of us should offer what our Saviour redeemed, namely, our soul. “But how,” someone will say, “how shall we offer our souls to him, to whom they already belong?” I answer: by leading holy lives, by chaste thoughts, by fruitful works, by turning away from evil, by following that which is good, by loving God, by loving our neighbour, by showing mercy (for we ourselves were in need of it, before we were redeemed), by forgiving them that sin against us (for we ourselves were once in sin), by trampling on pride, since it was by pride that our first parent was deceived and fell.’ [Fourth Homily On the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ.]

It is thus our affectionate Mother the Church invites sinners to the Feast of the Divine Lamb; nor is she satisfied until her House be filled [St Luke x 2]. The grace of a New Birth, given her by the Sun of Justice, fills this Spouse of Jesus with joy. A new year has begun for her, and, like all that have preceded it, it is to be rich in flower and fruit. She renews her youth as that of an eagle. She is about to unfold another Cycle, or Year, of her mysteries, and to pour forth upon her faithful children the graces of which God has made the Cycle to be the instrument. In this season of Christmas, we have the first-fruits of these graces offered to us; they are the knowledge and the love of our Infant God: let us accept them with attentive hearts, that so we may merit to advance, with our Jesus, in wisdom and age and grace before God and men [Ibid. ii 52]. The Christmas Mystery is the gate of all the others of the rest of the year; but it is a gate which we may all enter, for, though most heavenly, yet it touches earth; since, as St Augustine beautifully remarks in one of his sermons for Christmas [Eleventh Sermon On the Nativity of our Lord]: ‘We cannot as yet contemplate the splendour of him who was begotten of the Father before the Day Star [Ps. cix 3]; let us, then, visit him who was born of the Virgin in the night- hour. We cannot understand how his Name continued before the sun [Ibid. lxxi 17]; let us, then, confess that he hath set his tabernacle in her that is purer than the sun [Ibid. xviii 6]. We cannot as yet see the Only-Begotten Son dwelling in the Father’s Bosom; let us, then, think on the Bridegroom that come/h out of his bridechamber [Ibid].We are not yet ready for the banquet of our heavenly Father; let us, then, keep to the Crib of Jesus, our Master [Isa. i 3].

THE LITURGICAL YEAR (CHRISTMAS) BY THE VERY REV. DOM PROSPER GUÉRANGER, ABBOT OF SOLESMES

CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE MYSTERY OF CHRISTMAS

Everything is Mystery in this holy season. The Word of God, whose generation is before the day-star [Ps. cix 3], is born in time - a Child is God - a Virgin becomes a Mother, and remains a Virgin - things divine are commingled with those that are human - and the sublime, the ineffable antithesis, expressed by the Beloved Disciple in those words of his Gospel, THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, is repeated in a thousand different ways in all the prayers of the Church;- and rightly, for it admirably embodies the whole of the great portent which unites in one Person the nature of Man and the nature of God.

The splendour of this Mystery dazzles the understanding, but it inundates the heart with joy. It is the consummation of the designs of God in time. It is the endless subject of admiration and wonder to the Angels and Saints; nay, is the source and cause of their beatitude. Let us see how the Church offers this Mystery to her children, veiled under the symbolism of her Liturgy.

The four weeks of our preparation are over - they were the image of the four thousand years which preceded the great coming - and we have reached the twenty-fifth day of the month of December, as a long desired place of sweetest rest. But why is it that the celebration of our Saviour’s Birth should be the perpetual privilege of this one fixed day; whilst the whole liturgical Cycle has, every year, to be changed and remodelled, in order to yield that ever-varying day which is to be the feast of his Resurrection - Easter Sunday?

The question is a very natural one, and we find it proposed and answered, even so far back as the fourth century; and that, too, by St Augustine, in his celebrated Epistle to Januarius. The holy Doctor offers this explanation: We solemnize the day of our Saviour’s Birth, in order that we may honour that Birth, which was for our salvation; but the precise day of the week, on which he was born, is void of any mystical signification. Sunday, on the contrary, the day of our Lord’s Resurrection, is the day marked, in the Creator’s designs, to express a mystery which was to be commemorated for all ages. St Isidore of Seville, and the ancient Interpreter of Sacred Rites who, for a long time, was supposed to be the learned Alcuin, have also adopted this explanation of the Bishop of Hippo; and our readers may see their words interpreted by Durandus, in his Rationale.

