18. The Prayer of Christ

 

I. The Gospels remind us continually of the long, frequent, and fervent prayers of Our Lord. This is meant for our example, and we should learn to consider prayer as the most pressing and important of our duties. It was necessary even for the Son of God as man. As being bound by the laws of human life, He had to exercise the virtue of Religion with its different forms of service towards God. Prayer is the ordinary means of securing the blessing of God on our work and graces for ourselves; Our Lord made use of it, therefore, for the promotion of His work of preaching and miracles, just as He made use of food for the support of His life in accordance with natural law. Prayer was also a function of Our Lord’s office as Priest, Pontiff, and Mediator; those offices still continue in heaven, wherefore He is represented to us as “at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. viii. 34). The example of Our Divine Master shows us that prayer is one of the most necessary of our duties; first, as a homage to God; secondly, as the accompaniment of every one of our undertakings, to secure its success, especially if it be of a spiritual nature; thirdly, as a most precious privilege which admits us to intimate communication with God; fourthly, as a source of grace, strength, comfort and guidance under all circumstances.

II. Consider the qualities and virtues exhibited by Our Lord in His prayer. 1. Reverence. “Who in the days of His flesh, offering up prayers and supplications with a strong cry and tears . . . was heard for His reverence” (Heb. v. 7). 2. Fervour, arising from His perfect vision of the Father and knowledge of our necessities, from His burning love of God and men, and His ardent desire to obtain what He petitioned for. 3. Confidence, which He manifested when He said while yet praying, “Father, I give Thee thanks that Thou hast heard Me. And I knew that Thou hearest Me always” (John xi. 41, 42). 4. Perseverance. Jesus continued often the whole night in prayer, and once for forty days, and in Gethsemani He returned three times and used the self-same words. Attend carefully to the manner of your prayer. If one of these qualities is deficient, you are asking amiss, and cannot expect to obtain anything from God. Every effect must have an adequate cause; and as the favour you ask is greater, so must your prayer be more prolonged, more fervent, more confident, more capable of standing the severest test which God often imposes on the faith of petitioners.

III. The prayer of Our Lord was supremely efficacious, according to the foregoing words, “I knew that Thou hearest Me always” (John xi. 42). What He willed and prayed for was also the will of His Father, and was infallibly carried out. He prayed for all mankind, and died to obtain for them the sufficient means of salvation. Every soul, therefore, in some way or other receives those sufficient graces; after that, their actual salvation depends upon their own free-will, which cannot be forced. Our Lord prayed especially for certain persons and objects; for the unbroken unity of His Church, its preservation from the taint of error, its endowment with all truth, its stability, perpetuity, and infallibility. Those prayers were necessarily heard, for they are contained in what God promised: “Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for Thy possession” (Ps. ii. 8). Your prayer too, when properly conditioned, will possess infallible efficacy, according to Our Lord’s words, “Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full” (John xvi. 24).

17. THE SUBJECTION OF CHRIST

I. Consider the successive descents and subjections of Je
sus Christ for our sake. His Humanity was a creature of God, and so, of necessity, dependent on the supreme dominion of its Creator. The Divinity is over all, and loses none of its rights over the work of its hand even though it be united to the Humanity. Christ speaking in His human nature says therefore: “the Father is greater than I” (John xiv. 28). Our Lord then was subject to the natural and supernatural, moral and spiritual law. To the ceremonial law of God given by Moses, Christ was not properly subject, as being the Messias, the legislator, and the founder of a new dispensation. He submitted, however, out of respect to a law that had come from God, out of humility concealing His dignity, in order to give us an example. He submitted Himself further to obedience to the death of the cross under the law of His Father’s will, and the law of charity towards us. The subjection of Christ was a lowering of Himself, but it exalted the Divinity in the person of the Father. An infinite Person became in His human nature the first subject of God; and for the first time God received His full due, infinite service of adoration and love. How great are the results of humility! Put off all your self-sufficiency for the sake of God, forego all elevation in your own esteem and in the esteem of others; it is little indeed to offer to God, but it will cost you much, and it will honour Him still more. It is the only way in which you can exalt Him.

