_He that shall lose his life for My sake shall find it. For what doth it
profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own
soul?_--MATT. XVI. 25, 26.
No recorded word of our Lord better illustrates than does this the
startling and paradoxical manner of His teaching. For He Who _knew what
was in man_, Who spoke always down to man's deepest interests, dwelt and
spoke therefore in that realm of truth where man's own paradoxical
nature is most manifest; where his interests appear to flourish only by
being ruthlessly pruned; where he rises to the highest development of
self only by self-mortification. This is, in fact, the very lesson
Christ teaches in these words. To _find the life_ is the highest object
of every man and the end for which he was created; yet this can be
attained only by the _losing of it for Christ's sake_. Individuality can
be preserved only by the sacrifice of Individualism. Let us break up
this thought and consider it more in detail.
I. (i) Catholics, it is said, are the most fundamentally selfish people
in the whole world, since all that they do and say and think is
directed and calculated, so far as they are "good Catholics," to the
salvation of their own souls. It is this that continually crops up in
their conversation, and this that presumably is their chief
pre-occupation. Yet surely this, above all methods, is the very worst
for achieving such an end. One does not pull up flowers to see how they
are growing. The very secret of health is to be unconscious of it.
Catholics, on the other hand, scarcely ever do anything else; they are
for ever examining themselves, for ever going to confession, for ever
developing and cultivating the narrowest virtues. The whole science of
Casuistry, for example, is directed to nothing else but this--the exact
definition of those limits within which the salvation of the soul is
secure and beyond which it is imperilled; and Casuistry, as we all know,
has a stifling and deadening influence upon all who study it.
Again, see how the true development and expansion of the soul must
necessarily be hindered by such an ideal. "I must not read this book,
however brilliant, since it might be dangerous to my faith. I must not
mix in this company, however charming, since evil communications corrupt
good manners." What kind of life is that which must always be checked
and stunted in this fashion? What kind of salvation can there be that
can only be purchased by the sacrifice of so much that is noble and
inspiring? True life consists in experience, not in introspection; in
going out from self into the world, not in retiring from the world
inwards. Let us therefore live our life without fear, lose ourselves in
humanity, forget self in experience, and leave the rest to God!
(ii) So much for the one side, while from the other comes almost
precisely the opposite criticism. Catholics, it is said, are not nearly
individualistic enough; on the contrary they are for ever sinking
themselves and their personalities in the corporate life of the Church.
Not only are their outward actions checked and their words guarded, but
even their very consciences and thoughts are informed and made by the
collective conscience and mind of others. It is the highest ambition of
every good Catholic _sentire cum ecclesia_; not merely to act and speak
but even to think in obedience to others. Now a man's true life, we are
told, consists in an assertion of his own individuality. God has made no
two men the same; the mould was made and broken in each several case.
If, therefore, we are to be what He meant us to be, we must make the
most of our own personalities; we must think our own thoughts, not other
people's, direct our own lives, speak our own minds--so far, of course,
as we can do so without interfering with our neighbour's equal liberty.
Once more, therefore, we are bidden to live our life to the full; not in
this case, however, because we all share in a common humanity, but
because we do not!
We Catholics are wrong, therefore, for both reasons and in both
directions. We are wrong when we put self first and we are wrong when we
do not. We are wrong when we launch out into the current of life, and
wrong when we withdraw ourselves from its waters. We are wrong when we
insist upon our personal responsibility, and wrong when we look to the
Church to undertake it.
II. (i) Here then, indeed, is a Paradox; but it is one which our Lord
Himself expressly emphasizes. For, first, there is nothing on which He
so repeatedly insists as the supreme and singular value of every soul's
salvation. If this is not attained, all is lost. _What shall it profit a
man if he shall gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own
soul?_ All else, then, must be sacrificed if this is in peril. No human
possession, however great, can be weighed against this. No human tie,
however sacred, can hold against its claim. Not only must _houses and
lands_, but _father and mother and wives and children_ must take second
place, so soon as eternal life is at stake. And yet, somehow or another,
this salvation can only be attained by loss; self can only live if it be
mortified, can only be saved by its own denial. Individuality, as has
been said, can only be preserved by the loss of Individualism.
