49.The Last Words of Christ

I. “He upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart” (Mark xvi. 14). It is remarkable how frequently the Apostles, after their long training, their knowledge of Scripture prophecies, their sight of miracles, disbelieved the evidence of the Resurrection, and how continually Our Lord had to reproach them on that account. This, however, was very different from the malignant incredulity of the chief priests and ancients; it arose from human weakness, instability and grossness of mind, and was without real malice. Therefore Our Lord renewed the proofs of His Resurrection again and again, with infinite patience and love, till all were finally convinced. The disciples were by no means excusable for their incredulity; they were resisting sufficient evidence, they were showing great want of confidence in Our Lord. From this we may learn that there may be serious faults in even good people, that grace does not destroy all the weaknesses of nature, and that, however much we may have received from God, there is still a fund of hard-heartedness in us. Be patient therefore with the slowness and incredulity of others; and be not so rash as to class with the obstinate Pharisees those who are perhaps no worse than the disciples. Perhaps even now you are unfaithful, and resisting some unwelcome demand of God; and you may be giving occasion to Our Lord to reproach you.

II. A considerable portion of Our Lord’s discourses turned upon the constitution of His Church. He spoke to the Apostles of the future of the Kingdom of God on earth; He appointed St. Peter to be their chief, and confirmed his faith that he might support the others; He bestowed on them the power of working miracles, of forgiving sins, of conferring the sacraments; He commissioned them to preach the Gospel to every creature in His name, and to baptize them into union with the Church and with Himself. He opened their minds to the comprehension of the Scriptures, and qualified them to deal with other necessities and other questions which should arise. He promised them the Holy Ghost and His own abiding presence to the end of the world; and with this He gave the Church indefectible life and assured protection against error and the power of hell. He finally confirmed the authority of the Apostolic Church over all men, by the promise of eternal life to those who should believe, and the threat of eternal condemnation to those who should resist. There are also many other things that Jesus said which are not written but were committed to the Church for us; but the words which are written are sufficient for us, that we may believe and recognize the authority of His Church; they show us clearly that he who hears the Church, hears Christ and the Father who sent Him. Thank Our Lord for so clearly revealing your duty, and thus saving you from the uncertainties and responsibilities of being your own sole guide.

III. “Lifting up His hands He blessed them. And it came to pass, whilst He blessed them, that He departed from them” (Luke xxiv. 50, 51). The last words of Our Lord pronounced on earth were words of blessing poured forth on the Apostles, on the Church, and on all mankind. Then the Apostles went forth to their labour in the world. These words of Jesus were the counterpart of the words of malediction pronounced by God on the natural ancestors of the human race, when they went forth from the garden of Eden for their labours. The Church was blessed to “increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over . . . all living creatures that move upon the earth” (Gen. i. 29). That blessing has been most efficacious; it has come upon you also; be faithful in all things great and small and you will receive its fulness.

48. The Manifestation of the Resurrection

I. “If Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith also is vain” (1 Cor. xv. 14). There is no more important fact than the Resurrection. It was the greatest of Our Lord’s miracles. He proposes it to the Jews as the final proof of His divine authority (Matt. xii. 39, 40). The Apostles considered themselves as appointed to witness to this in particular, and they rest the claim of their gospel on the fact that its author was Jesus, whom God raised from the dead the third day. They tell us too that all our hopes for this life and the next depend on the Resurrection; and that without it we should “be of all men the most miserable” (1 Cor. xv. 19). In consequence, we may call it the corner-stone of the Christian system, and of all that is built on Christianity, of the civilization of the world, and of all liberty, benevolence, morality, and well-being. The risen Christ not only lives now in His Human Nature, but He has a permanent life in the souls of His faithful followers. This life in us is a standing proof to the world of the truth and power of religion, it is one of the chief manifestations of God and recommendations of His law. Take care that Christ so live in you. Without this, your religion is vain as regards yourself, and powerless for any good influence in the world.