These writers, then, observe that as, according to a sacred tradition, the creation of man took place on a Friday, and our Saviour suffered death also on a Friday for the redemption of man; that as, moreover, the Resurrection of our Lord was on the third day after his death, that is, on a Sunday, which is the day on which the Light was created, as we learn from the Book of Genesis - ‘the two Solemnities of Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection,’ says St Augustine, ‘do not only remind us of those divine facts; but they moreover represent and signify some other mysterious and holy thing.’ [Epist. ad Januarium.]

And yet we are not to suppose that because the Feast of Jesus’ Birth is not fixed to any particular day of the week, there is no mystery expressed by its being always on the twenty-fifth of December. For firstly we may observe, with the old Liturgists, that the Feast of Christmas is kept by turns on each of the days of the week, that thus its holiness may cleanse and rid them of the curse which Adam’s sin had put upon them. But secondly, the great mystery of the twenty-fifth of December, being the Feast of our Saviour’s Birth, has reference, not to the division of time marked out by God himself, which is called the Week; but to the course of that great Luminary which gives life to the world, because it gives it light and warmth. Jesus, our Saviour, the Light of the World [St John viii 12], was born when the night of idolatry and crime was at its darkest; and the day of his Birth, the twenty-fifth of December, is that on which the material Sun begins to gain his ascendency over the reign of gloomy night, and show to the world his triumph of brightness.

In our ‘Advent’ we showed, after the Holy Fathers, that the diminution of the physical light may be considered as emblematic of those dismal times which preceded the Incarnation. We joined our prayers with those of the people of the Old Testament; and, with our holy Mother the Church, we cried out to the Divine Orient, the Sun of Justice, that he would deign to come and deliver us from the twofold death of body and soul. God has heard our prayers; and it is on the day of the Winter Solstice - which the Pagans of old made so much of by their fears and rejoicings - that he gives us both the increase of the natural light, and him who is the Light of our souls.

St Gregory of Nyssa, St Ambrose, St Maximus of Turin, St Leo, St Bernard, and the principal Liturgists, dwell with complacency on this profound mystery, which the Creator of the universe has willed should mark both the natural and the supernatural world. We shall find the Church also making continual allusion to it during this season of Christmas, as she did in that of Advent.

‘On this the Day which the Lord hath made,’ says St Gregory of Nyssa, ‘darkness decreases, light increases, and Night is driven back again. No, brethren, it is not by chance, nor by any created will, that this natural change begins on the day when he shows himself in the brightness of his coming, which is the spiritual Life of the world. It is Nature revealing, under this symbol, a secret to them whose eye is quick enough to see it; to them, I mean, who are able to appreciate this circumstance of our Saviour’s coming. Nature seems to me to say: Know, O Man! that under the things which I show thee Mysteries lie concealed. Hast thou not seen the night, that had grown so long, suddenly checked? Learn hence, that the black night of Sin, which had reached its height by the accumulation of every guilty device, is this day stopped in its course. Yes, from this day forward its duration shall be shortened, until at length there shall be naught but Light. Look, I pray thee, on the Sun; and see how his rays are stronger, and his position higher in the heavens: learn from that how the other Light, the Light of the Gospel, is now shedding itself over the whole earth.’ [Homily On the Nativity.]
Let us, my Brethren, rejoice,’ cries out St Augustine: [Sermon On the Nativity of our Lord, iii] ‘this day is sacred, not because of the visible sun, but because of the Birth of him who is the invisible Creator of the sun. ... He chose this day whereon to be born, as he chose the Mother of whom to be born, and he made both the day and the Mother. The day he chose was that on which the light begins to increase, and it tvpifies the work of Christ, who renews our interior man day by day. For the eternal Creator having willed to be born in time, his Birthday would necessarily be in harmony with the rest of his creation.’

