24. The Offices of Christ. - Part I

 

I. Jesus Christ is our Redeemer; that is He has paid the price of our ransom, He has bought us out of slavery to sin and Satan, and has restored us to liberty, honour, and the enjoyment of our supernatural inheritance. These advantages mankind had lost through the sin of Adam and each one’s personal sins. They had lost the dignity of the supernatural life with the true freedom that belongs to it. They were incapable of executing the commands that God had given, and so were not fully under His dominion. They had chosen a lower state at the suggestion of Satan, and had placed themselves on the side of evil against the supreme good. Their natural forces had been corrupted and weakened; they had laid themselves open to temptations, and had less vigour to resist them. They were demoralized by their subjection, and were incapable of throwing off the yoke and asserting themselves against a triumphant enemy. They knew nothing of a nobler state, and did not even desire it. And all this was the prelude to eternal slavery and the overwhelming miseries of hell. Such was the thoroughly wretched and hopeless condition of all men. From this we have been “bought with a great price” (1 Cor. vi. 29), viz., the Incarnation and Death of Jesus Christ. None other could have delivered us: hence He is our sole Redeemer. Be careful that you do not “neglect so great salvation” (Heb. ii. 3); like many who love their chains, who will not submit to the conditions which the higher state requires, and who trample on the blood of their Redemption.

II. Jesus is also “the one Mediator of God and men” (1 Tim. ii. 5). Sin had intervened between God and men to separate them eternally. “Your iniquities have divided between you and God” (Isa. lix. 2). Satan was by this means a mediator of evil; and also because in his qualities he is between God and men, like Him in immortality and spiritual being, like us in sin and misery. Nothing less than an infinite mediation was required to intervene between God and man and unite them again, breaking down the wall of separation between them. Jesus Christ is the one and only possible Mediator: 1, by nature, because He shares at once in the divine and human nature, and so unites together in His person two things infinitely distant; 2, by office, because He alone has the power, through His atonement, of bridging over the infinite gulf opened by sin, and reconciling man to God. You must imitate Christ the Mediator, in these qualities. You must unite the divine and the human in your life; and you must mediate in your lowly way, trying to diffuse light and goodness in the world, and to bring sinners to the knowledge and love of God, and so to reconciliation with Him.

III. Jesus Christ is our Head. “He hath made Him head over all the church, which is His body” (Eph. i. 23). By His Redemption and Mediation, Christ has become our Spiritual Head, and the elect are the body, subordinate to Him. He is the highest and most honourable portion of that body, the brain which directs it, the centre to which all things converge, the source whence all motion and activity proceed. Christ founded the Church of the elect, gave it life, organization, doctrine and laws. He gives it the continual nourishment of grace in the seven sacraments. He abides with it all days, even to the end of the world, preserving it from the death of error and of extinction, purifying and reviving it constantly, securing its infallibility and indefectibility, and finally transforming it from the militant and suffering state into its final and permanent state of triumph. All this He did “that He might sanctify it . . . that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, nor any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. v. 26, 27). You are full of sins and imperfections now, and you will be until the end; but if you contend against them, suffer for them, and repent of them, you will still retain membership with the “glorious Church” and its Head.

23. The Worship Due to Christ

I. “He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Most High” (Luke i. 32). The homage we pay to any one is proportioned to his eminence and greatness. Christ Our Lord is great in every respect. 1. In His natures, the Divinity, and a most perfect and holy Humanity. 2. In His power, for He can do all that He desires in heaven and on earth. 3. In His qualities, which are the Divine Perfections, and the highest degree of all human virtues, splendour, beauty, benevolence, justice. 4. In His relations, to God first, as a Person of the Blessed Trinity, and then to creatures, as their King, Priest, Teacher, and as Son of a Virgin Mother. 5. In His activities, the internal ones of intellect and heart, and His external ones of miracles and beneficence. 6. In the variety of the sufferings of His Passion and their effects. 7. In His possessions, for all things are His. 8. In every place; in His Blessed Mother, at Bethlehem, in the lowliness of Nazareth even, in the temple, on the cross and in death, in His descent to hell, and on the right hand of His Father. 9. In every time; for before Abraham and the world were made He was. He was great in anticipation and prophecy, greater still abiding and working in His Church. 10. One thing remains, that He be magnified in you, and His greatness be shown in its effects on your life. “Now also shall Christ be magnified in my body” (Phil. i. 20). For this greatness He depends on your good-will.