II. Consider the character of the evidence for the Resurrection. Our Lord remained on earth for forty days, and appeared at frequent intervals to St. Mary Magdalene, St. Peter and the disciples at Jerusalem and Emmaus, and to five hundred at once in Galilee. He submitted to the test demanded by St. Thomas, and at a later date appeared in vision to Saul, a most bitter opponent of Christianity, and converted him. These all bore witness to the miracle by word, by the tenor of their lives, and by their constancy under torments and martyrdom. The evidence of sight was granted but to the few; to others was given only the evidence of their testimony. “Him God raised up the third day, and gave Him to be made manifest, not to all the people, but to witnesses preordained of God” (Acts x. 40, 41). Our Lord might indeed have done more. He might have appeared in His glorious invulnerable body before the tribunals where He had been condemned. He might have had the miracle registered, like His birth, in the annals of the Roman Empire. But such is not the way of Divine Providence. God makes knowledge accessible to all, but He does not force conviction. Faith in divine truths is the product of sufficient evidence united to purity of soul, earnest desire, readiness to believe, humble submission and prayer. Cultivate these qualities, or the most obvious truths of religion will evade your merely natural powers.

III. The sufficiency of the evidence of the Resurrection is shown by its all but universal acceptance. Its sufficiency is shown even by the perversity of those who rejected it. They did not examine the case and give it a fair hearing. The chief priests determined not to recognize the Resurrection on any terms; they bribed the guards of the sepulchre, suppressed their testimony, and invented a theory of their own to explain the facts; this was widely promulgated, and, no doubt, deterred many from embracing Christianity. Such men are impervious to all proof. Had the miracle been forced upon them, it would have been to them no more than an isolated historical fact and not a saving truth. Intellectual consent might be compelled, but this would not constitute a meritorious act of faith in Jesus the Redeemer; their hearts would still have remained hardened against Him. Be on your guard that you do not imitate the Jews, and mistake obstinate resistance for frank sincerity.

47. The Resurrection

 I. “His sepulchre shall be glorious” (Isa. xi. 10). The extremity of Christ’s abasement is the first beginning of His glory. Everything had appeared to be at an end. The shepherd was stricken and the flock dispersed (Zach. xiii. 7). One more was added to the multitude of lost causes. Evil had again triumphed over good. Satan and his instruments on earth were jubilant. Pilate was uneasy, but relieved that all was over. The chief priests felt that Judaism had escaped from the greatest peril that as yet had threatened it, and that it had taken a new lease of existence. The believers in Jesus had lost all heart; His name was to them no more than a memory of a disappointment, an illusion perhaps. There was only one who kept the faith in the silence of her heart, the Mother of Jesus. The tension of men’s minds was relaxing; when suddenly the rumour ran that the Dead had risen, and evidence accumulated that He had been seen alive. Dread and awe and despair invaded the minds of Herod and Pilate, Pharisees and Chief Priests. Satan perceived that he was conquered at the moment of his greatest success. Never had there been so sudden and complete a revulsion, such a victory for the cause of God. That cause is yours. That history repeats itself continually in each man’s life, and in the Church. To all the followers of Jesus will come similar disappointments and similar triumphs. Give glory to your Lord.

II. “Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell; nor wilt Thou give Thy Holy One to see corruption” (Ps. xv. 10). The Resurrection was the necessary termination of Our Lord’s Passion. Death could not hold dominion over the Son of God. The Sacred Body, elevated by its union with the Divinity, could not pass through corruption into dust. These things are necessary stages in our evolution, in order that all which is of sin in us may be eradicated, and our bodies re-formed afresh, adapted to the conditions of heavenly life. In Our Lord’s case, it would have been a retrogression, an undoing of the work of God, a recalling of His gift, if, after matter and human nature had completed their cycle by being united with the Divinity, this union had been broken by the return of the Sacred Body to original dust. Further, as being our true Life, and as being Lord of life and death, Jesus necessarily triumphed over death, and His triumph was more manifest in His submitting to death and rising from it by His own power, than if He had not undergone it. Again, it was the fitting reward merited by Our Lord’s unparalleled sufferings. “According to the multitude of My sorrows in My heart, Thy comforts have given joy to My soul” (Ps. xciii. 19). Congratulate with Our Lord on His supremacy over the universal domination of death. Thank Him that He will make its domination over you only temporary, and that He will grant you one day to rise superior to it.