The same holy Father, in another sermon for the same Feast, gives us the interpretation of a mysterious expression of St John Baptist, which admirably confirms the tradition of the Church. The great Precursor said on one occasion, when speaking of Christ: He must increase, but I must decrease [St John iii 30]. These prophetic words signify, in their literal sense, that the Baptist’s mission was at its close, because Jesus was entering upon his. But they convey, as St Augustine assures us, a second meaning: ‘John came into this world at the season of the year when the length of the day decreases; Jesus was born in the season when the length of the day increases.’ [Sermon In Natali Domini, xi]. Thus, there is mystery both in the rising of that glorious Star, the Baptist, at the summer solstice: and in the rising of our Divine Sun in the dark season of winter.
[It is almost unnecessary to add that this doctrine of the Holy Fathers which is embodied in the Christmas Liturgy is not in any degree falsified by the fact that there are some parts of God’s earth where Christmas falls in a season the very opposite of Winter. Our Lord selected, for the place of his Birth, one which made it Winter when he came upon earth; and by that selection he stamped the Mystery taught in the text on the season of darkness and cold. Our brethren in Australia, for example, will have the Mystery without the Winter, when they are keeping Christmas; or, more correctly, their faith and the Holy Liturgy will unite them with us, both in the Winter and the Mystery of the great Birth in Bethlehem. - Translator’s Note.]

There have been men who dared to scoff at Christianity as a superstition, because they discovered that the ancient Pagans used to keep a feast of the sun on the winter solstice! In their shallow erudition they concluded that a Religion could not be divinely instituted, which had certain rites or customs originating in an analogy to certain phenomena of this world: in other words, these writers denied what Revelation asserts, namely, that God only created this world for the sake of his Christ and his Church. The very facts which these enemies of our holy Religion brought forward as objections to the true Faith are, to us Catholics, additional proof of its being worthy of our most devoted love.

Thus, then, have we explained the fundamental Mystery of these Forty Days of Christmas, by having shown the grand secret hidden in the choice made by God’s eternal decree, that the twenty-fifth day of December should be the Birthday of God upon this earth. Let us now respectfully study another mystery: that which is involved in the place where this Birth happened.

This place is Bethlehem. Out of Bethlehem, says the Prophet, shall he come for/h that is to be the Ruler in Israel [Mich. v 2]. The Jewish Priests are well aware of the prophecy, and a few days hence will tell it to Herod [St Matt. ii 5]. But why was this insignificant town chosen in preference to every other to be the birth-place of Jesus? Be attentive, Christians, to the mystery! The name of this City of David signifies the House of Bread: therefore did he, who is the living Bread come down from heaven [St John vi 41], choose it for his first visible home. Our Fathers did eat manna in the desert and are dead [Ibid. vi 49]; but lo! here is the Saviour of the world, come to give life to his creature Man by means of his own divine Flesh, which is meat indeed [Ibid. vi. 56]. Up to this time the Creator and the creature had been separated from each other; henceforth they shall abide together in closest union. The Ark of the Covenant, containing the manna which fed but the body, is now replaced by the Ark of a New Covenant, purer and more incorruptible than the other: the incomparable Virgin Mary, who gives us Jesus, the Bread of Angels, the nourishment which will give us a divine transformation; for this Jesus himself has said: He that eateth my flesh abideth in me, and I in him [Ibid. vi 57].

It is for this divine transformation that the world was in expectation for four thousand years, and for which the Church prepared herself by the four weeks of Advent. It has come at last, and Jesus is about to enter within us, if we will but receive him [Ibid. i 12]. He asks to be united to each one of us in particular, just as he is united by his Incarnation to the whole human race; and for this end he wishes to become our Bread, our spiritual nourishment. His coming into the souls of men at this mystic season has no other aim than this union. He comes not to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him [Ibid. iii 17], and that all may have life, and may have it more abundantly [Ibid. x 10]. This divine Lover of our souls will not be satisfied, therefore, until he have substituted himself in our place, so that we may live not we ourselves, but he in us; and in order that this mystery may be effected in a sweeter way, it is under the form of an Infant that this Beautiful Fruit of Bethlehem wishes first to enter into us, there to grow afterwards in wisdom and age before God and men [St Luke ii 40, 52].