II. Our Lord made Himself not merely the subject but the servant of His Father. “He debased Himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil. ii. 7). He descended from the throne of the Divinity, put aside the dignity of Son, covered His glory with our degrading garb, gave up His own will, and devoted Himself to a life of lowliness and obedience. In this He made compensation to the Father for our refusal of service, He took the place of humanity, fulfilled its duties, and saved it from the chastisement of its rebellion. For the first time the fulness of service which God demanded, and which His greatness required from man, was rendered to Him. The offending race, in requital for the service of their head and chief member, are received back by the Father, not merely as servants, but as sons. Our Lord, further, is not content with this abasement, but makes Himself our servant, enduring our humours, waiting on our pleasure, allowing us to dictate terms to Him. As for His faithful followers, “He will gird Himself, and make them sit down to meat, and passing, will minister to them” (Luke xii. 37); for obstinate sinners He is ready to do much more in order to gain them. Put off that pride which revolts against all subjection even to God. Offer yourself to be the lowliest in the house of God; be ready to serve all others for His sake.

III. “Thou hast made Me to serve with thy sins; thou hast wearied Me with thy iniquities” (Isa. xliii. 24). Mankind, refusing honourable service in the house of God, have fallen into a most real and degrading slavery to material nature and to the passions; they have lost their spiritual liberty, and the dignity which ought to belong to free beings, and the beauty of noble life. Our Lord could not enter into this degradation; none are the slaves of sin but those who commit it. But He took on Himself the outward stigma of slavery, to save us from the reality. He was poor and in labour from His youth, and that labour was the ignominious one of cleansing this world from its filthiness. He had no possessions of His own, no home. He was sold for the price of a slave, was clothed as a buffoon and exposed to derision. He was scourged like a slave, and suffered the death of a slave. What He endured ought to have been your lot for ever; you deserved it, and except for Our Lord’s substitution of Himself for you, you would have had to endure it.

16. FOR WHOM CHRIST MERITED

 

I. In accordance with the law of the nature He had assumed, the Son of God, acting as man, merited for Himself. It was to His glory, as it is to ours, to earn the recompense, to win the victory at the point of the sword, to be crowned for striving lawfully (2 Tim. ii. 5). Therefore it is written: “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into His glory?” (Luke xxiv. 26). There were certain things which were not merited by Our Lord for Himself. The Hypostatic Union, for instance; His essential beatitude, His habitual grace and knowledge were bestowed on Him at first as prerogatives proper to His condition. Christ’s human actions rendered a service of glory to God and merited glory for Him in return. Therefore He says: “I have glorified Thee on earth . . . and now glorify Thou Me, O Father” (John xvii. 4, 5). He glorified the Father by preaching His name, by manifesting Him in His own life, by obeying His commands, by attributing His own great works to His Father’s power. He merited thereby what He received: the glorification of His Humanity in the Resurrection and Ascension, the power of miracles that proved Him to be the Son of God, the faith and adoration of the elect, the office of Judge which He will exercise at the end. Rejoice in the full justice that has been done to your Lord by His Father, and say: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and benediction” (Apoc. v. 12).

II. It is generally held that Our Lord as man merited for the angels the grace and glory bestowed on them, and that He is the Author of their salvation through the Father’s prevision of His merits to come. The words said of mankind are considered to include the angels: “of His fulness we all have received, and grace for grace” (John i. 16). The angels, equally with this world, were created by the Eternal Father through His Divine Word, the Second Person. This Word of God is in His human nature “head of all principality and power” (Col. ii. 10); and, therefore, such things as were superadded to the angelic nature may well be conceived as conferred on it through the merits of the Word made flesh. The same meaning seems to be conveyed by another passage: Thou “hast set Him over the works of Thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under His feet. For in that He subjected all things to Him, He left nothing not subject to Him” (Heb. ii. 7, 8). What a beautiful harmony of all things! The spiritual and the material universe are brought together in one unity of plan, under the prevalence of one law, by this subjection to Jesus Christ.