(ii) But this is not peculiar to the spiritual sphere; it is a paradox
that is true, in some sense, of life on every plane--civic,
intellectual, artistic, human. The man that desires to bring his
intellectual and personal powers to their highest pitch must
continually be sinking them, so to speak, in the current of his fellows,
continually exhausting, using, and wearing them out. He must risk, and
indeed inevitably lose, in a very real sense, his personal point of
view, if he is to have a point of view that is worth possessing; he must
be content to see his theories and his thoughts modified, merged,
changed, and destroyed, if his thought is to be of value. For, so far as
he withdraws himself from his fellows into a physical or mental
isolation, so far he approaches egotistic madness. He cannot grow unless
he decreases; he cannot remain himself unless he ceases to be himself.
So, too, is it in civic and artistic life. The citizen who truly lives
to the State of which he is a member--the man to whom his country raises
a monument, for example--is one, always, who has _lost himself_ for his
nation, whether he has died in battle or sacrificed himself in politics
or philanthropy. And the citizen who has merely hugged his citizenship
to himself, who has enjoyed all the privileges he can get and paid
nothing for them,--least of all himself--who has, so to say, _gained the
whole world_, has simultaneously lost himself indeed and is forgotten
within a year of his death. So with the artist. The man who has made his
art serve him, who has employed it, let us say, purely for the sake of
the money he could get out of it, who has kept it within severe limits,
who has been merely prudent and orderly and restrained, this man has, in
a sense, _saved his own life_; yet simultaneously he has lost it. But
the man to whom art is a passion, to whom nothing else is comparatively
of any value, who has plunged himself in his art, has dedicated to it
his days and his nights, has sacrificed to it every power of his being
and every energy of his mind and body, this man has indeed _lost
himself_. Yet he lives in his art as the other has not, he has _saved
himself_ in a sense of which the other knows nothing; and exactly in
proportion as he has succeeded in his self-abnegation, so far has he
attained, as we say, immortality. There is not, then, one sphere of life
in which the paradox is not true. The great historical lovers in
romance, the pioneers of science, the immortals in every plane, are
precisely those that have fulfilled on lower levels the spiritual
aphorism of Jesus Christ.
(iii) Turn, then, once more to the Catholic Church and see how in the
Life which she offers, as in none other, there is presented to us a
means of fulfilling our end.
For it is she alone who even demands in the spiritual sphere a complete
and entire abnegation of self. From every other Christian body comes the
cry, Save your soul, assert your individuality, follow your conscience,
form your opinions; while she, and she alone, demands from her children
the sacrifice of their intellect, the submitting of their judgment, the
informing of their conscience by hers, and the obedience of their will
to her lightest command. For she, and she alone, is conscious of
possessing that Divinity, in complete submission to which lies the
salvation of Humanity. For she, as the coherent and organic mystical
Body of Christ, calls upon those who look to her to become, not merely
her children, but her very members; not to obey her as soldiers obey a
leader or citizens a Government, but as the hands and eyes and feet obey
a brain. Once, therefore, I understand this, I understand too how it is
that by being lost in her I save myself; that I lose only that which
hinders my activity, not that which fosters it. For when is my hand most
itself? When separated from the body, by paralysis or amputation? Or
when, in vital union with the brain, with every fibre alert and every
nerve alive, it obeys in every gesture and receives in every sensation a
life infinitely vaster and higher than any which it might, temporarily,
enjoy in independence? It is true that its capacity for pain is the
greater when it is so united, and that it would cease to suffer if once
its separation were accomplished; yet, simultaneously, it would lose all
that for which God made it and, _saving itself_, would be _lost_ indeed.
_I live_, then, the perfect Catholic may say, as none other can say,
when I have ceased to be myself. And _yet not I_, since I have lost my
Individualism. No longer do I claim any activity at all on my own
behalf; no longer do I demand to form my opinions, to follow my own
conscience apart from that informing of it that comes from God, or to
live my own life. Yet in losing my Individualism I have won my
Individuality, for I have found my true place at last. I have _lost the
whole world?_ Yes, so far as that world is separate from or antagonistic
to God's will; but I have _gained my own soul_ and attained immortality.
For it is _not I that live, but Christ that liveth in me_.