And when, having thus visited us by his grace and nourished us in his love, he shall have changed us into himself, there shall be accomplished in us a still further mystery. Having become one in spirit and heart with Jesus, the Son of the heavenly Father, we shall also become sons of this same God our Father. The Beloved Disciple, speaking of this our dignity, cries out: Behold! what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the Sons of God! [St John iii 1]. We will not now stay to consider this immense happiness of the Christian soul, as we shall have a more fitting occasion, further on, to speak of it, and show by what means it is to be maintained and increased.

There is another subject, too, which we regret being obliged to notice only in a passing way. It is, that, from the day itself of our Saviours Birth even to the day of our Lady’s Purification, there is, in the Calendar, an extraordinary richness of Saints’ Feasts, doing homage to the master feast of Bethlehem, and clustering in adoring love round the Crib of the Infant-God. To say nothing of the four great Stars which shine so brightly near our Divine Sun, from whom they borrow all their own grand beauty - St Stephen, St John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents, and our own St Thomas of Canterbury: what other portion of the Liturgical Year is there that can show within the same number of days so brilliant a constellation? The Apostolic College contributes its two grand luminaries, St Peter and St Paul: the first in his Chair of Rome; the second in the miracle of his Conversion. The Martyr-host sends us the splendid champions of Christ, Timothy, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Vincent, and Sebastian. The radiant line of Roman Pontiffs lends us four of its glorious links, named Sylvester, Telesphorus, Hyginus and Marcellus. The sublime school of holy Doctors offers us Hilary, John Chrysostom, and Ildephonsus; and in their company stands a fourth Bishop - the amiable Francis de Sales. The Confessor-kingdom is represented by Paul the Hermit, Anthony the conqueror of Satan, Maurus the Apostle of the Cloister, Peter Nolasco the deliverer of captives, and Raymond of Pennafort, the oracle of Canon Law and guide of the consciences of men. The army of defenders of the Church deputes the pious King Canute, who died in defence of our Holy Mother, and Charlemagne, who loved to sign himself ‘the humble champion of the Church.’ The choir of holy Virgins gives us the sweet Agnes, the generous Emerentiana, the invincible Martina. And lastly, from the saintly ranks which stand below the Virgins - the holy Widows - we have Paula, the enthusiastic lover of Jesus’ Crib. Truly, our Christmastide is a glorious festive season! What magnificence in its Calendar! What a banquet for us in its Liturgy!

A word upon the symbolism of the colours used by the Church during this season. White is her Christmas Vestment; and she employs this colour at every service from Christmas Day to the Octave of the Epiphany. To honour her two Martyrs, Stephen and Thomas of Canterbury, she vests in red; and to condole with Rachel wailing her murdered Innocents, she puts on purple: but these are the only exceptions. On every other day of the twenty she expresses, by her white Robes, the gladness to which the Angels invited the world, the beauty of our Divine Sun that has risen in Bethlehem, the spotless purity of the Virgin-Mother, and the clean heartedness which they should have who come to worship at the mystic Crib.

During the remaining twenty days, the Church vests in accordance with the Feast she keeps; she varies the colour so as to harmonize either with the red Roses which wreathe a Martyr, or with the white Amaranths which grace her Bishops and her Confessors, or again, with the spotless Lilies which crown her Virgins. On the Sundays which come during this time - unless there occur a Feast requiring red or white or, unless Septuagesima has begun its three mournful weeks of preparation for Lent - the colour of the Vestments is green. This, say the interpreters of the Liturgy, is to teach us that in the Birth of Jesus, who is the flower of the fields [Cant. i 1],we first received the hope of salvation, and that after the bleak winter of heathendom and the Synagogue, there opened the verdant spring-time of grace.

With this we must close our mystical interpretation of those rites which belong to Christmas in general. Our readers will have observed that there are many other sacred and symbolical usages, to which we have not even alluded; but as the mysteries to which they belong are peculiar to certain days, and are not, so to speak, common to this portion of the Liturgical Year, we intend to treat fully of them all, as we meet with them on their proper Feasts.