III. Our Lord’s Resurrection was necessary on our account as well. 1. It established the faith of the Apostles, and through them of all mankind in His Divinity; and it gave them the energy to propagate His religion. “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). 2. It confirms our confidence, by showing that no obstacles of violence or fraud, no sophisms of incredulity, can cause one iota of His words to fail. He, and His Church, and His elect will in like manner triumph over the world, the flesh, and the devil. 3. It is the assurance of our resurrection and glory. “Christ is risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep. . . . And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Cor. xv. 20, 22). You can hardly calculate the immense influence that the Resurrection of Christ has on your life and your happiness. It gives you a definite certainty as to the hereafter, it is the solution of the most urgent problems of humanity, it is your comfort and strength in life and death.

43. Christ on The Cross

I. Consider the motives and thoughts of Our Lord. Always most perfect, they were especially so in His Crucifixion, the crowning act of His earthly life. Towards the Eternal Father He had a burning love, and He desired to render to Him an infinite sacrifice of praise and service, not only from Himself, but from the human race and all creation. He wished also to make atonement to Him for the wrongs inflicted by men, and to restore that glory of which He had been robbed. Jesus was moved by an ardent love for men and pity for their miseries. As God, in union with the Father and the Holy Ghost, He had created men; as Man, He was one of them. Mankind were thus doubly His; and He wished to make them still more His, by redeeming them to Himself, and gaining their love in return. Our Lord suffered a most bitter anguish at the sight of the sins of the world, of which He was bearing all the responsibility and the burden; but most bitter of all was the thought of human ingratitude, of the unprofitableness to so many of all that He was enduring, of their wicked folly in rejecting Him, and of their eternal obstinacy in the midst of most fearful misery. Strive to enter into Our Lord’s sentiments, and to carry out His objects and intentions towards His Father and Himself, towards yourself and your brethren.

II. Consider the words of Christ on the Cross. His dying words merit the most careful consideration, for they show us the action of His soul at that supreme moment, and the details to which we ought to direct our attention. He first thinks of the furious, blaspheming, blood-thirsty crowd who had brought Him to the Cross, and He prays that God will take account of their ignorance and pardon them. Then He turns to the most miserable of all there present, one of the malefactors suffering with Him, accords him pardon and grace, and declares him to be one of the elect in the eternal kingdom. Only after the wicked does Our Lord think of His own best beloved, the holiest of all creatures, His Blessed Mother; He bequeaths her to His chosen Apostle, and through him to humanity. Next He fulfils the Scripture by giving evidence of His desolation of spirit, and of the pangs of thirst which otherwise would have escaped our notice and sympathy. Last of all He declares that His work is finished, and commends His human spirit to the Father who had bestowed it on Him. Take each word separately, see how it applies to you; either say it with Our Lord, or hear it as said to you, and glorify Him for each one of them.

III. Consider what was achieved by Jesus Christ in His Crucifixion. He completed the work of creation and evolution which had been broken off at the point where Adam sinned. Man otherwise had remained on the level of mere nature, a little higher than the beasts, belonging only to the mundane sphere, incapable of raising himself higher. The Crucifixion infused into mankind the higher life, the supernatural breathing of God upon the face of man. Thereby it is in the power of all to become what God had intended that they should be. A new human society was formed, the universal Church, born on Calvary, and proceeding, like Eve, from the wounded side of the second Adam. Though consisting of sinful erring men, it was yet “a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Eph. v. 27). He gave it an indomitable life, as against the ravages of time and human violence; an incorruptible life, as against error. The death of Christ reversed the defeat of Adam, and made humanity triumphant over Satan, it assured the predominance of good over evil. It rendered to the Almighty the full glory that was His due from creatures, appeased His anger, obliterated sin, and opened to men the gates of eternal life. Glorify Jesus for this great work; be faithful to Him in order that you may participate in it.