II. “Wherefore also God hath exalted Him, and hath given Him a name that is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Phil. ii. 9, 10). God has made Jesus to be served and venerated by every creature; and the veneration due to Him is that of supreme and divine adoration. He is God and Man together. If the Humanity were separable from the Divinity it would not be adorable with divine worship. But such subtlety of distinction is not allowable or possible. Jesus Christ is one person only; we cannot separate the divine and the human nature as if they were distinct entities, and pay a different kind of homage to each. Christ is to be venerated as “true God of true God” whether we consider Him in the divine nature as Son of God, or in the human nature as the Son of Man and the Son of Mary. In Him we adore the Divinity directly, and the Humanity by concomitance, as possessing the prerogatives of the one Divine Person who supports both natures. Our love and attachment are, however, elicited rather by the qualities exhibited in that nature “which we have seen with our eyes, which we have diligently looked upon, and our hands have handled” (1 John i. 1). Be careful to pay to Jesus in every way, in attitude, in thought, in word, the adoration which is His due.

III. Those who recognize the ineffable greatness and beauty of Our Lord will, like Moses, pay Him the homage of desiring earnestly to see His face. “If therefore I have found favour in Thy sight, show me Thy face that I may know Thee” (Ex. xxxiii. 13). They will picture Him in their imagination. They will love to have before their eyes something that will remind them constantly of Him. The representations of Him by statues or pictures, as an infant or as dying on the Cross, will be found on the walls of their houses, or in the open country, or worn upon their person, testifying to the faith, and love, and desire that are in them. The fullest representation of Christ is found in our brethren, who are His brethren, and especially in the poor, the abandoned and the suffering. We must recognize His lineaments in them, and even in our enemies; we must remember that what we do to them He considers as done to Himself, and that so we can testify our homage and love towards Him, and make Him a return for what He has done for us. Let this thought guide you in all your relations with your fellow-men.

22. The Predestination of Christ

I. “Jesus Christ, who was predestinated Son of God in power, according to the spirit of sanctification, by the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead” (Rom. i. 4). All things were foreseen and ordained by God from eternity; so Our Lord, as being man, was predestined like the rest of His race. He was to be the first-born of humanity, the father of all supernatural life, both to the generations following Him and to those preceding Him; and all the rest of mankind were predestined after Him, and with relation to Him. There was a double predestination in Jesus Christ. It was first predestined that the Sacred Humanity should be united personally with the Word of God; and this, not in consequence of its being merited by the works and virtues of Christ, but by the infinite bounty of God. Secondly, it was decreed that He should not remain for ever in the suffering stage of human nature, bearing our afflictions, but that He should be raised from the dead and glorified by the exhibition of divine power, and that He should occupy as man the first place in heaven. This predestination had reference to Christ’s deeds and merits, as the reward earned thereby. Rejoice with Our Lord that His name is the first one written in the Book of Life; pray that yours may be written there after His, and strive to make it so.

II. “He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy . . . who hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto Himself . . . He made us acceptable through His beloved Son” (Eph. i. 4-6). According to this passage, the predestination of Our Lord is the occasion and the source of ours. As the world in all its evolutions was prepared for the sake of man, so are the elect prepared for Christ, to lead up to Him as the perfection of humanity to glorify Him by multiplying His likeness, and to form a court around His majesty here and hereafter. “All things are yours . . . and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. iii. 22, 23). Further, we are predestined in Our Lord, and not by ourselves or for ourselves. We have no claim of our own and no merits by ourselves, but only as His brethren, and as members of His body. As all things were created through the Word of God, so it is through the Incarnate Word, the Image of the Father on earth, that all of us are created anew to the life of grace and glory. Recognize that without Him you are nothing, and that in Him you are everything both here and hereafter. Take care that you never allow yourself to be separated from Him by unbelief or sin.

III. The Predestination of Christ is further the exemplar of ours, and explains its method. 1. Our Lord received the grace of the Hypostatic Union in advance of His merits; but His heavenly glory as the reward of the merits operated in that union. So we receive from God the grace of our first enlightenment and vocation without any effort of our own; but the subsequent increase of grace and light, our further progress, and our final glorification depend on the use we make of grace and light, on our own fidelity and exertions in union with God’s assistance. 2. We also learn that our Lord’s merits and glory are closely associated with suffering. “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into His glory?” (Luke xxiv. 26). So also it must be with us. We are “predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Son” (Rom. viii. 29), not only in glory, but in the means by which He entered into it. God requires of you not only action but endurance. Nerve yourself for suffering, and welcome it for the benefits it brings. “Labour the more that by good works you may make sure your vocation and election” (2 Pet. i. 10).