THE LITURGICAL YEAR (CHRISTMAS) BY THE VERY REV. DOM PROSPER GUÉRANGER, ABBOT OF SOLESMES

CHAPTER THE FIRST
THE HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS

We apply the name of Christmas to the forty days which begin with the Nativity of our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, February 2. It is a period which forms a distinct portion of the Liturgical Year, as distinct, by its own special spirit, from every other, as are Advent, Lent, Easter, or Pentecost. One same Mystery is celebrated and kept in view during the whole forty days. Neither the Feasts of the Saints, which so abound during this Season; nor the time of Septuagesima, with its mournful Purple, which often begins before Christmastide is over, seem able to distract our Holy Mother the Church from the immense joy of which she received the good tidings from the Angels [St Luke ii 10] on that glorious Night for which the world had been longing four thousand years. The Faithful will remember that the Liturgy commemorates this long expectation by the four penitential weeks of Advent.

The custom of celebrating the Solemnity of our Saviour’s Nativity by a feast or commemoration of forty days’ duration is founded on the holy Gospel itself; for it tells us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, after spending forty days in the contemplation of the Divine Fruit of her glorious Maternity, went to the Temple, there to fulfil, in most perfect humility, the ceremonies which the Law demanded of the daughters of Israel, when they became mothers.

The Feast of Mary’s Purification is, therefore, part of that of Jesus’ Birth; and the custom of keeping this holy and glorious period of forty days as one continued Festival has every appearance of being a very ancient one, at least in the Roman Church. And firstly, with regard to our Saviour’s Birth on December 25, we have St John Chrysostom telling us, in his Homily for this Feast, that the Western Churches had, from the very commencement of Christianity, kept it on this day. He is not satisfied with merely mentioning the tradition; he undertakes to show that it is well founded, inasmuch as the Church of Rome had every means of knowing the true day of our Saviour’s Birth, since the acts of the Enrolment, taken in Judea by command of Augustus, were kept in the public archives of Rome. The holy Doctor adduces a second argument, which he founds upon the Gospel of St Luke, and he reasons thus: we know from the sacred Scriptures that it must have been in the fast of the seventh month [Lev. xxiii 24 and following verses. The seventh month (or Tisri) corresponded to the end of our September and beginning of our October. -Tr.] that the Priest Zachary had the vision in the Temple; after which Elizabeth, his wife, conceived St John the Baptist: hence it follows that the Blessed Virgin Mary having, as the Evangelist St Luke relates, received the Angel Gabriel’s visit, and conceived the Saviour of the world in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, that is to say, in March, the Birth of Jesus must have taken place in the month of December.

But it was not till the fourth century that the Churches of the East began to keep the Feast of our Saviour’s Birth in the month of December. Up to that period they had kept it at one time on the sixth of January, thus uniting it, under the generic term of Epiphany, with the Manifestation of our Saviour made to the Magi, and in them to the Gentiles; at another time, as Clement of Alexandria tells us, they kept it on the 25th of the month Pachon (May 15), or on the 25th of the month Pharmuth (April 20). St John Chrysostom, in the Homily we have just cited, which he gave in 386, tells us that the Roman custom of celebrating the Birth of our Saviour on December 25 had then only been observed ten years in the Church of Antioch. It is probable that this change had been introduced in obedience to the wishes of the Apostolic See, wishes which received additional weight by the edict of the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian, which appeared towards the close of the fourth century, and decreed that the Nativity and Epiphany of our Lord should be made two distinct Festivals. The only Church that has maintained the custom of celebrating the two mysteries on January 6 is that of Armenia; owing, no doubt, to the circumstance of that country not being under the authority of the Emperors; as also because it was withdrawn at an early period from the influence of Rome by schism and heresy.

The Feast of our Lady’s Purification, with which the forty days of Christmas close, is, in the Latin Church, of very great antiquity; so ancient, indeed, as to preclude the possibility of our fixing the date of its institution. According to the unanimous opinion of Liturgists, it is the most ancient of all the Feasts of the Holy Mother of God; and as her Purification is related in the Gospel itself, they rightly infer that its anniversary was solemnized at the very commencement of Christianity. Of course, this is only to be understood of the Roman Church; for as regards the Oriental Church, we find that this Feast was not definitely fixed to February 2 until the reign of the Emperor Justinian, in the sixth century. It is true that the Eastern Christians had previously to that time a sort of commemoration of this Mystery, but it was far from being a universal custom, and it was kept a few days after the Feast of our Lord’s Nativity, and not on the day itself of Mary’s going up to the Temple.
But what is the characteristic of Christmas in the Latin Liturgy? It is twofold: it is joy, which the whole Church feels at the coming of the divine Word in the Flesh; and it is admiration of that glorious Virgin, who was made the Mother of God. There is scarcely a prayer, or a rite, in the Liturgy of this glad Season, which does not imply these two grand Mysteries: an Infant-God, and a Virgin-Mother.