III. Our Lord Jesus Christ also merited for mankind all that they possess of supernatural good, and a great deal of their natural advantages. He does this as being the principal member of the great corporate society of humanity, in which the rest of us constitute the smaller and subordinate portion. We share in the advantages which He brings to that society. “Blessed be God . . . who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. i. 3). So we receive through Our Lord the first grace that calls us to faith and repentance, then sanctification and perfection, the strength to persevere to the end, and lastly our reward in glory. He is the beginning and the end of everything for us; “without Me you can do nothing” (John xv. 5). God demands our service; we have to struggle and fight; we must earn and merit our reward; but it is Our Lord who gives us power to do all these things, and He serves, and struggles, and merits in us. Consider how much you individually have received through the merits of Christ, and give Him thanks. Consider the little you have done, and recognize that it was through Him. Consider how much you ought to do, and be certain that you can do it all in Him that strengtheneth you.

15. THE MERITS OF CHRIST

 

I. Every good action has its proper effect towards God and towards ourselves; it makes compensation for our bad deeds, and it obtains favours from God in reward; it is satisfactory and it is meritorious. The human acts of Jesus Christ had all the conditions which give that character to our actions. 

1. He placed Himself in our present stage of trial and preparation for the next life. 

2. He possessed human liberty. 

3. He was in the state of grace. 

4. He had received that which makes merit possible for us, viz., the divine promise of reward. 

“If He shall lay down His life for sin He shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be prosperous in His hand” (Isa. liii. 10). The divine actions of Our Lord could not remain sterile, but produced an adequate effect. Those actions proceeded from an infinite and most holy Person; they were wrought in a human nature which had been assumed and sanctified by the Divinity; each action received its character and value, not from its visible importance in the mundane order of things, but from the source that produced it, and the intensity of the motives and sentiments that acted through it. And thus a single drop of the Precious Blood, a single action, prayer, or thought of Christ was of infinite value, both satisfactory and meritorious, and was capable of expiating the sins of mankind, and purchasing grace and glory for the whole world. Admire the infinite treasures of Our Lord’s life, and thank Him for placing them at your disposal.

II. Satisfaction and merit are qualities which belong to human actions; they do not belong to the actions of the Divinity. Our Lord, therefore, did not satisfy and merit for us by those actions which proceeded exclusively from His Divine nature, such as the Beatific Vision and the divine love and enjoyment of the Divine Essence. It was His human actions that were meritorious, and they were so in the highest degree, both as regarded Himself and mankind. This is indicated by the Apostle: “He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore also God hath exalted Him” (Phil. ii. 8, 9). This merit belonged to every one of His virtues, prayers, and sufferings; and also to the commonest actions of His domestic life at Nazareth. But we attribute His satisfaction and merits rather to His Passion and Death, as being the crowning events of His life and the manifestation of Him in His highest office as Priest and Victim of Sacrifice. It is by communication with Our Lord that we receive the power of really satisfying and meriting by our good works. Actually and in themselves they are worthless apart from Him. Make use of this power by offering all your actions to God.

III. Merit and satisfaction belong to the deeds of this present life only, and cease as soon as we enter eternity. Our Lord merited, therefore, by every action, but during the present life only. St. Paul speaks of the beginning of His meritorious works: coming “into the world He saith, Sacrifice and oblation Thou wouldest not, but a body Thou hast fitted to Me . . . then said I, Behold I come” (Heb. x. 5, 7). Our Lord speaks of the ending of His time for meriting: “I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work” (John ix. 4). In heaven Our Lord satisfies and merits no longer; He continues only the offering of the inexhaustible satisfaction and merit accomplished by Him on earth. His life-time here was sufficient. Short as it was, it was the fullest and richest epoch in the world’s history, for “being made perfect in a short space He fulfilled a long time” (Wisd. iv. 13). You are able to merit by every action of your life. By fervour and love you can make the smallest things great, and in the sight of God fulfil a long time in a few years.

14. THE WILL OF CHRIST

 

I. Our Lord, being fully human, had amongst other prerogatives that of liberty and freedom of will. This was much more perfect than in us; it had greater range and power; it was not weakened and misdirected by mere physical impulses. 1. Our Lord could not sin. But this was not a restriction of His freedom; it was exemption from slavery to the domination of the body. His sinlessness was His freedom. So it is with us. A man of high principle and sense of honour, who has associated with others of like character, cannot do a foul dishonourable action; and in this he is not the less a free agent, but he has a fuller liberty than the man who is led away by bad company, ignorance and weakness to act basely or fraudulently. 2. Our Lord was necessarily obedient to His heavenly Father and subject to Him; but this again was an exercise of liberty, for it was the result not of compulsion but of deliberate choice. He suffered and died in obedience to His Father; “as the Father hath given Me commandment so I do” (John xiv. 31). But also it is written: “He was offered because it was His own will” (Isa. liii. 7); and again: “I lay down My life . . . and I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. This commandment I have received from My Father” (John x. 17-18). There is no true freedom without subordination. Your highest liberty consists in willing subjection to the supremacy of God.