42. Christ’s Death for all Men

I. “He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world” (1 John ii. 2). The magnificent superabundance of Our Lord’s Redemption is shown in this, that He did not die for the elect only, but also for the reprobate; He suffered the penalties not only of the sins that we shall repent of, but of those which will remain unforgiven through our perverse obstinacy. No sinner, however atrocious, is excluded from Christ’s love and the benefit of His death. He desires the salvation of all, and provides them with the means of obtaining forgiveness and eternal life. “He will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. ii. 4). Some labour under particularly adverse conditions, but there is more abundant grace and more generous allowance for them. However great the disadvantages of a man’s surroundings, however handicapped he may be by the prejudices of a bad education and an heredity of evil, he has, somehow, compensation for all this, and the means of saving his soul. So much has been done for us, that nothing remains undone which might have been done. We are saved almost in spite of ourselves. Nothing can outweigh Our Lord’s propitiation except a man’s own full and deliberate rejection of it. Only by persevering ill-will on our part can we fail of salvation. What immense confidence in Our Lord you ought to have for yourself and others!

II. Notwithstanding the infinite efficiency of the death of Christ, and its application to all, it is ineffective in many cases. St. John explains this; the light shined in the darkness, but the darkness would not comprehend it (John i. 5). God sent His Son for the illumination of all men, yet “men loved darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil” (John iii. 19). The sun pours forth light and warmth upon all the earth, yet it is possible for men to conceal themselves from its rays, and make it to themselves as if it did not exist. There are three stages of grace prepared for us by the passion of Christ. There is a first grace moving men to abandon sin and turn towards truth and holiness. All receive this; it makes salvation possible for all. Next there is sanctifying grace, the state of possessing God and loving Him. Not all are willing to go so far as this; and of those who do, some fail and return to sin and final loss. The third stage is of those who persevere to the end and attain to glory. Thus it is that many who are called are not finally chosen. They reject grace and pervert Redemption itself to their ruin. You cannot trust yourself. Whatever you are or have, there is in you a root of perversity, which may bring you to destruction if you fail in humility or prayer.

III. There are many now who will not take the trouble to secure for themselves their share in the Atonement of Christ. They think it a bad bargain to sacrifice the advantages of the present for those which, though eternal, are not at present visible to them. Many prefer to follow the animal impulses of the lower nature rather than the calls of the supernatural. They say that the law of Christ is too difficult for human nature, or is actually opposed to it, that grace and the evidence of truth are insufficient, that God expects to reap where He has not sown. But sooner or later, the sufficiency of grace, light, and strength, is placed within their reach; and the power of Christ’s merit makes all things possible to them. A day will come when the groundlessness of all excuses will be proved. Then sinners will recognize their folly and hate themselves for it. In the multitudes of the elect brought out of the great tribulation, they will see how easily salvation might have been attained, how it was actually within their grasp, and how completely their destruction is their own fault. Be wise in time. Take account of the future as well as of the present. Know that Jesus will never fail you if you be true to yourself and Him.