For example, on all Sundays and Feasts which are not Doubles, the Church, throughout these forty days, makes a commemoration of the fruitful virginity [The Collect, Deus qui salutis aeternae beatae Mariae Virginiate fecunda humano generi, etc.] of the Mother of God, by three special Prayers in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. She begs the suffrage of Mary by proclaiming her quality of Mother of God and her inviolate purity [V. Post partum, Virgo, inviolata permansisti. R. Dei Genitrix, intercede pro nobis.], which remained in her even after she had given birth to her Son. And again the magnificent Anthem, Alma Redemptoris, composed by the Monk Herman Contractus, continues, up to the very day of the Purification, to be the termination of each Canonical Hour. It is by such manifestations of her love and veneration that the Church, honouring the Son in the Mother, testifies her holy joy during this season of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christmas.

Our readers are aware that, when Easter Sunday falls at its latest - that is, in April - the Ecclesiastical Calendar counts as many as six Sundays after the Epiphany. Christmastide (that is, the forty days between Christmas Day and the Purification) includes sometimes four out of these six Sundays; frequently only two; and some times only one, as in the case when Easter comes so early as to necessitate keeping Septuagesima, and even Sexagesima Sunday, in January. Still, nothing is changed, as we have already said, in the ritual observances of this joyous season, excepting only that on those two Sundays, the fore-runners of Lent, the Vestments are purple, and the Gloria in excelsis is omitted.

Although our holy Mother the Church honours with especial devotion the Mystery of the Divine Infancy during the whole season of Christmas; yet, she is obliged to introduce into the Liturgy of this same season passages from the holy Gospels which seem premature, inasmuch as they relate to the active life of Jesus. This is owing to there being less than six months allotted by the Calendar for the celebration of the entire work of our Redemption: in other words, Christmas and Easter are so near each other, even when Easter is as late as it can be, that Mysteries must of necessity be crowded into the interval; and this entails anticipation. And yet the Liturgy never loses sight of the Divine Babe and his incomparable Mother, and never tires in their praises, during the whole period from the Nativity to the day when Mary comes to the Temple to present her Jesus.

The Greeks, too, make frequent commemorations of the Maternity of Mary in their Offices of this Season: but they have a special veneration for the twelve days between Christmas Day and the Epiphany, which, in their Liturgy, are called the Dodecameron. During this time they observe no days of Abstinence from flesh-meat; and the Emperors of the East had, out of respect for the great Mystery, decreed that no servile work should be done, and that the Courts of Law should be closed, until after January 6.

From this outline of the history of the holy season, we can understand what is the characteristic of this second portion of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christmas, and which has ever been a season most dear to the Christian world. What are the Mysteries embodied in its Liturgy will be shown in the following chapter.

THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST: Contributions to a Psychology of Jesus by Romano Guardini - Chapter II, Section 7

7. JESUS ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE AND DEATH




Now we must touch upon another topic which also throws light on the life of

Jesus: his attitude towards life in the obvious sense of the word.



In the total economy of human existence it is the spirit that makes it

possible to venture forth from the immediate world of things and one's own

nature and become creative. However, the growth of the spirit is not

without its dangers: it can cause difficulties in one's adaptation to life;

be a hindrance to bodily development and also to the unfolding of the

emotional life. Genius can lead either to the utmost limit of human

development or beyond it to a sheer pathological state. Religious genius is

no exception. We have, for example, the man with extraordinary religious

gifts who dies young. In such cases we refer to an early maturity or say

that he had an unearthly quality about him. Or there is the man who seems

to be a borderline case, the visionary who enjoys very poor health, the

mystic with a dangerous penchant for suffering, the man threatened by

demons, and so forth.