II. Our Lord’s human will is admirable for its unswerving conformity to the divine will. For instance in the Garden of Gethsemani Jesus asks that the chalice may be removed from Him if possible, but at once His will conforms itself to the will of His Father (Luke xxii. 42). The will of Christ exercised this virtue of conformity: 1, in eliciting all the acts demanded of it by the Father; 2, in acting upon the same principles and with the same motives as the Divine will; 3, in desiring the same immediate objects as the Father; 4, in seeking the same general end and object in all particulars, viz., the greater glory of God. The same is the rule of perfection for your will. It has two functions, to command and to obey. Like all things else in creation, it has to render and receive service, to rule and to be ruled. It stands between the most perfect will of God, which is above it, and the irregular desires of the sensitive appetites below it. Of these it is written, “the lust thereof shall be beneath Thee, and Thou shalt have dominion over it” (Gen. iv. 7); but in order to have this power, the will must be subject to the supreme will of God. Too often men reverse this order; they revolt against the divine will, and render slavish obedience to degrading lusts.

III. Another important quality of the human will of Jesus Christ is an intense and burning charity, “which surpasseth all knowledge” (Eph. iii. 19), exhibited towards God and men. Love is one of the predominant perfections of God, operating within the Holy Trinity, and externally towards all His creatures, and towards man in particular. In God, love sums up all His goodness towards us; in man, love sums up the observance of all laws regarding God and our fellow-men. This predominated consequently in Our Lord both as God and as man. It inspired all His action, whether for the glory of His Father or for our redemption. We recognize love in its earthly form as the most universal, irresistible, generous and beautiful of emotions. In Jesus Christ it was infinitely more. It moved Him to annihilate Himself, in a manner, for us; to come from heaven, lay aside the glory of the Divinity, and suffer every indignity and cruelty. Love is the perfection of your will also: it ought to be the motive power of your life. But it must be well-ordered and holy. It must take its rise in God, and extend thence to men. We must love them for God’s sake, and as Jesus loved them.

13. THE SINLESSNESS OF CHRIST

 

I. One of the singular glories of Our Lord’s Humanity is that He is “holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” (Heb. vii. 26). This supreme quality of holiness and sinlessness proceeds in the first instance from the union of the Divine Person of the Word with the Humanity. That fact necessarily perfects the human nature of the same Person beyond all conception. The body and soul of Jesus Christ are the body and soul of God the Son. That Divine Person guides and rules them and acts through them with infinite perfection and holiness. The Sacred Humanity of Our Lord is therefore holy and spotless beyond the holiness of all angels and men, and beyond the holiness of the Immaculate Virgin, although she was absolutely stainless in every respect. Our Blessed Lord, as man, is then the supreme work of God’s creative power, beyond which nothing can be more perfect and holy. Not only is this most glorious to God, but it is a great glory to the human race that God should have conferred on it such a distinction, not granted even to the angels. We have all a share in this dignity: for the human race, taken in its entirety as including Jesus Christ, presents a sum of holiness surpassing even that of the whole host of heaven. You individually, when free from sin, and especially in Holy Communion, have a share in that holiness. Take care never to lose this privilege by mortal sin.

II. A second thing which makes a soul incapable of sin is the sight of God, which confers beatitude. This was the case with the Sacred Humanity. From the first moment of its human existence the soul of Christ enjoyed the Beatific Vision; it had attained from the first to its final aim and object, the fruition of the Divine Essence. Two things are involved in this, the clear vision of God and perfect love of Him. The soul, knowing and possessing the supreme good, cannot be deluded into choosing anything inferior, and still less anything contradictory, in its stead. Perfected love, further, cannot hate God, or, which is the same thing, cannot love that which is repugnant to Him. If you sin, it is because you do not know God thoroughly, because you do not see Him with the sight of vivid faith, or because you do not love Him above all things. The practical result of religion is to keep you sinless, and make you by degrees more holy, by promoting in you, first, a fuller knowledge, and then a fuller love of the supreme good. Strengthen these in your soul till “neither death nor life . . . nor things present, nor things to come . . . shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus Our Lord” (Rom. viii. 38, 39).