41. The Excess of the Passion

 

I. From one point of view it might seem unnecessary for Our Lord to go to the extreme of suffering so much and dying; for His smallest action was of infinite merit, so that it exceeded all the demerits of the world, and could have purchased life for all. Yet there is a beautiful appropriateness and fitness in the excesses of the Passion. The death of Christ is in accordance with that fundamental law, typified in all the ceremonies of the Old Testament, that “without the shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb. ix. 22). Throughout nature we may trace the principle that death produces life. The spring is preceded by winter. “That which thou sowest is not quickened unless it die first” (1 Cor. xv. 36). Of old this was represented by the fable of the phœnix. After a hundred years of life it built itself a funeral pyre, and out of its ashes a new phœnix arose. Life, then, must be preceded by an adequate death. Death is a vivifying action, a creative action, we may say, and is itself the cure of death. The supernatural life of man, being a participation in the Infinite, must proceed from an infinite death. Our death in sin is irremediable, as far as we are concerned, and in a manner infinite. It requires to be remedied by a death which is productive of God in us. Therefore God died in His human nature. See then the great efficiency of the death of Jesus; and estimate rightly the greatness of the evil that sin inflicts, and the greatness of the boon bestowed on you.
II. The excess of Our Lord’s Passion is in full accordance with universal law. God destroys nothing; not even the energies of evil. He allows all things to work out their activities to the full; He lets the battle rage till evil exhausts itself, and is broken like a wave on an iron-bound coast. Sin, therefore, being, in its tendency, destructive of God, is allowed to go to its last extremity in destroying the life of God in human nature. Not till then had it done its worst; and after that, it can do no further harm except what we deliberately invite upon ourselves. Our Lord rose again unharmed by it, and in that consists His victory. His triumph is thus far greater than if He had prevented sin, or stifled its energies by an extra-legal intervention of new forces in the universe. In His Passion Our Lord bore the whole brunt of all the sins of the world, and not merely those of His actual enemies. The hatred and fury of Caiphas, Pilate and Herod, were the embodiment of our malice. But, further, in Gethsemani He actually saw and endured the full horror of each individual sin that we have committed. How fearful would have been the consequences of your sins to you if they had not been exhausted on Our Lord! “If in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry?” (Luke xxiii. 31).

III. The excess of the Passion teaches us important lessons. 1. It is an instance of the extraordinary prodigality of bounty which appears in all God’s works. Let this move you always to do the most you can, and not the least that you are obliged. Be generous towards God and your neighbour. 2. It lays down the important rule of self-sacrifice, as the grandest source of good in this world, and the only force that can counteract the terrible effects of selfishness. “Contempt of death is the source of all moral force.” “Those who are ready to die will always master those who prefer to live” (Lacordaire). 3. Considering the enormous destructiveness of sin, and the share of our burden which Jesus assumed, we should be content to endure such minor consequences of it as come upon us. 4. Judge of the horrible power which sin will exert in hell on those who are so foolish as to refuse the benefits of Redemption. 5. Reflect on the greatness of the love of Jesus for you, in that He endured such excesses for your sake, without compulsion, and with nothing to gain. In return give yourself to Him without reserve.

40. The Last Supper

 
I. In the Last Supper Jesus Christ exhibits His love, and proves Himself to be our best Friend. The account of it begins: “having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (John xiii. 1). This was the farewell banquet on the last evening of His earthly life; in it He delivered His Testament, His final word of love, and bequeathed us a keepsake and eternal memorial of Himself. This bequest was not His portrait, not even the most valuable of His created works, not an empty type or figure of Himself; it was Himself under the form of a simple creature, it was His own Body and Blood, it was the food of eternal life for our souls under the appearance of perishable bodily nourishment. This gift was not bestowed in its reality on the twelve alone, and as a mere historical remembrance for succeeding generations, but it was to be a personal gift for every human being to the end of time; it was to be the means of incorporating Christ, not merely with the human species in general, but with each individual soul. In this Supper Our Lord gives expression in act to that which He declared of old: “My delights are to be with the children of men” (Prov. viii. 31); and He literally fulfils that other promise: “Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Matt. xxviii. 20). This gift is the supreme expression of Christ’s love for you: the devout reception of it is the supreme expression of your love for Him. You receive in it the full effects of His love, and you are able to make Him a full and adequate return.




