_Rejoice and be exceeding glad.... Blessed are they that mourn_.--
MATT. V. 12, 5.
The Catholic Church, as has been seen, is always too "extreme" for the
world. She is content with nothing but a Divine Peace, and in its cause
is the occasion of bloodier wars than any waged from merely human
motives. She is not content with mere goodness, but urges always
Sanctity upon her children; yet simultaneously tolerates sinners whom
even the world casts out. Let us consider now how, in fulfilling these
two apparently mutually contradictory precepts of our Lord, to rejoice
and to mourn, once more she appears to the world extravagant in both
directions at once.
I. It is a common charge against her that she rejoices too exceedingly;
is arrogant, confident, and optimistic where she ought to be quiet,
subdued, and tender.
"This world," exclaims her critic, "is on the whole a very sad and
uncertain place. There is no silver lining that has not a cloud before
it; there is no hope that may not, after all, be disappointed. Any
religion, then, that claims to be adequate to human nature must always
have something of sadness and even hesitancy about it. Religion must
walk softly all her days if she is to walk hand in hand with experience.
Death is certain; is life as certain? The function of religion, then, is
certainly to help to lighten this darkness, yet not by too great a blaze
of light. She may hope and aspire and guess and hint; in fact, that is
her duty. But she must not proclaim and denounce and command. She must
be suggestive rather than exhaustive; tender rather than virile; hopeful
rather than positive; experimental rather than dogmatic.
"Now Catholicism is too noisy and confident altogether. See a Catholic
liturgical function on some high day! Was there ever anything more
arrogant? What has this blaze of colour, this shouting of voices, this
blowing of trumpets to do with the soft half-lights of the world and the
mystery of the darkness from which we came and to which we return? What
has this clearcut dogma to do with the gentle guesses of philosophy,
this optimism with the uncertainty of life and the future--above all,
what sympathy has this preposterous exultation with the misery of the
world?
"And how unlike, too, all this is to the spirit of the Man of Sorrows!
We read that _Jesus wept_, but never that He laughed. His was a sad
life, from the dark stable of Bethlehem to the darker hill of Calvary.
He was what He was because He knew what sorrow meant; it was in His
sorrows that He has touched the heart of humanity. '_Blessed_,' he says,
'_are those that mourn_.' Blessed are they that expect nothing, for they
shall not be disappointed."
In another mood, however, our critic will find fault with our sadness.
"Why is not the religion of you Catholics more in accord with the happy
world in which we live? Surely the supreme function of religion is to
hearten and encourage and lay stress on the bright side of life! It
should be brief, bright, and brotherly. For, after all, this is a lovely
world and full of gaiety. It is true that it has its shadows, yet there
can be no shadows without a sun; there is death, but see how life
continually springs again from the grave. Since all things, therefore,
work together for good; since God has taken pains to make the world so
sweet, it is but a poor compliment to the Creator to treat it as a vale
of misery. Let us, then, make the best of things and forget the worst.
Let us leave the things that are behind and press forward to the things
that are before. Let us insist that the world is white with a few black
spots upon it, be optimistic, happy, and confident.
"You Catholics, however, are but a poor-spirited, miserable race. While
other denominations are, little by little, eliminating melancholy, you
are insisting upon it. While the rest of us are agreeing that Hell is
but a bogy, and sin a mistake, and suffering no more than remedial, you
Catholics are still insisting upon their reality--that Hell is eternal,
that sin is the deliberate opposition of the human will to the Divine,
and that suffering therefore is judicial. Sin, Penance, Sacrifice,
Purgatory, and Hell--these are the old nightmares of dogma; and their
fruits are tears, pain, and terror. What is wrong with Catholicism,
then, is its gloom and its sorrow; for this is surely not the
Christianity of Christ as we are now learning to understand it. Christ,
rightly understood, is the Man of joy, not of Grief. He is more
characteristic of Himself, so to speak, as the smiling shepherd of
Galilee, surrounded by His sheep; as the lover of children and flowers
and birds; as the Preacher of Life and Resurrection--He is more
characteristic of Himself as crowned, ascended, and glorified, than as
the blood-stained martyr of the Cross whom you set above your altars.
_Rejoice, then, and be exceeding glad_, and you will please Him best."
Once more, then, we appear to be in the wrong, to whatever side we turn.
The happy red-faced monk with his barrel of beer is a caricature of our
joy. Can this, it is asked, be a follower of the Man of Sorrows? And the
long-faced ascetic with his eyes turned up to heaven is the world's
conception of our sorrow. Catholic joy and Catholic sorrow are alike too
ardent and extreme for a world that delights in moderation in both
sorrow and joy--a little melancholy, but not too much; a little
cheerfulness, but not excessive.
II. First, then, it is interesting to remember that these charges are
not now being made against us for the first time. In the days even of
the Roman Empire they were thought to be signs of Christian inhumanity.
"These Christians," it was said, "must surely be bewitched. See how
they laugh at the rack and the whip and go to the arena as to a bridal
bed! See how Lawrence jests upon his gridiron." And yet again, "They
must be bewitched, because of their morbidity and their love of
darkness, the enemies of joy and human mirth and common pleasure. In
either case they are not true men at all." Their extravagance of joy
when others would be weeping, and their extravagance of sorrow when all
the world is glad--these are the very signs to which their enemies
appealed as proofs that a power other than that of this world was
inspiring them, as proofs that they could not be the simple friends of
the human race that they dared to pretend.
It is even more interesting to remember that our Divine Lord Himself
calls attention to these charges. "_The Son of Man comes eating and
drinking._ The Son of Man sits at the wedding feast at Cana and at meat
in the rich man's house and you say, _Behold a glutton and a
winebibber!_ The Son of Man comes rejoicing and you bid Him to be sad.
And _John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking._ John the
Baptist comes from the desert, an ascetic with his camel-hair about him
and words of penance and wrath in his mouth, and you say, _He hath a
devil.... We have piped unto you and you have not danced_. We have
played at weddings like children in a market-place, and you have told us
to be quiet and think about our sins. _We have mourned unto_ you, we
have asked you to play at funerals instead, and you have told us that it
was morbid to think about death. _We have mourned and you would not
lament._"
III. The fact is, of course, that both joy and sorrow must be an element
in all religion, since joy and sorrow together make up experience. The
world is neither white with black spots nor black with white spots; it
is black and white. It is quite as true that autumn follows summer as
that spring follows winter. It is no less true that life arises out of
death than that death follows life.
Religion then cannot, if it is to be adequate to experience, be a
passionless thing. On the contrary it must be passionate, since human
nature is passionate too; and it must be a great deal more passionate.
It must not moderate grief, but deepen it; not banish joy, but exalt it.
It must weep--and bitterer tears than any that the world can shed--with
them that weep; and rejoice too--with _a joy which no man can take
away_--with them that rejoice. It must sink deeper and rise higher, it
must feel more acutely, it must agonize and triumph more abundantly, if
it truly comes from God and is to minister to men, since His thoughts
are higher than ours and His Love more burning.
For so did Christ live on earth. At one hour He _rejoiced greatly in
spirit_ so that those that watched Him were astonished; at another He
sweated blood for anguish. In one hour He is exalted high on the blazing
Mount of Transfiguration; in another He is plunged deeper than any human
heart can fathom in the low-lying garden of Gethsemane. _Behold and see
if there be any sorrow like to My Sorrow._