What is to be said about Jesus in this connection?



Is he a man in whom the spirit loomed so large that his very constitution

was devoured by it so that he died, as it were, from inside? Not at all.

Jesus gives an impression of perfect vigor. When he died he had, humanly

speaking, immeasurable possibilities left which could have been realized

had there been time and opportunity.



His personality and life are in no respect those of one who attains

perfection and then dies in the flower of youth; his life was destroyed

from outside, by violence. Jesus constantly gave the impression that he was

infinitely more as a being than was apparent on the surface; that he could

do more than he did, that he knew more than he revealed. His death showed

that he possessed incalculable reserves of strength and life.



What of the second type? Is Jesus one of those religious persons who are

borderline cases and, for that very reason, are able to comprehend and

perform the special tasks entrusted to them?



He is not this type either. In him we find no trace of that biological and

psychic instability we encounter so often in religious psychology and

pathology; nor of that oscillation in emotional states between an

extraordinary and unhuman exhilaration and a weakness and depression far

below the normal. The only scene that might suggest such a state is

Gethsemane, but this has a totally different meaning.



Nor can we induce this kind of psychic structure from his eschatological

consciousness, holding, for instance, that he first lived in expectation of

a colossal upheaval in the power of the Spirit, but that when this failed

to materialize he went to the other extreme and fixed his hopes upon a

dialectic of annihilation, hoping to gain through destruction what had not

been attainable the other way. Such an explanation would make sense only if

we could suppose a nature it would suit: and there is no trace of this at

all. The eschatological awareness of Jesus was of a totally different kind,

not to be explained in terms of the presuppositions of religious

psychology.



The essential character of Jesus shows no hint of melancholy, that

commonest of all pathological religious symptoms. He never knew a moment's

real depression. His repeated retreat into solitude was not the escape of

the melancholic from man and from the light of day: it was the result of a

longing for peace in the presence of God, especially at times of momentous

decision; and even more than this, it was the entry into that exclusive

relationship in which he knew he stood to him whom he called his Father.



Jesus was no visionary either, visited by apparitions of the supernatural

or the future, oppressing him at least as much as they exalt him. Nor was

he an apocalyptic so acutely conscious of God's threatening wrath that

everything around him, even his own life, seemed in imminent danger of

collapsing.



He gave the impression of perfect health. We never hear of his being ill or

having to be nursed, or of his being weakly or overworked and needing a

respite. He led the arduous life of an itinerant preacher, and there is no

hint that he ever had to exert every ounce of his strength in order to

carry on. The account which tells how he was too weak to carry the beam of

the cross to the place of execution (Mat. 27. 32), taken in conjunction

with what he had just gone through and with what was taking place within

him, does not contradict this fact. On the contrary, we cannot comprehend

how he was able to bear so much. The same is true of his rapid death (John

19. 33). As a rule it was a long time before a crucified person died; but

we do well to remember that death comes not only from the body, but also

from the spirit.



We have still to deal with the question of Jesus' relationship to death.

What is said here presupposes, of course, that the Gospels do not indulge

in fantasies. That they should have done so seems absurd, for they would

have had to choose either to portray a mythical figure, in which case the

unreality of the figure would have been immediately apparent, for mythical

figures have no psychology and are mere idealizations, whereas Jesus is

full of the most concrete life--or to invent a pattern of life quite

unknown to men, in which case improbabilities would occur at every turn.



If, then, we accept the Gospel narrative as true, we must admit that the

thought of death was not present in the mind of Jesus in the way in which

it is in our minds. Each time he spoke of his dying--he did this five

times--he connected this with his resurrection.



For us, death is simply the end. Our immediate awareness of life does not

penetrate beyond that. True, we say that the essential thing about our life

cannot come to an end with death. We express this in various presentiments,

metaphors and hopes; and the hope of eternal life is assured by faith in

revelation. With Jesus, however, the matter was quite different. He knew

that he was to die and accepted death: but he viewed it as a passage to an

existence involving both soul and body which would immediately follow after

death: "From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to

Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and scribes and chief

priests; and be put to death, and the third day rise again" (Mat. 16. 21).