21. The Sonship of Christ

I. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, not by adoption, in any sense of the word, but by nature. Adoption is the gratuitous assumption of a person who is not a relative, to bring him into the family and entitle him to an inheritance. This cannot be said of Our Blessed Lord. He has the two natures: the divine, which He possessed from all eternity; the human, which He took so many years ago; the one is of the substance of the Father, the other is of the substance of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But it is the one indivisible Person who exists in both these natures, and the same who is Son of God and Himself God, is also Son of Mary. St. Paul draws out for us this divine dignity of Jesus Christ. God, he says, “in these days hath spoken to us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the world: who being in the splendour of His glory, and the figure of His substance … sitteth on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. i. 2, 3). We adore Our Lord, therefore, with supreme worship as being true God of true God; and we venerate the unparalleled dignity of her who, being Mother of the Son of God, was also Mother of God. Adore Our Lord profoundly, especially when you enter His presence, for the sublime dignity which belongs to Him in His Divinity and His Humanity.




II. Our Lord Jesus Christ, as man, bore Himself with all respect, love and obedience towards His heavenly Father. He manifested God to us in that character, which hitherto had been unknown. God had been, during the old dispensation, the Lord of hosts, mighty and terrible, ready to punish every transgression. Our Lord, as His Son, was able to take a new attitude towards Him and teach it to us. The Infinite Majesty is always Father towards Him; and the same sentiments that He exhibits towards His only-begotten Son He feels also towards us. In return, Jesus shows us how we should comport ourselves towards Our Father in heaven. He showed obedience by carrying out His Father’s will to the death on the cross; He died as an exhibition also of love for the Father, that the world might know and imitate it. Every action of His life had as its object the manifestation and the glory of His Father. These duties are yours. See how you fulfil each one of them. See whether you live always as considering God to be your Father, and yourself to be His son.




III. “God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law … that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. iv. 4, 5). The Son of God became Son of man so as to make all of us sons of God. We were outcasts, criminals under sentence of punishment, absolutely devoid of any claim to supernatural grace or heavenly glory, “by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. ii. 3). Now we have become children of God, not indeed by nature, but by adoption, on account of Jesus Christ being our brother in the flesh. So we are made “sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom. viii. 17). By this adoption we acquire the likeness to God which children have to their parents. First, sanctifying grace is poured out in our souls, and God dwells in us, forming in us a preliminary resemblance. Our duty next is to make this more perfect by the exercise of good works, which constitute a practical and active resemblance to God. From these two proceed the final transformation into the image of God by the addition of the life of glory. Then “we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is” (1 John iii. 2). Thus we attain to the final results of the Incarnation. Humanity is inconceivably elevated, first in Jesus Christ, and by Him in us. He accomplishes it; but you must share in His works if you are to have your full share in His dignity.

20. The Royalty of Christ

I. Jesus Christ is not only our Pontiff in spirituals, He is King and supreme ruler of mankind in temporals; because “there is no power but from God” (Rom. xiii. 1); and secondly because He is actually our King; He is “Prince of the Kings of the earth” (Apoc. i. 5). He Himself says, “All power is given Me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. xxviii. 18), and again, “I am appointed King by Him over Sion, His holy mountain” (Ps. ii. 6). Our Lord has all the qualities which go to the making of kings. He is of noble descent, being Son of God, He is the firstborn of all mankind, He surpasses all in power and in qualities of body and soul, He has conquered His rights by delivering the world from its previous slavery and disorganization, and He is the founder of a new social order and a new civilization. He is also Son of David, the King of the chosen people, which had primacy over all nations, to be their blessing and their salvation. The Father gave Him not only the Jews but all mankind, according to His word: “I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for Thy possession” (Ps. ii. 8). His rights, therefore, over us are temporal as well as spiritual, even though many refuse to admit them. The two things cannot be separated; for our internal and external life, although different, constitute one human life; the prosperity of the one is interwoven with that of the other; and the influences of religion and morality penetrate all our actions—domestic, industrial, and political. Honour your King with the service both of body and soul. Let His law rule your whole life in every branch of it.