II. On this occasion Our Lord further exhibits the most profound humility, and makes Himself our Servant; according to His word: “the Lord . . . will gird Himself, and make” His servants “sit down to meat, and passing will minister unto them” (Luke xii. 37). In this He places us above Himself: “Which is greater, he that sitteth at table, or he that serveth? . . . But I am in the midst of you as he that serveth” (Luke xxii. 27). Our Lord showed His humble servitude by kneeling before His Apostles and washing their feet. By this He cleansed them from the remnants of their sins, and represented the much more lowly servitude by which He cleanses mankind from the intolerable loathsomeness of their iniquity. Thank Our Lord for this exceeding humiliation. He points out its lesson to you: “I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also” (John xiii. 14). “You also ought to wash one another’s feet” (ib.), by humble service towards them. How have you done this in the past; how will you carry it out in the future? By doing so to men you repay the debt that you owe to Christ.




III. The Last Supper was also the inauguration of the Eternal Sacrifice, and in it Jesus exhibits Himself as our High Priest. In the giving of His Body and Blood, He connects it significantly with the sacrifice that He was to offer on the cross the following day. “This is My body that shall be delivered, My blood which shall be shed.” The action in the supper-room was an anticipation of the action on Calvary. That mystical banquet was not only a memorial of Our Lord to us, it is also an act of worship on the part of men towards God. We receive in it a gift from heaven, we render back a sacrifice to Our Maker. Further, Our Lord conveyed the participation in His priestly office to the Apostles and their successors, saying: “Do this for a commemoration of Me” (Luke xxii. 19). By this instrumentality the Sacrifice of Calvary was made an eternal sacrifice, to be offered unceasingly among the Gentiles from the rising of the sun to its setting (Mal. i. 11). The Pasch of that evening was the Pasch of all time, and all mankind are called to partake of it with Jesus and His Apostles. This was the compendium of all God’s bounties: “He hath made a remembrance of His wonderful works; He hath given food to them that fear Him” (Ps. cx. 4, 5). Venerate this mystery of mysteries. In it you really partake in that solemn supper and in the sacrifice that Jesus offered on Calvary.  

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).

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.

11. THE POWER OF CHRIST

 

I. “All power is given Me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. xxviii. 18). Power is a characteristic of great men, and especially of God’s servants. Our Lord, in His Humanity, necessarily possessed a supernatural power of doing great works and miracles. It belonged to Him as the greatest of mankind and the Father of the supernatural life in them; also because in Him the supernatural and the natural were united perfectly; also because it was the necessary means of manifesting to men His supernatural and divine office. This power, as exercised by the Sacred Humanity, was not divine omnipotence; still, He was able as man to do all that He desired. Either He had an inherent power from the Divinity to raise the dead, cure diseases, etc., or it may be that the power was granted by the Divinity in answer to the prayers and merits of the Humanity. This latter seems to be implied in Christ’s words: “Father, I give Thee thanks that Thou hast heard Me; and I knew that Thou hearest Me always” (John xi. 41, 42). In any case it was a permanent power in Our Lord on account of the Divine Person of the Word which was united with His human nature; it was not like the miraculous powers of Moses, Elias and the saints, which were given to them occasionally for some special action which God moved them to do. Jesus is present always in His Church, and with you personally when in the state of grace. His power is communicated to you according to your needs. “He that believeth in Me, the works that I do he shall do also” (John xiv. 12). What perfect confidence and fearlessness this should give you!

II. Consider how Jesus Christ uses His power. 

1. With great modesty. He concealed it often, forbade men to speak of it, and accompanied it with special humiliations, such as those which surrounded His birth and His death. We, on the other hand, value our talents and powers as the means of asserting ourselves and impressing others with our superiority. 