These are no casual words: they proceed from a general attitude, from an

original and unique mode of being in life.



To regard such sayings as retrospective explanations in the light of the

later Paschal experience of the disciples would be to distort everything.



For Jesus, the concept of death and resurrection which they express is

fundamental to his whole person. As soon as this idea is removed from the

picture it is not a real man who is left, much less the truer one one might

have thought would emerge when stripped of his mythological trappings--his

whole nature and reality vanish. The span of life of which he was directly

aware did not end for him, as it does for us, at the approach of death,

thereafter to be resumed again tentatively; it passed with perfect clarity

right through death. For him, death was not the end but a point of

transition; and not at all--to make the point quite clear--in the sense

that nothing led beyond death but hope. The way in which Jesus felt himself

to be alive, spiritually and bodily, was of such a kind that it reached far

beyond death. It saw this as an event within life itself. This total view

of life has, of course, nothing in common with any mythology or esoteric

certitude: it derived from the reality of God, the beginning and end of all

his existence.



The Christian conception of life, death and resurrection is based on Jesus'

knowledge of life. It is something more than an assurance of spiritual

indestructibility. It is the hope of an eternal human existence in God

himself. But the reality in and with whose accomplishment it is found to be

possible is Jesus' sense of life. Here again the decisive thing is not what

he says but what he is.



All this leads us to the conclusion that he lived and died in a different

way from us. And this reveals, in all its greatness and clarity, what we

have already met before when talking of his "health"; it is something more

than mere natural vitality or the spiritual will to live. It is a quality

of his psychosomatic existence for which there is no standard of measure

based on our natural knowledge.



We can perhaps get some hint of what this means from the power to endure

and to suffer, which can spring from personal love, or from the spirit's

pure will to create; or from a truly religious sense of duty and will-

power. In mere men, however, this "health" has to assert itself in spite of

the disorders and malformations which are found even in the healthiest of

us. But in Jesus there was nothing like this whatever. He was utterly sound

and alive, but in a special sense. An animal can be healthy in terms of its

own nature. Man who has turned from God would like to be healthy but he

cannot be. He was created to exist in dependence on God: this is his

health, which he lost once and for all by sin. That "health", by contrast,

which we commonly speak about, is altogether a problematic thing. One is

even tempted to say that it is more enigmatic than sickness; for what is it

after all but sickness so entrenched as to have become normal? The

ontological sickness of the fallen creature which disguises its own total

disorder under cover of a relative order? There is nothing like this in

Jesus. In him is the fullness of that which this confusion has upset:

existence from God, directed to God, life in the Pneuma of God. Therefore,

our notion of health, worked out inevitably on the basis of our experience,

does not apply to Christ. His state is altogether beyond our notions of

sickness and health.



It is St. John again who analyses and puts plainly into words what appears

in the Synoptics as a simple, and hence elusive, reality. In St. John's

Gospel our Lord says to the disciples: "I am . . . the life" (14. 6); and

to Martha: "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me,

although he be dead, shall live" (11. 25). This is a theological expression

of what the Synoptics present as an objective fact.



"Psychology", however, can do no more than indicate that we are in the

presence of something very special, of a state of affairs which is

expressed not merely in conceptual propositions, but in a living attitude;

in the way, that is, in which personality and life are built up; by means

of words which are the double of an existence or form of life to which

nothing in any other man corresponds.



Further than this psychology cannot go. It can only point out a direction

to follow and show how this human-superhuman reality, once accepted by

faith, appropriated in love, and put into practice in deed, makes possible

an attitude to life which man could never have achieved by himself. That is

to say, psychology can try to exhibit the Christian sense of life and

death. If it does this, it will once more reach its limit at the point

where the believer's "Christ in me" emerges, the point at which the real

"synergeia," accomplishment in and with Christ, begins.



The nature of Christ cannot be deduced from a study of the psychology of

the religious man in general and the Christian in particular. The Christian

can exist only in terms of a Christ who eludes psychological analysis as

long as this is honestly pursued. If it is not honestly pursued, however--

and as a general rule it is not--then it makes no sense at all and becomes

merely another tool in the hands of self-glorifying man who uses it to

prove that there never was a God-man.