III. Another thing that restrains from sin is a clear knowledge of the nature of sin, its enormity, and foulness; and this is dependent on our knowledge of God. We know these things, during this life, more by the testimony of God than by direct evidence, so that their reality does not come home to us. Our Lord alone had perfect knowledge. He could see the surpassing horror of sin and the misery it involves, more than the blessed do in heaven or the lost in hell. He saw it as the deadly enemy and the antithesis of His Divinity. He hated it beyond all things, and was infinitely removed from it. He could see that which is so close to us and so dear to us, but which would kill us with horror if we could only glance beneath the veil of pretended goodness and deceptive pleasure which hides its real character. He knows that all the pains of hell apart from sin would be a less misery than the presence of one mortal sin in the soul. Hence He hates it with a necessary and eternal hatred. Strive to realize these truths, and acquire the spirit of Christ, so as to be ready to do all things and suffer all things rather than consent to a single mortal sin.

12. THE INFIRMITIES OF CHRIST.

I. “A man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity; and His look was, as it were, hidden and despised; whereupon we esteemed Him not” (Isa. liii. 3). Our Lord was all this, notwithstanding the perfection and power of the hypostatic union. It might have been expected that the Divine Nature in Him would have communicated all possible perfections and immunities to the human nature. In fact the Sacred Humanity was elevated and enriched by the communication of many extraordinary gifts, and it was also the most perfect and beautiful example of human nature. Christ is believed to have been perfect in manly vigour, and grace, and strength, and form; “beautiful above the sons of men” (Ps. xliv. 3). He was free from such infirmities as were inconsistent with divine purity and glory; from all internal derangements and maladies, which are generally the result of personal or ancestral excesses. Otherwise the action of the Divinity upon Our Lord’s body was suspended, and only for a moment did He permit it to be exercised, in His Transfiguration; its full effect came into operation only after the Ascension. Still there remained most of the afflictions of life; and Our Lord suffered most of our infirmities, in being subject to hunger and thirst, weariness and weakness, heat and cold and sleeplessness, violence and death. Suffer with willingness any infirmities that God sends you; be patient under ill-treatment or injustice; practise mortification, and surrender some of your comforts and rights in union with Our Lord.

II. Some persons might be inclined to think that the Divinity would have communicated to the human soul of Our Lord its own infinite knowledge, immutability, impassibility. But this could not be. Our Lord assumed human nature with all its limitations and liabilities, including mental suffering and certain other infirmities. The ignorance, darkness, propulsion to evil which belong to the actual state of sin, Jesus did not take on Himself. But He had all our susceptibility to influences from the senses and imagination. His soul was affected by the depression from bodily privations, by the loss of His friends, as Lazarus, for instance, by separation from His beloved Mother, by the sight of her afflictions, by the ingratitude of those He came to save, by repugnance to suffering and death, by the hatred of the priests and Pharisees, the unbelief and thoughtlessness of His Apostles. He suffered the emotions of love and sorrow, fear and aversion, pity, and even anger. But these were not like our passions: they did not tend to excess and sin, they were not rebellious against reason and law. Think how much Our Lord must have thus suffered beyond what has been recorded. When you suffer such things remember that He endured them too, and unite yourself with Him.

III. Thus Our Redeemer resigned for us as much as He could of the advantages which His Divinity might have conferred upon Him. He appears on the cross to have allowed His human nature to be deprived of the tranquility and happiness accruing from the Beatific Vision. So we may judge from the words, “My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. xxvii. 46). All this He did: 

1. To compensate for our sins of pride, insatiable selfishness, excessive indulgence, insistence on our supposed rights. 

2. To complete the reality of His human nature in every detail, so that we may know Him to be with us in all our troubles. 

3. That He may “feel compassion on them that are ignorant and err, because He also is encompassed with infirmities” (Heb. v. 2). 

4. To give us an example of the practice of virtue in despite of suffering. Whatever you suffer, Jesus suffered infinitely more. Imitate Him in these details.