2. With benevolence towards men, gentleness, and utility. So Our Lord never used His power for punishment or destruction, except for the sake of the lesson of the barren fig tree. He would not destroy with fire from heaven the city that hardened its face against Him (Luke ix. 55). He would not use His power to gratify curiosity, by working wonders in the heavens or before Herod; nor for His own advantage by changing stones into bread, or descending from the cross. We always misuse our powers, from savage kings who must “wash their spears” periodically, to great nations with a “civilizing mission.” 

3. In submission to God and for His glory. “The Father who abideth in Me, He doth the works” (John xiv. 10). You have power of some sort: see that you use it for proper objects and motives like your divine model.

III. “Have confidence; I have overcome the world” (John xvi. 33). Power is not complete unless it crushes opposition and becomes predominant. Consider how Jesus Christ gained His victories. 

1. By enduring without resistance all the misrepresentations and violence of His enemies, and emerging glorious and stronger than before. This is a greater manifestation of power than crushing violence by violence. 

2. By converting His enemies, sinners. Every holy life, every soul saved, every act of virtue, is a triumph of Christ’s power, for it proceeds from Him alone: “Without Me you can do nothing” (John xv. 5). 

3. By judging. Having died for us and done all that was possible for us, Our Lord “hath been appointed by God to be the judge of the living and the dead” (Acts x. 42). This will be the final triumph of the power of Christ over obstinate sin, unbelief, blasphemy, immorality. In one mode or another “He must reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet” (1 Cor. xv. 25). All opposition will be reduced to eternal impotence, and those who ignored the power of Christ as Saviour will not escape from it in judgment. Seek for yourself and for the Church no other triumph but that of Christ. 

10. THE INTELLECT OF CHRIST

I. Intellectual power is the most efficient force on earth, and the advantage most esteemed. It raises men more surely than anything else, and gives them command of the minds, and thereby of the services of other men. In the world it is rated more highly than moral excellence, and still more so than spiritual. Our Lord possessed the most perfect and powerful of created minds, but He concealed its brilliance, and He employed it solely for religious ends. Still, glimpses of its power appeared at times; as when He discoursed at the age of twelve with the sages in the temple; when His enemies confessed that never had man so spoken before; when, with a single word, He eluded snares devised by the most acute and unscrupulous minds; when He laid down the laws that should govern human life; and when He organized the Church which was to defy the ravages of time, the assaults of vindictiveness, and, worse still, the tepidity and neglect of its own members. If Our Lord had not been God, His human intellect would have dominated all the affairs of men, and His law would have been accepted as a masterpiece of insight and prudence. But, because He is divine, the spirit of evil has induced so many of mankind to reject the only system which is capable of meeting their needs. The great bulk of men pin their faith on some eminent intellect, and follow its guidance implicitly. Take Jesus Christ as your master and guide; study to know His mind, and carry out His will with thorough trust and obedience.

II. “Christ Jesus in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. ii. 3). There was a double intellectual operation in Our Lord, of the divine and of the human intelligence. As God, He possessed “all the fulness of the Godhead corporally” (Col. ii. 9), including its infinite knowledge. As man, He possessed all the knowledge of the blessed in heaven, enjoying as He did in His Humanity the full sight of the Beatific Vision. He had an infused or innate supernatural and natural knowledge of all things, so that it was not necessary for Him to learn them in the ordinary way. He had also acquired knowledge, for it is said of Him as a child that He “advanced in wisdom” (Luke ii. 52); not that He really learnt anything that He was ignorant of, but His faculties apprehended different things in succession, and manifested this progressively. “He knew what was in man” (John ii. 25) and what is best for man. What folly it is to think that we can advance our best interests by our futile prudence, when it is opposed to the dictates of Christ’s wisdom!