II. Our Lord’s Kingdom is not indeed of this world, but it is a real kingdom in this world. He has separated the Priestly and the Royal functions and placed them in different hands. In the spiritual order He has Himself appointed His representative, and one universal, unvarying form of administration. But not so in the civil order. Centralization and uniformity would not meet the requirements of human life. Men have to work out their worldly destinies for themselves under God’s direction and assistance, according to their different circumstances, but in accordance with revealed principles of action. They have liberty to obey or disobey these. The human apparatus of compulsion does not belong to Christ’s Kingdom—armies, police, tribunals, prisons. He appeals to the good-will of His subjects, by exhortation, by inward grace, by love, and also by threats of future consequences. His Kingdom is, in the first instance, in the souls of men, and thence it extends to their outward life. Thus He designed to establish on earth a universal kingdom, guided by faith, cemented together with love, abounding, first in spiritual, and then in temporal benediction. In spite of the extensive rejection of the Royalty of Christ, the faithful few still form a world-wide kingdom, and reap many of its benefits.

III. “The nation and the kingdom that will not serve Thee shall perish” (Isa. lx. 12). Our King, in giving His law, knew what was best adapted to human life, and necessary for its success. Under His laws the order of humanity would be as perfect and beautiful as the order of the material creation. If we disobey the instructions of the maker of powerful machinery we must expect some great catastrophe, and we deserve it. By disobeying the divine laws of human organization we lose control of the enormous destructive forces of the perverted human will, and our imperfect makeshifts cannot avert the calamitous consequences. Hence, among the highest creatures of God and the best endowed, we find so much failure, retrogression, hopeless degradation. As their capacities are increased, so do their miseries increase. There is one cause of all these evils; it is that men have thrust aside their King, His law and His grace. Your duty is to resist the rising tide of evil, to help the cause of good and happiness, by fidelity to Christ the King, and by promoting His reign.

19. The Priesthood of Christ

 

I. “The Lord hath sworn and He will not repent: Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedec” (Ps. cix. 4). The priesthood used to be attached to the primogeniture; it belongs, therefore, to Our Lord, the firstborn of mankind; and it is His office to offer supreme worship to the Creator on behalf of all. He was, further, appointed to offer the great sacrifice for sins by the shedding of His blood on Calvary. This priesthood is “for ever,” because the oblation continues for ever in heaven and on earth. The Apostle saw “in the midst of the throne … a lamb standing as it were slain” (Apoc. v. 6); and Christ “offering one sacrifice for sins, for ever sitteth on the right hand of God” (Heb. x. 12). The eternal sacrifice as it goes on amongst us, is, according to the order of Melchisedec, under the forms of bread and wine. This is the “clean oblation” (of flour), which the prophet said would be offered among the Gentiles in every place, from the rising of the sun to its setting (Mal. i. 11). Venerate Our Lord as the eternal Priest, always offering the sacrifice of the Mass, invisibly but really, and inviting you to be present at it. There is no event so holy or so efficacious on earth; nothing that corresponds so exactly with the actual facts of heaven.

II. Our Lord is also the great High Priest and Pontiff. In fulfilment of the Old Testament type, He offered His sacrifice in the outer court of this world; and then, leaving the priests still ministering at the altar, He has gone within the veil that shrouds the majesty of God in the true Holy of Holies. There, with the blood of sacrifice upon His hands, He continues the same oblation that was commenced and still goes on in the outer court. Jesus is High Priest also in relation to the multitude of consecrated priests of the New Law. They are His ministers and instruments, not of a new sacrifice, for there can be no other; nor of a repetition of the same, “for this He did once, offering Himself” (Heb. vii. 27); but they are appointed to give visible form, in every place, on every day, to the one sacrifice which the High Priest is ever engaged in offering. They act in His name, they speak His words, but He is really the Priest of the sacrifice exerting His supreme power through them. Admire the wisdom and power which God has exercised in so arranging this mystery that you may be able to assist at it as though on Calvary. Thank Him for this.

III. “It was fitting that we should have such a High Priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” (Heb. vii. 26).

We need such a one that He may be able to stand between us and God as Mediator, and atone for our sins.

We need a Victim also of infinite value for the sacrifice, and such also is our great Pontiff.

We need to have a form of sacrifice always amongst us, in order that the perfect religion may find its expression in that form which is the characteristic ceremony of religion.

We crave to be personally present at such an act, and not merely to know as a matter of history that it once took place.

We need such a form of worship as will bind the systems of the Old Testament and the New into one. The ancient law offered a symbolic sacrifice prophetic of the Crucifixion; we recall it daily in a mystic sacrifice.

We need a form of worship of divine institution, invariable through the ages, the same in all lands, which will express the unity of God and of religion, and bind our souls into one. All this God has given you through the sacred priesthood of Our Lord. What treasures of truth, and beauty, and utility are therein contained! Make full use of your privileges.

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).