III. The knowledge possessed by Christ was practical and efficient; it was not that vain science which puffeth up (1 Cor. viii. 1). It guided all His operations with consummate prudence, to the glory of God and the advantage of men; and was not merely an ornament or a personal gratification, or a source of pride, or of false inferences, as with men. His universal knowledge was also the basis upon which was built up His love for His Father and for us; for He knew both the perfections of God and the miseries of man, and He was moved to adoration or to pity accordingly. You have received much wonderful knowledge both spiritual and temporal; and all knowledge is in some way the knowledge of God. Yet there are many who have such knowledge of God and yet will not recognize Him. The Scripture describes them as having eyes and seeing not, ears and hearing not, hands and working not, mouths and speaking not; for they will not use their faculties for the only purpose which is ultimately profitable to God, and men, and themselves. Seek for all knowledge, and use it for God’s service and your own salvation; but, above all, seek for the knowledge of God and let it lead you to His love.

9. THE GRACES AND VIRTUES OF CHRIST

I. The graces of Jesus Christ are innumerable and splendid as the stars of heaven. He is “full of grace and truth” (John i. 14). “In Him it hath pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell” (Col. i. 19). The basis of all His graces was the supereminent one of the hypostatic union, the union of the divine and human natures. This makes Him the Holy of Holies, and involves all divine and human perfections and graces; it excludes the possibility of sin or deficiency, just as the fulness of light is the exclusion of darkness; it makes Our Lord the supreme object of divine love. This grace, as being infinite, was not susceptible of increase. Neither could the blessedness and happiness of Our Lord be increased, as He always enjoyed the full vision of the Divinity. Our Lord therefore required no further impulse of grace to help Him in His miracles and works of virtue. This completeness of Our Lord’s graces is the source of all the graces bestowed on mankind. He is the head in which they all centre, and from thence they are transmitted to all parts of the mystical body, to His Blessed Mother first, who was full of grace, and thence to us. “Of His fulness we all have received, and grace for grace” (John i. 16). Address Our Lord with the Psalmist: “Thou art beautiful above the sons of men; grace is poured forth on Thy lips; therefore hath God blessed Thee for ever” (Ps. xliv. 3). He will communicate His graces to you according to your love for Him.

II. Virtues are as streams which flow in different directions from their source, which is sanctifying grace. All the virtues we can conceive existed in Our Lord in supreme perfection, except such as were incompatible with the Divinity, like faith, and repentance for personal sin. Isaias tells us of the seven gifts of the Spirit in Him. Elsewhere we read of such virtues as poverty, lowliness, and obedience, which seem to be almost unworthy of an Infinite Being. He practised the virtue of religion with all the subsidiary virtues which have God for their object. Next He had those virtues which regard our brethren; all the virtues of a son towards His Holy Mother, of a citizen, a workman, a ruler of men, a teacher, a priest; generosity, fidelity, justice, sobriety, courage, modesty, prudence, benevolence. These virtues make Jesus your perfect model. Whatever your state of life, you will find its virtues in Him. Whenever you are in doubt as to the course of action to be followed, consider Our Lord’s life, and see how He would have acted. Such will be not only the most virtuous, but the most prudent and beneficial course.

III. “He that followeth Me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John viii. 12). This is the fulness of human perfection. Our Lord’s work was not only to expiate our sins, but to restore in us the supernatural likeness of God. All aspire in some way to the qualities of God; but many seek it unduly and rebelliously, like Satan in Paradise, and Adam in Eden. Our Blessed Lord satisfies that desire legitimately, and shows us in Himself the different ways in which it is possible for men to be like the infinite and all-holy God. The grandeur and holiness of the Old Testament saints attach to them as being figures of the Messias yet to come; they represented His death like Abel, His priesthood like Aaron, His peacefulness like Moses, or His obedience, or gentleness, or prayer. So too the saints of the New Testament are great in proportion as they are formed on Our Lord’s model and represent Him to us. There is some special aspect of Our Lord’s life, which you are called upon to represent, some particular virtue for which you have a facility, some work corresponding to one of His. He will point it out to you if you beseech Him, and will give you strength to follow in His footsteps.